Virginia says: hold your pee

I just spent a week with the family visiting DC, staying with friends in Haymarket, Va., in Prince William County, a commute that would kill me if I had to make it every day. Anyway, the big issue in the state while I was there, bigger than Michael Jackson's death, is one strategy the state has for cutting expenses:

It's closing about half of its highway rest stops.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/07/21/ap6680969.html

I noticed that one night the I-66 stop in Manassas heading toward DC was open, and the next it was closed. Apparently the one going the other way, the one with the Virginia Welcome Center, is due to close. So Virginia does not welcome you.

As near as I can tell, this is the biggest political blowup in Virginia since "Macaca."

 

I will pee all over Virginia if they approve this.

 

There was a movement a while back to privatize the rest stops (which would allow fast-food places and gas stations to set up shop there), but that ran out of steam. Creigh Deeds, the Dems' entry in the governor's race this year, supports doing so now. I'd support it.

 

Drove damn near the entire length of 81 through Virginia last week. Seemed like I passed a "Rest Stop will close on July 21" sign every few miles.

I bet the gas stations and other stores right off the exits are loving this.

 

Means they will have to cut the grass on the shoulders a little more often.

 

Or outsource that to billy goats.

 

Virginia isn't alone on this project. A lot of other states will be closing rest stops as well ... North Carolina for starters ...

 

What did mankind do for thousands of years before plumbing was invented?

People aren't going to stop peeing, that's for sure.

 

This is a great cost-cutting measure ...




... for me to poop on!

 

That empty Gatorade bottle in the back seat? Works just fine for me. I'll use it. Pull off at the closed rest stop exit, and gently sit it on top of the barricade. If I have Mrs. Novelist with me on the way through VA, though, the absence of rest stops will be a problem.

 

Leave Virginia alone! Leave Virgina alone.... she's not like you and me. She doesn't have to pee...

 

I have lived in Virginia for 10 years, and I have yet to stop at a rest stop.

I think closing these screws with truck drivers more than anything else. In nova they really have no place to stop and sleep.