The final bell rings, and after a long day of having your nose to the grindstone, you decide to treat yourself to a sweet snack from the famous Crumbl Cookies. You start your descent down James Madison Drive and narrowly miss hitting the freshmen who think they’d win in a fight against your car. As kids continue to walk by, uncaring of your desire to turn left onto Windover, you sit at the crossroads forever before finally commencing your turn. Mere seconds later, you are faced with Nutley Street, once more having to wait for pedestrians and fight with the cars streaming out of Wawa.
Finally, you make it onto Nutley and have to sit at the stoplight for what feels like eternity. Eventually, it turns green, but you don’t even make it through the intersection. You sit there for what must be hours, just dreaming about your Crumbl cookie, as more people walk by. You make it onto Maple Avenue, thinking the hard part is done, but the war has only just begun. Cars are swerving in and out of the narrow Vienna lanes as you hope and pray you don’t get side swiped. The car in front of you tries to swerve into the center lane without using a blinker, but horribly misses and blocks the left lane.
After expertly navigating the battleground that is Maple, you decide to try the backroads and make it to Courthouse Road. Despite the light being green, you can’t go anywhere because the next light is red, and people are blocking the intersection. Other drivers start to honk at you, even though there is nowhere to go and all you can do is sit and wait your turn. Finally, you are able to turn right, and Crumbl feels so close, yet also so far away. As you approach the stop sign at Locust, you watch as cars blow through the stop sign, despite it being within sight of the police station.
As you drive down Locust, you can see the bright red stop sign ahead at an intersection that is not a four way stop; normally you’d have to wait to turn as cars fly down Center Street, but since Vienna Elementary School just got out, a crossing guard stands there while cars pile up for kids to cross the street. Once the children and other cars clear, you can finally turn right onto Center. You flash your left blinker, which is a feature most cars in Vienna don’t seem to come with. You turn onto Cherry Street, nearly hitting the Tesla mom dropping her kid off in the middle of the road for football practice at Water’s Field.
New York City is run by rats, and Vienna is infested with Teslas.
The sharp corner at the Vienna Community Center is accompanied by a loud bang as a Maryland driver hits the curb because they couldn’t be bothered to slow down at all. You begin to question if Crumbl was really worth it as you idle at the stop sign while trying to turn left onto Park Street. You finally make it to Park, yet once again you are stopped by pedestrians and bikers on the W&OD trail whose heads are in the clouds, assuming that Vienna cars will stop for them. The stream of bikers and walkers are like a magician’s scarf, brightly colored and never ending.
Your mouth waters as Crumbl grows nearer. The final level is approaching, but first you must pass through the mouth of the cave; the traffic circle! Cars lurch through the circle, clearly confused about the task at hand. You know what to do because you passed Driver’s Ed. You yield to the people in the circle and once you’re in it, you don’t stop. If you get lucky, you may have the joy of skillfully avoiding the firetruck as its sirens blare through the quiet air and drive straight over the circle.
Now that you’re tired and regretting your decision to go get cookies, you have reached the end: the parking lot. Navigating the narrow spots that your family minivan barely fits in, you artfully park and try not to think about the stampede of middle schoolers you’ll have to face when you leave. After a treacherous and death-defying experience on the road, you have finally made it to Crumbl to claim your reward: mediocre overpriced cookies.
