Miasmatic Review

It's a war zone.

...thankfully I drive a tank.

The roads in Rockford,IL are getting worse by the day. The pot holes are starting to get way out of control. I really shouldn't be referring to them as pot holes, they really are more like craters. The prominent intersection of Alpine and Newburg/Broadway (East of Alpine it's Newburg, West of Alpine it's Broadway) is a prime example. It's not one pothole crater, it's close to a hundred of them, and they are huge! It looks like the intersection has been shelled by artillery. I kid you not, one of them is about two feet wide, twenty feet long and six inches deep. It's not just in the intersection it's bad, but in the roads leading up to it.

Traffic is horrible here as everyone has to do 5-10 miles an hour to keep from bottoming out or loosing a tire. It's gotten so bad between the potholes and traffic that I've taken to avoiding the intersection all together. Every time it snows it gets worse and the plows are pulling out more and more chunks of pavement. With all the snow we've gotten recently it's just killing the streets.

Now there are a lot of streets that are bad and maybe worse, but I travel through this intersection every day. Well I used to, now I go around it. I took a different route on my way to work today down 20th street. In the stretch between Broadway and Harrison by the train via duct, there is a pothole crater so big that I actually witnessed it swallow a VW beetle. Fortunately I had my spelunking gear and some tow chains with me or that poor lady would have been stuck down there for a long time. Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little, but I did see her bottom out and send sparks when she hit it.

I guess I could be like a lot of the people in my city and blame the government and their cronyism with Rockford Blacktop (The only contractor that does road work in the city), but it's really not their fault. The weather this winter as been farooking nutz.

It goes from unseasonably warm to really cold in short periods of time. We get snow, rain or sleet every time the temps change any. The roads falling apart is just a combination of natural erosion, wear and tear and plows digging them up. Until the weather gets warmer, they really can't fix them. It's just too damn cold, the patches won't stick and some of the roads, like Riverside, just need to be replaced in general now.

So my good readers, if you have to travel in the city of Rockford, make sure you have a vehicle with good suspension. I'm really glad I have a 3/4 ton Heavy Duty 4X4 pick up with off road package.