Updates

With a grand total of 5 days left of walking to and from work, my life is much safer now. Why? you ask.
There is a major street that I have to cross every day that is right in front of our boulangerie. The street I live on empties into the middle of this street so for the past 4 months I have been waiting for breaks in the traffic, or for street lights to hit just right on the two roads that merge into one about 40 feet to the right of where I cross. There is also a road street directly opposite where I cross where I have to dodge cars turning right onto the street while I am crossing. Each day there are probably 20 people with me each time I cross. Sometimes I let other people walk closer to the merge, nicely figuring that if cars come flying around the corner and decide not to stop, at least I won’t take the full impact. You know a street isn’t safe when you are considering the options of not getting ran over and they include letting someone else get run over instead. The traffic is at its absolute worst when I walk home from work, and when it backs up it can sometimes take 3 or 4 light changes to get across the road.
In a development that has been slowly progressing for about a month now, there is now a crosswalk. They added a light literally 20 feet after the merge so that the cars stop at the fork, then they stop 20 feet later after they merge. It is a logistical nightmare. The good news is that now that the crosswalk exists I don’t have to worry so much about cars flying around a blind corner and taking me out. The only problem now is that the crosswalk isn’t in my regular walking path so I have to go out of my way 20 feet. Sheesh, the things we do for safety.

In other Clermont news, remember me telling you about a gym being built across the street from school that I hoped was going to be finished at the beginning of August? I’m proud to report that it still isn’t finished. Ha. I walk by it each day and lately there is more exterior work going on like siding and stucco, but still dirt and no parking lot and no finishing touches. Not exactly biting at the dust to start exercising now are we?