{"id":1319386,"date":"2020-04-09T23:24:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T05:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/mulhall-column-extreme-traffic-calming\/"},"modified":"2020-04-09T23:24:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T05:24:01","slug":"mulhall-column-extreme-traffic-calming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/mulhall-column-extreme-traffic-calming\/","title":{"rendered":"Mulhall column: Extreme traffic calming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText DropCap\">What a contrast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">As I sip my morning coffee and survey the valley from my back deck these days, I\u2019m reminded the empty lanes I now see along Midland were not all that long ago a headlight-to-brake-light rope of idling vehicles stretching as far as the eye could see.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">From bridge construction to coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">What a contrast.<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"row gspi-donation gspi-donation-mobile p-0\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/PI-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/PI-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/pi-banner-paypal.jpg)\" class=\"col-xl-8 p-3 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=mid-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Yes, coronavirus \u00ad\u2014 you know, that unwanted houseguest who\u2019s overstayed his welcome.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Right now he\u2019s rifling through the bottom shelf of your refrigerator after crawling in through the duct work because you observed the stay-at-home mandate and haven\u2019t unlocked the front door in days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Yet, you just can\u2019t escape the guy, and while your options for trying are now limited by Gov. Polis, he even comes in through local TV news, as if to prove who\u2019s really in charge here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And, just when you think the news has said all there is to say about him, they come up with more. Heck, I half expect someone to start talking about how cool virus names are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cHerpes thimplex 10.\u201d Toothy grin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">You just know some Denver news anchor broadcasting from a spare bedroom with his laptop\u2019s camera zooming in on his unkempt nose hair is going to launch into an Eddie Murphy impersonation and try it on \u201ccoronaviruth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">But the virus\u2019 ubiquitous tendencies aside, healthy cells, individual liberty and human life itself aren\u2019t the only casualties here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Hardly. For an entire generation, coronavirus may have single-handedly rendered meaningless some of the most long-standing, archetypal rock-and-roll lyrics ever written.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Alice Cooper didn\u2019t write \u201cSchools out for the foreseeable future.\u201d Lynryd Skynryd never sang \u201cA-won\u2019t you give me six feet, give me six feet mister.\u201d And Thin Lizzy would never have cracked the top 40 with the refrain, \u201cthe boys are back in their parents\u2019 basements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I feel for the young people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Of course, I feel for the old people too, and not merely because I am one \u2014 right on the border between the age class with the highest hospitalization rate and the one with the most fatalities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Yeehaw.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">One of the harshest effects of forced quarantine on the elderly is apparent in the Democrat\u2019s presidential race.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">All the usual forums afforded by the media in an election year dried up almost as quickly as the Democrat field shriveled to two white male septuagenarians: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Lacking the kind of exposure you want at that age, Joe Biden tried shadowing President Trump\u2019s daily virus briefings with his own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I, for one, looked forward to these. I thought it wouldn\u2019t be long before Joe raised the subject of coronavirus safety precautions and riffed on how to sniff hair through an N95 mask. While his virus briefings haven\u2019t panned out, he\u2019s taken up podcasts, but you still don\u2019t hear all that much about him these days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Same with Bernie, really. Bernie was laying low, but on Wednesday he too dropped out, perhaps because too many voters figured out forced unemployment and toilet paper shortages provide a G-rated preview of what communist revolution looks like.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Yes, even the Democrats\u2019 presidential race takes a back seat to this virus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And, that\u2019s pretty much where we all are in all of this, for the most part dutifully second-fiddling to a virus who\u2019d just as soon kill us as cripple our livelihoods and re-order our futures, or something like that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Whether it\u2019s a survival instinct or a character attribute, I try to see the good in whatever comes my way, but coronavirus chaos has really begun to tax my ability to find the positive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">If, like me, you\u2019re searching daily for something fresh and encouraging while you pace the increasingly thread-bear carpet between the living room and the kitchen, there is an observation, however hapless, that fills the bill:<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">If you\u2019ve been to the Glenwood City Market lately, you now know what it was like to drive Grand Avenue in 1975.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">Mitch Mulhall is a husband, father and longtime Roaring Fork Valley resident. His column appears monthly in the Post Independent and at postindependent.com<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/opinion\/columns\/mulhall-column-extreme-traffic-calming\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a contrast. As I sip my morning coffee and survey the valley from my back deck these days, I\u2019m reminded the empty lanes I now see along Midland were not all that long ago a headlight-to-brake-light rope of idling vehicles stretching as far as the eye could see. From bridge construction to coronavirus. What [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1319386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 05:03:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}