Posted by
Richard Davis on Monday, March 12, 2007 5:42:20 PM
He was in my sights. All I had to do was just get a little closer... a little closer, and then my problems would be over. For that small patch of road. I was taking aim a slowpoke in the left lane. I wanted him bad. It had been a horrible traffic day here in Chicago.
The joke used to be around here that there were two seasons: winter and road construction. It ceased being a joke and has become reality. There's no escape. Every interstate, highway, main road and ally has orange cones and horses placed helter-skelter on the pavement.
Many times that is all there is. Often there are no construction workers. Sometimes there are, and they are usually on break, or lunch, or leaning on their shovels, or chatting. What they really are doing is laughing at us poor suckers stuck in the fumes going nowhere.
I'm not above flipping them off. I used to think that it's really not their faults; they are just doing a job, but I've revised that thinking.
They are ripping up the road just to tick me off!
Yes, that's the only reason -- and I am pissed off. I have been driving these Chicago area roads for over 30 years, most of it for work. My office is my car, and it really sucks when you have to pee. You can't just dash to the restrooms. Especially in construction. Those guys and the occasional token women holding the sign are laughing so hard at me that they are almost pissing in their pants. They know you've got a pain in your bladder, and they know you might be trying to do the bottle thing if you're a guy or the wide cup thing if you're a gal.
They are ripping me off in a bigger way because their bosses at the construction companies --the same one or two politically connected ones-- and their unions know they are putting down inferior stuff that just has to be torn up in another two years.
It never ends.
The other night I was driving late on the Tri-State Tollway, a piece of road that was supposed to be paid off in 1984, but somehow isn't. It's just cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, into the toll baskets and politician's pockets. With no warning there are cones, cones everywhere. Scattered about. No rhyme or reason. A busy exit is coming up and semi's and cars are weaving back and forth trying to figure out the magic path of orange cones to find the exit. A truck just missed me, and I just missed another car.
Just ahead of all of us tollway bing- bongs is a truck belonging to The Big Connected Construction Company dropping cones like seeds.
Signs all over warn that if you injure or kill a construction worker you will get the gas chamber. You have plenty of time to read each word, as usually you are passing the sign at an infant's crawl. I wonder how many construction workers have been killed versus motorists trying to figure out the red cone and horses puzzle?
Is the Big Connected Construction Company liable for crashes and deaths of motorists? Do we some how sign a waiver when we pick up our driver's license that if we are smashed paper thin by a confused truck driver we won't sue?
Last night we had a monsoon type storm, so the Road Construction Puzzle was made worse by traffic signals out, and an unbelievable amount of freight trains that just seemed to want to get out of town today. Nobody was going nowhere.
When you could get that stretch of road where you could accelerate to 15 miles per hour, you get the slowpoke in the left lane. That guy almost died today at my hands. He doesn't know how lucky he was. I better not see him tomorrow!
Winter is just around the corner. Relief? No. Not really. If it is a mild winter the Construction season continues, and even when the snow flies the red cones and horses are still out to get you. Nobody picks them up.
The construction workers? Most are on unemployment sitting on their asses, watching Jerry Springer, and waiting for another season of tormenting people who are just trying to get somewhere.