Stop and smell the road cones

Was it that last snow?

Was it the re-emergence of the sun?

Rising springtime temperatures maybe?

I don’t know what exactly sets off the infernal bloom, but it happens all across the West … every single year … right about this time.

They pop up faster than head shops in Colorado.

They are more pervasive than celebrity award shows.

More perfidious than stupid text abbreviations.

What am I talking about?

Road cones.

Not just road cones either.

Orange barrels, construction signs, reduced speed limit markers, lane closure notices, detour pointers and flashing arrows. I am firmly convinced they are all part of the same treacherous family.

They show up on the interstates first, but when you try the “back ways” you will find them sprouting there too.

We ferociously try to eliminate these perils to reasonably-paced travel.

I have seen men leaning on their shovels in groups bravely chatting and laughing although they were obviously exhausted from trying to dig up the roots of these orange-colored blights.

I have seen large machines spraying noxious black chemical coverings on the roadways in an effort to eliminate this pestilence.

I have seen teams of men and machines tearing up old, infected concrete and laying shiny white slabs only to see cones and barrels turning up in the same spots the very next year.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the valiant men and women who work tirelessly (Pfft! …he said “tire”-lessly about a road problem!) to end the tyranny of the orange cone! These “road warriors” deserve our respect and admiration and it wouldn’t hurt to give them a little smile and wave when you see them to buoy these plucky souls spirits in their never-ending struggle against our conical overlords.

The main problem with the whole cone/sign family is that they warp the very fabric of space in their immediate area and cause any passersby to go much slower when compared to what we think of as a regular flow of time.

An interrelated problem is that those affected by this time-slowing effect are acutely aware that time is passing more slowly.

Maybe they construct doctor’s waiting rooms out of road cones.

If only Einstein were still around to figure out these relativistic conundrums.

But where do these orange buggers come from?

There are abundant and fertile areas of speculation on that.

Some claim they were left on Earth by aliens in attempt to slow our eventual domination of the universe. With the space-bending properties these cones have, it sounds like a good bet and a very devious plot.

Others say orange cone spores arrived on meteorites and eventually evolved into the alarming forms they have taken today.

It is also possible orange cone spores evolved from a particularly noxious prehistoric plant that bloomed along dinosaur pathways. That particular theory points to the end of Dinosaur Mass Transit (DMT) and also helps to explain the swift decline of the dinosaur.

Since early pioneers recorded only a few road cones and barrels on their covered-wagon treks through the region we can assume that something has aided them in their explosively prolific growth across the West.

I think it’s asphalt.

Nobody really knows what this seemingly toxic goo is anyway and cones do seem to blossom in the general vicinity of the stuff. I think asphalt has changed orange cone DNA in much the same way radiation from the atom bomb changed a harmless little lizard into Godzilla.

California invented “road rage” to try to combat cone-lag but that has expanded into their everyday driving and now seems to actually be worse for everyone than the original problem.

Don’t worry though, there is a possible solution for those of us that live in the West.

We just don’t care.

It is possible that learning the laid-back style of small-town life has made us immune to the time-draining effects of orange cones.

We’ll get there when we get there—and in one piece too.

It is entirely possible orange cones aren’t the nightmarish scourge we think they are.

Maybe, just maybe, we should learn to be patient and take the time to stop and smell the road cones.