Parking Up the Wrong Street

One of the joys of running is that you get to see a lot of interesting things.

Take the neighborhood I run through each day.

There is a home owner who has taken it upon him or herself to establish parking codes for the development.

I’m not sure this is legal, or even enforceable.  I’m sure there must be some story behind this (the guy I run with says it involves a neighbor who was having some work done on his home and construction vehicles being parked in front of this particular house.)  Regardless, the sign screams to me:  THANK GOD YOU DON’T LIVE HERE!  Seriously, who would want to deal with this every day?!

But I never saw anyone park there.

Until today.

I don’t even know where to begin.

The white tarp that looks like a bedsheet?

My truck isn’t parking . . .  it’s just sleeping!

Maybe they won’t see it if I cover it up.

You’re going to need a bigger tarp, Chief Brody!

Pay no attention to that truck behind the curtain!

I’m not a bad truck . . . just a very poor wizard.

Waving hand . . . This is NOT the truck you’re looking for.

But it gave me a smile on my run today.

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Deer Me

We “hit” a deer.

A friend of mine was relating a story this week. She and her husband were on their way home Tuesday night after a party.  It was dark (but not a dark and stormy night.)  All of a sudden, he hit the brakes.  She looked up from her Ipad just as he “hit a deer that when flying off to the side of the road.”  She claims they even “heard glass breaking.”

Now, you may wonder why I put that in quotes.  It’s because I can’t do air quotes in a blog.

The car was still drivable so they continued home–expecting the worst.

They assumed something like this.

When they pulled into their driveway and got out, there was no visible damage to the car.  There were no broken lights or mirrors to explain the broken glass sound they allegedly heard.   She claims there was a “patch of fur” on the fender but nary a dent or scratch to indicate that a deer was launched off the roadway by impact.  She further claimed that her husband took the car to a mechanic to check and make sure there was no damage under the vehicle–and everything checked out just fine.

This led those who were listening to conclude one of the following possibilities.

1.  There was no deer.  She made it all up.  I hit a unicorn the other day with my jeep.  There was some horn on the fender, but nothing else.  See, we can do that too.

2.  They hit a reindeer, flying low across the road.  It veered away at the last second, and the glass breaking noise was actually jingle bells.

3.  They hit a Christmas Ornament (those light-up deer you see grazing in yards amidst twinkle lights) that fell off someone’s truck.  It would explain the glass, but you would expect some scratching of the vehicle.

4.  They ate some psychedelic mushrooms by accident at the holiday party they were returning from.  This is the explanation that the listening group eventually agreed upon.  It had to be the ‘shrooms.  Maybe they were drunken ‘shrooms as well.

5.  There was a deer.  It did get hit.  There was miraculously no damage (the “immaculate impaction”) and right now there is a deer in the woods trying to convince his buddies that he did indeed get hit by a car and lived to brag about it.

“Dude, that’s just a bald spot.  You didn’t get hit by a car.  Quit pulling our deer legs!”

“I swear it’s true!  See . . . they broke my glasses too!”

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Fun While Running

Being a runner, you never know what kind of things you are going to run into.

Surprisingly, I have never “hit the wall.”

I have run into cars, poles, and trouble, but I have not yet hit the wall.  But I digress.

Recently, I went running in a suburban area of Phoenix and saw some funny things.

Traffic calming???? Is that even possible?

Traffic calming?  Are you serious?  Traffic and calm should not be in the same paragraph together–nay, the same blog together–let alone the same sentence or on the same sign.  Thank heavens it’s just temporary!  After one mile, you are free to go back to being an uptight driver.

Being from Pennsylvania, though, I had no idea of what this traffic calming is that you speak.

So I continued running.  I would have done that anyway, but now I was a runner on a mission.  I needed to find out the secret to calmer traffic.

Here it is:

The Circle of Calm

I know what you are thinking.  (I have ESPN.)  Actually, I am assuming that you are thinking the same thing I was.

What the BLEEP is this?

It’s a traffic circle!  My cell phone doesn’t take great pictures but the YIELD sign instructs drivers to yield to cars already in the circle.  The circle is apparently a calming shape appropriate for driving.  You have round wheels.  Round tires.  Several rounds in the shot-gun.  Why not a round road?

What the BLEEP were they thinking?  All they need to do is drive around Boston, with its infamous “circles of death” to understand that traffic circles are not calming.  (They call them rotaries, but I suspect rotisserie might be a better term.)  Sure, if you know where in the circle of traffic you want to be you are okay.  But if you are a lost tourist–beware!  I swear I saw a car driven by a skeleton in Boston going around in the circle.  The poor guy died before he could figure out how to get out of the circle.  (Don’t ask me how he never ran out of gas, because it would ruin the humorous image this is supposed to elicit.)  I followed his remains for three days myself.

The theory is that these “circles” slow traffic down.  Isn’t that what the speed limit signs are for?  Can’t we accomplish the same thing with a STOP sign to keep people from raging down the road at unsafe speeds?  How about a speed bump (although they call them humps in Arizona?)  How many taxpayer dollars were wasted on this project?  I am anything but calm here.

Worse yet, as a runner, I now had to run outside the circle lines because I was pretty sure the vehicles weren’t going to yield for me!

And then I finally ran all the way to Paradise.  Well, Paradise Drive.  And it was a DEAD END!

You can't get there from here!

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