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62 IDAHO FALLS MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2018 Out There by Gregg Losinski Christmas came a little early this year to Idaho Falls or at least the blinking colored lights part did. This summer and fall seemed to mark the most road construction projects that I can remember ever in the past few decades. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the streets in our town couldn't use a little TLC, but barricades and safety cones seemed to pop up and shift around continuously. Driving around town was a little like trying to navigate the staircases at Hogwarts, you never knew what you were getting into and there was always a crowd of onlookers to gape at your predicament. I come from Chicago, a place where Christmas light displays have always been on the magnitude of Clark Griswold's in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Street construction projects are also a daily way of life there, especially given all the delays due to graft and labor disputes. This year I was beginning to feel like I was back where I grew up. Construction cone mazes with no apparent exits and staffed by seemingly surly uncaring flagmen made me start to wonder if graft had finally made it to Idaho Falls. More than once I found myself being routed in circles and having blockades appear when I blinked my eyes. Often I could see my desired des- tination accessible by seemingly perfect roadways, but signal workers—paying more attention to their smartphones than the road —blocked my path and made me go four-wheeling through gravel trenches. I often thought they did this impromptu rerouting just for fun and to be able to post videos of perplexed drives on YouTube. I'm sure if you Google "Loser drivers in Idaho Falls," that all kinds of hilarious videos have been posted. Resurfacing a street is one thing, but transforming it into the automotive equiva- lent of a 1040 form is a totally different thing. I'm talking about the bane of every red-blooded American driver, traffic circles. Sure, huge roundabouts might be perfectly fine for your average European driving a car the size of a riding lawnmower, but to a typical Idahoan whose idea of free will is choosing between Mountain Dew or Pepsi, they are a work of the devil. We are perfect- ly fine with letting a computer-controlled light tell us when to stop and go, but let us actually have to decide when and how to drive through a roundabout and all hell breaks loose! This past year I had the chance to drive in Ireland, a country that not only has an end- less supply of roundabouts but where they also drive on the wrong side of the road to boot. Throw an American into this environ- ment driving a stick shift rental car and its like a 1J driver on a tractor on his annual pilgrimage to Walmart to buy a brush for his tooth. How I made it out alive is truly a miracle. Hopefully roundabouts will work better here since we drive on the proper side of the road! So this Christmas let's hope that while Santa is on his way to deliver us presents, that he is able to navigate through all of our unfinished road construction or that he doesn't get broadsided in a roundabout by a 1J tractor.