I had a long bike ride planned for today, but you know what they say about best-laid plans. The weather is not cooperating with my desire to ride my bike and stay relatively dry. But I managed to get out for a bit, and I ran across some killer potholes. Now, the streets here are notoriously bad. The potholes are incredible. NOLA.com recently wrote up a nice cataloging system for them. After a big downpour, those potholes fill with water. This makes some of them hard to see, but others become just that much more prominent. Take this strip of potholes on Prytania, near Jefferson. This segment of street has been replaced by the entirely useless loose gravel. The water makes it turn a cloudy paste as the holes it was trying to fill just become bigger and bigger. This stretch is so pockmarked that there isn’t any real way around; you’ve got to push on through. I snaked my bike between the two at the top left.

I narrowly missed this other scene of car, water, and backsplash. While I can snake around these potholes, cars have no choice but to drive over/through them. Good cars slow down significantly, not wanting to ruin their rims, I suppose, but sometimes I fantasize that they don’t want to spray that rheumy water all over me. This particular splash left me dry, but I can’t say the same about the sky. I wonder if the roads here will ever be fixed, really, or if the temporary patching system that seems to have taken over will one day make all our roads look and feel like the surface of the moon. When I do manage to find a smooth street, such as sections of Baronne, or lower Magazine, it feels like a wonderful gift. I used to take that kind of street for granted. No more.