Passage IV

The Beltway: Washington’s Expressway

If you visit our nation’s capital, recently, as I did, you will probably plan trips to several of the famous memorials there, many of which you have probably seen on television. These celebrated landmarks were designed to inspire feelings of patriotism and pride. Nevertheless, the structure I remember most vividly from my trip was an expressway called the Washington Beltway, which seems to be a memorial to the frenzied and crazy lunacy of modern life.

This expressway resembles an ordinary highway about as much as a space shuttle resembles an airplane. At ten lanes wide, they are much larger than the bypass loops have driven around Indianapolis and Cincinnati. The beltway is also far more busier, perhaps because it extends through two populous states—Virginia and Maryland—and intersecting with many lesser highways. It’s also fast, the thousands of Washingtonians who dash from home to work and back sometimes ignore the posted speed limit. The one, redeeming, feature of the beltway is that it’s impossible to get lost on it. If you keep driving long enough, you will eventually circle the city and return to the point where you began. (55)

As I’ve already mentioned, I was on a visit to Washington. I was staying with friends in their suburban Virginia home, and I asked them for help with alternate, more scenic routes. But by their puzzled looks, I realized they had surrendered to the beltway long ago. Graciously, I learned to navigate this expressway. I approach it as if it were an unpredictable natural force that required careful monitoring. Was it congested? Overcrowded? Moving freely? Blocked completely? What about construction zones? The radio provided me with frequent updates. Just as some people on vacation like to keep a close watch on the weather, I wanted to keep track of beltway conditions.

I’m not sure how much American history I learned on my trip, as my powers of concentration were taxed merely reading road signs. (60)