Orange cones and sticky buns

'Tis the season of seal-coating on the streets of St. Peter, and bright orange cones are everywhere. Will G., if you have any of your cones from the old days stored away at home, tell your mom or dad to set them outside and they'll be put back into use.

You all know that it is only a smidgeon over a mile-- as the crow flies-- from our house to almost any spot on the Gustavus campus. I factor travel time and distance as well as the time it takes to blow-dry my hair and get dressed into how long (or short) I can spend on drinking coffee and reading the Free Press each morning between waking up and showing up at work. This morning, for example, I got up around 7:30 and had to be at the campus faculty meeting at 9:00. Having chosen clothing last night, I cut down on getting ready time, and had nearly an hour for drinking a slow cup of coffee and reading the paper. Since my hair was already clean, I only needed to splash some water on it and point the blow dryer in the right direction. I was ready-set-go at 8:45. Why, then, did it take over 20 minutes from home to the meeting?

First hurdle: spilling coffee from what I thought was a closed thermal mug as soon as I got into the car. Gotta clean up the mess.

Second hurdle: getting past the bright orange construction cones. The Broadway and Sunrise intersection was blocked by at least 10 cones and by two city trucks manned by four city workers who had all assumed the position. If you don't know what that means, picture four city "workers" in fluorescent green and orange construction vests and dark sunglasses, leaning on shovels and looking mightily important. I know there were four men, but I can't verify that there were actually four shovels, even though past experience and the imprint left on my brain sees one shovel per city worker. The official signal guy, probably the senior member of the group, signaled me to STOP with a stern hand gesture (as if I'd try to run the stop sign, much less the roadblock) until the cars ahead of me had painstakingly turned right onto Broadway and cautiously made U-turns to come back onto Sunrise headed north, from whence they'd come. There would be no travel east on Broadway nor south on Sunrise until this crew had completed its seal-coating task.

Instead of joining the U-turn procession and having to go the long route to campus, I chose to turn right/west on Broadway, heading toward the Catholic church. I figured I could turn into the GAC baseball field parking lot and go through the open gate onto the gravel road that connects to the maintenance area to save some time. Nope. The gate was closed and securely locked. I didn't want to damage the car by ramming the gate, so I came back out, went in a westerly direction until I got to the township road that connects to Jefferson at the south end of campus. A lovely drive all in all, but time consuming. I won't even mention trying to find a parking spot. Fortunately, I wasn't the last to arrive at the faculty meeting, but I'll avoid naming those who came in significantly later, well into President Ohle's talk, as I do not wish to deliberately incriminate anyone. Well, I do...but I won't.

A side note for anyone who is interested: I manged to avoid the temptation of the famous Gustavus sticky buns served at the meetings I attended both yesterday and today. It's a challenge, especially when sitting four feet away from the table of trays piled with sticky buns as I did this morning. It helped to envision orange construction cones and guys leaning on shovels blocking my way.
BTW--when I did a search for a picture of Gustavus sticky buns, one of the choices was a poster for a Doberman pinscher club. What?