Skip to main content

Married bliss and driving

Left-handed shifting, now that's a skill! Driving standard and eating at the same time needn't be mutually exclusive activities when you're travelling with a talented and gracious spouse who can shift for you.

The most impressive part of this manoeuvre was the fact that no words were spoken: with telepathic ease, Becky shifted at just the right moment with nary a cue from Mike (well, other than putting in the clutch, but that's a fairly subtle movement). I was impressed -- talk about two becoming one flesh.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Whose death matters?

In June of 2024, a man was just riding his bike to work. Early in the morning when traffic should be low to nonexistent. Wearing a helmet and a reflective vest.  A racing driver lost control and plowed him over.  Anyone who bikes in this city was grieved and outraged.  This stretch of roadway is designated as a bike route. There's a little green sign with a bicycle icon to tell you that. The wide road that invites speeding certainly doesn't. How does a person even drive 159 km/hr on a sleepy residential street within city limits? (Because the street is too damn wide.) For about as long as it has existed, the cycling advocacy organization has identified this stretch of roadway as a route in critical need of remediation to make it safer.  So, within a week, temporary safety measures had been rolled out. Reduced speed limit signs were erected, poly posts narrowed the roadway and speed cameras made sure folks took it seriously.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 20, 40,...

Bike 19

It's Earth Day today. It's a day, not to worship creation, but to pay mind to it, and in so doing, to worship the creator. So, says Sarah Pulliam Bailey , was the intention of Earth Day's originator. I confess I'm not doing anything special for the day. I take pride -- perhaps too much -- in the "eco-morality" of the normal things I do. That morality, sense of self-righteousness, is not the reason for my choices. Instead, it's a conviction that it is, in fact, worship when I climb on my bike; dig paper out of the recycling bin or stock used envelopes for reuse; dissect a teabag so the paper tab goes in recycling, the bag into compost, and only the string into the garbage; use my thrift store dishes; even when I carpool with someone else. The little bits of inconvenience that I subject myself to in order to reduce waste are intended for the sake of the Creator. The attitude is not always worshipful; on my way home today, I was once again muttering i...

Update

The president made a less than conciliatory speech last night, basically blaming the unrest on the opposition parties, accusing them of inciting dissent. Today, February 28, 2008, the army was sent in to Bamenda, which ups the ante somewhat. The local police are less excited about actually shooting at or harming their neighbours, but soldiers from other parts of the country will likely be less sympathetic. The morning was more active; the army trucks drove right past the compound entrance (which is on a major road), tear gas/concussion bombs were going off in fairly close succession for a while (though there was little gunfire), and right around noon there were some confrontations down the hill--young men being chased by the police ran down the road just over the hedge by the lower edge of the compound. Yesterday, one person was snapping pictures of some of the events with a zoom lens when the gendarmes passed by. They confiscated his camera and examined the cell phones of other looker...