TriangleREVA

The Observer has been a little concerned about all the construction going on in our fair city and beyond of late. Well, “concerned” is a bit much, we guess. How about “miffed”?
Miffed is about as hacked off as The Observer can get about anything these days, happy as we are that Yours Truly, Spouse and Junior now all have our two-shot Fauci Ouchie in our arms, and have percolated the required time to get as immune as we’re gonna get.
Happiness, tempered with sadness for all who didn’t make it to the shot, reigns supreme around The Observatory. If you haven’t got your second dose or have but haven’t percolated the required time yet, we kinda envy you. There’s no feeling quite like reaching the last day of your final two-week waiting period — your Alive Day, as we’ve heard soldiers leaving combat zones call it — and realizing that the captain has turned off the “You Could Potentially Die Just From Breathing” sign and are now free to move about the cabin, or even outside the cabin if you want.
Now that The Observer’s little Nuclear Family has successfully survived a plague intact, all that’s left to do is to decide whether we want to bankrupt ourselves going to the movies three times a week, by going to eat inside every restaurant we’ve missed for the past 14 months or so (we’ll see you soon, live and in-person, Damgoode Pies, Vino’s and Iriana’s!), or through exorbitant travel.
We’re staying strictly away from bars, taverns and saloons of all sorts for a bit, even though that’s where a lot of the live music is — another thing we have sorely missed. After the year we’ve had, that’s an idea that would probably go straight to hell, and Lord knows The Observer doesn’t need to be banned from any more drinking establishments in this town. Not when we’re just getting back on our barstool.
But we digress. Back to The Miffening.
There’s a ton of construction going on in Central Arkansas right now, and we love quite a bit of it. Maybe not the massive Amazon Workhouse being constructed down near the port, where proud Amazon workers will no doubt someday piss in bottles because their robot boss said no emptying of their puny human bladders between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. But a lot of it.
We’re seeing lotsa spiffing up, lotsa building out, lotsa basically getting ready for America to wake up from our coronavirus stupor and figure out who we are now after a long, long national nightmare. This country never wakes unchanged from our bad dreams, from the Civil War to World War II, Watergate to 9/11. When events of that magnitude happen, everything tends to change in the aftermath: art, culture, fashion, literature, the way we live, what we value, everything.
We’re just now coming through three or four humdinger catastrophes simultaneously — the pandemic with 570,000 dead and counting, an economic collapse to rival 1929, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and four years of America run by an insane former QVC steak salesman. That’s a hell of a lot. So we’re very interested to see where this all goes from here.
Did we just digress again? Sorry. As we’ve said: long year. We’re clearly taking the scenic route. Back to the Miff.
What we’re miffed about is all the damn road construction around here. We know it has to happen, but does it all have to happen at once? For example: the Arkansas Highway Department, in its infinite bureaucracy, has decided to tear up not one but both of the major freeway bridges that cross the Arkansas River at Little Rock: the I-430 bridge near Cantrell and the I-30 bridge near downtown.
Yeah, Maumellians and Dogtowners can still jaunt way over to the croplands near the airport to the I-440 bridge or drive to Toad Suck to cross the river unimpeded by progress. But we kinda question the wisdom, or even the common sense, of putting up barrels on both bridges at the same time and slowing traffic to a crawl. Not to take it personally, but doesn’t that seem a little punitive to you?
The Observer is thinking of buying a barge and an old tugboat and putting in a ferry. Gotta be a better way to cross the river than sitting in traffic. Back to the future!
Another thing that has added to our miffening: down on Rebsamen Park Road near Murray Park, they’re putting in some formidable speedbumps. They’ve already got one in, and it looks like, from the striping on the road, they’re going to put in at least two more.
We get it. It’s to fight people driving down that road like they’re out to commit vehicular homicide. We know people do that because we’ve seen it with our own eyes, even though all that road leads to is the dog park, boat ramp and the Big Dam Bridge, a place to bike or walk. The street racer The Observer once was long ago (well beyond the statute of limitations, so better luck next life, LRPD) also understands that the long, secluded, straight stretch on Rebsamen Park Road is probably also a good place for folks to get up to no good in their fast cars.
Here’s what we also know: They’d better put in some flashing lights warning people of those speedbumps at night, or even during the day. Because if they don’t, we fear that somebody on a crotch rocket or a Harley is going to be zipping down to the Big Dam Bridge for the first time since those were installed, and that person is gonna hit one of those speedbumps at speed, go flying and probably die.
The Observer in the four-wheeled Observatory — going the prescribed speed limit or a tiny bit above, we swear, officer — almost did a “Dukes of Hazzard” finisher our damn self the other day in broad daylight when we came upon the unexpected hump in the middle of the road, forced to quickly reduce thrust to five miles an hour to keep from ramping over Mt. Slowdown.
Go try it yourself and see if that hump doesn’t seem a little extreme, no matter what people are getting up to on that road.
Not to try to tell the honest and decent folk with the city how to do their jobs, but the speed limit is either 35 or it’s not. Because if a driver of any skill level short of “Freestyle Monster Truck Pilot” hits the first of those bumps at 35 miles per hour or beyond, send white lilies. So we need flashing lights. Let’s hope this column never has to be submitted as Exhibit A in a civil suit, to prove “knew or should have known” on the city’s behalf.
That’s The Observer, though: Always looking out for the citizenry, especially so now that anybody reading this has survived a thing half a million Americans didn’t. After all we’ve lived through, it would be kinda dumb to die from a speedbump, don’t you think?
Until next time, citizens: Keep it under the speed limit and sunny side up. Oh, and get your shots. The life you save may be The Observer’s, and we’re kinda partial to it right about now.

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