What If?

We spent most of the day in  the largest city in our region yesterday.  It's about an hour away and we typically go once a month to go to some stores we don't have nearer.  We did stop closer and bought provisions, then moved north for more.

A few things along the way led to some good conversations.  The main north-south highway is being expanded.  Soon almost all of the 40 miles we traveled will be three lanes both ways.  We live in a valley, really a toilet bowl, with five of the cities with the worst air quality  in the US and we want to make room for more cars and trucks?  Is something out of place here? But I guess stimulus money has to be spent somewhere and since we live in ones of the poorest regions of the country, why not here?

When we arrived in the city we had to travel the main drag to get to our first three destinations.  This street already is three lanes each way, and sometimes four.  At one point as we were looking for the store Maureen looked at me and said to the effect,  "All the stores look the same, dingy."  And they did.  The section we were traveling was new and the focal point of shopping, 25 years ago.

The trip wasn't as depressing as I'm making it out to be.  Like I said, the conversations were good and we talked about what we want out of the future.  With the current state of the nation/world and our mindset, we talked about what we want to do if things go south as it appears they are.  We concluded we are in reasonable shape.  We have some things to add to our list of skills and wants, but compared to where we were 4-5 years ago, we've changed quite a bit mentally and physically.

We eventually headed southward and home.  I hadn't really been thinking about the construction and potential delays.  Earlier in the week we had traveled to San Francisco and got caught behind some delays on the highway.  They weren't bad and traffic continued to move.  Yesterday though, all three Southbound lanes were stopped or moving very slowly.  We made the decision to get off the highway and use the backroads to get home.  But we still had to get off the highway.  Just after we made that decision we heard on the radio that there was a  vehicle collision on the highway and traffic was delayed.  Add to that, it was Friday evening holiday weekend traffic.

We eventually got off and continued through the countryside.  Having a knowledge of these roads helped, but what happened next has given me some pause. We eventually arrived at a mid-sized town and were looking for a store I thought was there.  We encountered stimulus sponsored road construction.  If we hadn't been looking for the store, we could have avoided the mess.  We didn't find the store, but still had the traffic and road problems.  In time we moved through and got home.

I've read about different ideas of what will happen if society breaks down.  Many have road and travel issues involved.  Recently the power outage in San Diego and even more the fires in Colorado have brought to the forefront these problems.  Yesterday was a mild version of what we might expect here.  We have more planning to do.