This morning I risked my life for a bagel.

I woke up craving the cinnamon-y, sugar-y deliciousness of a Panera Bread Cinnamon Crunch Bagel. I got ready in record time – for a Monday – hopped in my car and headed to Panera.

Panera is relatively new in Conway and in a new development of both residential and commerical properties. [Which, by the way, is quite possibly the cutest little neighborhood I’ve ever seen.] This development has sparked the installation of some roundabouts and due to those roundabouts there is understandably some construction to navigate through. I’m okay with that, as normally it doesn’t cause that big of a delay.

But today, this is what I encountered as I approached my turn:

What you are looking at is a roundabout where the middle is blocked, making it impossible to make my left-hand turn to get to Panera. [Also notice there’s a curbed grassy median preventing me from just making my own turn lane]

Frustrated, I continued to drive a bit further as there is a second roundabout just up the road, it’s also new. Unfortunately, that roundabout was similarly blocked preventing me from making a U-turn.

This would be where I developed road Tourette’s.

I was bound and determined to make that left-hand turn and buy a bagel, so at the first opportunity I had where there was no longer a grassy median blocking me, I made a U-turn through an opening in the traffic barrels and into oncoming traffic narrowly avoiding a collision, but also starting a trend of 6 other cars making the same manuever.

I got skills. And I know how to use them.

At lunch I risked my life for a salad.

Now that my favorite Little Rock restaurant has opened a location in Conway, it’s pretty much become my regular lunch spot. To get there I take a series of side streets from work to get back to the aforementioned cluster-*bleep*. You’d think, since I’m making only right-hand turns this time it would be a breeze to get to ZAZA.

Well, you’d be mistaken, because this is what that same area looked like at lunch:

This time, the entire northbound road is blocked off. Not only that, what you don’t see is the madness I had to get through just to get on the road. The last 20 feet or so of the side-street I took was blocked off and had detour signs up. What these detour signs didn’t tell you, until it was too late, is that you were being taken to a coned off area that was running out of road; where making a right hand turn was virtually impossible given how close the cones were together and the narrow lanes of two-way traffic you would have to fight. You also had no option of backing up and turning around, because there was a line of cars in the same predicament as you.

As soon as I could make a left-hand turn, as it was much easier to make than a right, I bolted into the traffic then quickly made another left into a parking lot so I could finish my U-turn. And, wouldn’t you know it, I started a trend yet again. Skills.

I’m giving myself an imaginary pat on the back for being so resourceful when faced with adversity when I realize that the entire half of the roundabout I need to drive through to get to ZAZA is blocked. I do a quick scan for construction workers and equipment, of which there  is NONE, and bolt through a gap in the barrels just large enough for my car to fit through.

Which brings me to this question:

Seriously, “road people”. What possessed you to block the ONLY entrance to 2 of the newest hotspots in town with construction? Is it to test my analytical thinking skills? Is it a subtle hint that I don’t need to eat a bagel? No? Well then, maybe it’s your way of really testing my patience first thing on a Monday? Either way I deserve an explanation. stat.