Beneath the Wraps

          How many of our decisions affect others?   Choosing to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich over tuna fish may not have any kind of a ripple effect as making a choice to drive or walk toward oncoming traffic.             Yesterday morning Balras Sing Dhillon had stopped his car just outside of Myrtle Creek.   Whether it was a conscience decision or not is unknown.   Police received a call about a vehicle stopped in the northbound left lane of the interstate approximately six in the morning and went to investigate. When they approached the vehicle, the driver took off.   The driver continued for another mile before crashing into the medium.   He must have climbed over the medium after he abandoned his car.   Was he running from the police?   Was he so disoriented that he didn’t know what he was doing?   I believe the latter as...

         I don’t recall having seen a car accident the entire time that we were in Oregon.   That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.   I did see one patrol card on the side of the road had pulled someone over.   I saw one other police car.   But that was it.          Someone had burned down the High School in Albany the night before we arrived.   We didn’t see the High School.   We just heard about it.         Exactly one week ago , when I took Jenna to school, the sun was so bright in the morning.   I generally stay in the parking lot an additional 30 – 40 minutes allowing the sun the rise further up in the sky before I get back on the road.          There is no normal in my routine as I haven’t been driving for that long and had forgotten how I did things a year and a half ago. Ha...

The weather the past few days have made for awesome biking weather, driving weather, walking weather . . . except for one thing.   There are some drivers who think they own the road and that the rules don’t apply to them.   They can drive as fast as they wish, as reckless as they wish and ain’t nobody in the path that is going to stop them.   Oh, whoops – there was.   Most of this could have been prevented.     I was at the front of the school yesterday – and have to walk a ways to the bus stop and make at least three transfers.   I make my first transfer at the college.   I decided to take the 41 in whatever direction came first.   The first one to come was going eastbound and then I made my final transfer to the 217 – which is the bus I normally take.   But there was a blockage that prevented both northbound and southbound traffic.   The bus had to turn back and take a long detour around that area.   I was at a ...

On Friday morning, after Jenna and I had parted ways, I decided I would return to the stop where we had got off and take a bus to the high school and transfer there.   I noticed the street was surprisingly clear and I could cross, but first I decided to text the time to see if it was worth the time.   Ten minutes.   I could cross the street and wouldn’t have to wait until I got to the high school. As I was crossing, I noticed lights flashing in all directions from the intersection.   Then it dawned on me – the traffic was light on the side going north because no cars were getting through.   No buses either.   And so I called UTA to find if the detour would skip the stop I was at.   It was a horrible accident .   Traffic was rerouted.   The bus drivers took a route behind the school and over to a road five stops away.   The only stop it made between the two main intersections was the stop where I usually go. To th...

            A week after Jenna’s first art class had finished, UTA had a problem when one of its trains derailed downtown.   The same train we would have been on had we still been commuting downtown. I guess it wasn’t just UTAs problem, but anyone driving that particular path downtown.   It appears that it was covered by all of the media during some point of day.   But I hadn’t heard about it until after 6:00 p.m.   I guess by then it had become “old news” and I didn’t know anything more about it until the following day when I typed “UTA derailment” on Google.               The Tribune article was the first one that I came across.   Comments can be submitted and read at the end of the article. Many hurtful comments were made toward UTA and thus UTA passengers, but just as many had come to the defense of UTA and those ...

     I believe there are seven traffic lights between the bus stop nearest our house and the bus stop nearest to Jenna’s school.   Three of those lights are at major intersections – though the middle through street doesn’t seem to have as much traffic as the other two.          Truth be known, I would go out of my way for that particular street – but this morning there was a terrible accident and I would guess all of the emergency vehicles that arrived on scene had blocked the traffic in all directions.   One could move west and south initially, but that probably came to a halt.      I had gotten off the bus at that particular intersection because I wanted to purchase three ingredients that were needed to make my enchiladas.   After I had made my purchase, I returned to the bus stop and saw that the bus would be delayed and I might be better off finding a different route....