These road conditions might drive me to drink

Dear Officer:

I am not drunk. I have not been drinking. Yet.

I usually don't imbibe before 5 a.m.

I know that you often encounter people at this early hour whose driving indicates that maybe they have been out celebrating a wee bit too much.

That is not the case with me. I am actually on my way to work.

However, I will plead guilty to some fairly erratic driving. I can't really blame you for being suspicious. After all, you no doubt witnessed me swerving from lane to lane.

I was in fact doing exactly that.

But I have what I think is a legitimate explanation.

I was avoiding potholes.

Believe me, it's not as easy as I was making it look.

That's one of the very few good things about driving at that ungodly hour of the morning. I literally can go from lane to lane without fear of hitting anything.

Usually I'm just trying to avoid deer.

These days, those four-legged obstacles are the least of my worries.

Have you driven on these roads lately? They're like the surface of the moon.

I think a family actually moved into one of the craters I swerved to void this afternoon.

I have several ways I can get to work.

For some reason, I insist on taking Providence Road from Route 3 out in Edgmont across to the Media Bypass. I am nominating it for the worst road in Delaware County.

I know they are in the process of redoing the intersection of Route 252 and the Bypass. I wish they would just back up a bit and go ahead and blow up Providence Road from the Y where it intersects with 252 at Rose Tree Park, all the way out to West Chester Pike.

It is beyond bad. It is like nothing I have ever seen before.

So far I have been lucky. I have not yet descended into any of these massive craters. My guess is that when traffic builds up later in the morning, many drivers don't have the luxury of veering over into the other lane to avoid some of these amazing potholes.

They say we are getting as much as a foot of new snow Sunday night.

Luckily, when we get major storms, I don't bother with the hills of Providence Road. Instead, I take West Chester Pike all the way down to Springfield Road, then cross back over through Marple and Springfield from there.

I won't miss Providence Road in the least.

Maybe the snow will fill in some of the potholes.

For some reason, I doubt it.

If I go missing in the next week or so, you'll know where to look for me. I'll be at the bottom of a pothole on Providence Road.

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