Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Are we there yet, are we there yet...

The other night Amy and I were driving home from some event somewhere off-cape... (there's at least one commitment every weekend, somewhere, and it will be that way through December). So yeah, the first 3 weeks of summer have flown by (since the eels), it's 1 am and I've got a couple minutes to myself... Anyway, that's not where I was going with this...

So we're driving home and I noticed a new sign on the side of the road on Route 6 on Cape Cod. It was a mile sign. I'm not talking about one of those little 2 x 6 single-digit green rectangles on a post, put there, i'm sure, to occupy your mind on long drives through such mundane landscapes as kansas or nebaska. This thing was a HUGE sign. I'd say it had to be 14 x 18 inches or so. It was a big green sign with typical white letters: "Mile 66."

"Odd" I thought. They need such a big sign for a mile marker. But, that wasn't the oddest part. It wasn't that they had the need to make every mile sign bigger and extremely conspicuous, but about 5 seconds along I saw another one... "Mile 66.1" ... Now THAT was ODD! Sure enough, there was one every TENTH OF A MILE the same size, marking every 10th of a mile that you'd passed since the last. Now I ask wha.. WHA... What FOR??! The only thing Amy and I could come up with was it was some kind of government work project to stimulate our dead economy... but really... REALLY! Do we really need a reminder that we're not where we want to be EVERY SIX SECONDS??? And what a waste. (photo is the next day going the other way, so multiply the waste by 2)

Any other ideas what this is for?

3 comments:

Chase Squires said...

Hey, a new post!!

My guess, you may be in for a change in the way they do addresses out there, like the Florida keys, everything is done by mile marker (my folks' place was in Marathon, MM50 .... ) just a thought.

Or, here's an idea, check out your local newspaper ... link to the story here ...

http://tinyurl.com/lrpge3

The Google, it's magic!

Here's the gist,

"State officials hope that new mile marker signs installed along Route 6 and other highways in Massachusetts will help emergency responders find motorists faster. But some drivers say the signs, which appear every fifth of a mile, will only help the companies that were paid to install them"

I'm here to help.

Bruce Christopher said...

Yeah, I did see that story... I think it came out on the 18th... I meant to add to my notes, but never got to it... so yeah... that's the story. Pretty big waste if you ask me.

Chase Squires said...

yeah.

A waste of taxpayer money.

uh, that surprises you, in Massachusetts?

what you guys put up with :-)