Dear Houstonites,
Do any of these roads have fun colloquial names? Addicks Satsuma Road, Barker Cypress Road, Greenhouse Road, North Fry Road, North Westgreen Road, and North Mason? The car chase is going along I-10 heading West and we need to make sure that we don’t say something like, “They crossed 99” and then get a bunch of angry emails about how “It’s Grand Parkway you dolt!”
Thank you in advance.
Sorry, no fun names on any of those I’m aware of.
Although normally would just refer to them as e.g. “Fry Road” or just “Fry”, and similarly “Mason”, don’t usually use the North/South designation when describing the local roads.
No one says North Fry, North Mason or North Greenhouse. 99 is also called the Grand Parkway. I-10 West where this is taking place is called the Katy Freeway or I-10.
What she says! ~.~
Yup. Ditto!
Just watch out for the Cypresses–there are SO MANY OF THEM and a tiny reversal or typo has you on a different one entirely…but it does exist, because the city planners hate navigation. My husband has lots of family in that area, so we have to drive there a good bit, and GAH. So. Much. Overlap. (But none of those have colloquial names insofar as his family says them, anyway).
Nothing other than what has already been mentioned.
I completely agree with the other three comments. There are no colloquial names, just drop the North/South designations and the Roads. Though Fry can be either Fry or Fry Road. Any commentator talking about that stretch of I-10 will alternate between calling it I-10 and the Katy Freeway. That stretch of I-10 also has toll lanes.
am I in comment jail?
There is no jails at this blog. Only dungeons.
More like purgatory. You can get out if it’s determined you’re not bad.
But then you have to ask yourself, “Do I really want to leave?”
Depends on the answer to one of life’s most important questions… Do they have cookies?
mmmm cookies, are they warm chocolate chip cookies??
*snickers quietly
snort. y’all are hilarious. and now I want cookies. but my long comment didn’t go through, either time I tried. so I might be in comment jail.
3rd & 4th comments didn’t go through either. HELP!
Maybe your phone did it. The old one I switched from last night would show me typing but not actually put the words on the screen field. I would have to make it sleep or turn it off to fix it. Then it took revenge for upgrading to a working model by somehow blocking my info from being forwarded to the new phone. I know the old was possessed because sometimes when I referred to it in texts it would switch the word phone to the name Ethan.
You are not in the comment jail. Maybe bad WiFi or 4G?
i’m not on a phone – my laptop is hooked up to an Ethernet cable.
Phone is doing it too.
Don’t know about I-10 but if you get out to 290 W there’s an exit for Kickapoo. And I know there’s an exit for Westward Ho going east on 290 but I don’t know about going west… but both of those are past Cypress so it might be kind of far
Oops not what you were asking for haha sorry
…..kick..apoo???
Fantastic.
There’s a drink in South East Asia called ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’. Wonder if it’s named after that place? -Sorry if that’s horribly off topic.-
I have nothing to add except how much I love this community. Kickapoo Joy Juice + the conversation about jail and cookies? Made my night.
I haven’t had any need to go into Houston frequently in years so I can’t think of anything. Will ask my mom when she gets off work. Though I have always felt that Houston has a love for large concrete barriers. So you feel slightly traped on the road, like a rat in a maze. If Rogan is in the car the walls won’t matter much.
There was a snippet where he was doing some road work.
Yes! I have wished to have that ability on Houston roads more than once. “If I could get rid of this block barrier, I could make a Texas Exit!”
Oh you could always have Rogan do a little creative road construction. “Was that the overpass? …okay make a left.”
I call Barker Cypress that place where that asshole tried to run my off the road, but I think that’s just me…
Only one place where that happened in Houston? Do you not drive in Houston much ;-)? (Or maybe that’s just us, dodging like we’re playing video game when we drive in Texas…)
Man am I ever glad I live in Oregon.
I’ve been seriously lost in Oregon. Though there were times that I couldn’t find my way in California(generally because the person giving directions left something out).
“Lo these many years ago”, Houston had really nice drivers. They considered driving a race, but they’d let you merge or make a turn and wave a friendly hello as they blasted past. Then we started importing folks from other places where driving was a full contact sport, like Boston, Miami, and Mexico City, and nobody was friendly anymore.
Then, just to make it interesting, we let them all have cell phones and guns.
I still like to drive fast, but it’s more of a survival skill now.
(Full disclosure – I came to Houston in 1967 to attend college and basically never left.)
Oh gosh. That is the best description ever of Houston driving.
I don’t live in Houston but go through it on occasion coming from the south to get to East Texas. Over the last ten years of doing this I have discovered you can no longer predict the bottlenecks. They can happen anywhere once you hit Harris county and there never seems to be any visiable reason for them, like a wreck or construction. Approaching the Pierce elevated is my weak spot. If you aren’t in the right lane, pray to the TxDot gods that someone lets you in or who knows where you will end up.
Had some dodo try to get into the lane space that I was currently occupying twice this week! Same spot different day, was it something I signaled? (They didn’t)
Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten that camouflage paint job after all. 😉
It’s the stealth button. My car has it too. Problem is, the button itself is stealthed, so you hit it by accident and then can’t find it again. And all the numpties head straight for you…
I think it the “Hit Me” light flashing. I can’t see it, but all other drivers obviously can.
I swear that some people don’t look to the side before merging. My nephew is of the opinion that we should let these people hit us, because then the law screws them over. I personally would prefer that they glance to the side (saves a lot of PTSD).
I blame AARP. They encourage older drivers to adjust the side mirrors in such a way that it eliminates the blind spot, but doesn’t note that you now have a big blind spot on either side of the car with the cars dead even with you.
Sorry, still mad about last July and the other car that ran me off the road, wrecking my car.
I agree with the other posts regarding road names. If they get close to the intersection of 99/Grand Parkway and I-10/Katy Freeway, there’s a nice high “flyover” (the connecting loops go waaaay up). Let me know if you want pics–I drive through that interchange daily.
So glad I don’t live in Houston! I’d rather drive streets and deal with lights than get off and on ramps switching directions all the time. My pet peeve is trying to get to the off ramp that is barely breathing room ahead of the on ramp full of mergers at rush hour. I take a lot of detours, gas is cheaper than an accident, and don’t get me started on drivers without their headlights on at dusk. Just plain scary!
I agree and am glad I drive a Volvo with lights on all the time.
But I do live South of Houston.
There are also HOV/EZ Tag (toll tag) lanes that go both ways from 610 to Katy, might be useful. Or alternately, maybe in this world of magic they did not stupidly get rid of the perfectly good train tracks on the side of I10 and actually made a light rail system instead of just expanding the freeway and frontage roads until they made the widest freeway in the world. A girl can dream.
❤❤❤ (Sorry, I just found the emoticon library on my tablet.)
There’s a short Nevada snippet posted on their Facebook page. (You don’t need a FB acccount to be able to read it. [Thank goodness.]) I hope this link works… https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1224739537595078&id=165760630159646&__tn__=%2As
Thank you for posting it! Some of us are still not on Facebook and I hate to miss out on awesome snippets!
I’m not on Facebook either, per se. I just have a few author’s FB pages bookmarked because they’re open for reading. Oh, and the Bangor, Maine, police department’s FB page that Ilona passed along months ago. That guy is a riot.
Ditto, thanks much for posting the link.
Me too, thank-you from a non-Facebook reader (glad I’m not the only one).
Off-topic, but I was looking for new books to read earlier and saw that OFS got a nice mention here. 🙂
We are so lucky to have you, Authorlords.
oooh, you guys! yarn porn! the names are so so so awesome.
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-color-names-dye-for-yarn/
I would like a sweater in “cold night.” and “bat in a bad mood.”
I didn’t realize my comment didn’t go through either until I went back to see if someone had verified my recollection of that section of the Katy Freeway. Doesn’t it have a double lane for toll/hov that’s just separated by painted lines and no actual barriers?
I love that you are so attentive to detail. What a snarly mess it must be to figure out local names/usage.
In the olden days when the interwebs were young and I was probably on dialup A-Oh-Hell, they (don’t know which “they”) came out with mapping and turn-by-turn directions and asked for corrections, if needed. Being curious, I checked directions to local destinations, and one route included something along the lines of, “Take the Evergreen Highway South.” By that time, I had lived in our immediate area for close to 20 years, but had *never* heard of the Evergreen Highway. What the … um… Heck? I called and let them know that no-one local had heard of the Evergreen Highway and furthermore, there were no signs for it. The nice human on the other end of the line asked what the road was called, and I responded, “Well the signs say ‘Hwy 395’, though I think I remember them saying ‘State Road 40′”
Good luck with the Info. hunt.
I am loving the fact that you used the word “colloquial”!