Bad Car-ma

Problems that used to be just a simple annoyance can become fiscally painful when one is only working erratically. I was actually looking forward to putting a few bucks in the bank with my new freelance gig at Sirius/XM (hosting on the POTUS Channel - watch this space in the coming days), because I was getting a couple of paid days for training, followed by a full week of work. But those dreams went away today, literally in a flash and a thump.

The flash was the telltale signal triggered when I sped past an unfamiliar speed camera on New Hampshire Avenue in Takoma Park at around 3:30 this morning. If you've read this blog, you know I'm no fan of speed cameras anyway, but THIS particular camera is especially heinous - and perhaps even not quite legal.

Allow me to present my case... I will confess to speeding well above the speed limit. Frankly, I wasn't thinking about speed because I was on the road alone - this being at 3:30am - and because my mind was focused on my new job. It's the placement of the camera that bothers me.

The only place in Maryland where speed cameras are currently legal is in Montgomery County. The location of this camera is in a place where Montgomery County crosses the road for literally just 5 or 6 blocks, with Prince George's County to the north and DC to the south. The camera is located at the bottom of a hill in both directions, so that traffic going either direction will have a natural predilection to be speeding. The camera is not near a school - it's in the middle of a commercial area, so I'm not even sure it's located there legally. But that's beside the point. Any argument the county can make that this is a matter of safety is simply absurd. That speed camera in Takoma Park is a cash grab - pure and simple.

But the Karma Gods were not done with me. On my way home (after carefully poking my way through Takoma Park), I felt a tell tale knocking under my car. I pulled into the parking lot of a high school and sure enough - my right front tire was flat. It has been a couple of years since I've changed a tire. It was warm and muggy out, but thankfully, it was cloudy and it was not yet raining, so I pulled everything apart in the trunk, got out the donut tire and the jack, and 20 minutes later, I was back in business.

The tire that had gone flat had lived a full life, I cut my hand as I pulled it off the wheel on the steel belt that was poking through the rubber, and I knew darn well that the other three tires were not in any better shape, so I took the car up to the tire shop in Olney (so nice to have one in the 'hood), and walked out an hour later with four new tires, a front end alignment and an oil change!

Now that I have a new set of tires for my '97 Honda, I'm good for another 5 years or so!

But with all of my transportation woes today, most of my work for this week has suddenly become pro bono. The only bono I want to consider these days is Sonny Bono. And he's dead.

How's This For Retro? I'm Making Mix Tapes!

Regular readers of "Life On The Beach" know that I drive a 1997 Honda Civic that recently passed the 100,000 mile mark. I love that car.... It gets me where I want to go, and in the $4.00 a gallon era, it gets nearly 30 miles to the gallon, so I love that too! However - there is one drawback. Because of its vintage, the Honda has a cassette deck, and NOT a CD player.

This creates a problem. As also previously discussed on this blog, I recently launched an alumni website for my college choir. The reason I launched that website was because my single old choir cassette had finally gone to the magnetic media graveyard, and I needed to reach out to my old school mates to save the music we recorded on analog tape thirty years ago from meeting the same fate.

For the past several days, my fellow choir alums have generously donated their cassettes to me, which I have been lovingly transferring to my hard drive and editing into individual tracks, which folks could then listen to online, or download and turn into their own CD's. No more worries of their analog cassette sound gradually devolving into mud!

Except for me. I could burn a CD or two to put in the family minivan, but do you think my wife is going to let me play "memory lane" in HER car? Think again. No - if I want to hear this recently-saved-from-certain-time-erosion-death music, I need to play the splendidly digitized files on my computer, and record them back onto cassette! Yes, I'm down to the point of creating mix tapes again!

Maybe I should put together some Bread and Dan Fogelberg cuts, create a make-out cassette and slip it under the Missus' pillow... then we could really go back to the 70's!

Thank You, Honda!

This is my 1997 Honda Civic. We bought it new in July of that year, trading in my wife's old Plymouth Horizon for 500 dollars, and walking away with this car for just a couple of hundred bucks over cost. I had a choice between the optional cassette deck or the optional CD player, and of course went with the more popular option... the cassette deck! After all, I had all those mix tapes at my disposal... and no one had ever heard of burning their own CDs! The sales manager at Sport Honda in Silver Spring gave me a good deal because I had just purchased two Hondas from him for WMAL that are still being used today as news vehicles. This practice tells us two things, but since I am sworn to take the high road, I will only make the second observation. Hondas are built to last!

I love my Civic. It is neither plush nor cool, and it has a couple of battle scars thanks to a couple of scrapes with pillers in the Jenifer Street garage over the years. However - it gets nearly 30 miles to the gallon, and it is reliable with a capital R. It could also make the drive to Connecticut Avenue to my old job by memory after more than a decade of commuting. The reason I'm writing about my Civic now is that we have observed an important milestone - Today, it reached the big 100 K.

The milestone was reached in Gaithersburg, near the Quince Orchard Swim Club, where I was dropping Brad off for a community service project he was involved in. We reached the pool with a mile or so to spare, so I drove around a traffic circle at a nearby school a half dozen times so we could experience the big flip together. A true father-and-son bonding experience!

It was especially signficant that I shared this moment with my oldest son. He is going to be 15 this fall, and it is certainly possible, if not likely, that the Civic will someday be Brad's first car. My first car was my grandfather's 1972 Ford Maverick, which was on its last legs when I inherited it, and which was spewing oil and smoke within a few months on its way to the scrap heap. I'm betting Brad will be getting a much better deal a couple of years from now!