New Road

SO this past Saturday, Saturday mind you, starting at FIVEFUCKINGOCLOCK in the morning-all this went down. 

Now I'm not complaining about the road work in and of itself. 

Frankly I was surprised there was anything at all being done, despite this being a major thoroughfare, given budgetary restraints.
Perhaps filling in potholes, at the very least. 

But when they started completely repaving the whole of the state wayside a few miles east of us, I was admittedly impressed. 

And continued to be. 

We had received a letter just before SHOW '14 which gave me fits of anxiety that our guests' access would be compromised, but fortunately the construction began several weeks later.
The waits weren't unrealistic and the whole project's gone off without too much inconvenience. 
Until Saturday.
Lately, we'd had some strange and unusual thunderstorms that were both thrilling (reminding me of my Midwest childhood) and frightful (several forest fires were burning from lightning strikes), so when bright flashes roused me from sleep followed by urgent male hollers, my semi-conscious state of alarm translated that into an emergency situation.
Briefly considering in that snoozy fog cats to companion travel well in which carriers (we were down one having donated it to the hens) and trying to determine just how much time we had to evacuate and what would make the cut to be stuffed into the cars, I climbed out of bed to discover we were not in danger.
(It'd be smart to get our evacuation plan together, something we didn't expect was necessary after leaving Seattle.
It may not be for the same reasons (domestic and/or international terrorism, The Big One, etc.), but it's become evident over these ensuing years that there's plenty of reasons we might have to jam.)

Rather the asphalt warriors were staging to lay siege to the embattled highway before us.

Greatly relieved, I staggered back to bed in the pre-dawn light and drifted into an uneasy rest, aided by earplugs and an eye mask.

Shortly afterwards, it occurred to me this would make for a great blog entry, but what had been jolting the early morning peace not an hour before had moved quickly down the road.

So the photos below do not justly capture the drama of what occurred directly in front of our abode.

And still it continues! 

As I type this, the guardrail around the bend is being replaced (loudly) from where some hapless teenager took it out last month with his wee Honda totaling the vehicle, but miraculously avoiding personal injury.*

Driveway aprons and line painting still to come and then I'm guessing that's the end of that for some time since surely, the State will see fit to appropriate monies for road repair towards much more important needs, like education, homelessness and environmental causes, right?

But we were asleeeeeeeppppp

*