Rants

Donna and I decided to walk up to the Chinese Restaurant to eat supper. It is about a mile one way, so it makes a nice evening walk. Walk, eat and walk back helping to burn off the meal. When we got back to the house, I went to unlock the front door and when I pulled my keys out of my pocket I realized I didn’t have the house key anymore. When I got the custom caricature key chain I didn’t put the key back on, hadn’t used it in so long that I figured what the heck, leave it off. Donna reached into her purse to get her keys and it turns out all she had was a car key, a key to her desk and a house key that we have no earthly idea whose house it goes to, but we do know it doesn’t go to ours. Normally Donna’s mom would be home and she could let us in or maybe the door wouldn’t even been locked, but tonight we had to use the emergency key. I took the screen off a window that we knew was unlocked, Donna boosted me up and I climbed in.

Borrowed Hudson Hawk on DVD from a friend at work, I think I deserve either a medal or some commitment papers for lasting 1 hour and 1 minute into this movie before hitting the eject button. I like Bruce Willis usually, but this must have been something he shot during a hiatus of Moonlighting, back when he was grasping with being a “star.” As a bonus bit of ugliness it had my least favorite movie actress of all time in it, Sandra Bernhard.

When came back from the weekend trip we noticed that they had replaced the puny new stop signs on Two Notch Road with King Kong sized stop signs. I guess people were still cruising through them so to help out our no-account, not paying attention drivers to notice the signs. For reference standard stop signs are 30 inches across, these puppies are 48″ and require two posts to support them. They have even put two orange flags on the “Warning Stop Ahead” signs.

I try to be polite by taking my hat off while eating. It is kind of like not putting your elbows on the table, not always practiced anymore, but just a small nicety that I hope people appreciate. I either hang the hat over the back of the chair or try to hang it off my knee and invariably it falls to the floor in the normal dining movements. Most of the time I remember it and search the floor or I don’t remember and get lucky by accidentally kicking it when getting up to leave. For the second time in 3 months I left my Palmetto Cycling Coalition hat behind in a restaurant. The first time we were near Charlotte, NC so we could go shopping at a big ol’ mall. When I got back to the hotel and realized that the cap was gone we called them and they had it. Rather than make a return trip that evening I told them I’d get it the next day when we were over there again. This time we were in northern Georgia following a bicycle race. We had dinner at the fine establishment of Pruett’s BBQ, so I didn’t even really need to take it off, but did. When I got back to the motel this time and realized I’d left it behind again, I just said forget it. It was raining and I didn’t want to drive back the 10 miles to get the hat. Tomorrow we were leaving town early and weren’t coming back, so that option was out. Figuring it must be fate that I don’t have that hat, I abandoned it in rural western Georgia. Anyway, I’ve got a spiffy new Master’s Miata Club hat to start wearing around waiting for me at home.

You know those 6″ high things that are there to prevent you from pulling to far in? Well because of the lowered stance of the Miata I have to be very careful how close I pull in and park anywhere. This one snuck up on me in a restaurant parking lot. It was the first in a line in the middle of a run. The usual visual clues were misleading as the car to my left could actually pull up closer because of the staggered shape of the sidewalk. Fortunately this one was short enough that it only scraped the bottom of the spoiler on the way in. On the way out, because that was now against the shape of the spoiler it made an ugly noise, but didn’t do any more damage. Luckily all these bits are made of flexible space-age polymers, if they had been custom fiberglass parts I’m sure shards of my front end would still be lying there in the parking space.

After living with the 4-Way Stop at the end of our street for 6 days and having passed through it a couple dozen times I have come to the conclusion that people here in Aiken don’t know how a 4-Way Stop works. It is not just because they are unfamiliar with this particular one, they just plain don’t know how to deal with one. As a public service here is the section on 4-Way or Multi-Way Stops from the South Carolina Driver’s Manual:

Another situation is at an intersection where all streets have stop signs. When this occurs, a sign reading “4-way” or “Multi-Way” is added to the stop signs. A motorist arriving at the intersection must yield the right of way to motorists who arrived before him, waiting his turn to enter the intersection. If two motorists arrive at the same time, if on different streets, the driver on the left should yield to the driver on the right; or if on the same street, a driver desiring to turn left should yield to the driver from the opposite direction.

This is one of those things that is remembered long enough to pass the test and then forgotten if you never use it. This may be part of the problem, my wife and I racked our brains trying to locate another 4-Way Stop in town and couldn’t do it, Aikenites never get to practice this art.