I headed off this evening to Tyngsboro/Tyngsborough to cover a fancy function for Merrimack Valley Magazine. Nothing really to report about the event (since I'm reporting on it in the magazine) but once again, it was me vs. The (Evil) City of Lowell.
Why, you ask, is it evil? Well, it's probably only evil to me. Every time I go there, I ... ah ... cough ... end up taking the scenic route. (That means I get lost.)
I only had to turn around once on the way to the Vesper Country Club, but coming home ... well, let's just say I forgot how lovely Boston looks in the early evening.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. After missing the exit to get back on I-495 (it was NOT clearly marked that you had to take the exit for Rte. 110), I decided that rather than turning around, I would just go to I-95/Rte. 128. I knew it was there somewhere.
And it was - just a tad more southerly than I wanted to be, of course. I had to go through all those "W" towns - Woburn, Winchester, WrongWay ... wait, that was me, not a town.
When I finally arrived at home, my neighbor (with who I had briefly discussed my anxiety about going anywhere near Lowell before leaving for this event) was outside and asked me how I made out.
"Oh," I replied, "I missed the exit for 495 off Rte. 3 and had to go all the way to 95."
"You mean 128."
I always forget that people who grew up here think of that piece of road as 128, as of course it has been for years, before it became also I-95. I remember when I first moved to Mass., being very confused about signs that alternately identified the highway as 95 and 128.
Since I frequently end up in Gloucester (staying on 128) and not Newburyport (exiting to 95), I tend to exit onto Rte. 1 at the earliest opportunity. Plus, there's a McDonald's on Rte. 1, in Rowley. It's almost a straight line to right where I want to be.
And that would be home. In Newburyport.
P.S. I did not drink that cosmo, I just photographed it.
6 comments:
Having grown up in Chelmsford and gone to high school in Lowell, I can't imagine how you could get lost there. It only has 3 or 4 streets!
128 was designed & mostly built before the interstate system came along. 95 was originally supposed to go through Boston. There are chunks of road base for it on both the North and the South. But, the residents whose neighborhoods would get ruined (mainly Boston's South End) raised such a stink that the Governor (Frank Sargeant) killed it.
That left a hole in 95. The feds had a policy that interstates should never just be a renumbered road, so that hole lasted for a long time. When they finally allowed Mass to renumber the central part of 128 as 95, they insisted that the 128 identification be removed. This was, believe it or not, only a few months after Mass had erected big "128- America's Technology Highway" signs.
As you might guess, this caused huge confusion. High tech people visiting Boston on business kept finding themselves in NH because they were expecting to turn onto 128. Everybody knew about 128. Finally, the feds caved and allowed those little square white 128 signs.
BTW, get out a map and imagine having to get from here to anywhere South/West of Boston without 95, 93, or 128.
Dick, that's funny because I try to bypass those highways as much as possible. I find 133 is a very pleasant ride into Andover (and takes only slightly longer than going on 495).
I take Route 1 south. But I have always hated driving on highways and I rarely drive very far from home.
The way I remember it, 95 (aka the southwest expressway) was killed by Milton Residents on environmental grounds (of course they've since built McMansions on the land).
http://www.bostonroads.com/roads/southwest/
Thanks, d-d-f. Yeah, you know, it's very confusing to 'new' people the way there's the southwest expressway, the southeast expressway, the central artery ... in Michigan, we just called 'em by the numbers. As in, "I was tooling down 75 and got caught by a Statie ..."
What's really confusing is that if you are drving on 93/128 from Canton towards Braintree, you are traveling south on 128 AND north on 93.....
PS. I once dated a woman from Michigan so I can do the Michigan Map thing with my hands including the U.P.
Wow, Bubba ... I'm impressed. Very few people actually include the U.P. in their hand renditions.
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