.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} The thing I’ll miss most about the Interstate 235 reconstruction project is the mystery of it all. I could never remember which bridge no longer existed, which entrance ramp had been pulverized, where three or four lanes had been orange-coned down to two.

The folks at the Iowa Department of Transportation always left a way for you to get where you wanted to go; they just didn’t get all obsessed about it.

For years, taking a 10-minute drive across town called for the puzzle-solving skills of Adrian Monk, but unlike a TV show, the outcome was always in doubt.

As the clock raced toward your appointment time, what would happen? Would you zoom along the MacVicar Freeway without a care in the world? Or wind up following a slow truck on a street you had never visited before?

It put some excitement back into travel across the “metroplex,” as we like to call it when there are no Chicagoans within earshot. You think the Dan Ryan Expressway is tough at rush hour? Try finding a way out of downtown Des Moines.

Every morning I would hear a traffic reporter helpfully describe what was going on, but he talked faster than I could listen.

It would be something like “The eastbound ramp at westbound I-235 and Guthrie will be closed to southbound traffic from 7 a.m. until yesterday morning, and eastbound traffic from the western suburbs is backed up between 35th Street and somewhere else, with lane closures to be decided at 8 a.m. with a Ouija board.”

But now life will be simple. Just click your way to Mapquest, which almost instantly and at no expense gives you slightly incorrect directions, and go.

It’s difficult, now, to know what life was like at the beginning of the I-235 project. Archaeologists suspect it was a time of large vehicles and a great many drivers who were allowed to drive even though they were, technically, idiots.

The ruling class apparently decided that the answer to the resulting problems was not something outlandish like personal gyrocopters or public buses, but acres and acres of fresh concrete. And the construction industry said, “Sounds good to us.”

It’s not easy to rebuild a highway while people are driving on it – sort of like ironing a suit while you’re wearing it – and odd, scary things ensued. You would approach the East Mixmaster and see a sign: “I80 and I35 SB exit 500 feet.” First you would start to correlate the choices with your planned destination, and then you would think, “Wow, it sure doesn’t take long to drive 500 feet.”

Wrenching the steering wheel to the right, you would feel the thrill of a curve sharp enough to evaluate astronauts. But when you realized a few seconds later that you had yet another choice to make, that’s when you felt you were really getting your tax money’s worth in excitement.

And coming back into town through that same mixmaster, going fender to fender with professional cell-phone testers while lanes simply disappeared, well, that was a nice benefit for all of us who will never get to compete at the Iowa Speedway.

Now, after spending enough time and money to have produced a decent-sized pyramid, we’re ready to celebrate the end of the project.

All the hassles soon will be forgotten, and future generations will be left with only a couple of mysteries to solve.

They’ll ask us old-timers: What’s with the entrance and exit ramps that require drivers to interweave their vehicles? Were the drivers of long ago blessed with great judgment and skill? And we will answer, with kindly smiles, “No. No, they sure weren’t.”

And they’ll ask: Were Central Iowans fabulously wealthy? Why else would they have built beautiful arched bridges for a handful of pedestrians? Then we’ll have to explain how easy it was to score federal tax money back when Iowa had something called “first-in-the-nation caucuses.”

Actually, it’s kind of sad to think that we’ll never live through another major reconstruction project like this one. Now it’s just one boring commute after another, all the way to the end of our careers.

Or we could take another look at that gyrocopter idea.