It rained again last night... go figure. Now, when I say rain, I of course mean that the gods were fighting again and I was caught in the downpour of tears which ensued when Zeus smacked Aries so hard that he cried for at least 4 hours.
Actually, let's just stick with it rained. It continued to rain this morning. Fortunately not that hard, so when I got on the road out of Tompkins, I was feeling pretty good. Yes, everything I owned was soaked through, and yes it was still 13 degrees, but none of that mattered because today was the day I arrived in Swift Current and had a day off to look forward to.
Remind me never to show excitement and positivity on the road; apparently someone is amused by my suffering and especially loves to break my little heart when I'm on the road. Some days, a simple image can sum up your whole day. I happened to find that image today:
What matters is that I'm in Swift Current now. I'm sitting around enjoying a beer with Morgan's brother, Nathan, and I have a whole day and a half to relax and pray for good weather on Sunday. HOWEVER, I need to air a small complaint.
To the Saskatchewan Highways Department:
Never in my life had I seen such a cock-up of a construction job as when I approached the trans-Canada highway (our country's largest W-E motorway) around 30km west of Swift Current. The state of the shoulders on the road traveling east can only be described as positively abysmal.
While the freshly paved roadway looked like an absolute, smoother-than-a-baby's-bottom, joy to ride on, I was unfortunately on a bicycle and confined to the veritable minefield which was left over on the shoulder. While I would love to give you the benefit of doubt that this project was still a 'work in progress' the road looked as though it had been finished for weeks and there was not a sign of continued work to be seen.
The shoulder appears to have been the leftover dump for every bit of loose gravel, half-melted tar and leftover junk which didn't fit onto the pristine road, leaving as deep as 10cm divots in the asphalt and a ball-bearing field of assorted bits lying about. The resultant surface makes me think that an oversized roto-tiller with a blood lust for asphalt was set loose across the shoulder and told to simply "go for it". Imagine a scaled down version of the moon with pebbles strewn across it.
From one engineer to another, I'd like to extend a congratulations to my colleague who signed off on this project. Never in my life have I seen such a failure of a relatively simple, straightforward bit of roadworks, which likely cost us taxpayers nearly 10 million dollars. Next time, instead of doing a half-assed job on 30km, why not go for 25km and do the whole thing?
Sorry... I needed to get that out of my system. I have beer and food now, so I'm good.
Smile! It makes people wonder what you're up to.
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