are we W-W-WHERE y-y-yet?

In addition to being a Midas-franchise-owner's dream, the roads in the Boston area strain credulity, confounding even the most jaded natives. Everything you've heard about Boston drivers is true - they're ultra-agressive, reckless, and just plain rude. However, I've come to believe that Boston drivers are bred, not born; the roads around here could turn Mr. Rogers into Mr. T. At any rate, they can't all be transplants from New Jersey.

First of all, they only label the crossroads here, never the road you're on. This is fine if you happen to know where you are, which, if you're trying to find a place you haven't been before, is never. Once you're lost, the lack of signs guarantees you will stay lost until you luck into a road you know or run into the ocean.

It's not what you would call a forgiving city. You can know exactly what road you're on, but if you happen to be in the wrong lane you can end up whisked away from familiarity and dumped in a random direction in about the time it takes to spell Massachusetts Avenue. You will be on a twisted, winding one-way street with no opportunity to turn around until you are in the next county (or New Hampshire, whichever comes first). In any case, you will not be able to retrace your path, and will instead have to figure out where you are and plot a new course, not unlike a frat pledge who has been kidnapped, blindfolded and left on the side of the road in Alabama. Good luck.

The twisted, tangled web of roads is one of those things that might be written off as quaint if it didn't result in so much wasted time. How often are Bostonians late for important appointments because they only left an extra twenty minutes early rather than a full hour? I once saw an entire wedding party pulled over on Memorial Drive, obviously trying to figure out how the hell to get to the reception...I'm talking about driver of the lead limo with a map spread out wide on the hood, and various members of the wedding party wandering on the side of the road looking dazed and confused. Figuring out what time you should leave in order to catch an event downtown is an art in and of itself...and if you leave enough time to recover from any reasonable misadventure, you will end up with a lot of time to kill waiting before your event if you do happen to make it there without incident.

It's not just downtown, either...the same haphazard road layouts can be found throughout the area. There's a three-way intersection in Belmont center without so much as a yield sign to tell people what to do. After being here for nearly four years, I still have no idea who is supposed to have the right-of-way...and let me tell you, at about 7:45am on any weekday, that intersection is a clogged mess that turns sedate suburbanites into horn-honking bird-flipping monsters of urban frustration. Mad Max, meet Mitt Romney.

And oh yes, the rotaries. How New Englanders love their rotaries. I have actually come to appreciate them, and I think they'd be great if it weren't for the fact that every third person either doesn't understand the rules or just plain ignores them.

At least someone had the sense to lay out most of Back Bay on a grid...it was probably NYC envy at work, but whatever the motivation at least you can kind of find your way around. But in downtown Boston? Forget it. The best you can do is try to keep an eye out for landmarks like the Prudential building, but even if you can estimate where you are, there is absolutely no hope of guessing your way to where you want to go. It's an insider's kind of town...if you're in Boston and you want to get to Storrow Drive westbound, you have to know to go east.

Damn those drunken squirrels, damn them.