Finally, a stretch of lovely, mild weather - well, with the exception of the brutal storm on Monday.
The storm knocked our power out for just an hour, but the Internet was down for two days. And then came Tuesday, and fields of purple coneflowers and monarda suddenly blooming! I guess they needed the rain.
The rainbarrels needed the water too -- ours were nearly empty, but the 3/4 inch storm managed to fill them back up with run-off from the roof!
In case you hadn't noticed, this isn't just summer - it is also road construction season. Construction and reconstruction, and then adding insult to injury, so many traffic lights out, further slowing any movement through Crystal Lake and points East!
Yes, I know, that sounds like a good reason to just stay home!
If you are like me, and drive on Route 14 between Woodstock & Harvard every week, you too have been witness to a perplexing series of road projects:
- first, crews were out replacing many of the centerline reflectors. They would remove one, fill the hole with asphalt, cut a new hole, and install the new reflector about 10 inches from the old one.
- then, they decided to do some pretty extensive patching. This was actually quite a fascinating process to watch -- and while waiting, or moving very slowly past the work crews for several weeks, I had lots of time to watch. First, the pieces of road to be removed were marked with spray paint, then someone came along with a piece of equipment designed to cut the road -- a big circular saw set to cut a line about 2 inches deep. Next, someone came along to blow the dust away from the cuts, presumably so the next workers could see the cuts. Then came a jackhammer machine to break up the road, followed by the big backhoe to dig the broken road out and put it in a dump truck. Finally, the holes were filled with asphalt, and compressed with a steamroller of some sort. They must have done over a hundred of these patches during the month of June.
- So, imagine my surprise when, July 5th, I noticed that ALL of the centerline reflectors (old and new) had been removed. And next thing I knew, they started grinding off the top two inches of the road all the way from Hughes/Hartland Road just west of Woodstock, to Dean Street. Now, in July, I have had the priviledge of watching a giant road-eating machine grind off the very same patches that were installed just a few weeks ago. I'm not kidding.
I have to believe that there was a more cost-effective way to manage this whole thing. Like maybe just do the current work, and skip the first two projects? I'm all for people having jobs, but do they all have to be employed to do (and undo) things on the same stretch of road?
Maybe I should spend some more time at home in the garden instead of out cursing the construction traffic. I certainly have plenty of rain water to use now!
2 comments:
You're not kidding! Kristen and I were just commenting on the patching then removing new patches and griding the top layer tonight! What a waste!
We should add rubber to the asphalt mix like they do in Europe to prolong the life through the freeze/thaw expansion and contraction.
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