Random Thought Of The Day #621

Day 621

Pittsburgh has long joked that it has 2 seasons. Winter.... and construction. I mean... is 79 STILL under construction? Cause it was for like a decade.

So it should come as no surprise to most of you that there's an absolute boatload of construction related paraphernalia all over this region. Road cones? Check. Signs? Check. Construction horses? Check. Those little construction things with the flashing lights on top of them? Oh yeah. All of it and more. Everywhere. In fact, you can't even really seem to go anywhere in all of western PA without finding piles of this stuff set off to the side next to the road or even set up ON the road.

And the thing is... It's just sitting there. Want some orange cones? Grab one. A stop sign on a pole? If your car is long enough, toss it in.

Well... see... a number of years back, things like that, as well as parking meters, seemed to just fall into my lap. I'm driving along and  "oh look, a parking cone"... or walking thru the Strip District and stopping to talk to friends while leaning on a parking meter, and it just falls over. Things like that.

But it wasn't just me. A few of my friends seemed to have similar things happen to them. And all of a sudden, between 4 or 5 of us, we had about 2 dozen road cones, 4 or 5 of those things with the flashing lights, a fuck ton of detour and road closed and other signs. And even 2 large construction horses. The ones that are like 8 feet long and 3 or 4 feet high.

Well, we were looking at our stash one day and something dawned on us. We were slowly becoming our own road crew. We had enough shit to actually set up a construction zone. We could close a road.

So we did.

Now... initially, we were going to be a little over-reaching in our endeavour here. And let discretion be the better part of valor in this instance. And opted against closing Route 22 for a 1/4 mile stretch between 2 red lights.

Mostly because we didn't think we'd be able to have the construction zone up long enough for it to really turn into chaos. But at approximately 5:30 am, we decided to close down a fairly well-trafficked road out near Penn Township. Mostly because a friend of ours lived right overlooking that particular spot and we were able to sit on his patio and laugh while watching all these people scratching their heads wondering "how am I supposed to get anywhere?"

It managed to stay in place until nearly 9am, and survived scrutiny from 2 cops before a 3rd realized "wait... this shouldn't be here! and by now, someone from the road crew should have told us about it!".

I just wish I'd have kept that stuff for a few more years (or rather, like... 12 or 14 more) and used it locally on one of the city streets. But then you have cross-streets and ways for them to easily bypass it and stuff like that. But freeways? Highways? Heavily trafficked local roads back in the more rural suburbs? Yeah.. that's the way to go.

I think it's been far too long since I played some kinda prank like that on anyone or anything. Just good natured delinquency.