Well, yesterday I had to make a drive to the Newark Airport.  I’ve only been to that airport once, and it was when I flew in here some years ago and was picked up and dropped off there at night.  So, I’ve never actually seen how to drive there. 

Fortunately, for me, and the others in the vehicle, I was driving it in the daytime.  Getting to the airport is easy enough.  Just follow the signs from the highway.  But, once you get off of the airport exit it’s like driving into a city of it’s own.  Every 50 feet there were signs with colors, letters and arrows.  If you don’t pay attention as to what lane you need to be in you’ll miss where you’re suppose to go and go around in a big circle.  At least there was six eyes looking at all the signs.  Of course, as I’m reading these signs, I was in the wrong lane.  So, with a blinker, and a quick turn of the wheel (and some prayers) I made it over to where I needed to be.  But, of course, that was only one change that needed to be made. 

Dropping someone off at the airport isn’t just driving a couple 100 yards and getting them to their gate.  There must have been at least 3 “exits” at the airport that needed to be taken just to find the departure area.  Also, it seems like everytime you’re looking which gate you need to drop them off at it turns out to be that last one.  As I approached the departure gates the road turned into three lanes.  The right lane is for dropping people off.  (This is the lane that if you stop in you might be stuck trying to get out for awhile.)  The middle lane is the drop off lane too.  (This is the better lane because it’s easier to pull out.)  And the extreme left lane is for thru-traffic.  When I got near the last gate the vehicle in front of me was going to it and he pulled all the way over in the right lane.  I took advantage of that and parked next to him, since I knew that he wasn’t going to be leaving soon.  I popped the trunk of the car got the luggage out and was back in the vehicle within a few minutes.  (By the way, you don’t want to walk away from your vehicle bacause when you come back it will be gone.  Airports are notorious for towing vehicles away.)  As luck would have it,  I could see in my rearview window a car pulling from the thru-traffic lane over and was stuck, blocking the traffic behind it from moving.  I took advantage of that and got the heck out of there!

Just because I got to the departure area didn’t mean that I was in the clear.  The journey out of the airport was similar to the one into the airport.  That meant that I was in the wrong lane again and had to get over FOUR LANES to get out to the exit and back on the highway.  And it took another 5 miles after physically leaving the airport before my heartbeat returned to normal.

So, anytime someone needs to be dropped of at Newark Airport I can comfortably do it now.  But, if they need to be PICKED UP – that’s an entirely different story!

A jughandle is a side road that allows a driver to make a turn (usually to the left).  The problem with the jughandle is that sometimes they are before the intersection, after the intersection, or there aren’t any at all and you can make your standard left turn.

New Jersey is littered with these jughandles. 

Just a few weeks ago I was heading to the local grocery store for the first time since I moved here.  Unfortunately, for me, I missed the right turn into the parking lot, so I figured I would go up to the next intersection  and make a U-turn.  So, being the typical non-NJ driver, I got into the left lane and proceeded up to the next intersection.  I was greeted there by a no U-turn sign.  This forced me to go up to the next intersection, and over to the right lane to hit the jughandle.

Unfortunately, the jughandle forces you to basically do a “P-turn” and face you back at the intersection.  After waiting what seemed to be an eternity at the light I was facing the opposite direction of the grocery store.  This meant – another jughandle!  With another jughandle meant another light.

So, when traveling in New Jersey remember to pay attention where you’re going.  Just for missing one turn I lost 15 minutes attempting to ‘turn around’.