Over the last few days I took my family on a beach vacation at the not too distant beach resort areas on the Atlantic coast.  When I say not so distant, I mean areas that are within a couple hundred miles, and less than 3 hours drive time at road conditions.  Distances I used to drive without even blinking and without really thinking about it.  Distances and drive times that are showing up in serious aches and pains this a.m. and yesterday a.m. even though I was done with my driving and had returned home a few evenings ago.

As I told my wife, part of the problem is that the trip to the beaches in my area have been streamlined in most places.  The trip out U.S. route 50 used to be ridiculously long with stops in every little 'burg along the way.  Seriously, there were several (half-dozen??) draw bridges that would invariably be raised to allow some Ted Knight (thanks for the correction, Dr Guy) (in Caddyshack) or Richard Crenna (in the movie Summer Rental) style blow-hard blow-boater to take their sailboat with the 4-feet too tall main mast under the bridge to get from one side of the harbor over to the other, mostly because they were too cheap to pay for a slot at the marina on the side of the harbor where they wouldn't have to ever have the bridge raised.  Thanks to those draw bridges getting raised at the most inopportune times, the traffic would back-up literally for hours (and miles) on end.  From one draw-bridge back to the previous one (normally about 12 - 18 miles apart) was not at all unheard of.

The draw-bridges themselves and the back-up from them would compound upon each other and create a line of traffic from the Chesapeake bay bridge all the way to just outside of Ocean City Maryland, or to Rehoboth Beach Delaware.  In addition, there were stop lights, speed traps, many hidden entrances, cross streets, and residential areas with direct access to the roadway.

That stuff has all been, slowly but surely, eliminated from the roadway and what was a mostly rural roadway has been upgraded in many areas to bypass the small towns and to eliminate most of the bottlenecks that were along the way.  Bridges were built to replace the drawbridges with the new bridges that arc high up over the water and never require opening of a draw span.

Progress, lots and lots of progess.  Trips that used to take 4 - 5 hours, if not more, became first 3 - 4 hours, and then down into the lower 3 hour range (if you are riding close to posted speed limits).

There are still a few areas I'd love to see improved, including large stretches of 55 MPH speed limits that could very easily be raised to 65 MPH speed limits, and areas where by-passes could be built that would eliminate another 10 - 15 minutes out of the over-all trip.  If both were done (assuming that the new speed limits were enforced at approx. 5 MPH over the limit, allowing a little leeway to avoid speed trap situations, etc.) the trip could probably become one of a fairly smooth 2.5 hours for most drivers.

But, at the same time, this quicker trip has unintended consequences and side effects.  Side effects such as lower back pain and stiffness that has me popping the Tylenol to help relax the muscles and relieve the pain/pressure.  Side effects that remind me that I should more frequently say THANKS! to people like frequent JU blogger Mason who haul materials around this country as they drive long-haul runs.  And oh, yeah, also some more respect for the work that NASCAR drivers put in on any given weekend.

Even in the junior (not Dale, Jr., but junior level) level Busch series the drivers there are strapped into a NASCAR vehicle and driving their butts off for (on average) 200 - 300 miles.  Up on the higher level, for the NEXTEL/Sprint cup drivers, the races are typically 400 - 500 miles in length.  3 hours, if not more, of hard driving.  Even when you look at the racers and consider that they are just turning left for 500 miles, it is grueling work where drivers are racing around in cars that are hot, gunning the vehicle to get up to max speed only to smack brakes and slow down to go through the corners and immediately start gunning the vehicle again to race through the next straightaway.

In the case of the NASCAR drivers, there's a pool of money that is there to help reward the drivers.  In the case of the trucking industry, well, not so darned much.  Yeah, I would assume that most are making money at their jobs (or they wouldn't be doing those jobs), but they aren't getting rich at it.  They're doing the job because it pays well enough for them to survive and feed families, otherwise they may do something else.  But again, I suspect that they wouldn't be getting rich at the job.

Anyway, as my back finally starts loosening up (as the Tylenol kicks in) I send /salutes to the truckers that are hauling goods and materials across the country.  And oh, yeah, some salutes to those NASCAR drivers too.