Crappy roads suck
Sometimes people ask me why I don’t drive a sexier automobile. People suggest things like Porches and Corvettes - I think they assume I need to compensate for something. But there’s no way I could have a nice car anywhere around here. Why you ask? Because California roads suck harder than a $2 crack whore.
Yup, Californian roads blow. You know how I know it’s just California? Drive across the California/Nevada boarder into Reno sometime. On the California side you are driving on some of the crappiest weather beaten roads ever made. Then ten feet further on the Nevada side it’s pristine.
So on the way to visit ID one day I noticed a particularly bad road and took it upon myself to take a short video with my camera phone showing how crappy California roads can be. This was taken in my 4×4 with the super burly sports suspension package. I’m not even trying to be funny here with how crazy the video gets, I was seriously trying to hold my phone stable and had my hand on the wheel, but even still. You just have to see this for yourself (if you can’t see the video you need to download the DivX codec):
That was in a 4×4, for Christ’s sake. What you are hearing is a box of tools in the back of my SUV bouncing up and down. I can’t own a good car because the shitty roads here would destroy it. I can just picture two guys who are super high drawing crazy plans to patch roads betting money that no one will notice how fucked up they can make it.
If you look at some places in San Francisco it’s like a frigging archiological dig. You see some layers that date back to the Paleozoic era, then a few lighter patches that were filled in during the Mesozoic era, and then five or six more on top of it. Why can’t Caltrans do it right the first time? I bet if we forced Caltrans to insure a road for 30 years, like some European countries do, you’d never see another jacked up road in California again.
The worst part is I’m paying some fat peice of shit’s salary with my insane state taxes to fill in holes with essentially gravel and tar just to pay to have him go back and do it again in a week when it needs re-patching. As Scotty would say, “She won’t hold together much longer, Captain! One more hit and she’ll blow for sure!” Bastards.
-RSnake
January 24th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more!
December 1st, 2008 at 11:54 am
You are absolutely correct in your assessment of the road conditions in San Francisco and they have not improved since you created the video. This begs two questions; how did this happen and why don’t they fix it.
I believe this happened by the city planners and powers that be having other motives and motivations. San Francisco has a reputation of being driven by “esteem based” priorities; not specifically liberal, although it is, but dollar driven. “What can we do to get more tourists and fleece them of their money?” Collect a lot and invest little.
On the second part of why the roads do not get fixed. I truly believe the problem is so pervasive and overwhelming that the people that could “potentially” fix the problems, have gone into apathy. So much money has been mis-spent, there is no money to do maintenance.
This does not even consider the gross issues suggested by: lack of left turn lanes, narrowness of the streets, confusion of contradictory signage, over-abundance of non- sequitur signs, lack of adherence to traffic laws and instruction by both drivers and pedestrians, et. al. We saw, literally dozens of police cars parked, mostly in front of restaurants, likely because the officers gave up trying to negotiate in the ensuing traffic created by their own ineffective city bureacracy.
This is the phenomena that occurs when visceral takes precedence over logical. It’s called “broken”.
Great place to visit, should make you appreciate where you came from, unless of course, you already live “nut to butt”.