California Here We Come

On the trip from Las Vegas to Bakersfield, California, we suddenly came upon some road works. Normally, this is not worth mentioning but in this case, it was a case of mayhem on the I-15. Road workers were working on the large median strip and had closed off both inside lanes on the four lane highway. Something we have noticed throughout the States is that road construction crews regularly close off sections of the highway for a long distance, even if they are only working on a short section. This is understandable as road crews are hurt or killed by vehicles quite often and they deserve to have a safe working environment. However, having such large areas of road closed and dealing with the resultant snarled traffic can be very frustrating for drivers.

The I-15 is a very busy stretch of road and the traffic, which had been traveling steadily at about 75 mph, came suddenly to a near halt, backing up very quickly. We tuned the CB to Channel 19 to see if we could find out what the problem was (we could not initially see the road works). We spent the next 30 minutes or so being thoroughly entertained by the truckers who were talking on the CB. They were hilarious and it was clear that they too were frustrated at the lane closure but it was also clear that they were contemptuous of the behaviour of some of the car drivers some of whom were doing some very stupid and/or inconsiderate things. A couple of times, we heard some truckers organize a rolling block to prevent some idiot car driver from doing something stupid but they also used the CB to warn others of the approach of a police car so the officer would have a clear passage through the mayhem. It was all very entertaining.