Was I absent-minded?
May 11, 2006Let me explain what pissed me off, again, today.
I went to university by car today, instead of my usual trip by public transport. I love to drive in this weather, you see. Anyway, by public transport, my trip lasts about 1.5-2 hours. Yes, that is really long. However, contrary to going by car, it’s also free. Students get free public transport in this country, you see. By car, without traffic jams, it takes about 45 minutes. All went fine, I arrived without getting myself or others killed.
After a fun day at school, I had to drive home, obviously. And that’s where the problem lies.
You see, there are two ways to get from Amsterdam to Alkmaar. A fast route, and a slow route. The bitching thing is, however, that the road signs on Amsterdam’s ring (in The Netherlands, the set of highways that encircles a city is called ‘the ring’) direct you towards the slow route. Let me give you a little drawing to illustrate my point:
I leave from the VU, and there I hop on the grey bit above (grey equals road). I move west, up towards the junction where I put the question marks. There, the highway splits and you need to make a choice: do I move north onto the A10, or do I move west?
The problem lies in the road signs: the logical choice would be to move onto the A10, as the road signs name various towns that lie en route to Alkmaar, while shortly after the junction also naming Alkmaar. So, my common sense said to move up north onto the A10. Evil choice. The A10/Ring-West is notorious for its traffic jams; and oh yes, now I know why. It was one big gridlock. I got through, and at the next junction the road signs with Alkmaar on them point towards the A8. However, the A8, which is a true highway, ends at the black dot; from then on, you are forced to travel on b-roads where you are only allowed to go 50 or 70kph. SLOW.
As you realized by now, I should’ve went west at the first question-marked junction. I knew it. My gut feeling, which I know for a fact never fails me (except when romance is involved, goddamnit), told me to go west. However, the road signs alerted my common sense. The road signs pointing towards the western, faster route said ‘Haarlem’, and ‘Schiphol Int’l Airport’. Definitely not en route to Alkmaar; contrary to the much more promising signs at the A10 route.
The bigger problem of the road signs on the question-marked junction is that they failed to tell me that direction would evolve into the A9; if it said that, I would’ve never taken the A10, as I know the A9 leads to Alkmaar.
This little joke costs me about 30 minutes, stretching the journey by 66%. And the traffic jam at the A10 made it even worse (also added a rough 20-30 minutes).
Argh. I knew it. I have made this error before, when returning from The Weekend at La Roche. The following time I had to make the decision, upon returning from the press conference at Apple NL, I trusted my gut feeling and ignored my common sense, and took the proper route.
Why didn’t I do it this time? Was I absent-minded? Not highly unlikely…
