Don't Leave Home--If You're Not in a Tank

There's a problem in this city that's even more pervasive than the playing of John Lennon's "Imagine" in Harvard Square. Driving in Cambridge is one of the most frenetic and perilous experiences in the reaches of civilization. If you can't catch that plane to Sarajevo, try taking a road trip up to the Star Market in Porter Square at 5:30 in the afternoon.

It begins with a relatively painless walk to one of Harvard's less-known cement monoliths, the Broadway Parking Garage. Painless, except for the constant fear of cars shooting up from the tunnel next to Canaday at rates up to sixty miles-per hour. Why fear these subterranean speeders? Simply put, you have no choice but to jaywalk if you decide to cross anywhere except Quincy Street. If you're as lucky as I am, you get to break the law in front of a completely ambivalent police cruiser. Ambivalent as to whether you're breaking the law, seemingly ambivalent as to whether it hits you.

Once out of the garage you return to that same tunnel, realizing that to travel north on Massachusetts Avenue you must cross all the lanes to your right. Accelerating frantically to pass the other two lines of traffic entering the tunnel along with you, the adrenalin of speed cases away your concerns for straying pedestrians, especially those you might encounter next to the Hemenway Gym. The semblance of a solo aircraft pilot taking off as you push up the hill onto Massachusetts Avenue quickly disappears as your lungs alert you to the most deadly nemesis known to a Cantabridgian Car Conductor, the Big Belching Bus.

Watching a putrid diesel bus slowly slogging along under unused electrical tram wires has to be one of the most existentially challenging situations in life. You could move into the "fast" lane to add a few years to your life, but then you'd be stuck behind legions of losers trying to turn left. Somehow, those canny Cambridge traffic controllers never figured that turn arrows at intersections could save people a lot of aggravation. So you resign yourself to a slightly shorter ride in a continuous cloud of instant smog.

Fifteen minutes later, you arrive in the huge-but-not-big-enough Star parking lot. It would have been shorter, and perhaps even cheaper, to take the T. Along the way, there was the guy who cut you off without using his turn signal, the woman who put on her left turn signal that made you change into the right lane but then didn't turn left, and the slimeballs who snuck past you in the half-lane on the right to do the U-turn past the T station and into the lot.

Because of the arcane traffic base that was Old Cambridge, one-way streets, odd angles, and bumpy, pothole-prone roads abound. All of these anomalies manifest themselves on the return trip. You have to drive into and out of Somerville, unaided by traffic lights at precarious corners, just to get back to Massachusetts Avenue.

On the way back to Harvard Square, the absence of one feature of civilized traffic is clear. There are no left-turn arrows in Cambridge, only delayed lights. The lights change for those travelling north about fifteen seconds earlier than those for their compatriots on the southbound side. Once the light has changed, everyone travelling north who wanted to turn left has done so; now the oncoming traffic makes turning left from the southbound lanes impossible. Inevitable long waits ensue.

More ill-constructed roads greet the driver back in the Square. In order to regain the safe cement of the Broadway Garage, one must turn back up northwards on Massachusetts Avenue and re-enter the tunnel of unbearable noise magnification. The problem is that two other lanes of traffic are also entering the connector from your right, so you must accelerate fast and cross two lanes or end up on your way back to Star.

I had an interesting experience once when I pulled up along side a blacked-out Camaro whose sole occupant wore wrap-around sunglasses, a pink bandanna and all the indications of steroid use. I inched up a little to the light, and when it turned he thrust his V8 engine into action. Of course, he had to brake heavily to stop before the next light, but I arrived, unavoidably, slightly later than he did. Knowing that my horsepower was inferior, I decided that brains would win the day.

Again, I inched up towards the light, and when the pretty green light changed to the pretty red light my snarling friend (or was it his car?) screeched his tires in my ear and took off., only to land behind a carcinogenic bus. I noticed with glee that his T-tops were off as he dealt with the fumes that enveloped his windshield.

Assuming the bus would be slower off the mark than the cars in front of me, I allowed myself to think that the enemy was vanquished. But no! The cars were in fact more slothful than their more massive counterpart. Nevertheless, as my opponent gave the smoking bus some room before he hit the gas, I executed a brilliant maneuver worthy of the most savvy of Cambridge drivers--the "blinkerless-half-in-half-out-cut-off-from-the-right-lane"! The day was won.

Alas, these triumphs are too, too few in the world of city driving. The majority of the trip is filled with the grating mundanities life. There's not much foliage between the two squares, and not much of anything else that's attractive from the outside.

Every time I get back to the Broadway Garage, staffed by the nice guy whom I see all too often, I realize that I should have bought more food. I can only heft so many bags back to the Square, but the benefits to my life expectancy of making trips less frequently stare me in the face every time I see a feeble left-hand blinker making a right turn.