Why Wendy likes the D.O.T.

The last week of April, I was the recipient of an entire, unexpected, "honey-do list day!" Remember how, after the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed, there was major national scrutiny on all of the bridges in the whole-wide country? Guess where three of the worst offenders are? That's right...Seward Highway, and Mark crosses all three of them daily (twice) for his commute. They finally are getting around to fixing said bridges (how many years has it been?), and they scheduled to close the highway from 10 p.m. Friday night to 5 a.m. Monday morning over the last weekend in April. The bets were on to see if a government-funded project would actually run according to schedule...ha!

Well, by Sunday evening the rumors were floating around town that it would be 8 a.m. Monday morning before they were done, even though DOT had not updated their website to reflect any time change. I've lost track of how many people kindly called Mark with what they had heard!
He headed to work a little before 6 a.m. on Monday (it's only about 5 miles from our house to the bridge, so it wasn't a major deal to check rather than depend on rumors). You guessed it...still closed, estimated to open at 8 a.m. 8 a.m. came and went...new estimate was noon. Noon came and went, changed to 5 p.m.

And by this time, our sleepy little town is positively overflowing with poor travelers who thought they would be able to get to S. When you only have one way in and out of a town, it's fairly simple to notify travelers of road closures and such. That is, IF the electronic sign that sits outside of Anchorage headed south is actually updated. Which it wasn't. So meanwhile, 75 miles later, you've got some pretty frustrated people hanging out at the only eating establishment in town.

And this was some major upheaval for life and business in S. People were missing airline flights in Anch. Emergency services were re-directed. A cruise ship even had to pull out of the harbor without all of its passengers because their food for the next leg of the voyage was on a delivery truck that couldn't get in!

5 p.m. Monday rolls around. Still not finished. New estimate: 8 p.m. Then 11 p.m. Then 5 a.m. Tuesday. Then 8 a.m. Finally, the highway opened at 8:20 a.m. on Tuesday. There was literally "no room in the inn," for a goodly number of people on Monday, and we even ended up with a family sleeping in the church Monday night.

All of this frustration and upheaval was totally lost on us. For our family, it was simply a guilt-free extra weekend day! Mark got an unbelievable number of projects accomplished that day! So, we finally have our swing set back up and in use at our house! As you may (or may not) remember, we had moved it, and a lot of our other "outdoor stuff" from our old house back in Dec., before we got too much snow, and stored it at Chad and Kindra's (at that point we still weren't sure where we would be landing after the move)!

Mark was heading to the dump (a 1/2 mile from our house), and it dawned on me over an hour later that he still hadn't come back. So I called him, just as he was headed back in the driveway with a truckload of our "outdoor stuff," and Tommy pulling in behind him w/ their one-ton truck and the swing set! It was great fun for the boys, who got to share their excitement with their friend Adrian. Both of Adrian's parents work at the only eating/lodging establishment in town, and Adrian goes to school in S...so he needed a place to go for the day, and we gladly took him!

Needless to say, it was a great day! The kids were thrilled to have the swing set back, I was thrilled to have my stanchion built for the goats, etc, etc! And the work continued the next morning, as both Mark and Tommy were ready to head to work, but couldn't make it through for a few hours, so the basement got some major overhaul, too! I'm so grateful to D.O.T. for not having their act together!