Orange Barrels

For as long as I can remember I have hated Orange Barrel Season.  In Cleveland this extended from approximately May through October (i.e. any  month where it wasn't snowing), and in spite of the incessant construction the roads never seemed to be in great shape.  Here in New Jersey it is much the same.  You see a lot of road repair going on, yet every year I see potholes the size of Connecticut.

Whatever state I've been in, however, the orange barrels meant traffic delays, bad roads, unannounced lane shifts, dirt, and debris.  The roads back up from people gawking, lanes are closed, surfaces are uneven, you get detoured and redirected... it is nothing but a huge hassle.

This year my perspective on construction has changed a bit.

Now instead of thinking "Another *$^@#& construction project?!?!" I instead am scouting the roads and scanning behind buildings and in parking lots looking for excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks, crane trucks, and backhoe loaders.  If I find one I point it out to Colin and we both exclaim loudly in our overwhelming excitement.  Having found a (ooooh! aaaaah!) truck, we then look closely... is it moving?  OH MY GOSH! ITS MOOOO-VING!!!!!  Did you see it?  Did you?!?  If it isn't moving Colin and I discuss why the trucks are resting.  (They're tired.  They're done working for the day.  It is the weekend.)

As fortune would have it, there is a LOT of construction going on here, so we have no shortage of trucks.

• At the end of our street they took out a driving range and are putting in a "commuter village" - townhouses, stores and restaurants.  There is a veritable army of trucks supporting this project.  We've seen giant excavators digging monstrous holes and depositing the dirt in enormous dump trucks.  There are bulldozers leveling the ground.  There are big crane trucks lifting compressors onto the buildings, and plenty of construction guys in hard hats as an added bonus.
• Rutgers is putting in some new buildings, so on our way home every day we see another batch of excavators, dump trucks, crane trucks, etc.  They're typically "sleeping" when we go by, but occasionally we'll see someone moving.

• In our development they're putting new roofs on some of the townhouses, so in addition to a lot of chaos and noise, there are two trucks which are technically called a "telehandler" but known to Colin as the "crane trucks."  I'd say Colin is obsessed with these, but that might be an understatement.  The situation didn't improve when Hari let Colin sit in the yellow one the other weekend.  Then last Saturday Hari and Colin spent about 45 minutes running back and forth watching the crane trucks at work (lifting, driving back and forth, and even crushing old gutters).  Now every morning as we get in the car Colin adamantly insists that we have to look for the white crane-truck and the yellow crane-truck.

So construction can be annoying, the delays are a bother, and the traffic shifts are frustrating.  But now if I'm at a red light and we see a big truck digging, or if we're stuck behind a slow-moving truck instead of thinking about how late I'm going to be and seeing red I joyfully shout "Look!  An excavator!"

Life is a lot more fun now.
Hooray for little boys!