For the past three summers, I've gone to northern Michigan to attend seminars at the Interlochen Arts Academy. In Michigan, they complain long and loudly about the pothole problem. In that area, they have winters where sometimes there's five feet of snow on the ground so you'd expect the roads to be pretty bad. I rent a car in Traverse City and drive down to Interlochen and after Honolulu, the roads feel like one is driving on silk. That's a very circuitous way of saying that our roads suck worse than a place with freezing snowy winters. The first thing we have to change is the idea of guaranteed life-time employment for contractors that toss a little asphalt in the hole, tamp it down and then drive away to the next hole.