Tuesday, February 08, 2005 :::
 
A certain pudgy, balding English teacher had a car this weekend--a Chevy Malibu that performed quite nicely on a quick jaunt to NC for the monthly visit with Dad. Said English teacher had a Ford Taurus that survived daunting odds (being owned by a certain pudgy, balding English teacher) but when said Taurus finally called it quits, so did the English teacher. For one reason: his leafy Washington neighborhood has become overgrown with two car families. Mt. Pleasant didn't need "gentrification," per se, as it was a pleasant mix of rich, middle, and poor, but there were a host of houses that could get fixed up and now have been. What a pain. By habits a late night person, said E.t. has not seen a parking space anywhere near his house at a time when he would need one for perhaps a year. Or more. T'ain't worth it.

But the sense of liberation in having a car is tremendous. It is an amazing feeling to hop in it and just go.

Until you get to the part where you have to sit in it and just stop. As in two hours of "parking is actually faster" traffic out of DC. Or as in suddenly remembering your secret "northern route" around a school and Metro station zone that is perennially clogged, and making it back behind the two busses that were just ahead of you when you detoured--only you are now exactly behind, as the cars that had been between you and the busses are nowhere to be seen, the streets that you avoided being mysteriously empty. (For you non-urban types, that means the cars that were in front of you got caught in something, so you have just dodged a bullet.)

Then it comes back to you: it takes 24 minutes on a normal morning to get to your office which is theoreticallyon 7 minutes away.

So then you find yourself thinking: busses--unpredictable, but you can read half the paper on the way to the coffee shop.

Tomorrow, a tribute to a colleague who just passed away. His story brought to mind the Bible verse, "some have entertained angels unawares." (Hebrews 13:2)


::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 1:38 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.