Bad Idea

The road to the Subway is horrible. Apart from all the 90 degree turns, it is ridden with potholes. Especially one particular spot where the car's left wheels go into a pothole, and then the right wheels, then the steering wheel comes off and you have to guide the car using brain waves. They haven't fixed this road up for the past year. This is what I think happened, and it is an educated guess on my part, that the PennDot, the Pennsylvania department of transportation, dug up the road while constructing a highway bridge over it and then did a sad job of filling it back up. And then the local township said to itself, hell, the potholes weren't our doing, so why in the name of sweet Jesus should we rebuild it? At least, this is the conversation I would have had with myself if I had been a government employee.

So no one filled up those potholes for a year and in the meantime the pile of steering wheels on the pavement grew and grew. And it was especially hard on me because as you know the Subway is the only eating joint in the vicinity and so I have to navigate this road every single day. Finally, one day, I decided that I had had enough of coffee cups falling off the roof of my car. So I went on the internet and looked for the website of this township and found that their website actually had a pothole reporting form on it, how about that? So I filled up this form and added my own biting invective in the text box where it said "Other Comments". I love it when websites have an "Other Comments" box because that is like the owner bending over, unbuttoning his pants, handing you a wooden rod and asking you to whack away. And so I did, and it unburdened my heart and it felt like an elephant had just removed his foot from the wooden chest of my happiness and walked away.

And it worked man, it worked. A week later, there were repair crews all over, whistling at women and shoveling gravel into those potholes. And although I felt a bit sad while saying goodbye, I knew that filling those babies up was the right thing to do.

Soon, cars, which previously had to slow down to navigate that section of the road were racing past and breaking the speed limit. And now, everyday, I have to spend hours on end waiting for a break in the speeding traffic that could allow me to get the hell out of the Subway parking lot and back onto the street. So all in all, sending that email appears to have been a mediocre idea. The only glimmer of hope in all this is the near-certainty that Penndot will be along soon to dig up the road again. After all, Pennsylvania IS the state having the worst roads in the USA.

Update : Apparently PA only has the 2nd worst roads in the country.