We've had over two inches of rain since last night. Unfortunately in mountain country, it doesn't take much to cause flooding. We're actually lucky because many places and seen more rain than we have. We do have flood warning here in Roanoke.
It seems to be raining all along the east coast even up to Halifax, NS where a local headline took me back in time.
The story entitled, "Sunday shopping changes ‘unfair’," is something that I would guess most people in the US haven't thought about in a long time. Actually I also suspect a lot of Canadians have Sunday shopping.
Nova Scotia remains a rural province in spite of Halifax. With many of our US grocery stores open 24 hours, we can't liberalize our rules any more. Most of them close Thanksgiving and Christmas, but any other closures are pretty rare.
Never having worked in one of these jobs that demand weekend work, I'm not sure what makes the most sense. People definitely like the convenience of being able to go to the grocery store whenever they have time. Folks also need time to relax.
I don't know that the Nova Scotia solution of holding another plebiscite makes much sense since they've already had one. I can remember it was a little challenging to get to the grocery store before it closed on Saturday when we lived in Halifax, but it's actually kind of refreshing to see one spot resisting even slightly the push to commercialize all of the week.
On another note, there was an interesting letter to the editor in today's Roanoke paper. The author was complaining about the poor quality of the lane markets along Interstate 81. Unfortunately I think it is a bigger issue than just Interstate 81.
I had a similar experience last Friday on the way back from the beach. My wife, Glenda, managed to drive the first ninety miles until we stopped for dinner just before 8 pm,, thirty miles to the east of Raleigh, NC. As we were walking back to the car, drops of rain started to fall.
The next two hundred and twenty miles were rain soaked. In fact the rain didn't stop until we pulled on to route 419 by Tanglewood Mall which is about five miles from our home.
Of course driving in that much rain makes you very conscious of lane markers. There was one stretch on Interstate 40 near Greensboro where it was raining very hard and the lane markers were almost invisible. I even speculated that perhaps we should just get a room for the night and drive back to Roanoke in the morning. However, we saw some signs pointing to US 29 and US 220 so we exited I40.
We ended up on a short stretch of an Interstate that is going to be a beltway around Greensboro. However, the big news was that the lane markings improved greatly. In fact they stayed that way until Virginia even though we took some fairly small roads on the way north to Roanoke, The lane markings were actually great until we were about seven miles from hitting US 220 at Ridgeway. As we crossed into Virginia, we came across a newly paved unmarked stretch of road (Route 14 I believe) which was really hard to drive on in poor visibility.
That's was just the beginning, the experience going up Route 220 was exactly the opposite of the time we spent on North Carolina roads. There were sections of 22o where almost all the reflectors were gone. The side markings of the lanes were almost invisible. Only around Rocky Mount was there a break with some new pavement and new markings.
If I were grading the two states, I would give North Carolina an "A" and Virginia a "F."
US 220 is an embarrassment. When we first moved to Roanoke seventeen years ago, US 220 was better on the Virginia side, today North Carolina has demonstrated it knows how to improve a road while Va. has just sat on its heels except for paving over Northern Virginia and the Tidewater area.
Yes, NC has within the past five years made significant improvements to their share of Route 220. Virginia's improvement cycle has lagged but the good news is that VDOT has begun making safety improvements to Route 220. It's a big job that includes improving many turn lanes, adding markers, and even removing some turn lanes that have proven unsafe.
Another thing I've noticed on NC's 220 is their extensive use of wildflowers on the median and on rights of way. We driving north in NC and enjoyed the flowers in full bloom. Once we crossed into VA the medians and rights of way got downright depressing until we were north of Rocky Mount. It's a serious issue that effects tourist perception of south central Virginia that I hope is fixed soon.
We had over seven or eight damn inches of rain over the weekend. All three barns were flooded because I completely neglected my gutters this year. I spent the morning cleaning all of the gutters out so that the next wave of rain, due late this afternoon won't flood the barns again. Also, one of our two culverts providing access to riding trails has been completely washed out and the other is about 40% compromised, so I'll be busy this week getting some crews out here to build some proper culverts. Yay!
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | June 26, 2006 at 01:50 PM
Hey, speaking of safety on Route 220, there is a mudslide between Rocky Mount and Boones Mill ;)
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | June 26, 2006 at 06:59 PM