So at the start of the summer, our lovely city implemented a new "No Road Left Behind" street maintenance program. At least I assume it was a dedicated plan and not a mere coincidence. I like to think that there were notices send out and a town hall meeting held in which some city manager showed a PowerPoint presentation detailing their plan to tear up every single fucking road in the city over the next 3 month period. I was simply too busy watching reruns of the Big Bang Theory to attend.
Summer arrived with the blooming of beautiful bright orange traffic cones all over town. Everywhere I went there was a closed lane adorned with a border of orange. There were thousands of cones. Cones everywhere. I even had the privilege of driving down one street following a maintenance truck that was in the process of, ever so slowly, closing off the single open lane that I and my fellow drivers were currently occupying. "Huh. Wonder what the plan here is?" I managed to steer around the truck so I never did find out. I spent months driving around wondering where all of the cones were stored in the off-season. Somewhere there was a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-esque warehouse filled with orange traffic cones as far as the eye can see. They should give tours. They should build a maze and sell tickets.
One road in particular has held my attention for the last 6 months. I travel this road regularly over the course of a week. This single 6 block stretch of road houses a hospital, a fire station and a middle school (without busing). Needless to say, this road carries a lot of traffic, some of which is in a bit of a hurry. I'm sure the city manager optimistically considered the school a non-issue since construction began during the summer break and shook off any suggestions that perhaps the hospital and fire station were the bigger issue. Silly, silly man. I've decided that they will never finish this road. It took 3 days to resurface the road that our house sits on. I supposed I should feel flattered that it was deemed more important for me to gain access to my garage than an ambulance to reach the hospital but it doesn't flatter me. It worries me deeply.
For the first couple of months, there were large (orange, naturally) signs diligently placed on the sidewalks or shoulders alerting drivers to which lane ahead may or may not be closed. The placing of the signs ranking higher in importance than the accuracy of their message. This made for interesting merging and prepared us to take on any synchronised lawnmower driving team in the country. Look for our upcoming national tour.
My favorite day was when they resurfaced the one main intersection leading to the hospital. It was a vision of overly large construction vehicles doing impressive and smelly things, a scattering of men standing amongst them in reflective vests and, this is my favorite part, traffic making left turns through the middle of it. I'm the first to admit that I know nothing about road construction but based on my many years poring over the collected works of Richard Scarry, I thought this was a bad thing. I sat there for a long time with my mouth hanging open looking for the worm driving the apple car. I avoided this intersection for the rest of the week.
We are now in December and the road is almost finished. All that is left are these perfectly round depressions that surround the sewer heads (?), kind of like a reverse doughnut. You can slam your car off them quite nicely if you're not paying attention. It's been like that for a couple of weeks now and I'm thinking that the construction boss had adopted my philosophy which is to shrug a shoulder and mutter "Ach, close enough."
We can now focus on the new "City Center" they've been threatening to build since we moved here 5 years ago. They've almost completed the new City Hall, build atop the only portion of the central park that was consistently used Every Single Day and adjacent to a vacant lot. Let the games begin.
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