An Open Letter to PENNDOT

Dear Pennsylvania Department of Transit:

I must have been hallucinating on Saturday.

Because it was... oh... two or three weeks ago already now that the evening news told us how you were done with roadwork on the Parkway East for the year.

Done until next spring, when you would once again regularly close one of the major highways that connect we East side folks to the rest of the city.

Or to Monroeville Mall.

Or to, say, the Turnpike.

So I know I must have been hallucinating over the weekend. Because I could have sworn I saw roadcrews all along the in-bound Parkway on Saturday. I saw road cones taking up two lanes of the three lane highway. I was so positive I saw cars backed up almost to Penn Hills by late afternoon.

I must have been imagining the men under the bridges, then. And the cranes. And the giant piles of freshly dug up dirt. And the worktrucks and machinery here and there looking anything but done for the season.

Because they couldn't possibly have been there. You were finished for the year, you see. We all knew that.

But it was very life-like.

When you originally decided to work on almost every major road in the city at the same time this spring, I can't say I was happy about it, but I understood.

Yes, the work would close us off weekend after weekend, evening after evening, from our popular shopping destinations, and the biggest route across our state. But I knew it had to be done. I had empathy in my heart for you. I held the image of a beautiful, smooth-riding future.

I am stupid that way.

And so I heeded your warnings and made workaround plans. Which isn't exactly easy when you decide to rip up the Parkway East, West, North, Saw Mill Run Boulevard, Route 28, Fifth Avenue, Forbes Avenue, and partially close the Birmingham Bridge, all at the same time.

My empathy waned a little once or twice there, I admit. I might have even said a few not-so-ladylike words.

But I kept out of your way, weekend after weekend, night after night. The way you seem to like it. The way your PR reps on the news tell us, "Avoid this area. And if you have to be somewhere, leave extra time."

Only it's hard to estimate an extra two hours for what's normally a ten minute drive. I had that happen once.

Never again.

So, you can imagine my horror over what had to be just a very vivid figment of my imagination. As I dared peek my head out from my home on Saturday and journey East, thinking my path was free--only to see my return trip might very well hold hours of gridlock and gritted teeth.

Fortunately, it was only a hallucination.

So I am now looking for a good psychiatrist. I will tell this doc about the vivid images that have been appearing before my eyes. Perhaps it was caused by stress. Perhaps brought on from spending too many weekends shut in. But whatever the reason, I am hopeful that with patience and analysis, I will have a cure.

I am stupid that way, too.

The tricky part, of course, will be to ensure I get a shrink on the proper side of the Parkway. Because if the doc's in Monroeville or off the Turnpike, well... I might just not be able to make my appointment.

Due to the hallucination delays, dontchaknow.

Sincerely,

Jenn Thorson

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Driving Miss Crazy

I ended up behind a Student Driver today. Poor kid was going about 15 miles an hour, with even the exhaust spewing the stench of sweat, PowerAde and terror.

It reminded me of my own early driving days, and a particular trip where I returned home, not entirely sure I’d ever be allowed IN Canada again.

See, I’d learned to drive during my senior year of high school, taught by my mother. Now, I do believe Mom had my best interest at heart. But what a shy, nervous, overachieving nerd-girl like myself needed was a guiding hand… a calm voice… a vote of confidence.

And Mom’s guiding hands were mostly busy clinging to the door-handle while her voice shrieked, “Do you SEE THAT STOP SIGN?! STOP! STOP!!! For the love of Mike, STAAAAHHHHHP!!!!”

This usually started about halfway down the driveway.

So I went off to college with a license, but with very little real driving experience…

Also, a small eye twitch, when I’d hear someone say the word “stop.”

And when I graduated college, I got a job, as luck would have it, not far from my apartment. REALLY not far from my apartment. Like, I could see the office building, if I stood in my bathtub on tiptoes and peered out the window.

I was at that job about four years before the company moved locations and I suddenly had to have a car. So I took some driving lessons from AAA as a refresher, and was surprised to learn their teaching techniques varied quite a bit from my mother’s own unique style.

I’d only had my car about a week, when my supervisor decided that, great! Since I was going to this tradeshow to set up the corporate booth-- and since shipping a booth meant you could never be sure the booth wouldn’t accidentally be sent to Zimbabwe--I could just drive the booth to the show.

DRIVE the booth…

In a several ton moving vehicle…

An SUV, specifically…

Five hours north…

To Toronto.

You know: the one in Canada... A whole other country.

I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” hoping he didn’t notice my eye starting to twitch. And I learned I’d be driving with a coworker, to help with the booth cases.

It concerned me somewhat that the coworker had children to support.

Or as I was thinking of them at the time, “the bereaved orphans.”

Well, my coworker ended up driving about half of the way before we stopped for gas, and she suggested I take the wheel the rest of the way into Toronto.

And once again, I didn’t want to admit the idea of driving this large, unfamiliar automobile on a road where there were, like, OTHER LIFEFORMS was somewhat of a concern to me considering my skill level.

So I got behind the wheel. Things were actually going very well on our way into Toronto. We joked, we listened to the radio, and two and a half hours went by with me not killing so much as a moth in the grill.

I was feeling good.

Then came the hotel parking garage. Or as I shall call it, my Waterloo.

Yes, my coworker had agreed to have the booth cases taken into the exposition hall, while I parked the SUV. And such was my relief over having made it into Toronto so smoothly—not so much as missing an exit—that I was already thinking happy thoughts of dinner.

Little did I know that the parking garage required you to take a ticket first. So I pulled in, and realized I was a bit too far away to reach the ticket. I opened my door and stepped a leg out of the car, to grab it and…

My foot slipped off the brake.

Did I mention that it was an underground parking garage, where there was a bit of a, well, SLOPE DOWN?

Oh, there was.

And so, the car began to roll forward, me half-in, half-out of the car. And there I was, being dragged alongside this SUV in the middle of a parking garage in the Great White North, while my coworker was waiting for me, having a glass of wine in the plush hotel lounge.

Just after I drove through the wooden arm barrier, I managed to get the vehicle to come to a stop-- my leg bleeding, one shoe lost, the driver’s side mirror bashed, and the wooden arm in splinters on the ground.

The next twenty minutes involved me tearfully explaining to some parking authority officers-- who my mind over the years has recorded as Mounted Police-- what exactly had happened that caused damage to the City of Toronto’s property.

Not knowing the local laws, I recall wondering if you could be ejected from Canada for this sort of thing.

Well, the Mounties were actually really nice to me. Probably because I was bleeding on their concrete and I only had one shoe. So they wrote up the accident and didn’t put me in the pokey over the cost of the arm or anything.

After locating my errant footwear, I headed up to the lounge. My coworker eyed me and said, “What took you so long?” I was limping a little and still bleeding, with eyeliner and mascara streaked into circles under my eyes.

I sat down and ordered a Molson, eye twitching. "The drivers around here are crazy ."


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