The ride down Hwy 18 this fine Monday morning was uneventful: No fog, no rain, no wind, no rocks bigger than, say, walnuts on the road surface. The road still has lots of curves, but other than that, there’s just nothing to sweat today.
Of course, I aged significantly today at the traffic light at 40th Street. Generally, when I am on final approach, I watch that light like a fighter pilot coming in for a landing on a very short aircraft carrier. If the timing isn’t right to catch the light during its three seconds of green which happen every 20 minutes or so, I’ll head west on Starbucks Lane, hook a left at 40th, then another right to be back on southbound Waterman. There’s some sort of sadistic satisfaction, too, in watching my mirror and seeing the rest of the traffic still sitting there at the light as I get miles down the road. It’s not that I wish misery upon anybody, but it somehow gives me this very smug feeling of being WAY smarter than the rest of the drivers with my clever little detour.
But, then, sometimes, the whole plan falls apart, and I get stuck at the light… I guess I’m not THAT much smarter. This gives me a long, long, long time to contemplate why, for the love of Pete, they set the timing of that light to give 40th Street a green light for 20 minutes— for all zero of the cross- traffic cars to go through— while the commuter traffic coming off of the mountain sits there, engines idling away, putting exhaust into the air while getting zero miles per gallon, all of us aging. Beards sprout, the punch clock at work heads ever closer to red numbers, and we sit. And we sit, and we sit, and then we sit some more. I really need to make it a policy to ALWAYS take the Starbucks route, regardless of how good it looks that I’ll hit that light on its rare green moments.
But… in spite of the significant aging event that happened at 40th Street, I am still VERY excited about the launch of an actual up- to- date, current- event reporting service! As nostalgic of an experience it is to sit with an actual hand- filthifying newspaper, electronic news seems to be the way to get your news NOW, current, daily, hourly, even live, as this site will now provide for FREE. You can now browse, click, learn, enjoy, laugh, and even participate in conversations about mountain events, news, weather, anything. The dawning of a new day is here! It’s being brought to you by Raymond Ray… so let’s hear it: Hip hip for RAY!!! Hip hip for RAY!!!