esrosedotblog

As promised, the city is resurfacing Baristo Road this week.

That is the street that runs east and west just on the other side of the hedges behind our condo.

They have been working in our neighborhood all month and I was sure that it was only a matter of time until the dirty, broken, guttered street that we abut would be redone too.

Right now, I can see the machine that is used to chew up the old surface, about three inches deep. It is going by the back at quite surprising speed eating a few feet of pavement as it goes.

Soon, the whole surface will be completely new and Booker will get to walk on a renewed road surface.

I mention him because when we leave the sidewalk on our side, there is long patch of open desert and he insists on walking on the road. He does not think that he should go across the street and walk on the sidewalk there. This is our goddam side and he will walk on it.

Nor will he walk on the desert. Pebbly and nasty, he disdains it.

And yet he will walk on the extremely rough street surface where perhaps decades of tar have eroded out leaving a surface that I would never consider for my bare feet.

It has gotten so bad that for certain lengths he will only walk very slowly. Nearly stopping. Picking his way along for maybe a hundred yards.

Airedales are stubborn.

If he could, he would be one of those shrill bastards who go to City Council meetings and demands action. He would have written letters to the editors of the Desert Sun.

Fortunately I have a neighbor who does this and while he is not even as close to Baristo as we are, he has almost single handedly formed a neighborhood association (The Baristo Neighborhood) and has hounded the City into action.

Of course, it has been bad traveling. One of our autos might have fallen into a pothole.

Now, not so bad. The new surfaces are quite remarkably smooth.

Booker will have a soft place to walk and our neighbor will be able to point to another achievement of good gad fly ism.

Labels: neighborhood