Potholes Redux

Here's my latest gripe about where I live.  Patching potholes.  Does anyone really know how to do it? No one working around here knows the meaning of level. Driving down a street near my house is like driving on a dirt road.  The large mounds of new asphalt are anything but level.  I steer to the right and with my right tires on the bike lane stripe I can straddle the patches and have a moderately smooth ride.

In patching the street instead of actually repairing it the city made speed bumps out of potholes.  One was concave, the other is convex. There's really no difference in the ride. In fact the patches are bigger than the potholes so it's actually worse. It's so bad I'm sure it will eventually ruin my suspension.  But there is no hotline to report bad street repairs only to report potholes. I can't imagine what "they" were thinking when they finished the repairs.  Someone must have looked at the repairs and said, "Yup, them's fixed." Unfortunately, that same someone forgot to go over the fixes with that machine flattens asphalt.  My engineer would know what it's called, I don't, but I've seen it.

There are a few streets, marked by signs, that were truly repaired with "stimulus monies" and they are a pleasure to drive on. Smooth, quiet creating an almost spiritual experience in your car.  Needless to say I try to drive on those regularly.

And then there's the odd new asphalt laid down in long patches in my area.  It looks like they had some leftover from another job and needed a place to put it so they put down 100 feet here and there.  There is no method to their madness.  They could pour down one length and come back to the same place and extend it. No, they pick another random thoroughfare and lay down another 100 feet.  What's with that? Imagine if they just extended the same section until the whole lane was redone!  No, I'm sorry, that would be way too efficient.

On our trip through German, Austria, and Switzerland we'll be cruising those wonderful roads we heard about.  Maybe we can bring back the name of their contractor, 'cause this city sure needs another one.