One issue when driving will be construction. It’s always in the way, never feels like it accomplishes anything, and holds up your day.

When making a half hour commute to school every day, running into some kind of construction is pretty much a guarantee. On the ride to class, there are some spots that will seemingly never get rid of construction.

I don’t know if this necessarily classifies as construction, but it seems like the power lines around Hildebrandt Road in Dallas have something going on multiple times a month, which has drivers on the lookout in case the street isn’t clear. This isn’t nearly as big a holdup as other places, but it is something I notice relatively often.

Another spot of construction I always hit on my way home from school is on Parsonage Street in Pittston. Every drive home, I expect the street to be restricted to one lane and, most of the time, I’m correct. I have no idea what is worked on there, but it doesn’t seem too effective because the road is still a mess.

Aside from these expected hold ups, one particular event I experienced was totally out of left field. I was driving home on West Eighth Street in West Wyoming and nothing was out of the ordinary. It was a typical drive until I saw a tree fall over the slight curve in the road.

It just fell. I have no idea how or why it fell, but what I do know is there was a tree in the middle of the street. It was a huge tree, too, so it completely covered the road. A driver in front of me got out to check what had happened. A resident of one of the houses joined him as I sat there stunned, wondering if this problem would be fixed relatively soon.

For some reason, my mind thought, “Are these guys going to move the tree out of the way?” Obviously, the two average-sized men didn’t move the massive tree off the street. I turned around while they checked out what had happened and put an alternate way home in my GPS, since using that street was the only route I knew.

To this day, I have no idea how that happened. The tree simply fell down. I was shocked by what I saw and, if my timing had been worse, I could’ve possibly been flattened by that tree. The next day, the tree was gone and construction workers worked on the weird scenario. If you find yourself driving on West Eighth Street, you can still see the smashed portion of the guardrail the falling of the tree caused.

More recently, the entrance to Misericordia’s Passan Hall has been held up due to construction. I had no clue what Passan Hall was and, to be honest, I still don’t know what it’s for. However, this didn’t stop me from driving down there to check out what has been changed due to the ongoing construction.

There are signs around campus, directing drivers where they need to enter to get to Passan Hall. It was pretty simple, as you had to take a right on Center Hill Road and then a left into the facilities parking lot before Leggio’s.

Since I was going through a different parking lot, I was skeptical because it did not look like a back entrance at all. Once I followed the signs, though, it became apparent how everything lined up.

I drove around the building to check out what was going on and it looked to me like the front entrance was what was being worked on. I thought I’d be able to leave the same way I came in, but it turns out the parking lots are split up and I couldn’t go back through that way.

I used the other exit between Old Café and the art studio but saw that it was one way and had to turn right towards the roundabout, something I prefer to avoid. Luckily, I had successfully used a roundabout a few days before, so I got out of this one unharmed.

Overall, construction isn’t fun. It holds up your drive and leaves you frustrated when you see there’s no end in sight to the work being done. At the end of the day, I’d rather sit and wait on construction than be flattened by a randomly falling tree.