Pot holes

Back in the States we called little places chipped out of the top layer of asphalt "pot holes." But we were wrong. Very wrong. Pot holes are not saucer-like places of missing asphalt kindly spaced six miles apart. Pot holes better resemble canning kettles lined shoulder-to-shoulder like they do in my kitchen when it rains. And those bone-jarring, wheel-thumping, kettle-sized bumps are the babies. The granddaddy pot holes are more like washouts that hold enough water to choke up cars or (worse) damage them. 

Our friend was exiting a washout when the radiator of his truck hit the asphalt on the edge of the pothole. It was damaged enough that they limped it home and relied on public transport until it was repaired. That story was fresh in John's mind when he picked his way through the hole below and thumped both bumpers on its edges at the same time.  For one dreadful moment, he thought his radiator was the next to be cracked but a quick assessment assured him that his was fine.

This same puddle choked a car this past Sunday. We were on our way home from church and saw the road blocked by a car in the middle of the puddle. The unfortunate driver, his trouser legs rolled well up his calves, motioned us to take a detour. A group of men had collected to help push the car out. That was the second car we saw stalled in a bad section of road that day. The first was abandoned entirely and left to rest by the side of a deep puddle, a warning for all other motorists to navigate the puddle at their own risk.

You might notice the piles of dirt beside the holes in the picture above. (There are actually three holes; the mounding edge of the first hides the other two.) Earlier when we four-wheeled our way through this series of holes in our pickup, I used to wish someone would be inclined to fill them in. Then dump trucks came and offloaded giant piles of filler. It isn't dirt, exactly. Do you see the chunks of debris in them? It almost looks like it contains trash from a construction site, hopefully only broken cement blocks. 

Hello, nails? Please be kind to our tires.