Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Rental Cars
Check to see if your insurance or credit
card covers you. The rental car company insurance is expensive!
Andy's Advice:
"
Always ask for a red Ferrari"
For the best deal, check the travel internet
sites and utilize any company or auto club discounts.
It may be cheaper to rent your car from a location away from the airport.
Number
Please.
U. S. Highway numbers
were established actually on purpose so that even numbered highways run
east/west and odd numbers run north/south. Clever huh? If there is a
bend in the road, it doesn't get a new number.
The federal government
established a national numbered highway system in 1926 to bring order to the
nation's confusing collection of named regional roads, many of which were known
only to locals. States later followed that system.
The U. S. government
developed federal interstate numbering system in 1957, which began to replace
the old U. S. highway system.
Much as the nation's founders
preferred easily manageable grids in plotting cities, Eisenhower-era bureaucrats
set up a numbered, graph paper highway network for the entire nation.
Major roads in this system have one- or two-digit numbers, while three-digit
routes signify smaller spurs. There are some exceptions like the 101 is
considered major in California!
The numbers for north-south
routes get bigger as you travel east, while east-west routes get bigger as you
travel north. Thus, I-95 and I-90 hang by the East Coast and meet in Boston,
while I-8 and I-5 traverse the far west and intersect in San Diego.
Moderate-sized numbers such as I-40 and I-44 appear, sure enough, in the heart
of the country, Oklahoma City.
Three-digit numbers are
reserved for interstate routes that branch off a major, long-distance route. The
last two digits indicate the parent route. The "-05" in 405, for example,
indicates the freeway feeds a principal route, I-5.
The first digit of a three-digit interstate explains the road's function. If
that first number is odd, it indicates a spur that runs directly to a city, the
way the 710 terminates right in Long Beach.
When the first digit is even, it means the road makes a loop, or partial loop,
around a metropolitan area.
The U.S. highway system shares some numbering traits with the interstates but
reverse others. North-south routes also are odd, while east-west ones are even.
But the numbers of the freeways grow larger as one travels from the East Coast
to the West Coast--the opposite of the interstate system. That's why California
has U.S. Highway 101 and Maine has U.S. Highway 1.
