Construction lament

I can’t believe it’s already August. There’s only a month left of ‘real’ summer. Worse still, this leaves only a couple months, weather depending, of my favourite time of year: construction season.

It’s possible that I am in the minority here, but I capital L love construction season. I predict that in a decade or two, I’ll be spending my days on my umbrella-equipped scooter, just watching orange-clad, helmeted crews do their thing.

I think I’ve always been this way. Even as a young boy I was fascinated by construction sites and would watch the dance of people and machinery, accomplishing what seemed supernatural to me. When I moved to Toronto for school, I got to see next-level sites. Down there they fence off the big projects with just small chain-linked windows to peer down at the start of construction, several stories below ground level.

There might be a few of my former managers from my time in the construction industry who could attest to the fact that I like to watch the work. In my defence, I did say in my interviews that ‘I love construction.’ It is possible, however, that I left out the ‘I could watch it all day’ part. My bad, as my kids say.

Beyond the ‘how it’s made’ wonder, there are so many ways to enjoy this most glorious time of the year. One of my favourite ways is to use the local message boards to play ‘complainers bingo.’ It’s a pretty easy game. You make a board with the standard complaints and mark them off as they pop up on the Facebook machine: ‘it’s loud’; ‘it’s dusty’; ‘why is taking so-long (after a week of weather-related delays); and the go-to of the complainer, ‘the city of Kawartha Mistakes.’ It’s a game that can be played all year. I give myself bonus points when I spot someone who complains about road construction in the summer and potholes in the spring.

And if you want, you can wear an imaginary white hat and ponder improvements to the process, while holding a virtual coffee, watching others work. I did this last month with a recent detour of Lindsay Street North. The diverted northbound traffic was sent to William Street. It had to go somewhere but planners might have forgotten that the William and Wellington Street lights are brutal on a good day. I swear I could read War and Peace while waiting for a green there in normal traffic situations. Could the lights have been reprogrammed to handle the extra traffic from the detour? Probably. But I’m not a traffic engineer. I just play one on TV.

I wish everyone a happy summer. And I encourage everyone to take a second, or an hour, breathe in the sweet diesel fumes and dust and watch the wonder of our tax dollars at work.