Working at the DOT

Before I hear of any more crashes on my old project, I thought I would dive into the stories that relate to the building of my last project. I was given two fellow DOT employees as staff on the project. Allow me to introduce you to them. Above is, Nura, and on the right is Sue. I know, two real lookers. They were commonly known around the project by the contractors as "Dumb and Dumber" or the "Two Dingbats". It was always amazing going to work, because I never knew when I would come across a jem of a story relating to the stupidity of these to people.


May 13, 2005

On this Friday, Nura and I were going to stake East Lang Road for Clearing and Grubbing. The surveyors had been through the area and put flags in the ground where the center of the road was going to be. All we had to do was measure off of these flags the distance to the right of way and mark it so that the contractor could remove all of the trees. We had to stake Station 608+00 to 630+00. Each station is 100 feet. It was a cold and drizzily day. Their wasn’t any real staking to be done from station 614+00 to 620+00. So we were just walking through this corn field on our way to the next station to stake. After a minute of walking, I stopped to see where Nura was, and she was about 30 feet behind me. I said “Are you OK?” She said yes. So I waited for her to catch up, it wasn’t a minute later and we went through the same thing again. Maybe I have long legs and walk fast, but she couldn’t keep up. We finished all of the stations and we had to walk back to the jeep which was at station 608+00. I began walking back, basically back tracking right back over the steps I had taken to get to station 630+00 because that was the fastest way back to the jeep. I was thinking about what I had to do next, and I was actually a bit cold. So I wasn't really thinking about where Nura was. I figured she was behind me somewhere. After a couple of minutes I stopped to see where Nura was. She was in the middle of the marsh. And I am not talking on the edge or barely into the marsh, she was in the middle of this marsh. It had to be 300 feet in diameter. I just stopped and looked at her. I looked around because I didn’t know what to say, or how she got there. Please see drawing to get an idea of how bone headed she is or was to be in the middle of this marsh. Then she asked me if there was a path over where I was. Yes there is a path over here, it is the same one we walked in on, the same path that the farmer used to get to the back corn field. The same path that has tire tracks. I could almost understand walking into the marsh if it had been the most direct path back to the jeep. But it wasn't, I was taking the most direct path back to the jeep. She walked out of her way to walk straight in to the middle of the marsh. I nearly felt sorry for her, since with each step that she took I could hear that she was in at least 2 or 3 inches of water. And she wasn't wearing boot, nope these were regular dress shoes that you would wear into the office.