An excerpt from an IM conversation with a friend, just moments ago (hot off the... er.... pixels... people!) when he informed me that this blog showed up on Google... I had to see for myself, of course.
Smartass Friend: you're on google
Farmgirl: I am?
FG: *blink blink*
SF: you are!
SF: (laughing face)
SF: "Holly's Hystrionics" is the first one that came up
FG: oh wait yeah blogger is a google thing.
SF: sidesaddle rodeo is on there too
SF: well, yeah
FG: she linked to me and she's a more popular blogger than i am
SF: ahhh, wait, Holly is?
FG: yeah
SF: oh, okay
FG: what did you search google for?
FG: that you found me?
SF: yeah
SF: I put you into my drop-down google search bar in Firefox, to get the link over
FG: no, i mean what search?
SF: yeah, it was in google
FG: *rubs forehead* whos on first?
SF: What? wait, no, he's on second..
Really folks. I gotta stop putting so many multi-syllable words into the stories, or pretty soon I'm going to be going through the rest of my interactions with a dazed drooling expression on my face, because I'll have used all of my intelligent vocabulary here.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Oy
I mentioned in my post last night that my job is a never ending series of near-misses. Someone upstairs heard me and made sure that today fit the bill.
Two separate vehicles that we called in to the Highway Patrol, one truck break down in the middle of the site, in the middle of the traffic line, and a couple of bright ones that either didn't see, or couldn't comprehend the bright frickin orange sign on the back of the Silver Streak proclaiming "Pilot Car
Follow Me"
I mean COME ON people.
Number one... there IS a no passing sign in the long series of BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS signs that lead up to the flagger that stopped you. This does not mean that its "ok" to pass after the pilot car starts leading traffic through. And guess what... when you're stuck between a steep ditch and a twelve inch drop you don't have much choice but to slow down when the pilot car goes twenty passing the nearest flaggers, thus allowing them a good look at your license plate. Hope you enjoyed that ticket, Mr. Impatient.
Number two... When the flagger tells you flat out that he cannot allow you to enter the construction zone without the pilot car, since you are neither a local, construction personnel, or law enforcement/emergency response personnel, that does NOT mean to turn around and back track to the nearest county road, go around the flagger, and drive eighty until you catch up with the pilot line, six miles on. It DOES mean that your license plate number will be dutifully written down, along with your vehicle description, your description, and the exact nature of the offense in a written statement. Right after your plate number is called into the highway patrol, that is. And probably while you're being told by the nice policeman that since dispatch received a call and the reporting parties have agreed to provide written statements as to the nature of your offense, and your estimated eighty plus mile an hour speed in a forty five mile an hour zone, it DOES mean that you're going to get one honking big traffic citation. And possibly a spanking.
Oh, and acting nonchalant as you leave the site does you no good at all. Ever heard of radios?
I'm gonna make a small statement to anyone who drives through ANY construction zone. Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT mess with Traffic Control.
We take our job seriously. That job is safety. If you mess with us, we WILL shove our steel toes where the sun don't shine, even if we have to do it with a phone call.
You've heard the phrase "just do what I tell you and no one gets hurt" ?
Thats our motto, especially the no one gets hurt part.
Not that I'm not all for the process of natural selection... just don't do it in my zone.
I don't want to do the paperwork.
Two separate vehicles that we called in to the Highway Patrol, one truck break down in the middle of the site, in the middle of the traffic line, and a couple of bright ones that either didn't see, or couldn't comprehend the bright frickin orange sign on the back of the Silver Streak proclaiming "Pilot Car
Follow Me"
I mean COME ON people.
Number one... there IS a no passing sign in the long series of BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS signs that lead up to the flagger that stopped you. This does not mean that its "ok" to pass after the pilot car starts leading traffic through. And guess what... when you're stuck between a steep ditch and a twelve inch drop you don't have much choice but to slow down when the pilot car goes twenty passing the nearest flaggers, thus allowing them a good look at your license plate. Hope you enjoyed that ticket, Mr. Impatient.
Number two... When the flagger tells you flat out that he cannot allow you to enter the construction zone without the pilot car, since you are neither a local, construction personnel, or law enforcement/emergency response personnel, that does NOT mean to turn around and back track to the nearest county road, go around the flagger, and drive eighty until you catch up with the pilot line, six miles on. It DOES mean that your license plate number will be dutifully written down, along with your vehicle description, your description, and the exact nature of the offense in a written statement. Right after your plate number is called into the highway patrol, that is. And probably while you're being told by the nice policeman that since dispatch received a call and the reporting parties have agreed to provide written statements as to the nature of your offense, and your estimated eighty plus mile an hour speed in a forty five mile an hour zone, it DOES mean that you're going to get one honking big traffic citation. And possibly a spanking.
Oh, and acting nonchalant as you leave the site does you no good at all. Ever heard of radios?
I'm gonna make a small statement to anyone who drives through ANY construction zone. Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT mess with Traffic Control.
We take our job seriously. That job is safety. If you mess with us, we WILL shove our steel toes where the sun don't shine, even if we have to do it with a phone call.
You've heard the phrase "just do what I tell you and no one gets hurt" ?
Thats our motto, especially the no one gets hurt part.
Not that I'm not all for the process of natural selection... just don't do it in my zone.
I don't want to do the paperwork.
Its a bad sign...
When you work with your father, and he starts quoting your blog at you, at work, over the radio.
Or at least I *think* it is... I'm not sure yet. I'll have to tell a few funnies on him, at some point...
Or at least I *think* it is... I'm not sure yet. I'll have to tell a few funnies on him, at some point...
Saturday, June 23, 2007
My Co-Workers
Within my construction job I have a lot of "co-workers." Everyone on the site is my co-worker, technically. However, when I speak of my co-workers I'm usually talking about my fellow traffic control people. We're a very special club, and it takes a lot to get in. Watching the entirety of a video more cheezy than the sex-ed ones from high school (no, really, Sammy The Sperm has NOTHING on the chick in the armor in the CDOT Flagger Certification video....) and taking a test that it is impossible to fail. Why is it impossible, you ask? Because, my friends, should you fail this test that you are allowed to ask questions during, you will be handed your corrected answer sheet, told to go over the questions you missed, and given a fresh answer sheet, to take it again.
Yes.
Like I said, a very exclusive club.
Anywho, my co-workers are a varied bunch, and only my favorite ones leave much of an impression at all, the rest of them tend to fade into the landscape. Which, in some cases, is the way they prefer it, and who am I to argue with them?
Several of my favorites are guys, around my own age. They're people that I know outside work, socialize with, and one of them can blame me for getting him into this whole mess.
I've known T since we were kids. His older sister has been one of my best friends since elementary school, but it was only recently that T and I began socializing much on our own rights.
For some reason, everyone is convinced that T and I are a couple. Some of them are obnoxious about it, maintaining the claim even after we both explain that it would be akin to incest for either one of us to think that way about the other. Since we can't seem to convince them otherwise, we've decided to have fun with it.
One guy in particular is convinced that I have VERY round heels, and that they're round for everyone on site... except him. Thanks to his firm (and fanatic) belief in this, I got treated to him taking his shirt off and doing one of those manly show-off-the-chest type stretches. Which I normally wouldn't argue with, as I like a little eye candy as well as the next girl, but this one had me searching the first aid kit for the mental iodine.
After that, he was fair game. One of his favorite assertions is that T and I "fool around" in the pilot car. So, as T was giving me a break (supposedly the time when we're supposed to be fooling around) I made the suggestion that it might be entertaining to find out just what kind of reaction we got if I... disappeared... as we were going by his particular flagging station. T found the idea entertaining as well, so I hid in the floorboard, while T drove by. The stubbornly deluded gentleman in question was facing away from us as we were going by... so T honked the horn and gave him a thumbs up as we went by.
Knowing that the fact that I wasn't visible wasn't entirely an indication of anything, I planned ahead, rolled my seat back a little further than I usually do, slumped down into the seat in a languid pose, threw one arm up on the steering wheel and made sure I was smoking a cigarette as I went by.
No fallout on that one yet, but we haven't worked with the guy since.
Of course, T and I are fairly comfortable with each other, probably encouraging the idea that we're dating.
Today, he was being a brat and sat on the window opening of the Silver Streak after I'd rolled it down to talk to him, so I reached out and pinched his butt.
You know something? T sounds remarkably like one of those damsel in distress types you see in the movies, when you pinch his bottom unexpectedly........
Yes.
Like I said, a very exclusive club.
Anywho, my co-workers are a varied bunch, and only my favorite ones leave much of an impression at all, the rest of them tend to fade into the landscape. Which, in some cases, is the way they prefer it, and who am I to argue with them?
Several of my favorites are guys, around my own age. They're people that I know outside work, socialize with, and one of them can blame me for getting him into this whole mess.
I've known T since we were kids. His older sister has been one of my best friends since elementary school, but it was only recently that T and I began socializing much on our own rights.
For some reason, everyone is convinced that T and I are a couple. Some of them are obnoxious about it, maintaining the claim even after we both explain that it would be akin to incest for either one of us to think that way about the other. Since we can't seem to convince them otherwise, we've decided to have fun with it.
One guy in particular is convinced that I have VERY round heels, and that they're round for everyone on site... except him. Thanks to his firm (and fanatic) belief in this, I got treated to him taking his shirt off and doing one of those manly show-off-the-chest type stretches. Which I normally wouldn't argue with, as I like a little eye candy as well as the next girl, but this one had me searching the first aid kit for the mental iodine.
After that, he was fair game. One of his favorite assertions is that T and I "fool around" in the pilot car. So, as T was giving me a break (supposedly the time when we're supposed to be fooling around) I made the suggestion that it might be entertaining to find out just what kind of reaction we got if I... disappeared... as we were going by his particular flagging station. T found the idea entertaining as well, so I hid in the floorboard, while T drove by. The stubbornly deluded gentleman in question was facing away from us as we were going by... so T honked the horn and gave him a thumbs up as we went by.
Knowing that the fact that I wasn't visible wasn't entirely an indication of anything, I planned ahead, rolled my seat back a little further than I usually do, slumped down into the seat in a languid pose, threw one arm up on the steering wheel and made sure I was smoking a cigarette as I went by.
No fallout on that one yet, but we haven't worked with the guy since.
Of course, T and I are fairly comfortable with each other, probably encouraging the idea that we're dating.
Today, he was being a brat and sat on the window opening of the Silver Streak after I'd rolled it down to talk to him, so I reached out and pinched his butt.
You know something? T sounds remarkably like one of those damsel in distress types you see in the movies, when you pinch his bottom unexpectedly........
Reaction Time
This one happened at work today, and a short note to those of you in fairly risky jobs and professions.... if you're going to work in a job or a profession in which physical danger is pretty much an every day occurrence... you should have a pretty good crisis reaction time. I'm not talking about run out to your car or truck and get to the "scene" kind of reaction time, I'm talking about in your face its happening now to you or right in front of you reaction time.
Also... situational awareness, people, situational awareness.
So I'm driving the pilot car today (the Silver Streak, still) and about my third round of the morning, I pop over the hill on the north end of the site to see one of the workers' trucks in the live lane in front of me. (Live lane being the lane that traffic is running on, dead lane being the lane that traffic is shut off from. Its a little confusing right now, I admit, because we've got traffic going from one lane to the other, at each end of the site.) No big deal right? I figured he was in the truck and going to move out of my way. Then I realized that not only was he not rolling, he wasn't even in his truck. He was on the opposite side of a big honkin piece of equipment. About the time I had the little sheepies slowed down as much as I dared and leaned on the horn, he looked up, and bolted for the truck, and got it moved. All is good, except for the fact that I had to slow traffic down to nearly a stop, which is a major no no.
Right after we rearranged the site so that the traffic went on the new concrete closer to the south end, I'm headed south. And my supervisor says over the radio that M (one of the workers) is ahead of me. No biggie, right? He'll get out of the way. Wrong. M had, apparently, had a brain dead moment, and left his truck parked right smack in the middle of the live lane, pointed north, and was walking south, away from it. I had to honk the horn a few times to get his attention, before he, too, bolted like a scared jackrabbit for the vehicle and got it out of my way. (By the by, he was on the opposite side of the vehicle from me for most of it, but my supervisor saw it, and she says that M runs real purdy.)
The thing is, both of these men have, presumably, years of experience. They're both well above your average D-1 Dozer (read: shovel) operator in their company, so they should have a decent amount of experience to back it up. M is also the Traffic Control Liaison for his company, so he should have a decent idea of whats going on with all those confusing orange thingy-ma-jiggers.
Both of them stared at the situation for full seconds before reacting.
Maybe I'm expecting too much out of your average person, but I would think that if you grasp the dangers of a job, you'd make sure you kept aware of them, and have some kind of something figured out for when/if it happened. I can understand a couple of seconds of hesitation if its something utterly unexpected and unplanned for, but a traffic line coming down the live lane shouldn't be a surprise. No, really, guys, it happens about every fifteen minutes or so, depending on where you are within the site.
I'm not saying people aren't allowed to have braindead moments, I'm not saying that everyone has to be perfect every time. I've screwed up myself, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. But, and this is where the situational awareness part kicks in... both of those guys could have been well out of the way if they'd been even half watching for the pilot line. They wouldn't have risked their vehicles, their lives (yes, I mean it, their lives, even at twenty miles an hour, a semi doesn't leave much behind if it hits you) and the lives of everyone in the pilot line, including Yours Truly. German Engineered or not, I don't want to find out how well a bug holds up to being in the middle of a pickup and semi sammich, thanks.
It all worked out ok, and no one got hurt, today. It just got me to thinking about how few of the people that I work with, who don't work in traffic control specifically, think about safety. I can't count how many times I've snatched a big burly worker back by the collar of his shirt, because he was about to walk in front of a car, and on this job specifically, I had a surveyor decide to walk down the live lane in front of a semi. Really. He looked at me, asked me if he could cross the road, looked back and forth with me at the gap in the line, before I told him he had time to get *across,* and then trundled his happy way down the middle of the live lane. I thought I was about to see the invention of a grill ornament, but luckily the trucker was paying attention, and hit his brakes... thus causing the guy behind him to hit his brakes... etc... etc. It about caused a pile up, but it was narrowly avoided.
Thinking about it, my job is a never ending series of near-misses, of one sort or another. Sobering thought, ain't it?
At least M had the grace to be embarrassed about his slip up. As I went by where he'd gotten the pickup off in the ditch, I looked over to see him hunched over his steering wheel, shoulders around his ears and not daring to look directly at me, like a puppy caught piddling on the carpet, in front of company. He looked like he thought I might stop right there and beat him with his own measuring wheel.
Wonder who told them THAT story?
Also... situational awareness, people, situational awareness.
So I'm driving the pilot car today (the Silver Streak, still) and about my third round of the morning, I pop over the hill on the north end of the site to see one of the workers' trucks in the live lane in front of me. (Live lane being the lane that traffic is running on, dead lane being the lane that traffic is shut off from. Its a little confusing right now, I admit, because we've got traffic going from one lane to the other, at each end of the site.) No big deal right? I figured he was in the truck and going to move out of my way. Then I realized that not only was he not rolling, he wasn't even in his truck. He was on the opposite side of a big honkin piece of equipment. About the time I had the little sheepies slowed down as much as I dared and leaned on the horn, he looked up, and bolted for the truck, and got it moved. All is good, except for the fact that I had to slow traffic down to nearly a stop, which is a major no no.
Right after we rearranged the site so that the traffic went on the new concrete closer to the south end, I'm headed south. And my supervisor says over the radio that M (one of the workers) is ahead of me. No biggie, right? He'll get out of the way. Wrong. M had, apparently, had a brain dead moment, and left his truck parked right smack in the middle of the live lane, pointed north, and was walking south, away from it. I had to honk the horn a few times to get his attention, before he, too, bolted like a scared jackrabbit for the vehicle and got it out of my way. (By the by, he was on the opposite side of the vehicle from me for most of it, but my supervisor saw it, and she says that M runs real purdy.)
The thing is, both of these men have, presumably, years of experience. They're both well above your average D-1 Dozer (read: shovel) operator in their company, so they should have a decent amount of experience to back it up. M is also the Traffic Control Liaison for his company, so he should have a decent idea of whats going on with all those confusing orange thingy-ma-jiggers.
Both of them stared at the situation for full seconds before reacting.
Maybe I'm expecting too much out of your average person, but I would think that if you grasp the dangers of a job, you'd make sure you kept aware of them, and have some kind of something figured out for when/if it happened. I can understand a couple of seconds of hesitation if its something utterly unexpected and unplanned for, but a traffic line coming down the live lane shouldn't be a surprise. No, really, guys, it happens about every fifteen minutes or so, depending on where you are within the site.
I'm not saying people aren't allowed to have braindead moments, I'm not saying that everyone has to be perfect every time. I've screwed up myself, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. But, and this is where the situational awareness part kicks in... both of those guys could have been well out of the way if they'd been even half watching for the pilot line. They wouldn't have risked their vehicles, their lives (yes, I mean it, their lives, even at twenty miles an hour, a semi doesn't leave much behind if it hits you) and the lives of everyone in the pilot line, including Yours Truly. German Engineered or not, I don't want to find out how well a bug holds up to being in the middle of a pickup and semi sammich, thanks.
It all worked out ok, and no one got hurt, today. It just got me to thinking about how few of the people that I work with, who don't work in traffic control specifically, think about safety. I can't count how many times I've snatched a big burly worker back by the collar of his shirt, because he was about to walk in front of a car, and on this job specifically, I had a surveyor decide to walk down the live lane in front of a semi. Really. He looked at me, asked me if he could cross the road, looked back and forth with me at the gap in the line, before I told him he had time to get *across,* and then trundled his happy way down the middle of the live lane. I thought I was about to see the invention of a grill ornament, but luckily the trucker was paying attention, and hit his brakes... thus causing the guy behind him to hit his brakes... etc... etc. It about caused a pile up, but it was narrowly avoided.
Thinking about it, my job is a never ending series of near-misses, of one sort or another. Sobering thought, ain't it?
At least M had the grace to be embarrassed about his slip up. As I went by where he'd gotten the pickup off in the ditch, I looked over to see him hunched over his steering wheel, shoulders around his ears and not daring to look directly at me, like a puppy caught piddling on the carpet, in front of company. He looked like he thought I might stop right there and beat him with his own measuring wheel.
Wonder who told them THAT story?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Comments
Usually its my practice to answer each comment, at least with a thank you.
I'm not exactly used to having this much response, though. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but since I don't have enough time to sit down and write a specific response to each of you, please consider yourselves thanked when you post a comment complimenting me.
I'll reply to any questions, or anything that I feel needs responding to, of course.
And, I'll try to remember to put something up every so often thanking everyone who has complimented me. I've found I work well under the influence of positive reinforcement, and I really do appreciate all of the compliments and want to keep them coming, so that I can keep entertaining all of you!
Plus that whole part where my momma taught me to be polite and thank folks for sayin nice things 'bout me......
I'm not exactly used to having this much response, though. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but since I don't have enough time to sit down and write a specific response to each of you, please consider yourselves thanked when you post a comment complimenting me.
I'll reply to any questions, or anything that I feel needs responding to, of course.
And, I'll try to remember to put something up every so often thanking everyone who has complimented me. I've found I work well under the influence of positive reinforcement, and I really do appreciate all of the compliments and want to keep them coming, so that I can keep entertaining all of you!
Plus that whole part where my momma taught me to be polite and thank folks for sayin nice things 'bout me......
Bikers Love Bugs
Working as a flagger is not all sunshine and light, and we get some really pissy people who are absolutely convinced that we get a call that they're coming, and rush to put together this whole elaborate scam, just to inconvenience their day. Of course we did. Millions of dollars spent by the government just to screw up YOUR schedule. Yes, you, in the massively expensive four wheel drive vehicle, thats never seen dirt in its life.
Mostly, though, its pretty fun. I get to be outside, albeit pretty much tethered to one spot, and I get to meet a lot of interesting people, both on the crews that we work with, and people going through.
The job I'm working now, is on US highway 287. Its a fairly busy truck route, being one of more straightforward routes between I-40 in Texas, and I-25 and I-70 in Denver. (Not even the truckers want to drive in Colorado Springs!) We get a lot of traffic, and since the paving operations involve laying down a twelve inch thick slab of concrete, we have to run traffic control twenty four hours a day. We also run a Pilot Car, since, you know, theres a twelve inch slab of concrete with pieces of re-bar sticking out of the side of it for eight miles in the north bound lane, and we're running traffic up on it, or down off of it, around some culvert replacements and bridge replacements. Pain in the patoot.
On weekends, I drive the Pilot Car. Thanks to an engine blowing in the ratty old pickup that they had been using for a pilot car last summer, the owner of the company went out and bought a 2006 diesel fueled VW Bug, in mint green. She got it cheap, when she needed it, and that little sucker will run for twenty one hours before we have to fuel it. Plus, bonus for those of us who drive in circles for twelve hours at a time, its pretty cushy inside, too. Heated leather seats, Monsoon CD stereo system, sunroof, the works. Deciding she liked the concept, she also went out and bought a used Bug, silver, with purplish go-fast type decals down the sides, tinted windows, but no CD player, which makes me sad. Now I have to load my audio books on my MP3 player and buy batteries for the wireless FM transmitter, until the green one gets out of the shop. I'm so deprived! (insert dramatic wrist to forehead fainting motion here.)
So, when you roll up on our construction, if you're first in line, you get a thirty or so minute wait, a chance to chat with the flagger, and a front row seat when the little Bug with the flashy light rolls up on your end, with a big 'ol bullrack behind it. Its an amusing sight, and I see it every day.
One of the days that I was working, as I neared the middle of the site, checking my mirrors to make sure all of my little sheepies were in a row behind me, and not deciding that they knew where to go better than I did, I hear some broken-up chatter on the company radio. Now, our radios aren't the best in the world. The big units in the vehicles do all right, but the hand helds just don't reach out and touch someone every time you need them to. So I didn't think much of it, until I heard the supervisor say something about pulling them up to the front of the line.
My first thought, medical emergency. We get a few of those: someone is having a heart attack and doesn't want to go to Podunk Hospital, so they get someone to drive them to Slightly Larger Podunk Hospital, forty five minutes away. I can't really blame them, PH isn't set up for a lot of things, doing anything more than stabilizing a heart attack patient being one of them. So, I'm preparing to speed my traffic up as much as I dare, to get them through faster so I can get the heart attack/stroke/hypochondriac victim out of our site and on their way.
I get on the radio, ask the supervisor if there's anything she wants to let me know about, and she responds that all is kosher on the south end. Not a medical emergency then. I breathe a little easier and continue on my merry way, being careful to show the people immediately behind me how to dodge the pot holes caused by bog-only-knows how many individual vehicles driving over the same lane all the freakin time. And trust me, some of those potholes could swallow the Pilot Car whole. I think we actually lost a Mini Cooper in one, but by the time I got back there to check they'd patched it again.....
As I roll up on the south end, I see a plethora of motorcycles, and I perk up a bit. Nothing like a big rumbly machine that goes between your legs to get a girl's attention. Even better, they're Harleys!
I do my little song and dance of diving out of the way of traffic and only hitting the brakes once they're not gonna smack into me, which places me in the north bound lane, facing all of the traffic that has been stopped while I've been gone, and tends to make the jumpier drivers twitch, if they happen to be in the front of the line. Only then do I notice the cameras.
It seems that the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Harley Owners' Club were coming home from a rally in Texas, and because of the kind treatment of my supervisor, pulling them out of the exhaust fumes in the middle of the line and putting them up front where they wouldn't get as many rocks spit at them, and offering them all water, they'd been chatting with her. I maintain that her reasons for being nice to motorcycle riders stem less from a humanitarian urge and more from her desire to ogle the pretty bikes, as long as they're real road bikes. I've never seen her pull a crotch rocket up front.
So they decided they wanted pictures of the bug, and had their cameras ready. They got a couple snapped as I pulled in and came to a stop, and then my twisted sense of humor kicked in.
See, it gets HOT in southeastern Colorado in the summer... so I had stripped down to my sports bra underneath my regulation blind-me green vest. I slip the car into park, rummage in the back seat for my regulation orange hard hat, plonk it on my head over my S&W 1911 ball cap and climb out. I saunter to the front of the car, rip open my vest (yay snaps for dramatic effect!) and pose against the hood of the car, saying "If you're going to take a picture, take a REAL picture!"
They loved it.
I'm pretty sure I'm on a clubhouse wall somewhere, now.
Mostly, though, its pretty fun. I get to be outside, albeit pretty much tethered to one spot, and I get to meet a lot of interesting people, both on the crews that we work with, and people going through.
The job I'm working now, is on US highway 287. Its a fairly busy truck route, being one of more straightforward routes between I-40 in Texas, and I-25 and I-70 in Denver. (Not even the truckers want to drive in Colorado Springs!) We get a lot of traffic, and since the paving operations involve laying down a twelve inch thick slab of concrete, we have to run traffic control twenty four hours a day. We also run a Pilot Car, since, you know, theres a twelve inch slab of concrete with pieces of re-bar sticking out of the side of it for eight miles in the north bound lane, and we're running traffic up on it, or down off of it, around some culvert replacements and bridge replacements. Pain in the patoot.
On weekends, I drive the Pilot Car. Thanks to an engine blowing in the ratty old pickup that they had been using for a pilot car last summer, the owner of the company went out and bought a 2006 diesel fueled VW Bug, in mint green. She got it cheap, when she needed it, and that little sucker will run for twenty one hours before we have to fuel it. Plus, bonus for those of us who drive in circles for twelve hours at a time, its pretty cushy inside, too. Heated leather seats, Monsoon CD stereo system, sunroof, the works. Deciding she liked the concept, she also went out and bought a used Bug, silver, with purplish go-fast type decals down the sides, tinted windows, but no CD player, which makes me sad. Now I have to load my audio books on my MP3 player and buy batteries for the wireless FM transmitter, until the green one gets out of the shop. I'm so deprived! (insert dramatic wrist to forehead fainting motion here.)
So, when you roll up on our construction, if you're first in line, you get a thirty or so minute wait, a chance to chat with the flagger, and a front row seat when the little Bug with the flashy light rolls up on your end, with a big 'ol bullrack behind it. Its an amusing sight, and I see it every day.
One of the days that I was working, as I neared the middle of the site, checking my mirrors to make sure all of my little sheepies were in a row behind me, and not deciding that they knew where to go better than I did, I hear some broken-up chatter on the company radio. Now, our radios aren't the best in the world. The big units in the vehicles do all right, but the hand helds just don't reach out and touch someone every time you need them to. So I didn't think much of it, until I heard the supervisor say something about pulling them up to the front of the line.
My first thought, medical emergency. We get a few of those: someone is having a heart attack and doesn't want to go to Podunk Hospital, so they get someone to drive them to Slightly Larger Podunk Hospital, forty five minutes away. I can't really blame them, PH isn't set up for a lot of things, doing anything more than stabilizing a heart attack patient being one of them. So, I'm preparing to speed my traffic up as much as I dare, to get them through faster so I can get the heart attack/stroke/hypochondriac victim out of our site and on their way.
I get on the radio, ask the supervisor if there's anything she wants to let me know about, and she responds that all is kosher on the south end. Not a medical emergency then. I breathe a little easier and continue on my merry way, being careful to show the people immediately behind me how to dodge the pot holes caused by bog-only-knows how many individual vehicles driving over the same lane all the freakin time. And trust me, some of those potholes could swallow the Pilot Car whole. I think we actually lost a Mini Cooper in one, but by the time I got back there to check they'd patched it again.....
As I roll up on the south end, I see a plethora of motorcycles, and I perk up a bit. Nothing like a big rumbly machine that goes between your legs to get a girl's attention. Even better, they're Harleys!
I do my little song and dance of diving out of the way of traffic and only hitting the brakes once they're not gonna smack into me, which places me in the north bound lane, facing all of the traffic that has been stopped while I've been gone, and tends to make the jumpier drivers twitch, if they happen to be in the front of the line. Only then do I notice the cameras.
It seems that the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Harley Owners' Club were coming home from a rally in Texas, and because of the kind treatment of my supervisor, pulling them out of the exhaust fumes in the middle of the line and putting them up front where they wouldn't get as many rocks spit at them, and offering them all water, they'd been chatting with her. I maintain that her reasons for being nice to motorcycle riders stem less from a humanitarian urge and more from her desire to ogle the pretty bikes, as long as they're real road bikes. I've never seen her pull a crotch rocket up front.
So they decided they wanted pictures of the bug, and had their cameras ready. They got a couple snapped as I pulled in and came to a stop, and then my twisted sense of humor kicked in.
See, it gets HOT in southeastern Colorado in the summer... so I had stripped down to my sports bra underneath my regulation blind-me green vest. I slip the car into park, rummage in the back seat for my regulation orange hard hat, plonk it on my head over my S&W 1911 ball cap and climb out. I saunter to the front of the car, rip open my vest (yay snaps for dramatic effect!) and pose against the hood of the car, saying "If you're going to take a picture, take a REAL picture!"
They loved it.
I'm pretty sure I'm on a clubhouse wall somewhere, now.
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