A Beautiful Dance

I simply love traffic circles...
there are two traffic circles on the way home from the kids school...and I absolutely love driving thru them...

(...is 'thru' a word?  my spell check always marks it as wrong, but I feel like it is a word, but I'm not confident enough that I would hit the 'add to dictionary' option under spell check so it would stop telling me that thru was spelled wrong...)

back to the traffic circle...
I'm a West Coast girl,
born in Southern California (obviously not raised there because I still can't bring myself to refer to it as So Cal),
raised in Southern Oregon (and no, we don't call it So Oreg)...
traffic circles just aren't very common out here in the west...

I remember seeing/experiencing my first traffic circle when I was in high school visiting my mom's family in Ohio,
I was in love...this is it...this is the solution to those ugly 4 way stops...
is there any other traffic design more artistically appealing than the traffic circle?

what a beautiful thing,
no harsh corners,
nice flowing design
people even decorate them, if there's a small traffic circle in a neighborhood people might plant some flowers or bulbs there, they may decorate it for the holidays...
well, that's just plan fun, no ones out decorating and planting bulbs in the middle of your regular ol' 4 way stop!

even the signs are fun...it's like showing you how to dance rather than demanding that you must stop

problem with traffic circles...
as previously stated...I'm a West Coast girl, so I live on the western side of the US ...
...where you don't run into these crazy traffic circles very often...
so others might not cherish the wonder and beauty of the traffic circle
they may have failed to learn the proper driving rules of them...
some of these people may including my husband...and I do not enjoy a traffic circle nearly as much if he is the one driving thru it...I feel like he takes a beautiful dance and steps all over my feet!

okay, so I get that some traffic circles, or roundabouts if you will, might be a tad overwhelming
and cause any normal functioning human to crawl into the fetal position...
but I'm talking about the normal, run-of-the-mill, small town traffic circle...

I enjoy traffic circles, my heart is happy when all the players/dancers preform their parts correctly...
lately my joy of the traffic circle has been stomped on by idiots uneducated drivers
and NO I am not referring to my husband...I just witnessed a horrifyingly ugly traffic circle encounter on the way home from school today,

some nincompoop uneducated driver went the WRONG direction, too fast, and well, he turned a waltz into some sort of scary dance from a high school prom!

so with that in mind, I felt that I must use my blog to help educate...
*you may enter the traffic circle at the same time as another driver
*traffic circles are not a STOP and then Go, they are a slow and then merge, you may need to stop, but if you can gracefully merge and keep the dance going that is the goal
*it is a slow dance, no speeding thru the dance
*you move in a counter clockwise direction (in the US, if you are outside the US then ignore my babbling)
and most importantly
*enjoy the dance, don't become overwhelmed, put a smile on your face, slow down and just role with it!