A watery moment

One day shortly after Pride weekend, I took the University Avenue exit on the way home and found the usual bottleneck a little nastier than usual.

From way back on the off-ramp it wasn't immediately obvious what the issue was but as I inched slowly, slowly toward being able to make the left hand turn onto University, some glimpse of the reason why I was idling away tres expensive fossil fuels came into view.

In the distance there was a sign about 6th being closed ahead. I had no idea why since it wasn't a weekend special event closure day.

When I got home I checked a few sources and found no info on the cause of the closure so I made a mental note to pop round and see what had happened.

When I finally did get a chance to walk 'round to have a look see I found quite the assortment of heavy equipment in place.

The closed street had a remarkable number of hoses, barriers, generators and, naturally, plenty of signs with conflicting information about sidewalk closures and such littering the street.

Sure enough, the source of the closure was another delayed maintenance nightmare that looked rather a lot like water main, sink hole or some such.

Not sure when the road got closed but I took my first up close and personal look around the end of July and the road stayed closed well into August.

The tank, liner, whatever that big corrugated metal thing is was slowly forced down below street level with the help of lots of concrete, gravity and time.

All the while generators and hoses did a less than efficient job of recovering the water that should have been flowing through the pipes that connected to that thing.

Although amazingly inconvenient for some, it was actually sort of nice to be able to stroll down 6th as unfettered pedestrians.