ROAD CLOSED

 Is there anyone out there in the English speaking world who does not know the meaning of the words, "ROAD CLOSED",????????  I mean, it should be pretty simple, right ?  We know what a road is . . . "A wide way leading from one point to another", a highway, a lane, a street or an avenue. And the word, "closed" as in not open, shut down, no access.  Simple concepts, no? 

Let's take this one step further and accompany the words, 'road closed" with the words, 'DETOUR", "TURN LEFT HERE", and a HUGE flipping black arrow on an orange sign. Are you beginning to get the picture?

As you can probably tell by now The Man and I had an adventure today.  We had to drive from Gladstone to Iron Mountain, a drive that we make an average of 4 times a month when we are in Michigan.  The Man has his favorite route to drive for this hour long journey and usually all goes smoothly. But today God must have been bored and decided to play with The Man and test my patience yet again.  

The first 15 minutes of our journey takes us on back roads that wind through some lovely farm land. Big red barns, fields that are now just starting to turn green with the young shoots of corn starting to grow.  Lots of cows with little calves dot the countryside with an occasional deer standing near the road munching on the fresh new grass that the cows are enjoying. It is a lovely, quiet drive.  UNTIL . . . 

As we neared the point where the back roads lead into the "highway" we saw detour signs up ahead.  The THREE signs warned us that the road ahead was closed.  The signs also told us to FOLLOW the DETOUR signs.  OK,  no biggie!  There are bunches of small bridges that cross numerous streams and creeks and the Michigan road commission is forever repairing these structures. One day the road is open and the next day you are making a ten mile detour.  This is not the first time this has happened to us. 

BUT . . .  for what ever reason The Man decided that when we got to the cross road where the detour wanted us to turn left  HE  was going to continue straight ahead because there was no barrier across the road and this is the way he always goes so therefore the road must NOT be closed and ALL the signs must be a joke.  Five hundred feet later we were stopped in front of a large orange barricade blocking the entire road.  

It was at this point that the thoughts of this blog began to form in my brain.  It is also at this point that the conversation between The Man and I went down the tubes.  It went something like this;

The Man . . . "J.... C....  What the Hell is going on here?"    Me . . . "Looks like the road is closed" (DUH!)     The Man . . .  "What the Hell? Why didn't they tell us that back there", (he is pointing back the way we just came where there were all the signs saying the road was closed).    ME . . .  (I am not stupid so I did not say anything).  The Man . . .  "You would think they would put a barricade across the road back there to tell you the road was closed!!"   (By now he is waving his arms and is all pissed off that he drove 500 feet and now has to turn around and follow the detour signs because HE didn't believe the signs when he saw them.). ME . . .  (I'm still not stupid so I'm not saying a word but he knows damn well what I'm thinking!)

And so for the next 45 minutes I heard about the stupid highway commission not telling people the road is closed.  When we got to the VA at Iron Mountain The Man actually called the Michigan State Highway Commission to complain to them about their terrible road signs. Then I got to listen ALL the way home about how STUPID the highway department is!  

I wonder what the highway department was saying about the idiot who just called to complain about the signs.