Getting side tracked

I remembered mid-morning that I had graded exams sitting on my desk at school, and had promised the grades would be posted on BlackBoard by midday today*. So I decided after lunch to haul over there. And then I remembered: this coming week is supposed to be the herbaceous vegetation lab.**

(*Like a lot of "labor saving" devices, this has raised expectations: it used to be, when I was a student, you waited a week or more for your professor to get them graded and hand them back. And sometimes, they would even publicly POST your grades - using your SSN as your ID, back in those more-innocent days before large-scale identity theft and FERPA)

(** but it might rain, so I might ultimately be off the hook)

And then I remembered a student had said that one of the Corps' sites (USACE - the Corps of Engineers) that we use was closed for a hunt. So I figured I better check. Driving out there I also looked for places that had plausible stands of grass where I might be able to get permission to take the class to. (The most likely one is next to the local Methodist church. I probably will call them Monday and see if they own the land, and if so, could we have permission to park in their lot and use the land, non destructively)

But yeah. When I got out to the site I saw a big banner declaring they were CLOSED FOR CONTROLLED HUNT and the blank for when they reopened was blank, so I can't even hope they'll be open again by Wednesday.

(The difficulty level here is: it has to be somewhere within a 20 minute drive of campus. The site we went to for tree sampling has a SMALL grassland area, but it's quite a hike in from the main road and we'd burn up a lot of our lab time doing that, and also, I walk faster than most of the students so timing it by MY walking, I'd have to add another 10 minutes at least)

I was kind of gobsmacked by that and was trying to quickly calculate other options, when I realized: hey dummy, you didn't pull into the lot so you could turn around, and now you have no option other than driving across the Roosevelt Bridge.

This is an old bridge (built in the 40s) and it has a weird configuration and lots of features about it I dislike. When the lake is up (as it is right now , inexplicably given how little rain there has been), the water level is distressingly close to the deck (I don't like bridges that are super high - there was one coming back from Pawhuska that was scary high - but I don't like ones where you feel you're right at the water level). And it's two-lane, so there's oncoming traffic facing you. (I think this is why the bridge over the Red doesn't bother me - it's a four-lane with a divided center). And in some places, it's VERY narrow, and it's just a low guardrail between you and doom. (You can see the full horror that is the bridge here.)

I've never liked bridges all that much - as a child, I hated the trek over the Mackinac Bridge to visit the UP relatives, and I didn't have to drive, so I could close my eyes. But now, it's all me, I have to do it.

I don't like the Roosevelt Bridge because it's visually unsettling to me to drive on, and also, I've heard of some horrific head-on collisions where people were killed.

I could tell it was going to be a bad trip across, I started to get nervous on the wider part of the bridge. (Part of it was, I think, the "oh crud, I have to do this now" rather than "hey there's something good on the other side of this I want to do"). My mouth got dry, my heart started to pound, and I could feel myself sort of panicking a little. I told myself I had to get safely across and then it flashed in my mind: "Yeah, but how are you gonna get home?"

Then I remembered the Cumberland Cut. It's an alternate route, it essentially does the three sides of a box that the Roosevelt route would be the bottom side of, it's some 30 miles longer, but:

the Cumberland Cut bridge is newer
It's wider
It has MUCH less traffic on it
You can't see the lake as clearly
It's not as long of a bridge.

So, I headed off for Madill, hoping I could remember the route. (I did).

It took a half hour more than I planned on, but I felt like there was no way on Earth I could get across the Roosevelt again today. Already I could tell I was freaked out and nervous - in a couple places I felt like the highway was way too narrow and I was in danger of running off onto the edge (which drops unpleasantly much in some places). Eventually, though, I got across the Cumberland Cut, past Fort Washita, and finally the road widened out where it had proper shoulders and I felt safer.

But yeah, I could tell I was nervous the whole way home. I still feel unsettled and maybe I need to make a cup of herbal tea (I was thinking on the drive home, "If I still had a bottle of that cider***, I'd crack it open when I was safely home" but I don't)

(*** yes, alcoholic. I don't generally drink but cider is pretty low-alcohol)

But, ugh. I didn't expect that to upset me too much. I guess in the past the few times I've had to go that way I have just taken the longer route with the Cumberland Cut.


(And yes, it has a name: gephyrophobia. And it's nice to know that some of the "big" bridges (like the Mackinac) apparently have public-servants who will drive your car across with you if you're too afraid too. (Does not exist, I'm sure, for the Roosevelt, so I will take the Cumberland in the future)