Column: Appalachian on the Prairie - A catalog of big city traffic

    This weekend was my first stop in Minneapolis. I had been around the fringes of the cities a few times, but this was my first time smack in the center.
    As far as traffic goes, I would rank it better than Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.
    I’ve never officially stopped in Indy before, but have been through it far more times than I’ve desired. But the national highway system seems to think it an important place to be. Every time I travel east, I try to find a route that goes around it. The GPS never allows an answer. Not one that doesn’t add 10 hours to the drive time, at least.
    Pittsburgh is maybe the worst city traffic I’ve seen. I’ve been there three times, and every single time we spent an hour in sitting traffic. Two times were by bus, and one with my wife driving. That is still a city I refuse to drive in myself.
    As far as other major cities I’ve been to, there are New York City and Washington, D.C.
    I can’t rank traffic in either of these places because we utilized the trains and/or Metro, and everything else was on foot. 
    It has been 23 years since my last time in the heart of D.C. It’s been a while. That was back when The Newseum had its original location outside of the city. They’ve since moved to a bigger location and gone out of business entirely.
    We were in D.C. for a journalism trip. The only things I remember now are that we went to an NHL game (Capitals vs Devils), and I bought a shirt at the Newseum that said “Will Write for Food.” I wore that shirt to my first-ever job interview at a newspaper and was hired. I credit that shirt to the whole of my career.
    New York City was a surprise. My mother, for whatever reason, hated NYC and did everything in her power to vilify it and its people. Being a young country boy, I believed her and stood clear of the city for most of my life.
    But my wife always wanted to go and landed tickets to see Hamilton on Broadway early in its popularity. 
    We took a train from Charlottesville, Va. to New York City and spent two days wandering around Midtown. We got a hotel off Times Square and spent a lot of time seeing the sights. It was by far my favorite big-city experience.
    But I still heed the common warning. "It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”