Meredith Select Board (12/15/14) - working session on "roundabouts" - Granite Grok

Meredith Select Board (12/15/14) – working session on “roundabouts”

If you have passed through Meredith, NH in the “summah” time during the bigger tourism / vacation weekends, you know that traffic in and around it can be miserable.  Yes, there are some backroads that we locals use but if you want to get to something in the middle of town, well, it can suck.  A few years ago, they put a rotary in from the south coming up from the Weirs to replace one rather sketchy intersection but they are still looking for better.  Now, they want more.  Once again, a citizen journalist (‘Grok friend Rosemary) brings us the discussion on the issue (which seems to be pretty much splitting the town over the aesthetics, if it is an actual solution or a mere stopgap, and of course, the cost).

As you can see, NOTHING is simple in small towns (and that can be a GOOD thing!) – Part 1:

Oh, the existing roundabout?  Yeah, I have a personal story about it:

Part 2:

Part 3:

That story – kismet, partly.  In going to get the SD cards with the videos, I had to go to Meredith and through that roundabout.  Now, it is NOT a real big one at all – I certainly would not want to be driving a big rig around it.  Well, I almost got rear-ended heading north.  You know, coming into one you generally slow down to watch “what’s coming from the left” (heh – you ALWAYS have to look out for the Left, eh?).  Since this roundabout is small, it isn’t clear at all that someone heading south on the entrance is going to take the “main” exit to head back to the Weirs – or keep going past where I was and take the “last exit”.

So I pretty much stopped for the first car coming around, and then edged out a bit, and then stopped again as another car came barreling through.  WELL!  It was clear that the guy behind me was not a happy camper that I was not willing to act like a battering ram (or get battered) just so he could play race car and laid in on the horn and high beams.  The auDACITY that I was behaving “local” seemed to be beyond him.

So, I proceeded slowly (instead of how fast the Turbo would have propelled me in Sport mode) – rather slowly.  Which seemed, for some unknown reason, to not make the “bumper kisser” to not be such a joyous and grateful person that I was protecting him as well.  Slow and steady didn’t seem to be a phrase in vogue in his vocabulary – beeping and honking and flashing of the lights.

So, not only did I have the chance to get clobbered, I got heckled for my trouble.

BTW, I am bemused that the British term “roundabouts” seem to be supplanting the American term “rotaries”.  Dang Europhiles….

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