Putting aside Toys, p.2

. . . So I got up on my appointed day to leave on a cross-country trip to deliver my 2000 Toyota Tacoma PU to my friend in AZ to consummate the sale of it to him we had negotiated over the phone and went around the corner with it to my local used-car lot with it. I told them there (they know me) that I was driving west to sell the PU to a friend and what the price was, and I said I would eschew the trip and sell it to them if they matched the price.

Obviously, my price was low, but fair for my friend, because the dealer agreed to it, minus $200 for "gas consumption" on the trip (and motels because the trip would take days of driving, plus a flight back).  Built like a tank, my friends described to me my very own single-owner 18 year old Toyota with 99,900 miles on it, and good for 150,000 more miles at least.

I hated to part with it, I loved that truck, and I felt bad selling it out from under my buddy out west, but he understood.  He still gave me hell about it though, because he had used up some of his capital with his new wife to talk her into agreeing to accept such an old vehicle into the household as their second car.

She would get the BMW, see, with the automatic transmission and he would get the manual transmission 2WD pickup that was a little bit beat up but not to bad to drive.  Boy, those Japanese make great, long-lasting cars and now I was down to only one vehicle, a 2015 Nissan 4WD PU.

When we grow up, we must put aside our Toys.

As I pondered having two pick-ups, my new (used) massive 4X4 traveling truck and my beloved Toyota Tacoma 2000 PU with 99,900 miles on it, good for 150,000 more I was told, since I'm involuntarily retired now, I must trim costs. Two ownership windshield stickers ($40 each), two vehicle property tax bills (hundreds, remember No More Car Tax?--that didn't get done), double insurance (almost a thousand), and maintenance costs.

I called up my buddy John in AZ and offered to sell my stick-shift PU to him at a fair price. He recently got married and made the mistake of teaching his wife to drive, so now he needs a second car for himself.

The fact that the Toyota has a stick-shift, which I love, is a limiting factor in selling a vehicle because many people with operator's licenses can't drive a manual transmission. (Do you even know what I'm talking about?) All I had to do was drive to AZ to deliver it to John, 2,000 miles away, in the winter.

Hmm. The morning I was going to leave on my cross-country trip arrived, and I lolled in bed thinking about a series of Motel-6's across the country, gasoline and toll costs and whether I had enough books-on-tape to last the trip. My thoughts turned to the used-car lot a stone's throw from my back yard where I had purchased my new (used) truck a few weeks earlier... .

I just like 'em

I take lots of pictures.

I carry my Sports Camera whenever I run.

Over the years I quite by accident occasionally get snapshots I like.

My car trips and running sometime take me past memorable sights.

Photos also can memorialize persons I know.

Or places.

Or effects.

Here are eight over the years that I like.

Parking in Arlington

I'm having trouble with regulators these days.  Yesterday I enjoyed a lunch with a friend at a restaurant in Arlington. 

Arlington is notorious for its parking enforcement.  They make you want to never go there.

After lunch, I returned to my car and was standing there with my driver's door open, one foot inside the car, waiting for my friend to come get in.  He was lagging behind twenty feet or so on the sidewalk, coming and plainly in sight.

An Arlington Meter Maid swung by in the traffic lane on her Segway.  Vroom vroom look at me I'm an "Officer" and I'm bad.

While I stood there, standing with my car door open, one foot inside, waiting for my passenger who was in sight mere feet away and coming, she wrote out a ticket (they punch in or scan in your license plate, hit a code and out pops the ticket in seconds) and tendered it to me while I stood there, standing with my car, door open, foot inside waiting for my clearly visible passenger.

"This is my car," I said.  "And that is your ticket," she said smugly.

"I'm not parking, I'm standing," I said.  "There are no signs prohibiting standing."

"You're seven minutes over," she said sneeringly.  "$35 for seven minutes, five dollars a minute, three hundred dollars an hour to park in Arlington?" I asked while I still stood there with my driver's door open and my foot inside the car waiting for my passenger who was plainly visible a few feet away to get in the car.

"Take it up with the traffic board," she said.  "Do you know how hard it is to stand on this machine all day?"

I had no sympathy for her for her complaining, probably she should come down off her mount a little to address her prodigious frame.  She swirled around in the traffic lane on her Segway like the Lone Ranger rearing up Silver and roared off at twelve mph, swerving around the corner in search of quota fulfillment.

Welcome to Arlington, Virginia, friend.  My weekend running buddy who lives in Arlington assures me that Traffic Court in Arlington is merely Kangaroo Court where they'll just assess the printed penalty and then assess you 15% more in court costs for having the temerity to come in.

Fourth of July

On the morning of the Fourth, I ran a 5K race in Potomac, Maryland with Jeanne. I run a race every Fourth of July.

In 2001, I ran a 5-miler in Fredericksburg in under 40 minutes which pleased me, so I didn't run another 5-miler until last year because I was afraid I'd "ruin" my 40 minute benchmark in the next one (I didn't). In 2002, I ran a 6K in Baltimore in over 30 minutes which displeased me, so I had to wait a whole year to run it again so I could get this oddball distance under 30 minutes (I did). Who says runners are obsessed with numbers?

In 2004, I ran a 25:51 at the Cure Autism Now 5K in Potomac. I ran it again the next year in order to break 25 minutes on the somewhat hilly course but guess what? I ran exactly 25:00 so that didn't count. Last year I had a good day and passed over the finish line at just over 23 minutes. This year I ran the Potomac race again in a relaxed manner, having met my goals there, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

However, I have been dealing with a tendinitis issue in my left leg since April. It limited me to running just 50.5 miles in May. Since I'm getting ready for Chicago in October, I bumped that up to 100 miles in June but it caused my leg to get worse again. (Pain is not merely weakness leaving the body.).

July 1st I did an LSD of 15 miles at a 9:20 pace and although the leg felt alright during the run, it felt like fire afterwards. I tried to run the next day but quit after a block. I legged out 2 1/4 miles the following day leading the weekly running group at work and then did the relaxed July Fourth 5K.

Coming back from the race, I decided how best to enjoy the rest of the holiday. Rather than jostle with the masses on the Mall to view the fireworks, I figured out how to watch the Falls Church fireworks from a really good, really close-up spot.

The second tallest structure in Falls Church is the six-level parking garage at West Falls Church Metro which overlooks the town's high school playing fields. (You can see the town's tallest structure from there, the enormously tall back-stop costing hundreds of thousands of dollars behind home plate on the baseball field which prevents foul balls from sailing onto cars speeding by on Interstate-66 one hundred feet away.) The city launches its fireworks every year at 9:30 pm from the football field, one hundred yards away from the parking structure.

My idea was to park my pickup truck atop the parking garage in a spot overlooking the football field and watch the show from a front-row seat in my car. At noon I parked in the last remaining space along the wall nearest the field. Other folks evidently had the same idea. I ran home from there, an even mile, in 7:55. My leg hurt.

In the evening a friend dropped by and we walked to the parking structure where we clambered onto the bed of my pickup. We sat and watched the thirty-minute pyrotechnic display as it literally unfolded right before our eyes. It was spectacular! (My pickup. Hey, how do you like my cool 26.2 oval magnet below the rear window?)

The only downside was that after the fireworks it took an hour to get my truck out of the packed parking garage so I could drive my friend to her car. The next day, of course, was a work day.

I also called and left a message for my oldest child, a 21-Y.O. who lives in Arlington with his Mother. I asked him to call me to say whether he'd like to go with me when British soccer superstar David Beckham and his team play against the DC United at RFK.

I regret that my estranged son never returned my call. He was victimized as a boy by a form of child abuse known as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which is the deliberate destruction of the other parent's bond with a child by the parent with primary physical custody and his or her coterie of hired gunslinger "professionals."