Road Obstructions

This afternoon I encountered a huge drum in the middle of the road when I was taking the ramp for I-65 South/I-40W in Nashville, Tennessee. The drum must have fallen off someone's truck and was lying in the right hand side of the left lane. I had thought we had all come up on a traffic jam but was surprised when I encountered the huge obtacle when it was my turn to avoid it. The drum was about 4 feet in diameter by 8 feet long and was lying on its side, the round side, so it was a wonder that it was not rolling around on the road. I called the state highway patrol number who transferred me to the metro police for Nashville. When I asked them if the drum had been reported, they said yes and that they would get someone out there to move it as soon as they were available. My thoughts were that they might as well go ahead and send a wrecker, fire truck, and ambulance if it were going to take that long, because someone would sure enough hit the silly thing and create a huge pile up.

This is not the only time that I had encountered obstacles in the road. The last time was when I was returning from the east coast and a flat bed carrying huge transformers lost one of them in the middle of the road. I was sitting still for over an hour waiting for the road to open back up. It was closed down while wreckers attempted to get the huge transformer picked up and put back onto the flatbed.