Abstract Thursday. : : Reflections

Abstract is a double exposure of various flowers reflected in the hall mirror....

The making of a trench by PG&E for the power cable for the house on the other side of us from the fortress involves three huge trucks, a backhoe, which seems to be doing all the work, and two guys within 100 feet of each other directing traffic. The majority of the traffic on our narrow road with lots of curves is composed of construction vehicles. Today one of the flagmen was turning in circles around his stop sign at the bottom of our driveway, seemingly mesmerized by  his view of the ground. It has to be the most boring  job on earth.

It reminds me of a quirky short film we saw at a film festival years ago.  A guy in a hi-vis vest, is dropped off on a long straight road in the middle of nowhere with two traffic cones, a stop sign  and a stick. There is not another soul in sight. The truck that dropped him off drives away, leaving him to set up his traffic cones with the stick between them across the road and wait...and wait...and wait. He amuses himself by doing the limbo under the stick. He sits on top of the traffic cone and gazes down the empty road. He waves his stop sign experimentally.  Finally, off in the far distance he sees a car approaching. He straightens his vest, rearranges the cones and the stick, and stands in the middle of the road waving his stop sign and watching the approaching vehicle. When it finally arrives, it blows past him without even slowing down and he goes back to sitting on the traffic cone....

Matthew had many phone call meetings today, so we kept our appointment with Kathy. On the way we joined  a long tailback of stopped traffic on a busy road. We were delayed for about 15 minutes as we waited for the one way traffic coming toward us to stop, giving traffic in our direction a chance to go. When we finally reached the cause of the delay, PG&E was digging a trench across the road, traffic backed up for a mile or more. 

I hope we can at least assume that they are undergrounding new power lines. At this rate it will only take them about a hundred years to do the whole county.