The Sunshine State and the Washboard State

I like bicycle lanes. A four-inch wide stripe of paint isn't much to separate you from motor traffic, but I have my own strip of pavement to pedal on--even if I do have to share it with broken glass and rotten armadillo carcasses. There are quite a few bicycle lanes on Florida highways now, US 319 for instance. But if you keep pedaling north on US 319, eventually you cross over into Georgia

Georgia also has "bicycle lanes" on many of its highways. These really aren't for bicycles, though. They're cut with deep grooves, possibly to wake up a sleeping driver whose automobile has started to drift off the road. The washboard pattern would more than startle you out of your reverie if you were on a bicycle. It's sort of a "welcome to Georgia!" complimentary pulverization of your vertebrae. It can't do your machine any good, either. If I were riding from Tallahassee, Florida to Thomasville, Georgia, it would certainly encourage me to turn around at the state line.

Maybe that's the point. It would explain a lot.