Potholes R Us

If you live in a large northern metropolitan city in the US you most likely have experienced a winter that just won't quit.  From the snow at Thanksgiving to the latest round here in March, winter has been dumping precipitation in one form or another on a major portion of the northern half of the country.  And because the sun has been higher in the sky and we've had a few patches of warmer days, the ice and snow and moisture have done their thing to the streets of most major cities - expand, contract, crack the pavement.  The result: potholes. 

The city of Chicago has supposedly filled over 200,000 potholes.  I say supposedly because you'd never know it, mostly because there are about 10 times that yet to be filled! Even our potholes have potholes! Now I understand that the work crews are the same guys who are out plowing the snow and salting the ice and that we've had plenty of that this year.  But between the winter weather conditions, the potholes, drivers trying to avoid hitting potholes, utility work crews, the shoulder snow plowing on sunny days to get rid of the obstructions and the general snarliness of drivers fed up with winter, driving has turned into quite an adventure.  

You plan your route - which way has less potholes (and no, the Pothole Tracker the city has on their website doesn't really help). You plan the time of day when less traffic is on the road (yeah, it's a major city so that doesn't really happen). You watch the Weather Channel to see when the next round is supposed to hit and try to get out before that happens.  And if you're very very lucky, you don't damage a rim or get into an accident - or worse, get stranded for hours by a road closed by a chain reaction accident.  

Spring will come, though in our case it normally goes right into summer, the potholes will be fixed, well, some of them at least, and life will go on.  Will we remember the cold Chiberia weather and the ice and snow when the temperature reaches 90? Probably not.  We'll complain about the heat, we'll complain about the humidity (because every good Chicagoan knows it's not the heat, it's the humidity), and we won't remember the chill of winter.  That is until we round the next corner, and find a few dozen potholes that didn't get filled.  We may complain about the cold of winter and the heat of summer and not remember the opposite, but the potholes will be with us always!