Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for June 11, 2020

Wheels up! Or off.

City: “We’re here to repair your street.”

Driver: “About time. These potholes are about to shake my car apart.”

City: “OK. This is the estimate of how much it will cost to repair your street and your share of the cost.”

Driver: “Uh … Maybe I can drive around the potholes.”

“It’s like driving a pogo stick.

Shift the funds from the police. Maybe fix some roads?

The Wiley Bears adopted the potholes outside their restaurant.

They used to run a contest to find the worst stretch of road in the country. Pot hole in the neighbourhood made the top ten list

Ever heard of “speed bumps”? … around here, they aren’t extended curb to curb because water needs to run on the edges. And you can see that many drivers swerve clear over to the other side of the road so as to put the driver-side wheels into that no-bump channel.

For America’s sake, I’m hoping that auto mechanics don’t have a lobbying group. I’d hate for them to get ideas.

From the papers I gather that Lancaster, Pa. is like that. UGI has been digging up the streets, replacing ancient piping and only doing the minmum repair until all the other parties get stuff fixed when the streets will be paved. I’m glad I’m not still there driving a delivery truck.

Here in Honolulu, they don’t bother to flatten it out when they fill potholes. So we get potholes and speed bumps together.

Pot holes in Seattle are horrible, avoiding them is an acquired skill, drive just north into the city of Shoreline and it’s like a breath of fresh air!!

Driving around Puerto Vallarta , watch for the Topes (speed bumps). Also known as “Lazy Cops” that can wreck your suspension

Ah! The Montreal method…

That’s not a Pothole it’s a concave speed bump!

Sounds like Chicago, where when they finally patch a pothole, they create a bump. Even worse, the patch the patches & make it worse.

Back in the 1960’s, Atlantic Avenue was that way. The potholes had names like Barringer Crater, Grand Canyon, Marianas Trench and many lunar features. One day I was driving along and after about 10 minutes of a tooth-shattering, jaw-rattling, jarring ride I saw a sign that read, “Bump Ahead.” I never found out any more. I did a U-turn.

60 years ago on a trip through eastern Canada we saw little flags sticking up from the centers of major potholes. Nothing before it to let you know, just the little flags. Cute but not helpful.

……then comes the bridge……

Similar to their bank’s .01% savings account interest rate saving them from the oppressive clout of the IRS.

I used that approach to get out of debt years ago. Don’t fix nothing. Don’t buy nothing. Poof, all debt finally left. However…….um.. um

Here in N. Indiana they throw hot patch in a pot hole, the the traffic runs over it to mash it down. Trouble is, it slings up all over the car, truck, whatever.

Well our road and potholes were all ground up, graveled and … nothing! That was last year and now the stutter bumps are harder to deal with than the potholes!

Potholes keep my cousin’s alignment shop in business.

Project management is pretty easy when the point is to let things go to pot before you bail.

I went to school in Connecticut in the 80’s. when we went to Rhodes island or Massachusetts ,we noted when we returned there wasn’t a sign saying “Welcome to Connecticut” so much as big orange signs saying “Road legally closed, state liability strictly limited” considering this was on major high ways like I-95 I really don’t think it would have stood up in court, especially as the signs were up so long they were sun bleached.

Here in CT the state puts up a sign stating that a road is being maintained, state liability “limited”. IOW, proceed at your own risk. Similarly, they won’t put in a left-turn lane on the secondary roads for prominent businesses or side roads, but they will pave a little wider; so you can go outside the lines to pass on the right, but don’t blame us if anything happens.

I see on various web cams that Key West, FL, which has been a ghost town since March, has used the time to make repairs and repave Duval St., it’s main tourist area.

Around here there are still railroad tracks running through town. If the potholes don’t get you, the RR crossings will.

Non Sequitur is located in West Sacramento CA.

And: “There are 616,087 bridges in America. Of those, 47,052 (nearly 8%) are ‘structurally deficient’ and need urgent repairs” (ARTBA 2019 report). Maybe we should stop building new roads and bridges until we can maintain the ones we have.

I was driving around my new home in Miami a few months back and drove into the city of Doral and immediately regretted it. Most of the roads in Miami-Dade county and the municipalities that make up Miami-Dade county are pretty good. The city of Doral is a definite exception.

Welcome to Michigan.

https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/03/bad-roads-cost-michigan-drivers-average-of-648-a-year-in-additional-vehicle-expenses-study-says.html

Remember a few years ago when somebody promised to repair America’s infrastructure? Potholes, teeth loosening highway pavement joints, bridges litteraly having pieces of concrete falling off of them, etc? Yeah, where are we with that now? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Local small town crew was filling the potholes in the streets, but the repairs were not lasting. A local dentist wrote a letter to the newspaper offering to show the street repair people how to fix a cavity.

Roads are paved with asphalt. Asphalt is what’s left when all the good stuff has been refined out of crude oil. Used to be, refineries would practically pay you to take the asphalt.

Then we decided we were gonna "Save The Planet’, and make it hard to get more crude oil and hard to build refineries. Hurricanes have destroyed floating refineries in the bay area around New Orleans that haven’t been rebuilt.

We have changed technologies to extract more good stuff from the crude oil, leaving less asphalt per barrel.

Now, we buy gasoline from overseas refineries, we have to buy asphalt from them, also. For some odd reason ( ;{ ), the cost of asphalt and the cost of transporting it has skyrocketed! That’s why the cost of shingles (my area of expertise) has gone way up.

Small wonder cities no longer have the funds to staff road crews AND have supplies to give them work to do.

I have a theory on pothole repairs and it has proved itself true worldwide! Those pesky and dangerous hazards do get repaired when mayoral and city council elections are drawing near. They also will get filled on the streets in your neighborhood IF you and your neighbors support and vote for the current incumbent-in-thief at city hall.

There are people who drive around and count the political flags, lawn signs, and banners. The neighborhood with the most for the guys in power gets their potholes repaired first! (And maybe, if they’re real supportive, they might even get the entire road repaved! )

We seem to have reached rock bottom.

That & speed bumps…

4 words: Chicago in the springtime.

What they’re not telling you is that these are the kind of potholes found at Yellowstone.

Most cities are deep into the red right now. With almost no tax sales revenue and other sources of income, and next year’s budget on the table, they are cutting drastically. My city is closing the museum and taking away around 60% of their support of local charities who provide services to the poor. It’s brutal, but it’s reality.

I lived in Pasadena, half a block from an off-road vehicle equipment store. After complaints of speeding, the city put in “speed bumps” (oddly enough known as “sleeping policemen” in the UK). Paradoxically, off-roaders came from miles around to get that extra bounce.

Inverse speed bumps.

When I lived in Florida, you were never sure what was a pothole and what was a sinkhole … until your car disappeared in it!

Welcome to the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Madiganistan—the state formerly known as “Illinois.”

Two weeks or so again, during our discussions on Jack and the Autism arc, someone (I don’t remember who…) recommended the book The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.

WONDERFUL!

Fiction (could be called Science Fiction but not really). Weaves a very insightful tale of Lou, an adult with Autism, working with a group of other adults with Autism in an unnamed mega-corporation. We learn of an opportunity for a procedure that will remove the autistic traits. A bit of Flowers for Algernon, Rain Man, and 1984, with its own unique twists and turns.If you get the digital version, be sure to read the interview with the author after the epilog.

Sounds like Portland Oregon.

Potholes are just Reverse Speed Bumps.

Or Reverse Speed Humps after a few months.

The usually end up as Volkswagen Traps if left more than a Year.

Anything larger than a 32 gille pot may cause tire damage.