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Lynn James: 2020 just keeps on giving, but we have to hope the disasters are behind us


Just as we thought the year 2020 couldn’t get any worse, it did. I’m talking about the bridge and I-75/71 closure across the Ohio River. 

It’s an important transportation route whether you travel a short distance or travel through several states when using it. Although there are plans to open the bridge and connecting expressway just two days before Christmas, it sure made Thanksgiving holiday travel worse than ever before. Thank goodness more people stayed home this year than in previous years.

Prior to that fire filled accident on the bridge, I along with others who were still driving to work, had only one positive thing to say about the covid pandemic – the lighter rush hour traffic.

Transportation Cabinet photo

With many working from home, driving towards Covington in the morning became a lot easier and quicker. Getting to work happened in record time no matter how close I cut it. I’d leave a little later each morning just to see if I could still clock in on time. The drive home had become such a pleasure after three months of avoiding the expressway during the summer construction season. Hopping on the expressway and weaving around the trucks struggling to climb the cut in the hill was my normal routine again.

That certainly changed quickly and abruptly. 

It was weird driving southbound with hardly a car around and seeing the northbound completely empty 3 days in a row. At least they have reopened one northbound lane on I-75 giving some relief to local back roads. That first week, I felt sorry for every driver I passed on Crescent Springs Pike and Kenton Lands Road as they sat idle in their cars from Buttermilk all the way to the Dixie Highway.

Just as we were adjusting our travel routes to this unforeseen disaster and saw some help with the crowded back roads, another blow for our area erupted. Another spark of hope was put out.

Poor Joe. Poor Cincinnati Bengals Joe Burrow. Fantastic stats, although only two wins (which I don’t completely understand the oxymoronic nature of). And now, out for the season. I have to admit I was cheering for the Steelers to beat the Bengals a few weeks ago (I miss Andy Dalton). I even enjoyed watching the sacks Joe endured (rookie initiation in my book). But no one deserved the season-ending injury Joe received with that last sack from the Washington Football Team (the offending team without a mascot).

Even without these two latest local disasters, many of us knew there was no hope of 2020 turning around and getting better before year’s end. We knew and were told the COVID crisis would get very bad again – medically and economically wise – before it got better. We are still waiting on the vaccine (which is getting closer) since COVID didn’t magically “disappear” after election day as someone (what was that guy’s name) suggested.

Two weeks after Thanksgiving, we can be assured the positive covid cases will rise again. But no one expected more “new” disasters to add to our misery. 

So what’s in store for us this December? 

While guaranteed higher covid numbers and more covid deaths, what other calamity will 2020 bestow on us in the last month of this historic leap year. Catching COVID ourselves? Being quarantined because someone we are around gets it? Or will we end the year being blind-sided with another unpredictable calamity just as one surprised us as this year started rolling. 

Possibly an early start to winter with lots of snow and bone chilling cold temperatures? God only knows. And only God can help us get through it.

Lynn James is a lifelong resident of Northern Kentucky and has lived in Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties. She enjoys living and observing real life with real people.


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