Road Conditions

Phoenix is unique among the large cities of America. It's relatively easy to navigate where you are in the 515 square miles of concrete grid lines. Many times, my friends from the east coast do not believe me when I tell them our street hierarchy grid (super block) is a mile (5,280 feet) on each side. By comparison, Manhattan is only 24 square miles in size, and city blocks there are 264 ft x 900 ft. In other words, about 117 city blocks from New York City can fit into one Phoenix city block.

There is constant construction taking place wherever you drive in Phoenix. Many times, they will close off a freeway in the middle of the day with a sign saying, "Thank you for your patience" or whatnot. After being closed for a week, they open it up, but you're still not sure exactly what kind of work was done until the next sign saying, "You're great, Phoenix! We just finished resurfacing the 5 storm drains on this 50 mile stretch of highway. Stay tuned for more exciting closures."

So I'm driving to work the other morning two months ago, and traffic is backed up from downtown to the state border 150 miles away. Aggravation trickles in. Inching along the freeway asphalt, I wonder what kind of construction they're doing. Slowly, I get up to the bottleneck, and I discover half naked people from southern California had pulled haphazardly to the side. They were running around on the freeway chasing after a black dog that kept running away from them. No amount of bacon would get that dog off the road. Perhaps the dog was a vegan. I swear, crazy people from SoCal in bathing suits running after a homeless dog on the freeway. I would have just sped up...

Yesterday, I was driving back from another hospital when I noticed everyone swerving out of the way. Naturally, I'm a fantastic driver, so I get into the lane everyone is swerving into. As I pass the swerve spot, I look over and notice a guy in a wheelchair racing traffic in the middle of the road. Amazed that there were no Californians around trying to help him, I mentally transport myself back to a story I read a few months earlier about another traffic incident involving a guy in a wheelchair. I fondly remember the tag line from the article, "Why did the 21 year old cross the road?" Passing by and heading back to work, I secretly think to myself two things. First, 'I wonder what homeless race he's training for', and second, 'is there going to be an uprising of wheelchairs in the near future?'