To which we now must add "potholes."

Nice alliteration if you can get it, but any way you add it up or close it down, traffic in Grand Island is about to require an inordinate amount of the P-word.

At work are a widening project on Highway 30 and our annual rite of spring, when gaping chasms sprout along our byways.

We call them potholes, although they occasionally answer to the older "chuckholes" or the more technical term, "dirty *#^@%s!"

They are formed by mixing moisture and asphalt and varying the air temperature between a slight thaw and 134 below zero, which, coincidentally, has been the exact range we have experienced this winter.

Ergo potholes, some small enough to ignore, others large enough to have their own ZIP code. Last year, a family of four from Oregon was found hungry but relatively happy after spending two weeks in March at the bottom of a pothole on Second Street. The Pennypackers from Portland said they had overlooked a stepladder when putting together their emergency travel kit for the car.

The city is embarking on a plan to fill the potholes ahead of the widening project, which starts March 17. My pals at public works will be busy because as soon as they can patch one hole, we are treated to a day in the 50s and a night near 15. You can almost hear the asphalt breaking apart.

Trout fishing

I wrote recently of the glacier whose eight-inch frozen fanny has been parked at my house since Boxing Day. Dozens of readers told me they cheered or wept as they, too, were in the throes of the floes, ice-bound and darn grumpy about it.

Navigating streets glistening and rutted with ice is one thing, but driving among potholes requires a different skill set, lest you damage your vehicle's front end and rearrange the placement of your internal organs.

I worry, too, that once the ice has melted at the end of my driveway, I'll discover a crater the size of a kiddie pool and deep enough to stock with trout.

If I can avoid depositing a front wheel in such a cavern, I'll still have to determine the best route for those daily trips that require an intersection with Second Street.

That's because the potholes will be repaired, but the city's main street, its 18,000-vehicles-a-day four-laner, its traffic aorta, will be reduced to pumping a quarter of the volume it normally does.

After consulting Friday's "Patience Map," I have devised several alternative routes to the north and west, none of which I choose to share with you.

Don't take it personally. Do the math. Over 13,000 vehicles will be looking for a new street, a new way every day. Throw in the usual dose of rail traffic, impatient and unfocused drivers and Murphy's Law, and we have a recipe for serious gridlock.

If I can find a less painful route to my appointed rounds, I'm keeping it to myself in hopes of keeping the way clear.

I know. Fat chance.

Patient return

Things look different in the chill of February than they do in the heat of July. That ice we cuss could be a pothole waiting to erupt and for us to cuss.

The work on Second Street will continue as cold turns to warm, warm to hot, hot to warm, and will finish just about the time warm turns to cold.

The temperature our patience runs will be the real test, however.

Vehicles turning left across Second Street's double lines have never ruined my day, but they have slaughtered a few minutes here and there. Adding a turning lane should ease my blood pressure and smooth traffic in theory. No slamming on brakes in the left lane. No wondering if I can safely switch lanes to avoid the backup. No worrying about a westbound truckload of russets clipping me if I do.

I'll have to keep that in mind while I wait for traffic, for trains, for construction.

And for my patience to return.