The guys out the back who were using high pressure hoses to  wash down the new concrete noise barrier walls seem to have shut off their equipment.  Finally.  Which has offered a blissful moment of what passes for peace and tranquility when you live in close vicinity to a highway.

I could just shut the house up and turn on the air conditioning and I wouldn’t hear a thing, but this is supposed to be Spring… which means moderate weather with sunny days and nice breezes…. and if you saw my electricity bills for last summer you’d think twice about turning the AC on too.  But I tell you what, we’ve been sorely tested these last few months. 

Bulldozers clearing away trees.
Woodchippers to cart it all away.
Reversing beepers sometimes as early as 4am.
Drilling equipment digging holes for steel uprights.
Workmen yelling back and forth at each, esp on smoko.
Cranes with safetly alert beepers moving the prefabbed concrete
And all this on top of the road noise and road construction noise.

The new noise barriers that are being built out the back were scheduled to be completed in October 2007 but as at today – October 16th 2008 – they’re still incomplete.  Which means they were supposed to be completed BEFORE the upgrade to the Gateway was to start but seeing that they weren’t we’ve had the inconvenience of the noise from not just the construction of the noise barriers, but the noise of the road construction and the all too frequent noise of idiot dumb ass drivers hitting the brakes out there because no one wants to stick to the reduced speed limits. The so called professional drivers – truckies – appear to be some of the main offenders.  I know they’re on a schedule and having to slow from 100kmph down to 80kmph or 60kmph is a dreadful in convenience, but hammering on the jake brakes at every opportunity is really fraying my nerves.

Going out on the Gateway at the moment is really taking your life into your own hands.  The trucks are tailgating cars who have the audacity to try and slow down to the posted speed limit.  Cars are weaving in and out of traffic to get around the same slow drivers AND stupidly trying to get infront of the large trucks.  It’s a nightmare.

I swear it happens at least twice a day that I hear the squeal of tyres under extreme braking and find myself bracing for the subsequent sound of impending impact…. which at the moment seems to occur in about one in ten maybe?  At least once a week since the construction started I hear the squeals are smartly followed by the sickening sound of crunching metal (which is doing nothing good for my accident/traffic concerns).  We were jumping up to investigate the accident noises at first… but now I’m just trying to ignore it and telling any interested parties that we just heard another accident and the Gateway will be shot to shit so they might want to take an alternate route.
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