Quick Takes: You zig, I’ll zag

Commuters in a Pennsylvania town might be forgiven for thinking they’re participating in an evasive driving course. Or that the construction crew tasked with painting lines down a Montgomery Township road March 28 was suffering from a severe case of vertigo. But local officials say the squiggly lines on Grays Lane are intentional. According to local police, the city decided to add chicanes (a series of tight turns) to the otherwise straight road to address chronic speeding. “These traffic calming measures are being installed due to the numerous complaints/concerns we receive from residents about the ‘speedway’ Grays Lane has become,” a police spokesperson said on Facebook. In the new traffic pattern, drivers have to weave left and right to stay between the middle yellow lines and the outer white lines. In theory, that should slow drivers down the same way chicanes slow down Formula 1 racers. Motorists aren’t so sure. “Right now, everyone is just driving through the middle of it,” Lauren Chesterton told CBS News. Others described the new traffic pattern as “weird,” “awkward,” and an “eyesore.” Police officials said they plan to install road markers called delineators to force drivers to comply with the chicanes.

April Fools’ Day surprise

When Lino Monteleone’s daughter went to sleep March 31, her car was parked legally on a Montreal, Quebec, street. By the time she woke up the next morning, her parking spot had been turned into a bus stop. Worse still, she’d received a ticket. Monteleone checked his doorbell camera and discovered that just before 8 a.m., city workers redesignated the curb outside his house as a bus stop. Minutes after workers finished installing the bus stop sign, a traffic officer ticketed the family car. Monteleone said he called the city for help, but officials said they couldn’t rescind a parking violation ticket once issued. Monteleone plans to contest it.

Blown out of orbit

Commuters in Washington, D.C., faced an unprovoked Martian attack on the afternoon of April 3 when a giant inflatable Mars balloon slipped its moorings and careened toward Interstate 66. The 30-foot-tall balloon had been part of the Kennedy Center’s “Celestial Bodies: Earth, Moon, Mars” exhibit along with other balloons representing Earth and the moon. But the gusty spring weather was too much for the balloon’s rigging. The incident snarled traffic on the highway until workers retrieved the balloon from its resting place along the roadway.

Influencer on an island

According to Indian police, American tourist Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, climbed off a rented boat, waded ashore a remote island off India’s coast, took some sand samples, left a tribute for the island’s inhabitants, and then sailed away. Now officials are prosecuting the social media influencer for the March 29 incident. The problem: Polyakov visited North Sentinel Island, home of one of the most isolated primitive tribes left on earth. Indian law forbids interacting with the islanders, who in 2018 were responsible for the death of an American missionary who tried making contact with tribal members. Police said Polyakov left behind a Diet Coke and a coconut as part of a social media stunt.

A ballooning dispute

When an Indiana restaurant refused to pay the plumber, the plumber made sure the drain stayed clogged. Evansville restaurant manager Jesse Sanders hired a plumber to unclog the business’s grease trap. Three days later, Sanders had to call the plumber back when the grease trap clogged again. The restaurateur said he paid $235 for the first service call, but then received a $390 bill for the second one, even though the work was identical. After Sanders initially refused to pay the second charge, he said, the plumber returned after hours and installed a balloon in the grease trap to re-clog the drain. According to plumber Joel Heavrin, the second charge was higher because he’d been called out on an emergency basis. Sanders later paid the bill, and Heavrin removed the blockage.

Dream job … or not?

An Australian town has quite the offer for a doctor looking for a job: make twice as much money as a similar job in the nation’s capital, get a free car, and live in a nice, rent-free house. One catch: The remote 500-person town making the offer is a seven-hour drive from the nearest big city and more than 17 hours from Queensland’s capital. Since the town’s current medic will soon depart, the Queensland outback town of Julia Creek has decided to up its offer to keep a qualified doctor nearby. In 2022, the town government offered a $315,000 salary plus perks to draw Adam Louws to take the job. Now that Louws is planning his departure, the town is offering nearly $430,000 a year for his replacement.

Mouth muffler

Professional golfer Ryan McCormick went to extreme lengths to tame his tongue during the recent Club Car Championship in early April. The hot-headed New Jersey native has been looking for ways to keep his composure during golf events. So during the tournament’s second round April 4, McCormick taped his mouth shut. “Been having not-so-fun times this year on the golf course. Pretty angry and mad,” McCormick said in a social media video post by the Korn Ferry Tour. “I’ve tried a lot of things, and I ­figured I’d just shut myself up.”