The tree menace.

I recently posted a picture of a house that had been bashed by a falling tree, being a little flip about the whole thing. But it can be deadly serious. This dead tree below, which seems to be held up by vines and hope, is poised to go one way or another -- it may smash into a house or fall across the road; the slope of the ground wouldn't seem to leave it much other choice. 

I'm a fan of trees, finding them shady in a good way, and pleasant to be around. But I'm not a dimwit who thinks they should not be tended to, just let them go as nature intends. Bad things happen without good forestry, as we've seen time and again with wildfires that could have been prevented with careful pruning and thinning of brush. Many wildfires are caused by malice or stupidity, but sadly there is no cure for those evils in the human condition. The least we can do is be good caretakers to our woods. 

The worst tree story of the year happened to a family a parish or two over from ours. The dad, Anthony Apostolico, was riding on the picturesque -- and heavily wooded -- Palisades Interstate Parkway, that runs 42 miles up the west side of the mighty Hudson, from the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge to the Bear Mountain Bridge in New York. He had a family-owned Italian deli in Rockland County, and was riding home on Father's Day with two of his children, ages 20 and 17. The weather was windy, according to reports, although I don't recall it being blustery. His son was driving.

A tree fell on the truck.

The father was buried; the children are still recovering at home and expected to do well. How you ever really recover from something like that, though, I wish I knew. 

I imagine the family will have grounds for a huge lawsuit against the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, or whoever is responsible for the tree surgery along the Palisades. I don't take that road often, but I can tell you it's a nightmare at rush hour -- the road itself is often potholed like it had been bombed, people drive it to their jobs in New York City at breakneck speeds, there's not much shoulder, and apparently there's a chance the foliage will come out of the sky on you. If that accident had happened on a weekday morning instead of a Sunday, the death toll could have gone to double digits.

Trees can be dangerous. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that more than 100 deaths are caused by falling trees and such per year in America, which is way more than the number of deaths due to shark bite worldwide. And that doesn't even include the deaths in the tree-care industry, which is considered very hazardous. In addition to falling off trees or being hit by limbs, workers may be electrocuted, suffocated, or that old favorite, pulled into a wood chipper. 

I guess what I'm saying is -- watch out for the trees. We love them, we need them, but they're just objects and need to be treated with good judgment for safety. If you have one waiting to fall on your house, don't delay -- get a tree surgeon in soon.

Beep, honk.

It's been said about Illinois and Massachusetts and New York and I guess anywhere that winter is an issue: There are three seasons here -- fall, winter, and construction. 

Well, yesterday I had to make a drive to Pennsylvania, and on the way I found that here in New York, construction season is in high gear. And I haven't put up any of my decorations yet!

I tend to be a lot more patient with construction delays than other causes of traffic jams, partly because I sympathize with the guys working, but also because there's a feeling that things are ordered and not in horrible chaos. An accident with blood and heads rolling on the pavement -- well, that's going to take a while to clean up. A crime scene where a meth addict ran into a school bus while being chased by the troopers is going to require everyone and his brother on the scene for medical help and to make sure the evidence against the guilty idiot is preserved. A massive road failure like the collapse of an overpass? Might as well hunker down and take a nap, drivers.

But regularly scheduled constructions projects with flagmen and drivers doing a courteous zipper merge? May take a while, but we'll get there. We just hope we don't have to pee while we're waiting....

Country roads.

I was walking around a country road in Pennsylvania with large economy size dog Tralfaz when I noticed something that made me curious.

I couldn't figure out why the intersection up ahead was supposed to be dangerous. I'd been there before. It's a two-way stop with pretty good visibility in either direction. To your right is a downward slope, but it seems to me that only pea-soup fog, exceptionally bad ice, or the Dukes of Hazzard driving up the hill would make it dangerous.

I wondered if the sign was just a means of the local highway department using up its budget so it wouldn't see a cut the next year. The irreplaceable Mark Steyn has had some fun with America's stop-sign statism over the years: "I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America’s unending procession of bend signs, pedestrian-approaching signs, stop signs, stop-sign-ahead signs, stop-sign-ahead-signs-ahead signs, pedestrian-approaching-a-stop-sign signs, designated-scenic-view-ahead signs, parking-restrictions-at-the-designated-scenic-view signs, etc."

And sure enough, we have one of those great "Stop Ahead" signs, because it's not enough to tell drivers to stop anymore. We have to be alerted to start stopping so we can stop completely at the stop sign. Before we stop stopping. And here is the stop sign itself.

hooray

The speed limit is set at a leisurely 35, as is typical for American town and rural roads that are not main thoroughfares. 

After looking hither and yon, there was only one thing I spotted in the intersection that would indicate any particular danger to the intersection.

Yeah, that could have something to do with it.

Taking a toll.

The state of New York continually finds new ways to annoy people.

Here's a bill we got last month.

The state has the new no-tollbooth plan called Tolls By Mail, where instead of tollbooths with human beings we get our license plate photographed and a bill for the toll sent by mail. This makes it easier to go over bridges like the Verrazano-Narrows without worrying if you have enough money on you, but also easy to rack up a huge monthly bill for all those $19 tolls. Even E-ZPass will keep you honest by alerting you when your account runs low. With about 20 workdays in a month, if the V-Z was part of your commute, the MTA could skin you for $380 before you knew it.

Well, we only went one Thruway exit to see the doctor, thus the whopping $1.25 toll. We seldom go far these days. Not too many people do. I don't know how the bridges will keep afloat. But that's their problem.

I paid the bill online -- the stamp and the physical check would have cost about half the total of the bill, but I almost wrote a check just to annoy everybody. It would have been the smallest check I ever wrote.

I shouldn't complain. The Tolls By Mail system is faster while driving -- although the inconvenience comes on our side, not the government's, which is how they like it. It must have meant the dismissal or early retirement for many tollbooth operators. Then again, not handing around cash may mean we've avoided spreading COVID-19 even farther than we have. So I guess I ought to look on the bright side.

One thing, though, about the New York government using technology: They always say it will save money, and yet somehow the taxes and tolls never go down.

I should note that this invoice informed us that we could have saved six cents on this toll with E-ZPass. The irony is, I have E-ZPass on my car, but we took my wife's. Oh well, there goes that trip to Fiji we were planning.

Squiggles.

Walking the streets more than I ever did in the pre-dog days, I find myself wondering about these squiggles:

What's up with that?

For some reason, I realized, road crews are making squiggly lines all over the asphalt. Why is that? It's a thin coating in no particular pattern. It couldn't possibly help hold the pavement together, or prevent potholes, could it? I thought not.

The longer I looked, the more I thought, the more the light began to dawn. Yes! These are not random squiggles; these are, in fact, messages. And these messages are coded, by which I mean they are written in script, and children are not taught penmanship anymore.

Carefully I began to crack the code on these squiggles. Perhaps if you look closely, you too will see the hidden messages....

Road rip!

Uh-oh...

You never like to see this. Even if the road in question is one you must use, one you've been yelling at the town council or state roads commission to fix because of its cavernous, axle-busting potholes, you still die a little inside when you see road work signs. Because if it's a road you take, you know that for the duration of the work you will be inconvenienced.

Roads are funny things. Kingdoms that could build them could become empires. The Romans may not have been the nicest guys in the ancient world, but they sure could build roads. Even most libertarians agree that, for the sake of commerce and freedom of movement, roads are a legitimate government enterprise. We need them, and we're willing to pay taxes and tolls to maintain them.

When the road being fixed is the one outside your house it can be worse than a change of route. It can be a minefield of tire-popping fun and an obstacle course of flagmen every time you have to run out. This sign popped up last week on my street. Monday at about 6:15 a.m. the trucks started rolling in.

What did I expect? Oiled road. What the hell is that?

You may know, but I did not. According to the Straight Dope, this is a necessary maintenance wherein the top layer of road is crunched up and a layer of sealant (not really oil) that helps bind the new surface applied later. If what I've seen of this kind of work in these parts was an indication, we'd have a greasy, pebbly road for several weeks, and then another sign would go up and we'd have blacktop.

Here was the street as of 6:32 Monday morning:

As of Monday evening... it was exactly the same. They started up the street, about half a mile away, and we didn't see them on our end until Tuesday.

Tuesday morning a fellow came bopping down the center of the road with a little wheeled measuring device and a spray gun that made skinny lines. I was outside with the big dog, who went into an uncharacteristic barking frenzy. "All dogs hate this thing," the man told me, gesturing with the paint blaster. We would later have a lot more canine objections -- the little dog was terrified of the steamrollers. Even inside the house, not seeing them. It was the sound that made him nuts. When he did get a look at them it didn't help.

By 3:06 Tuesday afternoon:

Ahhh. That smooth, silky blacktop. You want to just lie down on it and luxuriate in its pure dark richness. Bad idea, though, as there's nothing like fresh blacktop to make drivers think they are in car commercials and hit the gas.

Later I realized that they never did chop up the old pavement and leave us for weeks with an oiled, rocky surface. And I hate when the road is like that. But they just laid the new surface right over the old surface. Does that mean that this a half-assed job? That the new surface won't adhere properly? Did we get gypped? Should we have demanded they leave the road in diabolical condition for a few weeks to make for a better road in the long run?

Well, at least it looks nice right now. My wife says I should have slipped the crew a few bucks, have them do our driveway. My luck I would have been arrested on the spot for bribing a government worker.