Road work

Earlier today, I noticed some road work taking place in my neighborhood, most likely an attempt by the township to finally repair the massive indentations left by the overzealous snow plows on a series of side roads surrounding my house.



Now don't get me wrong - I'm glad to see that they're finally doing something to make up for the fact that this cluster of streets looks like it was previously trampled by an of out of control T-rex seeking blacktop for food. However - and you knew there was going to be a "however" - what I don't appreciate is the lack of warning to the local residents on these particular streets, letting us know that said road work was going to be done smack in the middle of a random Monday.

I had just finished an extended series of errands, and I was about to return to my home via the usual network of streets, when suddenly I came upon a road block in the form of three orange cones and a police officer with his arms crossed, staring me down as if to say "don't even think about going this way."

Now here's the problem - I'm pretty bad with directions, so when I realized that I was blocked off from the street that usually leads straight to mine, I kind of didn't know where to go. I figured that the officer might be willing to help me out, but when I rolled down my window to ask about a detour, he started at me in disgust and motioned for me to shoo. Great.

A mile and a half later, which was the shortest detour I could come up with, I found myself approaching my house from what I'd call "the back way," this time around another series of streets in a completely separate section of town. As I got closer to the street right before mine, I noticed an unsettlingly familiar sight: three orange cones and a different police officer. Perfect.

I explained to the officer and one of the workers that I had attempted to reach my street the first way, was told to get lost, had driven all the way around the neighborhood to access my home via a different approach, and was now, once again, blocked by the road work.

Fortunately, once I described the location of my house relative to the road work, this officer, who was clearly a lot nicer than the first guy, decided to help me out. With the guidance of one of the road workers, I was able to navigate my way around the cones and ripped up sections of street to eventually reach my home, albeit a little shaky from driving through an obstacle course of bumpy hell. (Oh, and remember those alignments I wrote about a couple of entries ago? Yeah, my car will be needing another one of those thanks to today's adventures in virtual off-roading.)

The whole incident really pisses me off.  Sure, do your road work in the middle of the day - after all, how else are the roads supposed to get fixed? But how about a little warning from the township, letting its tax-paying residents know that certain key streets will be closed off at certain times, thereby making local travel annoying bordering on virtually impossible depending on which officer you get at the time? Is that really too much to ask? The township gets thousands of dollars a year from each household on the 3 affected streets - is it unreasonable to expect a notice in the mail a day or so before alerting us that we might not be able to access our homes between the hours of 11:00 and 3:00?

Gotta love New Jersey.