The joys of road work, an informal study
It’s the middle of summer in Wisconsin, which while that brings with it sunshine, grilling and the ability to be outside for longer than fifteen minutes without the danger of frostbite, it also means that road construction is in full bloom. It doesn’t matter if it’s a street in the heart of Milwaukee, a four lane interstate, or a county road in the middle of nowhere, wherever you drive, you are sure to run into it. With basically only three months of the year that can, for the most part, be counted on to not have incredible amounts of snow covering the ground, the maintenance that should be done over the entire year is usually regulated to just a fourth of it.
While maybe not nearly as exciting an experience as sliding down asphalt ice rinks with a semi driven by someone who is apparently very late for a very important date barreling down on you in the dead of winter, summer Wisconsin roads can still offer their own brand of adventure. Bright orange signs serve as far too late omens that your trip is about to be delayed and detoured. The cones that soon follow funnel you and every single human on the entire planet towing a huge camper or boat to that lake up north into a single, tightly squeezed lane of slow moving traffic. It’s fun for the whole family!
As I’m sure hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice, the residents of Abbotsford and Colby have gotten the opportunity, nay the privilege, of experiencing the pure joy of navigating through the maze of blaze orange on a near daily basis this summer. Highway 13 has seen some extensive work between May and now, bringing with it all the fun that comes with such a facelift.
Trapped at a gridlocked stoplight as the one person tries to turn left? Check. Getting stuck behind a dump truck as it slowly chugs along, pebbles flung from its bed careening into your windshield? Double check. The ever-popular “I wonder which lane is open today” guessing game, now featuring even more knocked down cones and confused drivers than ever before? Oh yeah, don’t worry, we’ve got that one too.
Based on an informal survey of the various mumblings and grumblings I’ve heard over the last two months regarding the road construction, I can tell that everyone is loving it just as much as I am. There are few things in this world that can elicit the same emotion as having your regular daily schedule slightly altered so that it takes ever so slightly longer to get to your destination, apparently.
Like all things, however, even this must come to an end, and it appears that we are rapidly approaching that point. New traffic lines are being painted now, the icing on this metaphorical cake. Soon, we will be returning to the boring doldrums of normalcy, though, I’ll be honest, I was getting a bit funned out, so perhaps that’s for the best. I bid you adieu, adios, sayonara, safety orange colors! Until next time!
Okay, on a more serious note, one thing that I actually did find kind of fun over these last couple weeks was seeing the progress throughout the project. Watching the transformation from the beat-up, potholed highway we started with to its current version, while wholly involuntary, was a bit of an enlightening experience. I had never really stopped to think about the complexities of something as seemingly simple as a four lane highway until I was practically forced to, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The engineering, planning and workmanship needed are impressive.
It served as a reminder that there are so many things that I might take for granted without recognizing the work and time needed to create them. It’s crazy to think about the intricacies involved in most everything I use on a daily basis, all of the things that I barely put a thought towards, that are just an expectation, things that would look like magic to a person in centuries past. When constantly surrounded by an ocean of amazing feats of human ingenuity, it can be hard to appreciate them, either on an individual or even general level. But stop and think for a moment, and the nature of skyscrapers, airplanes, computers or even highways can marvel and inspire.
Anyhow, the moral of this story seems to be that I just had way too much time to think about all this stuff while waiting for two semis to decide who wants to be the first to try to make a near impossible turn at the intersection while knocking over the fewest possible cones. Apparently, road construction also turns me philosophical. Who would have guessed?
A C ertain Point of V iew
