At one point in the past I owned a 1970 Dodge Challenger. The rear end loved to dance on wet roads and the gas gauge needle was pinned permanently on empty, but it was a great car to put in the hands of a 21-year-old.
Well, perhaps not from the perspective of others on the road — though I hasten to add that most were not forced to yank their vehicles into a ditch to avoid a purple (make that “plum crazy”) beast stalled in the middle of some rural highway miles from the nearest gas station.
Yeah, while I love classic cars I prefer wallowing in front of the television to picking up a tool box.
The other day a couple of guys from a local car club dropped by the office. They spoke of gatherings, shows, the pure fun of firing up the engine. Their enthusiasm for the pastime of gutting a transmission, re-chroming massive bumpers and a leisurely drive in a piece of history is easy to catch. The lure of the open road remains part of American culture.
Names like Galaxie 500, Bel Air, Hemi ‘Cuda and Superbird are evocative. OK, Pacer and Vega are also evocative, but in a different way. There is just something about vehicles made for two lanes of asphalt and greasy spoon diners rather than the sanitized interstate system. Those who designed cars from the days of Henry Ford to the oil crisis of the 1970s had apparently never encountered words like “efficiency.”
It’s no wonder old cars can consume a person’s spare time. Of course, Lake County potholes can consume cars — old or new.
We had not intended to conduct a pothole inventory when venturing out over the weekend, but it couldn’t really be helped. Some stretches of road in Lake County are pocked to the point they might as well be corrugated, and we weren’t certain whether these should count as one continuous pothole or forty small divots linked by a series of trenches.
The car club members could only laugh while acknowledging the problem. A bicycle rider I spoke with last week also mentioned road conditions as the one drawback to pedaling around the county.
OK, so we quickly lost interest in counting the things. I’ve never enjoyed math, anyway. Besides, my mind conjured up a scenario in which Shaun Hornby changed the name of his band to LC Potholes.
At least Mendocino and Amador counties are worse.
Despite what we may think, crumbling infrastructure is not an issue limited to Lake County. A 2009 report knocked the entire state for poor road conditions. And a survey by Trusted Choice and the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of American, who should consider a shorter name, claimed that half of all car owners in the U.S. experience damage to their cars directly related to a pothole strike.
For California drivers the cost of rough roads amounts to something like $590 in repair work, on average.
Yes, the various governments overseeing roadwork are aware and work diligently to repair rough roads. Even if money was available to complete all the necessary work at the city, county and state levels, entire communities would be cut off from civilization if crews set out to smooth things over in one fell swoop. Funding, however, is always an issue. CalTrans estimates that some 50,000 road miles of the state highway system alone require maintenance each year. But in 2013 they managed to hit just 18,000 of those miles.
Pretty depressing … unless you happen to specialize in suspension repairs or own a tire shop.
So cataloging all the potholes is tedious and repair work will take years before we’re all caught up. Fortunately, most of us know when to swerve, having driven the roads over and over. But far too many tourists leave the area commenting on the bone-jarring drive.
And that’s too bad, for we have just about everything else — the car shows, the scenery and the driving tunes of the band formerly known as the Diamonds.
