As seen from Goldstream Road, Tuesday

The Worst Pavement in All Christendom
Next Five Miles

Okay, to read this authentically, as one might read it while traveling in your Soob or great-big-honking-pickup-truck at 70 miles per hour, scroll down to the bottom picture and read your way back up.

The difference being, primarily, that shortly thereafter you won't hit any teeth-rattling potholes or roll over your office chair.

Or get airborne. I had a conversation last night in which several of us discussed where we had gotten airbone on particular stretches of Goldstream Road.

Of course, I might add something about how this is a state-maintained road (cough)and perhaps suggest that we might fix the roads we have before funding studies/building Bridges to Nowhere or Murkowski's Folly, aka the Stampede Road extension.

I'm not sure what I love above this more: that someone actually used the term "Christendom" in their grafitti, or that whoever did this wrote it so neatly.

Lefty types like me often get accused of being tax-and-spend liberals. (To which I reply, "Better than cut taxes for the richest one percent and continue spending as if you haven't cut revenue.") I have a better idea than both: take care of the stuff you already have, as in, don't let it get into such a state of disrepair that it will cost more to fix it when you finally get off your butt and do so.

I was raised by the world's cheapest man. Seriously, the old blues lyric about pinching a penny till it screamed? My dad. But the one thing the old cheapskate did teach me was to take care of stuff, maintain it regularly, and it will usually last a long time.

And linking this to the gas line issue, because we just need to flog that horse to death, is the admonition that the gas line will bring the state a great big flood of cash at some point, much like the pipeline did.

The state went on a spending spree, some of it good, some of it a waste... but all sorts of places got great buildings and facilities. The only problem is, when the money that built something is gone, there still remains the hidden costs of operating and maintaining whatever it is you built in the first place.
So fix the damn road already, whichever of you state bureaucrats it is in charge of these things, and please already, Murk and the rest of the you, do it before you build any new ones.

Particularly when the local folks don't want a new one in the first place!

However, my rantings aside, I do truly love whoever wrote our on-the-fly traffic report. It's a good warning, because some people (me, for example) drive entirely too fast along that road - and hitting the bad stretches at 70 miles per or more is dangerous.

I find the attention to detail, well, cute, I suppose, particularly how our graffitinist went to the trouble of circling all the bad spots further up in the same metallic silver spray paint and writing the word 'dip.' In one section, you can't even swerve to avoid one, because there is one in the other lane as well.

And, by the time you've seen those, you're probably already smack dab on top of them.

What do you think, is this the work of a diligent, but frustrated, ADOT worker longing to fix the road? (Or one with either: a) a fantastic sense of humor; b) a pragmatic streak?) Could it be a Goldstream Valleyite whose Soob gave out after an unexpected launch?

As Sgt. Esterhaus* used to say, "Let's be careful out there."

*Yes, I am old enough to remember Hill Street Blues.