BUMPS!

At the intersection of North Ashland and Bowdoin this morning, I came upon this portable caution sign.

I drove through the intersection after seeing the sign and stopping, and then I got all the way across before I realized that something was very definitely amiss...

I backed up and took a picture of the sign and the road surface so that you will also be able to see that something is strangely amiss.


There is no bump.

A couple of blocks away at the intersection of Chestnut and Bowdoin, just a minute or two later, I encountered a second manifestation of this bizarre phenomenon.

As you can see, there's no bump here that would merit that big sign.

In this city, it would have to be an unusually BIG BUMP to merit calling attention to it with such an imposing piece of signage.

Anywhere else in the whole physical universe, a sign like this would be cause to hit the brakes and slow right down so that the suspension in the car isn't damaged. But in this city, a sign like that should be cause for coming to an immediate halt. In this city, it would indicate a vehicle swallowing hole in the road, a bump of such proportion that it would be unusual, standing apart in some way from the tens of thousands of other bumps in the roads all over the city that do not have warning signs.

It's pretty clear, as you can see, that the city uses these signs the way Emmanuel Goldstein would.

They are just basically messing with our heads.

If this keeps up, I expect to read the slogan, "A bumpy road is a smooth road," any day now.