Road Warrior

As Chez notes in the comments below, our lovely reconstructed I-59 ramp is being completed just in time for something else to happen.

Around 8:30 or so last night, a tractor-trailer carrying a gigantic 45,000 pound (!)industrial driveshaft was going around one of the big loopy ramps from I-65 to I-459 over in Hoover and the whole shebang slid off the trailer and punched two long narrow holes--one reported to be about six feet long, the other about 10 feet--completely through the deck of the overpass. The concrete dropped down onto the roadway below and hit a Caddy, damaging it pretty badly and sending the driver to the hospital.

I'm telling you, sponge rubber is the answer. Stuff'll just bounce right off of it.

In other road news, I saw a loaded-to-the-headliner Volvo 940 tooling along this morning with an odd license plate. When I got a bit closer, it said Delaware. Then I got even closer and saw that it only LOOKED like a Delaware plate, because it flat, made of plastic, and was personalized with the name of a used car dealership. The driver, who appeared to be moving her collection of worldly goods, had a map upon her steering wheel, gazing at it through a magnifying glass.

Upon even FURTHER investigation after I got in this morning, I found it odd that I could not find the name of the dealership in several different searches. Hansby. Fritz, is that really a dealership up there in The First State, or is there some sort of fake Delaware plate ring at work?

Finally, in my little rant yesterday about vehicle assembly quality, I later on remembered the stories Brian Bosworth (washed-up loudmouth ex-jock, who finally calmed down some and became an actual adult) used to tell about working on an auto assembly line (I think GM in Kansas City, but I can't find it now) and tieing a bolt to a string and leaving it up inside of a fender so that it would rattle and ding and drive the owner nutty. Such a sweetie pie. That reminded me also of a time back about 1976 or so when my Dad was looking for a truck. We visited a Ford dealer, who had a new Ford Granada sitting on the showroom floor. Granadas and the Mercury Monarch (shown here with Lido) came off the same assembly line, and as I puttered around, I looked at the side of the Granada. Nice little fake chrome nameplate (crooked, and I think you can see where this is going) reading "Monarch." I showed it to one of the salesmen, and he said, "Hm." Which pretty much sums up the state of Ford during the mid to late '70s, I suppose.

Anyway, there's your vee-hickle news.
posted by Terry at 8:50:00 AM