Road repairs

I was walking down Bank Street across from Lansdowne Park last Wednesday evening when I passed a road crew, just in the process of spraying down one of the massive dents in what might be the most egregious pavement in the city. Anyone who's biked down that section of Bank knows what I'm talking about - from Wilbrod to the base of the Lansdowne Bridge is a bone-jarring, tooth-rattling, gear-slipping nightmare. It's worse at night, when you can't quite see the pavement to try and avoid the worst of the tire-grabbing fissures.

But, there was a crew that evening, apparently in the process of fixing it. I actually stopped, walked back a bit, went up to the nearest worker and told him thanks. I don't know how much he understood - the way he repeated "bike?" with a circular pedaling motion with his hands made me think English really wasn't his first language. But I think I was clear enough, with my hands folded in a more or less universal gesture of thanks and a big smile. He smiled back, anyway.

And then as I continued walking, I had to stop and get a picture of the white lines around the crevices, cracks, lumps, chuckholes, and assorted hazards awaiting repair. Like chalk outlines at a crime scene. The truck in the distance is the repair crew - and they had a lot to do before getting to the bit in the foreground, believe me.