Momnesia

If You're Coming to Augusta for the Masters Golf Tournament...

AUGUSTA, GA. - Masters Tournament News: I'm going to post some things you should know over the next couple of days, to help our friendly tourists who visit the area every year. Many people return for years, and they need little assistance. So I'll start with some basics for the newbies among you.

Three very important considerations this week are the big C's: cops, construction and cars.

Between Atlanta (into which many golf fans fly) and Augusta, there isn't much to see besides pine trees - some historic sites, sure, but it's all four-lane highways to Columbia, S.C. And on those highways, there are not only state patrol officers, but representatives of just about every precinct from Newton County to North Augusta policing the speeds of drivers. I drove back from ATL this evening. I counted no less than 32 traffic stops, and I'm certain there are some cruisers I didn't spot hidden back among the trees. So, the first rule of thumb is to slow down.

Second, since Georgia has been growing exponentially from about the mid-80s, and that growth hasn't shown any signs of slowing down, we've been working on I-20 pretty much every day since 1986. That blue line on your map... well, it's pretty much just a suggestion by now. Now, having lived here a while, many of us are immune to the orange cones and barrels, accustomed to sudden drops in speed limit and in traffic stalls that seem to have no apparent cause. You are not. So, the second rule of thumb is to slow down.

Now allow me to mention an experience I had right as I got off I-20 to go home. My daughter whining hungrily in the back seat, I attempted to stop in at the McDonald's to pick up dinner at the drive-thru. When I turned into the parking lot, there was a man in full golf regalia - Masters logos affixed to everything that his seamstress could pin down - standing in the middle of the in-lane, checking his text messages. My car half in the lot and half still on Washington Road, I attempted to be patient and wait, inching forward carefully, hoping the sound of my engine would bring him out of his OMG LOL!!!!!-induced reverie. Alas, the cars stuck staring at my trunk began to rev their engines angrily. So after 30 seconds, I gave the briefest and softest (((honk))) that I could produce. It was the vehicular equivalent of "Oh, pardon me. I seem to be trying to use your parking lot. Do you mind terribly if I were to pass through?" If my car could speak, it would use a very British accent. The man looked up, threw his arms out, and screamed, "What the fuck's your problem, bitch!" For which my daughter thanks him. Those are vocabulary words every 3-year-old should know. Some "gentleman's game."

My point? Allow me to explain it more directly: Despite the annual exodus of all Augustans who could get the week off - i.e., those not employed by either the service industry or the media (hi!) - traffic in Augusta has already doubled in number of cars on the road. By Wednesday, the roads in any proximity to the Masters Golf Tournament will be a long shining example of why Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for Documentary Filmmaking - oops! I mean, the Nobel Peace Prize. In short, y'all need to learn to carpool. There's shuttle buses and everything. You can't carry your golf clubs onto the clubhouse grounds, so why are you driving that ridiculous, rented SUV? So, the third rule of thumb is to drive little - and I mean both in size and quantity.

Oh, and get the hell out of the way, chicken legs. My 3-year-old could take you.