Monday afternoon was the perfect day for an aimless drive.

But Jackson city administrator Jim Roach and Mayor Barbara Lohr were hardly cruising as they tooled along East Main Street and onto the ramp to Interstate 55.

"We're saying the mayor was the first person to drive the new interchange, but we've been driving it for six months," joked Danny Dumey, whose company, Dumey Contracting Inc., built the $8 million interchange and finished it six months ahead of schedule.

"Well, I'm the first official non-contractor," Lohr said, grinning in the passenger seat of Roach's car.

Dumey was driving his truck along on the new pavement with passenger Ronnie Walk, Dumey's project superintendent. Walk beamed.

"It's going to be awesome. It turned out real good," he said.

MoDOT engineer Darius Dowdy said it was a "soft open" for the $8 million interchange. Weather delayed work but not the Dec. 17 double ribbon cutting for East Main Street and Exit 102. At the ceremony, officials from the cities of Cape Girardeau and Jackson, the state and Cape Girardeau County hailed the project for being built in the spirit of cooperation. Now cities will compete for developers to take advantage of the new road. Work has not begun on Cape Girardeau's side of I-55, which will be LaSalle Avenue. Dumey said he's not sure when the city will look for bids on that project, "but we're going to take a hard look at it."

Exit 102 was spurred by former mayor Paul Sander's $1.2 million plan to extend East Main Street to the freeway. Over 14 years, he and others campaigned for state funding that is also paying to build a side road from the new interchange to Center Junction.

"This is going to take a lot of pressure off Old Cape [Road] and Shawnee [Boulevard]," said Carl Curry, while sitting at the wheel of his car, waiting for the traffic barriers to be moved so he could cruise through the interchange, too. "In the morning and in the evening, it's jammed."

Curry lives near the corner of Old Cape Road and Shawnee Boulevard. He wasn't exactly waiting to drive East Main [Street] to I-55, but saw some barrels moved and decided to try it.

"It is a smooth road," said Lohr, as Roach steered onto northbound I-55. He wore a black leather jacket and joked about cruising in his younger days.

Lohr mused about learning to drive when she was a young military wife. Permit in hand, she and another military wife, who had an infant, drove from Sikeston to Quantico, Va., to join their husbands.

The conversations rolled along as the scenery flashed by. Roach exited the freeway at Fruitland, drove onto the overpass and the southbound ramp.

The radio crackled with updates about opening the exit ramp to East Main. Beyond the orange barrels, which stood like sentries across the ramp, the new concrete gleamed under bright sunshine. Roach saw an opening between the barrels and took it.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127