.floatimg-left-hort { float: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: 12px; 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: 12px; } .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: 12px; } .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;} It was snowing as I drove home from a basketball game in Cedar Falls the other night, and the Iowa Department of Transportation plows had not ventured onto most of the route. Instead of covering the distance in the usual 90 minutes, I crept along for 2 ½ hours, watching headlights approach and wondering where the center line might be.

On another recent outing, it was sunny and clear as I drove through Ankeny, giving me a good view of every detail of the street surface.

It might be less scary – just slightly – when you can’t see the road.

When it’s dark and snowy, and you’re navigating mostly by ESP, all you have to worry about is death.

When you can examine the potholes in the full glory of their moon crater dimensions, you start to worry about taxes.

Here in Iowa, we bought an extremely extensive system of roads and bridges, brought it home, and now it turns out we have to feed it.

On Highway 14, north of Marshalltown, there’s a stretch where the pavement has buckled again and again, creating a series of bumps that are sort of like ski moguls, if you imagine hard enough. Sure, it’s fun, but you can’t help wondering what happens when a 10-ton dump truck hits those ridges with a snowplow blade at 40 mph.

Picture a cheese grater and a block of mozzarella.

And as Des Moines Public Works Director Bill Stowe told the City Council last week, our efforts to keep snow and ice off the roads make the pothole problem worse even as they make travel safer.

To combat ice, workers spray brine onto the streets, which drains into the cracks. The water in that brine eventually freezes, pushing those cracks wider and popping up chunks of concrete or asphalt.

As Stowe reported that his department had received 200 pothole calls during the preceding weekend, he immediately heard more pothole repair suggestions from half of the council. At this point in the year, you wonder if he ever checks Monster.com for public works director openings in Barbados.

The ongoing cost of salt and overtime, plus the looming expense of extensive road repairs, means that Des Moines and other government bodies are shifting money out of “long-term enhancements,” as Stowe put it.

America has become like a research scientist, brilliant and ambitious, who has to spend all of his time up on the laboratory roof, patching leaks.

City Manager Rick Clark mentioned that we might be getting a chunk of federal stimulus money that can be used for roadwork. That will come in handy, but it’s sad to think of stimulus money being packed into potholes. We were hoping to use that cash to make the nation better, not just bring it back up to basic standards.

We’ll have to wait for spring weather to start fixing the roads properly, Stowe noted. Of course, by then we’ll be busy dealing with flooding.

Stowe is hoping that we won’t have heavy rains, and that the snowmelt will soak into the ground. That’s the best thing we have going for us – the fact that the soil had barely started to freeze when the first thick, insulating layer of snow fell out of the sky.

Doesn’t really sound like much to get excited about, but at this point we’ll take the hope.

Otherwise, we would just be wondering why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can’t start lowering the water level at Saylorville Reservoir, and hearing them say that it just doesn’t work that way.

We would be wondering why it takes so long to beef up the levees that allowed flooding on the north side of Des Moines in 2008.

Wondering gets tiresome after a while, and simple hope seems like a good alternative.

But we’ll never stop wondering if there’s a way – whether by satellites or incantations – to control the weather.