Working

I'm doing some work these days that requires me to be in downtown Alexandria on a fairly regular basis.  As I was walking back to my car, I turned and snapped this shot of Henry Street where it crosses King in Alexandria.  If you just looked at this shot, you might even be able to imagine yourself in downtown Roanoke.  Of course it you swung around and looked up or down King Street, you would down that you're far from Roanoke.  Getting onto Interstate 495 to head back to Reston would remove any doubts that you were far from Southwest Virginia.

There's really no way to describe the traffic up here but can call it all pervasive.  There's traffic everywhere you turn.  Some parking lots like the one I tried to find a spot in the other night at 7 pm just never seem to be empty except on Sunday mornings.  The only thing I can relate it to would be my college days in Cambridge.  There I got my fill of Boston traffic. The Boston roataries might have had something to do with my moving to rural Canada for the next several years.

It's beyond me why some of these jobs can't migrate to the Roanoke area.  Traffic sucks the productivity out of your day, and there's no getting away from it.  There's no question that you get less done here than you can in our area with the exception that many of the movers and shakers are here and don't seem to be very interested in relocating to Roanoke or Blacksburg.  I guess that's okay since it they all came down, we just be moving the problem from one area to another.

Me, I'm just looking forward to heading over the mountains and back down the Valley to God's country.

It will be nice to be away from the heart of the beast which is what I call the turf inside the Beltway.

Comments

[Yankee]

I've lived in this valley for several years, off and on. Roanoke is a small town with a big city arrogance to it. Too many people here are both arrogant and ignorant. roanoke city high schools graduate less than half of their senoir students. Pay here is horrible. Businesses refuse to pay anything resembling a surviveable wage, so most people here have to work two or more jobs -usually with NO benefits. Kroger, for example, only pays $6.50/hr to start. One woman who works for a Kroger in Southwest County has been employed by Kroger for 26 years, and only makes $11.50/hr. Most employers here are cheap a-holes who whine and moan if they can't get what amounts to free productivity. Roanoke's Southwest County has become far too expensive an area in which to live for most who live in the valley. What a joke! Those who live in a middle class setting in that part of the county are conceited because they actually believe they're wealthy! Hunting Hills ISN'T a haven for the wealthy elite in the sense that Newport RI is, but to hear those who live there talk, one would think they make Bill Gates look like a miser. I'm looking for employment out of state so that I can leave this sorry area, and those of its residents who are stupid enough to think of themselves as "elite", behind. Hillbillies who live in a middle class setting and who hold memberships to country clubs are, well, still hillbillies now aren't they?