The Mad Dash

Complaining about other drivers seems cliche, let's be honest. Today, however, I feel compelled to. I live near a major road that, just a few years back, wasn't. When I first moved here, it was a two lane suburban street. The problem was that it lay along a proposed route that would connect a very important part of Jacksonville to another very important part of Jacksonville. Portions of this route had already been built, with some on top of preexisting infrastructure while others were purpose built for the remaining leg.

Seemed like a good idea to the traffic planners.

Aside from the one purpose built leg, most of the route runs through neighborhoods, sidewalks bordering its asphalt flanks, with well delineated (though I think narrow) bicycle lanes. The speed limit for most of this run is 45 mph, typical for most suburban arteries in such settings, with a small 55 mph segment through a less congested area, then back down to 45 for the remainder.

Of course, nobody drives the speed limit anymore.

But this route has gotten almost dangerous.

Wait; strike the "almost".

Today, as I drove home from work, I found myself doing 55 in the long 45 stretch. I was in the left lane, preparing for my left turn, and while I normally don't like to speed at all, not doing so in this situation is foolhardy.

The trouble is that people were passing me, in the right lane, at speeds that were probably closer to 70. If they were simply going around is one thing, but they maintained these speeds and that slot until they disappeared down the road. If it were one or two people is one thing, but this seemed to have been almost every single one of them today.

And if it hadn't been for the rain, chances are they would have encountered bicyclists a little further up the road. Indeed, they may have, beyond my turn off.

Which brings me to another terrifying moment.

I have to make a left turn into my neighborhood where there is no light. This means crossing the two westbound lanes. Gauging the speed I need to cross the remaining lanes should be easy, assuming that the oncoming traffic is doing 45 mph. Which, of course, is not the case. Just like the eastbound jets, we now have westbound jets, also moving along at speeds greater than 55. This is the flow I have to go with during my morning commute, when my thirty one hundred pound Volvo 240 wagon is still warming up.

As anyone can tell you, getting an older station wagon up to speed is hard enough, let alone one that weighs in at a ton and a half. Then, not even a third of a mile up, I have to get into the left lane to turn off (I take a different, though parallel, route in the morning). In other words, I have to scoot my one and a half ton elderly grande dame of a car into the left lane, where many a frustrated test pilot seems to be living, all the while being pushed by others.

It can be argued that I wouldn't be having this problem if I were to buy a newer car, perhaps a lighter one. Yes, that'd be swell, except, of course, I live and die by the adage "buy new, wear it out, make do or do without". Besides, if people were doing the speed limit, or even just a little over it, this would not be a problem; my car is quite capable of speeding along, it just takes a little time to get there.

But this is just crazy. Forget coffee, my morning adrenalin rush is provided by my fellow drivers.

I could so go into how this seems endemic of a society that lives faster than it should. I won't.

Though I just did, of course.

The Rounding

When I was young, I really wasn't particularly active. Due to a number of health problems, my activities were restricted to those less strenuous. I did a number of things most children did, but not those that pushed my body too hard.

Because of that, as well as one of my health problems, I was a little pudgy. Earlier, I could only be described as round, but as a teen, I always carried around a belly. It was my cross to bear, and I still do.

At least my activities were stimulating, at least for me. I built models, rode my bicycle, explored the woods behind our house, walked to Pic n' Save for my parents, went to the library by myself, stuff that seems, in my still young mind, to be fairly harmless. I did play some sports, though the last time I played football, it shattered my collarbone; no future in the NFL for me. No, most of my activities were really centered around learning and exploring. Not school work, but self directed education.

The other day, we went to the water park. Right now, swimming is a real pain for me; I have an injured shoulder, the one that many years earlier I busted playing back-lot football. My plan was to laze around in a float and maybe wade in the wave pool. Being a poor swimmer, even when my shoulder isn't hurting I prefer those activities anyway.

When we arrived at the water park, our friends had already been there for awhile in our shared cabana. I'm body shy, and always dread the moment I need to remove my shirt to hit the liquid. You see, I still have a bit of a belly. A bit more, in fact. Thin arms, thin but somewhat well-shaped legs, and a belly. I worry that people will look and comment, as they are so apt to do.

Fortunately for me, I was in good company.

I would have to guess that a good three quarters of all the adolescent boys there were rounder than I ever was. Their parents, namely good ol' dad, were my size or bigger. Well tanned, muscular, frequently tattooed but with bellies that sometimes rivaled my own. Definitely the wrong sort of oneupmanship.

In total, I would have to say that two thirds of the males there had my body form.

For the first time in my life, my shape wasn't the exception, it was the rule.

The parents' condition could be forgiven. With age comes weight, usually, and once you hit your late thirties and early forties, it becomes a challenge. But these kids?

Even as we were heading home, I noted a number of local boys who wore the same body shape. Sadly, there were also a number of girls who looked the same.

Maybe we've become too focussed on activities that require more mental exercise than physical. It would be easy to spout off the numbers from the government about how we've become less active overall, but that's not my point.

I feel for these kids.

I know that by the time I reached sixteen I was capable of making twenty mile round trips on my Schwinn Continental 10-speed. I may have had a belly, but I had rather muscular legs. Some of my other friends who did the same were veritable rails, with barely any body fat; how I envied them. Yes, I still built models and yes I was still a bookworm. But my parents rarely took me those places I needed to get my things, and when I became interested in girls they seemed even less interested in giving me lifts to see them (Mom, Dad; you were wise). If I wanted something, it was either walking or bicycling.

To be honest, I loved my bike.

I don't see children today riding bikes as we once did. Maybe it's because the most common ones today, derived from off-road and mountain bike designs, are heavier than the bantam weight Schwinns, Huffys and Raleighs of my youth. Perhaps its our now fear based culture; we are afraid of letting our children wander beyond our sight.

Or maybe it's this thing I'm typing these words into.

Maybe it's all forms of distraction that keep us indoors. We've built our worlds around things that require that we sit and stay. Our children are growing up in those worlds.

Don't get me wrong, I feel that the computer and our networked world has been one of the greatest creations in human existence. With the click of a button I'm chatting with friends oceans away. I don't play most computer games but there is a Wii in the house, and it is a whole lot of fun. Many of the children I worked with told me about all the things they have made their game systems do, about how many hours they sat and explored all the little niches of their virtual worlds.

Sat and explored. It's fun.

So is bicycling, or flying kites, or hitting a few at the diamond.

And really exploring.

A Republic, Madame, If You Can Keep It

The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin was leaving at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman walked up and asked the good doctor if we were to have a monarchy or a representative government. "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," was his response.

The wise doctor knew perhaps too well how easy it would be, could be, for any form of government to be manipulated.

By the end of the 19th century, with the Constitution being interpreted in ways that I'm sure our founding fathers had never intended, the path was being blazed to allow the rich and powerful to manipulate our government more to their likings. There have been many times when they have been pushed back, held in check by the law. Eventually, though, they found ways to have the very population whom they were seeking to control vote to allow the powerful to do just that.

We the people were, and are, ultimately voting against our best interests.

It saddens me to see the depths of the divisions within this country today. Regardless of the differences, be they skin color, religious, philosophical, political or economic, these divisions seem to be growing in magnitude and width.

This is exactly what the powerful want.

In so allowing this divisiveness to flourish, they can go about their business of actually holding the reins of real power, namely economic.

I'm not sure if we've passed a threshold of no return yet, but I worry that we are fast approaching it. Woe be unto us if that happens.

As long as we allow the forces of fear and irrational thought to rule the day, as long as we allow rumor over fact, speculation over what can be substantiated, govern our actions, the powerful, whose interests are certainly not our own (and indeed can be said to be light years from it), will continue to manipulate us.

It is time for the people to realize that it is indeed "we the people". Failure to do otherwise will take this once great land of ours down a path that many have tread before. Remember, it is not military or economic strength that truly defines a nation. It is in how that nation stands for its principles, and for its people.

Happy Independence Day.