Pocatello Creek Road, one of the more consequential roads on the east side of Pocatello and the connection between Eel's place and the freeway, is next on the city's hitlist of repairs for the second year in a row.

They've been putting up ominous signs over the last week. Ominous and a bit ambiguous. It says "Construction to start 6/6" and "find alternate routes," but didn't say explicitly whether or not the entire road would close. It's one of the only roads in town I don't think that they could close entirely, though they could deter most traffic through an unholy mess of longwinded detours.

But on Friday they set up the orange cones on the side of the road, presumably so that yesterday morning they could take them out to the road and do whatever they were going to do, whether it be closure-and-detour or one-laning it. Since it's a road that I travel frequently and there's no parallel road available for easy detour (civil engineers take note, this is what happens when Interstates don't have access roads!), their presence was an ominous sign all weekend long. They were like an invading army lining up. They posed no threat where they were, but the problem was that you knew they wouldn't stay there.

It reminded me a bit of the end of the Star Wars Episode Two. The clones, up to that point, had saved the Jedi (and others) from death at the hands of the droids. Yoda and others had worked with them before. They obviously posed no particular threat at that point-in-time. Though, of course, you knew that the clone troopers (along with later drafted human recruits, of course) would eventually become the storm troopers that plagued Luke and Leia and all.

That same ominous feeling.

The cones invaded yesterday and as near as I can tell they're just knocking it down to one lane each way, which is perfectly fine. Coinciding with the lifting of school zone speed limits, it's actually pretty much a wash.

Assuming, of course, that the cones stay at their stations.

[ominous music here]