That said, I would like to start by telling a fairly personal story. This happened to me and my home town today, beginning with a gas leak behind our neighborhood department store, Kohl's. What followed that was the consequence of the streets that surrounded the store, including the main streets of Shirley, NY getting shut down as our local leaders try and tend to the situation.
Perhaps the biggest challenge was having to deal with government head on. Of course, we all know how it rolls - We must rely on those people to survive, but they absolutely suck at their job.
Anyway, my father and I had to go get groceries this morning. Because two of our local supermarkets (Pathmark and Stop & Shop) were on the main streets of our town, they were closed. So we settled on going out of town for it, deciding that King Kullen was just going to be crowded and driving to the Stop & Shop in Medford. We picked up a few items that would allow us to entertain family visiting for Christmas celebrations, delayed by last week's blizzard.
Now, we drove along Smith Road, and passed the expected roadblock at Montauk Highway to a surprisingly traffic-free drive. But, when we got to Horseblock Road, there was another roadblock. We were allowed to pass that leaving our hometown, but when we returned, they wouldn't allow us to pass back through.
WHAT. THE. HELL?!?!
We really couldn't get back home the way we came. Why on Earth did that roadblock let cars out of Shirley, but not letting cars back in? For that matter, why on Earth was that roadblock there in the first place? There was another at Smith Road to keep drivers from getting into the area with the gas leak, so what was the point? Why couldn't that one just redirect traffic coming East around the gas leak? Sure, the traffic load would have been heavy, but it would have made more sense than just confusing and aggravating commuters the way they did.
My father seriously had to work his way around a labyrinth of back streets just to get home. We had to drive west to Bellport, go up Station Road to the Long Island Expressway, and drive down Moriches-Middle Island Road back to the peninsula. A couple of hours later, we drove back up to pick up my Godmother in Yaphank, and found the situation only got worse. The roadblock was still there, but now there was another one on Horseblock right over Sunrise Highway. That made even less sense.
Sometimes, our local government clearly has no idea what it's doing, and the way this procedure was handled is a powerful example of such.
Still, it was worth it to work around this sort of debacle, as I rode with my Godmother back down to Shirley. She lives over in Nassau County, and so I directed her to the right streets back to my house. I actually wrote the original draft of this story as I was riding with her.
After all, with last weekend's Post-Christmas blizzard, my family was blocked from coming when they initially wanted to. Why should we let human incompetence do the same thing nature pulled off easily?
