Living on borrowed time

Coming North on Highway 25 a few weeks ago the visibility started to get worse, and the road icier. When I saw a car off the road on the far side and a sheriff's vehicle with emergency light on near it I knew it was time to hunker down. Shifting down and holding on I felt a thump under the front left side of the vehicle, and then we started to spin over the double line. I corrected as I could and kept on the gas, we were definitely on the wrong side of the street. As I fought to straightened it out I looked ahead; luckily nothing was coming downhill.

After crossing the double line and trying to get the vehicle back on course it started to spin again. This time I decided it was time to go into the ditch on my side of the road, and luckily was able to steer it into a fairly shallow snow area between the shoulder and the ditch. Then I looked around a little and decided to see if I could drive out of there, luckily we were facing North ... and did, with all-wheel drive, thank you Subaru. It was a harrowing drive and I was exhausted when I parked in the garage.

Sitting in front of the fire with the cat my mind went back to Buffalo, N.Y. where I first learned how to drive on ice (?). That school of hard knocks started on a trip home from the Airport, after some practice on local streets. The expressway had been worked by snow crews, the cloverleaf I had to take down to the trunk road hadn't; and we (my wife and very small children in car seats) went into a half spin down the grade. Luckily this was a great handing Peugeot with excellent tires. I got it almost straightened out with about 50 yards to go before a blinking stop sign, shifted down again and by the time we got to the sign were nearly stopped. I looked in the rear view mirror, luckily nothing coming behind us.

Pulling carefully around the corner on to the shoulder of the trunk road I waited for a break in the traffic. The road had been worked and so the trip home, although arduous, was uneventful. My life expectancy at that time was still on charts, perhaps twenty years to go. By the time I got to the couch after the trip up 25 I had outlived my life expectancy and was thanking "my lucky stars," and whatever small amount of skill I possess. Suggestion: standard transmission, all wheel or 4 wheel drive, good tires and all the coolness and experience behind the wheel you can summon. Adrenaline* rushes are very uncomfortable, and, I think, not very good for you.

* This really is epinephrine and isn't all bad, but keep it to a minimum, please.

Dark and Light

A friend recently reminded me that I have neglected the BLOG; this will be a feeble attempt to get "back on track." A recent trip to a local coffee shop found me looking at the bookshelves and other shelving units created by a local carpenter/log cabin builder, Mike Falls. My question was what are they for, besides backpacks and magazines & books? Are the books borrowable? Yes, and so my eye landed on a volume of stories by the genius of crime fiction, Elmore Leonard. A huge successor to the likes of Raymond Chandler this man takes it to the dark side of life, in the terrain of cops and criminals and where they often intermix.

His writing is excellent and it is tempting to me to deviate from my usual reading preferences and go on the dark side with him. Years ago when one of my sons was beaten and arrested by the Mpls. police for being involved with a political demonstration I got a glimpse of an inner city city hall/police dept. milieu, where police officers and thugs look alike, and where there is a feeling of fear about what is going on. And this in a city where the mayor was supposedly a progressive democrat, and the police chief an intellectual.

How different is a saint like Rabindranath Tagore's interest in the Jiban-debata and the likes of seeming opposites and the fiction of Elmore Leonard? Tagore: "The poet who takes up all the good and bad in me, all my constituent parts, the favourable and the unfavourable alike, to go on creating my life - it is he that in my poetry I call Jiban-debata." I suggest a walk on the wild side with both of these authors.