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calendar   Tuesday - August 14, 2012

local fame


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You see these things everywhere out on the roads. Any place there is road work. Any place the road crews are widening a lane, repaving a bit of highway, whatever. I gather that these portable concrete short protective walls are called Jersey Barriers everywhere on the planet ... except in New Jersey. We just call them “those concrete things in the road”. Which is funny, because they’re from here actually. My own very local part of from here, actually.

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Small claim to fame, I know. But like the great Jersey Divide, those little blue road signs always give you a bit of local history.

And if there ever was an area where crash-proof lane dividers really needed inventing, this is it.

I was coming down Iron Bridge Road this afternoon ... there is no iron bridge there any longer; that old bit of 1850s iron was long ago replaced and these days there is a galvanized steel girder bridge with wood planking there instead, turned 45 degrees to the road and with a blind drop off ...


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It takes a real leap of faith to come down hill and drive across this bridge any faster than a crawl.



... and I’m riding the brakes hard the whole length of the road. Trust me, I’m not a ninny behind the wheel, or afraid to go fast or to corner hard. But the roads out here seem vertical. I’ve gone on milder ski slopes that were marked with black diamonds. Plus the lanes are very narrow, and dark under the trees, and they quickly turn to the left and right. Blindly turn I should say. You know it starts being a challenging drive when the signs say “blind corners next 4 miles”, but it really gets the driving challenge on when the signs say “extremely steep road ahead drive at your own risk” ... and that’s where Jersey Barriers were born. In the steepest and blindest roads in the state. Right here in Hunterdon County, not 5 miles from where we live. In the mountains, almost. Well, almost in what passes for mountains in New Jersey. There are two of them I think, in the whole state. And they aren’t really all that tall. Just vertical on the sides. grin


Personally, I prefer the taller “Ontario barriers”, “F barriers” or whatever they’re called. They do stop bigger trucks better, but I like them best because they block the headlights from even the tallest pickups and SUVs coming the other way and I don’t get blinded in my low to the ground little skateboard Saturn.

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 08/14/2012 at 01:29 PM   
Filed Under: • BridgesMiscellaneous •  
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