At five AM, Monday morning, the black helicopters began orbiting the house. These helicopters were not the emissaries of some nefarious government agency, but rather the representative of the various local television stations. They all wanted to get footage of the first workday commute on The New I-64. They continued buzzing about the house until I left for work in the morning. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, Monday night. As I was walking out of the store, across the parking lot to my car, there was a helicopter hovering directly above me. It was a bit unnerving. Some people worry about big brother. I just say, oh brother!
As I exited from the highway this morning on my way in to work, I decided to tune into the local radio traffic report. I was amused to hear the helicopter borne radio announcer explain that after two years of construction and a half billion dollars that the regular traffic jams were in their regular spots. I confirmed this fact on my way home Monday night. Southbound I-170 started to back up where it always use to back up. I was also amused to hear the traffic reporter refer to The New I-64 as Highway Farty. So what did our sacrifices buy us?
The evening news announcers were saying that MODOT was rather surprised that even on day one traffic levels returned to their pre-construction levels. I guess that they were not listening to their own announcements. One can only hope that with time drivers will become more adept at navigating The New I-64.
I believe that the picture with this post is of a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. Sibley’s was not all that helpful on this subject, so I had to google several candidate species of hawks before I finally, but sill with some reservations settled upon the Red-tailed Hawk. If anyone has a different idea, let me know.
When Elizabeth was about 1-1/2, we were at a neighborhood playground one day (Maryfield Park) and a big army chopper started circling at a fairly low altitude. I don’t know what it was doing, training maybe? Fascinating but terrifying.
Later that day, Liz described the chopper to the GG by circling her arms above her head and saying, “ca-ca-ca!”
We get traffic copters pretty regularly, but only occassionally low enough to grab our attention. What is more attention grabbing is the late night copter, low, with a spotlight, apparently looking for or tracking somebody.
Years ago I was riding in the Park in the pre-dawn hours. A police helicopter, very possibly the one pictured in Tuesday’s header, started searching the Park with its spotlight. I also saw then several police cars speeding about the Park. When I got back home, I learned that a carjacker, after being chased, had abandoned the vehicle at the southwest corner of the Park. I think that they caught him later.