Slip slidin away! Into a brand new pothole!

Well global warming struck again last night and the global warming fairie dropped an inch and a half on my place. Talk about slick. The last snowfall dropped about 10 or 11 inches and the road out front was snow packed for a couple of days. It froze into a lumpy mass of ice. At least it was navigable but then came the city. They decided that for the first time since I have lived here they should send a plow down my road. We came out to find two foot masses of ice frozen in place in front of the driveways and around the cars parked along the road making it impossible to move most of the vehicles here without a great deal of backbreaking work. Brilliant! The funniest part of it is the surface they left behind. Where we had a rough but drivable surface there was now a nice smooth inch or two thick layer of ice. The sound of shovels chipping away down the block bore testimony to the work left behind. I of course was not about to shovel out. We had anticipated what was to come.We had moved the Buick up to the top of our driveway. Our driveway has a top. Both houses on either side have a flat driveway but our house sits on a hill in between. So to enter you have to turn in a rather narrow two lane street and aim up this five foot rise. A terror in the snow and ice. But I have "Jolly Green". My old green Dodge pickup "Jolly Green" has a small lift and 30" mud tires on 4x4 axles with limited slip diffs. It goes up and down the drive when not much else will make it. Even the delightful mass of ice the city left behind that stops my neighbors cars is nothing more than a bump. It's sad to watch them fight over the lump left in their driveway then slidding sideways down the street. Not really!

If you're going to talk about Topeka streets dept. you have to be prepared to talk stupid. We had a big discusion last year about increasing taxes so that the potholes from the global warming of the last winter could be fixed. They eventually got the tax they so fervently desired. And we got temporary patches. Before I became an Electronic tech I made asphalt highways so I know temporary when I see it. We also got more obstacles on the street. They call them islands and roundabouts. Supposedly we wanted these things. But if you look at them this summer and check out the amount of rubber on them you'll see that there is no way those people who ran into them enjoyed it. I also have two friends who laid down bikes by running into these stupid things at night. The roundabouts have an apron that looks just like a wide sidewalk around them and no reflective curbs so they are very hard to see in low light hence all the rubber and the bike crashes. Also most people don't know how to navigate them. I just avoid them.

Well we have some holes developing that give my old truck a pretty good bump. It will be interesting to see what sort of song and dance the city does to get more money out of us "to fix the potholes". It'll also be fun to watch and see what new obstacles they build with the money instead of really fixing holes.