Idle hands and all that!

This is not particularly railroad related, however it seems to be a bit of a sign of our times. So let me explain:

After dithering around for many years, our local electric power company (PEPCO) finally decided to relocate the electric distribution lines in our neighborhood from poles to underground conduits. It was beyond embarrassing that in the Nation’s Capital the electric power supply in our neck of the woods could be so unreliable. The wind would blow and the electricity would go out. It would rain and the lights would start to flicker. Somebody down the block would fart and we’d be without electricity. Just kidding…However it got to be so irritating that some time ago we actually invested in a standby generator.

I don’t know what or who pushed PEPCO to finally upgrade the distribution system starting some months ago. But just to let everybody know what a wonderful job they were doing, signs appeared on the affected blocks. Like this one:

However the sign on our block was put on a substantial wooden pole, about 4 inches by 4 inches and roughly 8 feet tall, pretty solidly rammed into the ground. Of course once the work was done the sign disappeared, and, not really surprisingly, nobody bothered to remove the pole.

So there it stood for a while, until one of our artistic neighbors decided to repurpose it. What if we put some whimsical direction signs on it he thought. Well, fine by me!

What started out with just a few signs has morphed into something bigger: now half the neighborhood wants to participate.

The Beginning

Now there are over a dozen arrows:

Did you know that it is only 6532 kilometers to Hildesheim, my hometown:

Or that Kronos, the Klingon homeworld, is only 4 days away at warp 5:

So thanks to Jim and Anthony for the much needed diversion from the rather discouraging current events. If this keeps going we may have to put up another pole!

As always, comments are welcome.

All photos by Ralf Meier (Sony a7c)