Dinner was lasagna. We haven't made lasagna in a long time, but it was another rainy, gloomy day that felt nothing like summer.

On the upside, the road contruction crew finished the bridge reconstruction after just shy of a year. It was supposed to take nine months. That means I no longer have to take a long and circuitous detour to get the train station on weekdays. The entire span can't possibly be more than 100 ' over a river, but connects two counties, so there were a lot of politics involved. The Union county side has a brass plaque with the names of the Union county freeholders. My side had the one with the Morris county freeholders' names.

At least it's done. The old bridge was stone with a stainless steel eggcrate style thing that let the rain snd snow fall right through to the water. The new one's still stone on each end, but the road surface is concrete, and it actually has a pedestrian sidewalk. My only fear is that cars are going to go barelling over at at 35 mph, because it was widened by quite a bit. Two cars used to be able to pass slowly, but a car and a van could not.

Some people used to refuse to go over the bridge if any other vehicle was traveling in the opposite direction. That was usually unecessary, but it did create a bottleneck that kept accidents to a minimum.

I once saw a car pull so far over to the side of the road approaching the bridge when there was an oncoming car, that when she felt it was safe for her to go, she sideswiped the stonemasonry and ripped off her side mirror. I was stopped, waiting behind her, a good car length back. It was a single car accident, so she knew there was no point in holding up morning rush hour traffic. She got across the bridge, pulled off the side of the road and got out to inspect the damage.

The best she could do about it was call her insurance agent, anyway, if the dollar damage was high enough. At least the rest of the cars were able to get around her. The thing was, that in her panic after she hit the bridge, she was in such a hurry to back up and try again, that I had to honk at her before she backed into me. That would have really freaked her out, because it would have required an accident report--causing property damage to someone else's property instead of just her own. At least she slammed on the brakes before she hit me.