This could be you...
Potholes. You've gotta love 'em. Well, you've certainly got to something them, because like it or not, they're here to stay. From November through April, metropolitan Minnesota becomes infested with the treacherous horse-sized holes, and so we drive on: hitting bump after bump after coffee-spilling divot. A friend of mine told me yesterday that the potholes outside her Cedar-Riverside apartment are so bad, if anything bigger than a pickup truck drives over them, it wakes her up at night. Ridiculous. With all the freezing and thawing that has been going on lately, they're worse than ever. So what is to be done? Sure, you can call the Minneapolis 311 line and report a pothole, and they, more often than not, will come and fix it. However, fixes last anywhere from a day to a few weeks typically, and they cost the city money in the interim (they'll get re-paved come spring anyways) and then poof! they're back again!
Sooo what to do, what to do, what to do... my suggestion? Public transportation. Chances are, if you're in a bus or on the light-rail you're not as concerned with the alignment-shattering abysses. Then again, that suggestion may not be approved by my good friend in her pothole-adjacent apartment at night, because MAN does a bus make a racket when it drives over one of those puppies.
My other suggestion? Let them get so bad that they soon become a corporation's advertisement platform. Take Chicago, for example: last year, their potholes got so bad that KFC began filling them in to generate some goodwill and free PR. Brilliant? I think yes. By all means, let KFC fill in potholes as they simultaneously clog America's arteries with fried chicken, the metaphor is too awesome to pass up. Who knows, maybe 3M, Target, or Best Buy could follow Colonel Sanders' lead.... and also give me a new stereo system for giving them the idea. Until then, check out metrotransit.org. to find a bus/train near you.
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