Wild roads - Saturday morning musings

Here in the US we think politics of Detroit and Boston are wild. In Detroit the mayor violated a court order not to leave the state, and was reprimanded by a judge, for taking a quick trip under the Detroit River to Windsor to discuss concessioning the tunnel with the Canadians. The mayor, now stepped down, was in trouble for Doing a Clinton - telling fibs in court by swearing under oath he wasn't having it off with his chief of staff, when he was.

Detroit is also in financial straits, as they say.

And Boston? Matt the Awful Amorello and Michael Proud-of-the-Big-Dig Lewis have been set aside a while now. One's up on self-enrichment charges from his time as chairman/CEO, and the other has taken refuge in l'il Rhode Island.

Anyone at the Turnpike looks good after those clowns.

But we read yesterday how a major highway in Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in Nigeria was under blockade by truckdrivers parking their trucks on entry ramps to the expressway.

Oil prices?

Freight rates?

Non-union drivers?

No, they were expressing solidarity with a fellow driver who'd been arrested for swinging a sword in a threatening manner.

The trucker was shouting out "I'll cut your head off" to a builder beside the highway, according to local reports.

The builder - here we must warn you, readers, the story gets a little indelicate - had caught the trucker shitting in a corner of his half built building, and had noisily denounced him and demanded he remove his, err, deposits.

The loud argument attracted a crowd and shoving between building workers and some truckers which escalated into, scuffles. The driver then went to his truck to arm himself with the sword he kept in the cab and got himself arrested.

The arrest and impoundment of the sword-wielding shitter's truck was regarded as an outrage by fellow Nigerian truckers. As a protest they blockaded the highway, demanding that he be released from custody.

This just days after truckers blockaded the Ogere toll gate on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway to protest new parking fees at the parking area nearby.

Heck, we forgot about New Jersey.

An official reminded us this week that NJ has to go down in the records as the only place where the tollroad's rest stops were regularly trolled for sexual partners by a reigning state governor.

TOILLROADSnews 2008-09-06