Yesterday on my ride:
I don’t know the story behind it,
but I know what it’s like to be inside one of these crumpled metal boxes before the leaves have a chance to settle.
Back in my
New Jersey life, I was rudely introduced to the windscreen of the Toyota Tercel pictured
here in a lineup. Never wrote about it, though I did manage to get a story out of my previous encounter as a
crash test dummy, pedestrian division, where I never saw the automobile in question.
Fast forward to
Collateral Damage, which broke me in as a first responder. That was in the middle of a bike ride, too.
A few years later I found myself fishing the phone out of another wrecked car, so a woman with her tibia sticking out of her leg could call her boss to tell her she wasn’t going to be in that day.
I keep meaning to take a first aid course.
My wife has lately started volunteering for
speedwatch in the village. That's right, she's become a
do-gooder! While I still think inattentiveness and leaving enough distance between you and the guy in front are equally if not more to blame for accidents than excessive speed, I can now see firsthand how she is effecting good in the community, which is a beautiful spot mostly ruined, like so many others, by that bloody motor vehicle that most of us need so much but a significant minority don't know how to drive properly.
It’s even come with homework: she tasked herself with commiting her Alpha Bravo Charlies to memory. I quizzed her and she got 26/26, which is about 20 better than I could probably manage. I'm forever reaching for a suitable word on phone conversations to people who need to know my postcode, and pulling all kinds of weirdness out of the air. Triangle Noodle, anyone?
Just because she’s a member of the force, I don’t expect any favours. It is in fact her sworn duty not to let me off the hook if I go over the limit. That's not going to happen anyway, as she has the car.
Yesterday she put 8 notches on her safety vest, so that's 8 letters going out to people who will either be suitably abashed, or crumple the letter until the next one, then the one after that, which will come with
a visit from
the bizzies.