Bodily Functions and Clean Roads

Ahh November, brisk cool nights, crunching leaves and the annual physical. Fasted this morning so I could get my blood work done at the same time, usually I forget and have to go back, and went in to see how my natural and artificial chemistry (daily meds) are doing together. We'll see how the blood work comes out, but the blood pressure is managed and the normal bending of joints and cough tests turned out OK.



Late in the day it was out the door early to help our adopted section of road, a portion of Highway 61 (yes, that Highway 61) between Duluth and Two Harbors. I was really disappointed at the turnout. We have 115 people that work in our Duluth Office and we had seven of us out picking up the trash, 2 finance people, one civil engineer, 2 electrical designers, a draftsperson, and a mechanical engineer. No focus leaders, only myself from the Duluth Management team. Usually there are a few others that show up, notably Dave Sheedy our Duluth Office Leader, our finance director Lori, and some of our marketing folks, but - I really am thinking it might make sense to give this section up for adoption.

It apparently is not important enough, even to those persons that count MnDOT as a client, that we make this small bit of community service a priority. Even a word of encouragement would be something. I once thought that having a civil engineer organize the work effort would perhaps help get out more people, especially those involved in Transportation, but that has not turned out to be the case. It would take having our leaders out there and them telling others that this is an important thing for this to work the way it should.

Oh, yes - Kate Loyd, and I did the section from the Homestead to our sign and back - about 1-1/2 miles round trip and collected about 5 bags of trash - mostly cans bottles and paper.