The Exploding Roads

Newsletter 2025-07-07

Roads shouldn’t explode. That’s my controversial hot take, and I’m sticking to it. The interstates in Wisconsin disagreed. Our path from Indianapolis to Minneapolis was more fraught than ever, but we pushed on all the same. This is that tale.

This weekend, we once again attempted to reach my aunt’s house in Minnesota for the Fourth of July. She throws an annual reunion for her nine hundred siblings, nieces, and nephews. Those numbers are an exaggeration, but not by much. The actual count is 852. Unfortunately, between our house and hers, there’s an impassable road block known as the city of Chicago. Lola and I decided that we are done falling for its tricks. The massive metropolitan sprawl takes up a critical junction between four states. The only options are to go through it or to take a very long detour around. The estimate always says going through Chicago is faster than going around it. That estimate is a work of creative fiction. When we get to the outskirts of the city, there are suddenly delays that materialize out of nowhere and slow us down by minutes if we’re lucky and months if we’re not. Each time, the app acts totally surprised that this happened, as if it didn’t have data points from thousands of people’s phones on that very road that could have warned us hours in advance to avoid the area. Earlier this summer, we ended up parked for an hour in a Chicago traffic snarl that Google Maps claimed it had no idea was there. You can only lie to my face so many times in a row before I catch on. That number is roughly two dozen. For our twenty-fifth trip in that direction, I finally caught on.

Although it killed me to do it, this time, I deliberately picked a longer route that showed a much worse time on my phone. Google Maps practically screamed at me for making a suboptimal choice. It kept trying to reroute me to the Chicago Pit of Despair, even after I picked a fake interim destination that should have taken us in a completely different direction. I can only conclude that Google’s software engineers were bribed by Chicago’s tollway system and continue to get kickbacks by sending people into that trap. It’s like wandering through Mirkwood Forest in Middle Earth. No matter which path you pick, you always end up at the giant spiders. I had to turn off my phone and navigate by compass and sextant to avoid arriving at Willis Towers. I successfully avoided the city, but I’m sure Google Maps will try again next time.

As Lola and I battled technology to stay on rural interstates, the kids behaved themselves. They all have their own phones. Usually, that’s not enough to stop them from fighting. No device will ever be as entertaining as open combat with your sisters. To our infinite shock, on this trip, each kid remained in their own world. Betsy slept for half the drive and then spent the other half working on her online classes. Even Waffle, who generally can’t resist stirring up trouble with everyone in arm’s reach, stuck to YouTube reels. We made it four hours before our first bathroom stop, which is close to a record for our family. If only the total route wasn’t estimated at over nine. We reached the seven-hour mark before our next and final (we hoped) pitstop. That’s when the asphalt erupted out of the Earth.

We were in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin when traffic suddenly ground to a halt. I had immediate flashbacks to my worst moments in Chicago. I thought the vindictive Google Maps software team sent all those urban Illinois drivers to slow us down. The origin of the stoppage was a half mile ahead. We figured it must be a car crash. Surely, the police would scoot one or both cars to the side and let one lane of traffic pass, if only on the shoulder. Instead, nothing moved. Gradually, more police officers arrived on the scene, but not to free us up. The first one we saw simply pulled up beside us to block the illegal u-turn spot that I definitely wasn’t considering using. We were completely trapped.

After half an hour of a dead stop, traffic finally began scooting along. I craned my neck to see the source of the problem. It wasn’t a crash at all. The pavement had erupted upward, like two tectonic plates had smashed together to create a new mountain range. Huge chunks stuck out, waiting to destroy a tire or an entire chassis. It would not have been fun to hit that at seventy-five miles an hour. I wasn’t looking to do any involuntary stunt jumps in my minivan. I had never seen an asphalt volcano before, but Lola said she read about them recently. Leave it to literacy to ruin a good mystery. It’s been so hot that roads across America are buckling. To me, “buckling” indicates sinking rather than bursting upward, but I guess we all have breakdowns in our own way.

At the site of the fracture, a road crew with a skid steer was carefully scooping away debris. A police officer eventually waved us past. Nothing could stop us now. An hour later, the road exploded again. We pulled to a stop on another isolated stretch of interstate. This time, we knew what was going on. So did the road crew. They only stopped us for five minutes before letting us go by on the shoulder. They must have figured that any driver who had made it that far into Wisconsin could handle a little exploding asphalt. We drove on, holding our breath to see if the road would explode again. It did not.

Ten hours after we set out, we arrived at my aunt’s house. We got there with enough daylight left for the kids to swim. I would have thought the sun would wear itself out melting Wisconsin’s roadways, but it had enough energy left to light her backyard. It doesn’t matter where we go in the world or what we paid to get there. All my kids really want to do is splash around in the water for a few hours. It makes me question every elaborate vacation plan I’ve ever made. While the kids frolicked, Lola and I caught up with my parents, who met us there, and the first wave of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, who I only see once a year. Conversations got louder as the night got later. I’m sure there were a few noise complaints from passing cars and low flying airplanes. Eventually, it got dark, which meant we all had to run inside as mosquitoes the size of minivans showed up. That’s also a slight exaggeration. The mosquitos were only the size of four-door sedans. We kept the conversations going in the kitchen for another hour before we remembered we were all very old. There’s nothing more exhausting than catching up, except maybe for dodging exploding roads. That also gets kind of tiring.

The next morning, the sun was also feeling lethargic. We awoke to cloudy, overcast skies. The forecast called for intermittent rain all day. We weren’t sure if the kids would get to swim at all. That was less than ideal for an event where swimming was the main draw. If they had to stay indoors, they would break everything and get us disowned by our extended family. It wasn’t raining yet, so my girls hopped in the water under ominous clouds. The precipitation stayed away. The kids were gradually joined by cousins, second cousins, and cousins once removed. I can never remember the definition of those last two terms, but both must have applied. My girls mainly played with the kids of my oldest cousin and the kids of my youngest aunt, who, by coincidence, lined up with my children by age. Well, it wasn’t that much of a coincidence. When you have enough relatives to populate their own public high school, every age group gets saturated. My oldest cousin is nearly fifty and my youngest cousin is nine. That’s not hard to keep track of at all. Everyone at these gatherings should wear not only a nametag, but also a diagram of their place on the family tree.

The clouds came and went, but the rain mostly stayed away. The younger generation kept swimming. It was one of the most relaxing days I’ve ever spent by the pool. I watched as my two youngest daughters, Lucy and Waffle, darted about like fish in the deep end. While they’ll always need adult supervision, they’ve reached the age and swimming level where they’re more likely to save me in the water than I am to save them. That was a nice change from previous pool parties, when I was afraid one of them might drown if I accidentally blinked. The only dangerous moment was when Waffle did her best Mario impression and jumped on Betsy’s head. Video games really do cause violence. The incident was unfortunate, but it was to be expected. If you don’t have to go through concussion protocols at least once, did your kids even play together?

Luckily, Betsy was fine. The swimming continued. Meanwhile, the sun and clouds battled for control of the sky. The rain held off all day until, with no warning in a moment of full sun, there was a sudden downpour. The adults ran for shelter. So did a small frog. It made it inside the door of my aunt’s house. My uncle scooped it up and tossed it toward the door, where it hit my cousin’s wife and fell into her bag of towels. Her husband heroically retrieved the frog from the bag and relocated it outside, earning what I assume was a million marriage brownie points. During the whole ordeal, the kids continued to swim, unperturbed by the weather. Five minutes later, the rain was over. It stayed away for good. We remained outside for the rest of the day. By the time the children finally got out of the water, half of them had grown gills. I’m sure that won’t raise questions at their annual physicals.

Photo by Austin Santaniello on Unsplash

As darkness fell, we once again ran inside. This time, the mosquitos were the size of school buses. They had bulked up after feeding on us the night before. Nobody was ready for bed. Instead, we reconvened in the kitchen and discussed the terrifying noises wildlife makes in the dark. You do not want to hear what the fox says. From there, we logically pivoted to how your arm span compares to your height. We pulled out a measuring tape to test our hypothesis. When we hang out, we get science-y. The main thing we learned is that my uncles have long orangutan arms far out of proportion to their bodies. Their case studies will be coming soon to a biology textbook near you.

The kids didn’t want to wake up the next morning. I forced them out of bed anyway. I’m a monster, but I also didn’t have a choice. The return trip always takes longer than the trip there. The universe knows we’re tired and cranky and just want to get home. We had a choice of driving through Wisconsin past the Dells or taking a longer but less busy detour south through Iowa. We took a chance and went through Wisconsin. I wanted to see what the roads looked like when they weren’t erupting out of the ground. Apparently everyone else in the state wanted to see that, too. We lost an hour to standstill traffic. We were surrounded by every RV in the country. The silver lining was it gave us more time to listen to the Harry Potter series. All the same, I’d rather not be stuck for long enough to hear all seven books on one trip. We arrived home late but unexploded. Now I have another year to figure out a faster and less stressful path to Minneapolis. That also gives the Google engineers a year to find new ways to send me on an involuntary vacation to Chicago.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James