There is an interstate in our city that needs to be re-designed. A ramp has to be moved and expanded so that the traffic does not back up. There is a pinch point that is bad all day and a nightmare at rush-hour. Every city has one of these, or many of these pinch points. Ours has been bad for more than a decade. Why has this been allowed to go on? A tiny cemetery, created by a no longer existing church, is in the path of the design and construction. When it comes to cemeteries, they are held with a great deal of sanctity and legal protection. Of course, if there were a few small homes there with living people in them, well they would be bought out against their will, forced to move and that would be that. The living have different protections than the dead I guess. The buried are given permanent consideration, the living…well, that is covered under “eminent domain,” which gives the government a lot of power to do to the living what it would have a hard time doing to the dead. Odd. My neighborhood of one thousand homes', (I live in the suburbs if you couldn't guess), has a tiny cemetery in it. One of the primary accesses is a road that S-curves through that tiny cemetery of no more than a hundred graves. The graves are on either side of the road. Semi-truck trailers will try to negotiate their way through this curve only to have to back down the hill, (cemeteries often are built on hills to give eternal pleasant views to…I don't know, the tombstones?). The trucks cannot navigate the tight curve or oncoming traffic. The curve safety metal barriers on both sides of the road look a little bit like the "Magic Bus" because of all of the different colors of car paint scrapes from drivers going too fast through the turns. I believe it was the most terrifying moment of teaching my daughter to drive for both of us. It was scarier than her first drive on the interstate, was her driving through the cemetery as a bus was coming from the other direction. Once, when I was running a company and a client decided to fire us, they asked us to fly to their home offices. They provided us driving instructions to their location. There were no GPS devices at the time, so we just followed the instructions. On the way, they directed us through a very large cemetery. I am certain that there were other more direct routes, but I believe they were trying to add emphasis to the event. Odd customs occur around graveyards. Whistling, making the sign of the cross, looking for your name on the headstones are all traditions people follow I have seen when driving by or through graveyards. My personal favorite came one year when I rode RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. It happens at the beginning of August each year. The ride starts at the Missouri River on the West side of Iowa and ends at the Mississippi at the East side. It follows a different route through little towns all across Iowa during the day and then reaches a destination for each night for an entire week. This takes a week for about 450 miles. On average, in the blazing hot Iowa summer, you ride a bike for between 50 and 80 miles each day, which really is not that much…except for some traditions. Thousands of bicycle riders do this ride each year and often times, groups ride together. It is not a race, so the social aspect is the most important part. Wake whenever you want, break camp whenever you want, partying in the town the night before the next day's ride if and when you ride. Groups would set loose rules; drink one beer at the first/last/third or some other bar in each town you rode through. As a data point, there are a lot of little towns in Iowa. Another might be to eat a sausage at each street vendor selling sausage along the way. The group I rode with for a day had a tradition of finding the bar with a vinyl tile floor, pour beer on it and then have belly sliding competitions. This was at every town. I may still have scars. A different group had a tradition of stopping at every graveyard they saw along the way, parking and getting high. For some inexplicable reason, that group also had the informal distinction of being "last into town" every night. Cemeteries' grounds are impeccably well kept, they are quiet, they are peaceful as a library and quietly reverent as a church during the weekdays. My comparison would be a zoo for stuffed animals that only one person at a time is let in to see the exhibits. It is really a terrible misuse of beautiful land and peaceful space. Those who occupy it cannot appreciate it. Those can appreciate it are afraid of it, avoid it and yet protect it with greater fervor and agreement than the earth's environment. I don't have a great or fast answer. Frisbee golf feels a little cheapening as a way to increase the use for the beautiful land. Traditional golf is often just the waiting room for the cemeteries and wastes just as much land. Digging all of the graves up and using the land more efficiently will really turn the once park like space into condos and strip malls. I don't know why every strip mall has a nail salon, a hair salon, a dry cleaning drop off place and a coffee shop, but at some point market saturation has to stop this use of any land. (Sorry, unrelated observation but still, doesn't it piss you off just a little?) We are going to protect the dead. Their rights do not change and we will legislatively fight against encroachment. In my case, I have been maligned by cemeteries, scared my daughter with cemeteries, looked for my name in cemeteries and gotten high, (scratch that), heard of people who got high in cemeteries. I am looking for better uses for cemeteries. Not for the distraction of the dead, (really? distraction?). I do not want to dishonor anyone. I just think that maybe if we gave directions to people coming to see us through the cemeteries with possibly some highlights we have picked out for them to look for, it might make for a more interesting visit to see us and a better use of those often immaculate, but infrequently used roads.