End Road Work!

As we near winter, we also near the end of construction season. Or so I thought. The ongoing construction sites, some of which have been up and running for months, suggests that perhaps the Season of Slowly Altering Roads will continue longer than I had thought. I have noticed however that there are perhaps other people frustrated with the road construction, something that has come to my awareness with the number of signs expressing a desire to "End Road Work"!

I couldn't agree more. End it! Well, maybe I'd regret that in the long term. Potholes and degraded roads do get frustrating, I'll admit. Though around here in Kentucky, it often seems that all Road Work does is turn the pot holes into pot bumps that erode quickly into pot holes once more. They've done work up and down our road for months, breaking up sidewalks. And once they've finished, the nice and shiny sidewalks get obstructed by the ongoing construction in a new and only slightly different location. I don't see much of an advantage here.

So I definitely share the sentiment to End Road Work.

What's that you say? Those rectangular orange signs are not actually political sentiments, but rather warning signs? Warning me of what exactly, that the people who are now driving slowly in front of me no longer have a valid excuse to do so? Well I guess that is a good warning, now I know they are senile and dangerous and I should just avoid them all together.

But your argument doesn't make much sense. After all, if the signs were telling me that I had come to the end of a construction zone, then logically they would appear only at the end of an active construction zone. But I see them all over the place. I'll enter an area that is arguably a construction zone. I say "arguably" because yes, there are orange signs, but there are no cones, and no trucks, and no people at work. In other words, other than randomly posted orange signs telling me things that are not true (such as "Left Lane Closed Ahead"), there is nothing to suggest that I was in a construction zone (except for the cars going 20 miles under the speed limit for no discern-able reason). And some time after all of those not very clear signs that I may have possibly been in a construction zone, suddenly I happen upon "End Road Work!"

I agree, it is most likely that those signs were placed for the purpose you suggest. However someone left them there, and I am inclined to think it was a like-minded person, who thinks Road Work should End. And the sooner the better!

After all, I have some speeding to do.