Who needs a driveway?

Work on our street has been progressing. Thursday, we both took a half day as we were driving quite a distance to attend a wedding over the weekend. When my wife arrived home, she found that the road was completely torn up, and the crew had started laying gravel. Trouble was, they had a big pile right in front of the house, and a large ditch between the street and our driveway. Thus, she was unable to get into the driveway and had to park down the street.

When I arrived, the large gravel pile had moved, but the ditch was still there. One of the guys operating a small bulldozer/shovel machine saw me, drove over to my car, shrugged, and then said "sorry, road's closed, where are you going?" I pointed at the house, told him it was mine, and he said "oh, I'll go build you a driveway" and in under 5 minutes the gap was filled and I rolled right up. When we left later, I caught him and told him we'd be shuffling cars, and then he could dig it all back up and leave it that way till end of day Friday. He said it wasn't needed, they only needed to re-dig the trench on Tuesday when the granite curb was scheduled to come in.

Fast-forward to this evening. I arrived home before my wife, and found a Road Closed sign at the end of the street. I bypassed that, as usually these signs mean "closed, except for local traffic" and the other end wasn't closed at all. What did I find? An even bigger ditch in front of the driveway, and the crew had gone home for the night already! I looped around and stopped at the village hall to get some answers, but they were closed. On my return trip to the house, I was tailed rather suspiciously, by the Code Enforcement Officer (only found out after I had parked and he had gone by). I resigned myself to parking across the street.

I called the town highway superintendent to find out what was going on. I was under the impression that we'd be informed well in advance of any disruptions like this. He's going to check on that. In the meantime, we're out of our driveway until Wednesday. The ditch is for the curb. Installation starts at 7 AM on Tuesday. After installation, they backfill with concrete and that has to set for a day. Then in another week or two, we're locked out again for a day or so, when they pour the new sidewalk.

I'm not upset that they're doing all this work - I'm actually pretty happy to see the improvements made. What I do take issue with is that we're not informed of these disruptions to the driveway and water service. Notifications which I believed we'd be given when these activities took place. I'm just glad this is happening now, and not in December when we have a baby to manage around it.