Why.

So it is Friday afternoon and I am looking forward to the weekend. There are plans involving road trips and frivolity, but my body is apparently thinking differently. I am feeling some signs of impending bed rest and sneezing. I should be in Vitamin C shock by now with all of the juice and fruit and vitamin C tablets and Airborne. Better now instead of the weekend of the wedding I suppose.

Let’s see which set of plans for the weekend come to fruition.

I still remember sitting down and writing this blog entry on Sept. 12, 2001. On Sept. 11 I couldn’t bear to sit down and write a blog entry; Earl and I had been glued to the television set watching the news and I wasn’t able to put my thoughts into words that would be coherent for anyone to read. The next day I was able to muster that brief blog entry.

I have said before that I had a weird sense of ‘something’ as I rode the elevator up to my office on the 16th floor. The phone rang as I got off the elevator, Earl called and said a small plane had run into the World Trade Center. I had a whole bunch of spidey-sense going; I didn’t know why but the best I can describe it is borrowing from Star Wars, there was a disturbance in the force.

As I entered the doors of the radio station I worked at, the satellite feed was switching over to an ABC News special bulletin. We soon quickly put together a makeshift antenna and hooked it up in the production room of the adjoining advertising business so we could watch the news and get a handle on what was happening. The rest is history. History that I hope will never be repeated.

Yesterday at the SU game was Patriotic Day. As we honored those that have served our country and the lives that were lost on 9/11 (and those living with that loss today), my eyes teared up quite a few times. I mourn the loss of life and I’m sad for the loss of the pre-9/11 USA. Sometimes it’s so weird to step back and see where our country has gone since this tragedy. An event that united us in it’s aftermath has ultimately turned out country into a land much more markedly divided than it was 10 years ago.

As I asked last year, please burn a candle of peace today. While we will always remember the events of 9/11/01, let’s continue to learn and find ways to come back together as a united people.

Back when we did the Industrial Revolution thing I wish we had decided to base the workday on the natural time of day instead of rigidly adhering everything to a clock. Perhaps we would be a happier society today if we weren’t constantly fighting against the natural order of time.

Nearly 18 months into doing this I pretty much have the getting up at 5:30 a.m. thing down pat. I know what time I need to go to bed, I feel tired at the appropriate time at night and I feel rested when I get up in the morning. I’m still not a morning person but I’m at least functional and I’m able to speak English when prompted to do so. But it’s 5:45 a.m. right now and it’s still pitch black outside. It’s going to be like this for the next few months until the end of daylight saving time, when it will just be semi-dark out until we get to the cold, hard reality of winter.

I have mentioned many times that I despise Daylight Saving Time. Perhaps I complain about it too much, but it is such a stupid, idiotic concept because it’s deception. The only reason we have it today is to trick the population into thinking they have more time than they really have. It’s man’s feeble attempt at trying to control nature. And Bush’s extension of DST back in the mid ’00s ranks right up there with the Iraq War and waving a hello to Stevie Wonder on my Idiocy Top 10 list.

One might think I’m cranky this morning, the first morning back to work after a long, holiday weekend. But I’m not. I’m just brutally honest, but that’s not much different than the way I usually am. I just can’t wait until it’s dark at the end of the day like it’s suppose to be.

Then I’ll find something else to crank about.

I have watched the video a couple of times of last night horrible tragedy in Indianapolis (the stage collapse prior to the Sugarland concert at the Indiana State Fair). The first thing that crossed my mind was how you see a number of people run towards the fallen stage, looking to help their fellow man. This helps reinforce my belief that we are basically a good lot of people with just a few morons sprinkled in. I hope that in that situation I would have done the same, run towards the stage and help those that were trying to lift it up off the people that were trapped underneath.

The second thought that crossed my mind was that of an engineer: why on earth did they have such a temporary, and apparently not very sturdy, stage setup in such a tornado prone area of the country? I find it mind boggling. My only point of reference is the New York State Fair, which has a pretty sturdy grandstand setup for the concerts that take place there. I find it hard to comprehend why such a temporary rig would be used in a weather-volatile area of the country. It just doesn’t make sense to m.

Our thoughts and prayers are with those that are injured and with the families of those that were killed in last night’s horrible tragedy. The things should not happen and it is horrible when they do.

So I was pretty pleased with myself. I had successfully completed 39 miles of my planned 40 mile long ride and it was only a few more moments before I could get out of the increasing blazing sun and into the relative coolness of the house. The ride had gone fairly well. I had found some quiet spots on the road that had let my mind wander as it tends to do when I’m riding my bike. I like getting lost in myself that way. It’s something that I don’t do enough.

I approached the traffic light slowly as it was red. I was in the right hand margin of the center lane, like any responsible cyclist would do. The right lane was for right turns, the left lane for those turning left and I wanted to go straight through the intersection so I was in the lane traditionally designated for that. I slowed way down so I wouldn’t have to come to a complete stop.

I saw the opposing side of the light turn yellow. There was a car coming from my right, very slowly, with her turn signal on, indicating that the driver wanted to turn left, back towards the direction I was coming from. Since the light was yellow and she was slowing, I figured she stopped.

I balanced myself a bit by riding slowly as I waited for the light to turn green. It’s easier to do that instead of getting unclamped out of my pedals. The light turned green and I picked up speed.

Except the motorist from the other direction decided to run the light. Then she saw me. So she stopped.

Directly in the path of my bike.

I couldn’t go left or I would have been mashed by the vehicles that were also going straight through the intersection. Going right wouldn’t have worked, because the rest of her car would have been in the way. The only way was down.

So I went down.

I couldn’t unclamp from my pedals before hitting the pavement, so the bike and I went down together. I landed on my right knee and skidded a little bit. My left foot then unclamped. I swore, A LOT. I looked up and the woman in the car that had stopped in front of me decided to continue through the red light. I jumped up, pissed and for a brief nanosecond, considered throwing my bike at the car that was starting to make it’s way across the intersection. But I decided not to. I jumped up on my feet and did what you’re suppose to do when you fall off your bicycle. I got back on it and rode home.

Earl listened to a really loud rant of mine when I walked into the door. God bless him. He puts up with a lot of crap from me. I profusely apologized for my outburst after getting myself together again and cleaned up. My knees are sore and one is scraped up pretty good but I’m not really that worse for the wear.

At least I was able to do 40 miles on the bike today. And that’s the part that made me feel good.

“I’m going to give you something to cry about.” I can’t count the number of times that I heard this statement being shrieked in the middle of a public venue when I was a kid. I have to admit that I don’t recall my mother ever uttering that phrase, she was too busy screaming at the top of her lungs that she was going to scream, but I remember seeing kids in the market or whatever crying and their mother threatening to give them something to cry about. I didn’t ever really feel particularly bad for the kid as I figured he must be some sort of monster if his mother was screaming that instead of just screaming. I couldn’t really relate.

But as an adult I can relate to that sort of hostility that was displayed by the screaming parent. I feel a similar sentiment towards people that needlessly have a handicapped decal hanging from their rearview mirror.

I know quite a few people that actually need these handicapped designations on their vehicle; they have a genuine reason to need to use one of the spaces near the front door, for example, they have an artifical leg or the fact that the wheelchair ramp is very hard to open when you’re wedged between an empty shopping cart corral and a lightpost. But if appearances mean anything, the handicapped sticker/badge has become a status symbol in these parts, where the only handicap exhibited by the driver is:

1. They completely lack parking skills
2. They’re lazy
3. They have an unfortunate sense of entitlement (the American way!)
4. All of the above

This afternoon I saw a bright blue, 1980s vintage, unnecessarily big pickup truck zoom into the handicapped spot in front of the Dollar Tree at an unusually high rate of speed. The driver, a woman, parked at a 30 degree diagonal to the lines denoting the space. Because of this, a state owned wheelchair capable van had to park further down the lot next to the aforementioned cart corral. The big truck had a handicapped sticker dangling from the mirror; I noticed then when the woman RAN from the truck to the front door of the store.

Unfortunate.

Once the wheelchair van was unloaded of it’s two passengers, both in wheelchairs, the driver calmly walked behind them as the folks in the wheelchair wheeled themselves to the same store.

The fault of this idiocy really does belong to the town halls or whatever layer of red tape is responsible for giving out these handicapped badges that hang from the mirror. “Give me a box of donuts, Gertrude, and I’ll give you a handicapped sticker so you can park closer to the donut shop.”

You wouldn’t ever see one of these people spring for the paperwork necessary to get an actual DMV-issued handicapped designated license plate. Too much work and effort required with the need to prove that you’re indeed handicapped.

It would cut into their entitlement time.

When you work with a large group of people, there is seldom going to be complete agreement when it comes to politics. Our office is no different from the norm. The office as a whole leans conservatively (typical Upstate New York) but it’s nothing radical or extreme. Those that are very right wing are countered by those on the opposite side of the scale.

However, one thing that everyone seems to agree on is this: Sarah Palin is not going to be the next president of the United States. Folks either find her amusing or a complete mess and they find her as a good source of a chuckle but no one takes her seriously.

I have to admit I was kind of happy to hear that.

Last night as I was driving home from work I passed through the small village area before getting out to the much preferable countryside. The village has five traffic lights that I have to pass through. The lights are mostly unnecessary outside of the traditional traffic hours, the usual time that folks are driving to and from work.

I sat at the first light with two vehicles in front of me. The vehicle closest to the light was a red, mundane vehicle. The driver looked to be a young girl. Behind her was a man around my age driving a pickup truck. Pickup trucks are popular in this area. The truck was signaling that he wanted to make a right turn.

After about 15 or so seconds at the light, the truck pulled into the left lane and made a right turn AROUND the vehicle in front of him. He flipped off the driver on his way around her. She looked aghast. It was then that I noticed that she was also making a right turn, as indicated by her blinking directional lamp. The man was obviously pissed because the woman was just sitting at the red light instead of making a perfectly allowed and legal right turn on red.

New York State (outside of the city of New York) has allowed legal right turns on red since the early 1970s. I’m going strictly by memory, but I believe it was 1974 when this law was passed. Technically, you can also make a left turn on red, as long as you are going from a one way street to another one way street. As Earl is quick to remind me, one is not obligated to turn right on red but you are allowed to turn on red.

Personally, I think if you are incapable of handling a right turn on red then you should be relieved of your driver’s license, because it isn’t actually brain surgery to figure out how to turn right on red. It works just like a stop sign. You stop, see that there is nothing coming, and then you make a right hand turn and continue on your merry way. The reason this law was enacted so many years ago was because it kept traffic moving freely and decreased wait times at traffic signals for the traffic that wasn’t turning right.

The lack of turning right on red has become a huge pet peeve of mine. Again, Earl reminds me that no one is obligated to turn right on red. There are people that have printed bumper stickers up that say “I CHOOSE not to turn right on red”. I’d like to smack them. Hard. I guess I have a violent streak.

I overheard a mother telling her friend that she wasn’t letting the teen in her house (who presumably had a learner’s permit) turn right on red. “It’s too risky.” This is bad. It is when these young drivers have their learner’s permit that they are learning driving habits that are going to stick with them the rest of their lives. If they don’t turn right on red now, and don’t properly learn how to turn right on red, they’re never going to turn right on red. And then they’re going to clog the roads.

The City of New York doesn’t permit right on red because it’s too damn crowded. There’s pedestrians and all that. The drivers claim they can’t see. The folks that live in the City of New York need their nanny laws to tell them what to do and how to keep safe. The right on red law is, thankfully, something that was still considered for the rest of the state, we are allowed to be freethinkers up here. At least when it comes to right on red. The reason that I mention this is because over the past several years numerous folks from the five boroughs have been migrating northward to get some fresh country air. They are easily identified by (among other means) the different inspection stickers on their car windows. They never turn right on red. They clog up the streets. If it’s good enough for da city, it’s good enough for the world. I don’t like them.

One thing about right on red that baffles me, though, is that the younger drivers are interpreting the sign that indicates a “right turn only” (the arrow with the word ONLY under it) as “you can only turn right when the light is green.” The two concepts are completely unrelated but then again, driving and texting at the same time should be completely unrelated and not done in tandem as well, and we know how well that is turning out.

So as we continue to dumb down society by making mundane chores seem scary with nanny laws, we are also apparently reducing the average IQ.

The next time I choose to rant about something traffic related, we’ll discuss the “KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS” concept that is completely ignored on America’s freeways.