Bad Drivers, Flat Tire, and Cell Phone Laws

As I mentioned yesterday, Summer Session I started this week so that means it is back to the daily grind. Unfortunately, things got off to a bit of a rocky start. As we were about to head off to campus yesterday, Colleen caught Roxy peeing on the bed. Had it been Rubi, it might not have been so bad (since she has a history of this sort of thing) but now that Roxy is on the act we are a bit worried. Luckily, we caught it before it had a chance to really seep into the sheets so we quickly got everything thrown in the washing machine. In practically no time we were off to the mean streets of La Jolla to get Colleen to work.

Californian’s have a reputation for being poor drivers (especially when even the slightest drizzle appears) but there must be something about the beginning of summer session that brings out the worst in people. I think we were cut off, nearly ran into, and (in general) mortified way too many times for a 10 minute commute.

Bad driving aside, the new cell phone law took effect in California today. Granted, the $20 fine for getting caught the first time doesn’t seem like a big persuader to go spend $50 on a bluetooth headset, I was interested to see how many people I could spot today using a cell phone the (newly) illegal way. I only noticed 2 people (since I was trying not to get run over by angry motorists while biking). The funny part is that I didn’t really set out to keep a tab when I left the apartment this morning; I only thought about it after some guy nearly pulled out of a driveway and hit me because he was too busy blabbing on his phone to pay attention to the road. Zoinks!

On the plus side, at least I was biking today. Yesterday I was about to hop on my bike for my morning commute when I realized that I had a flat tire. I’ve had my bike for nearly 3 years now but I still haven’t had to change my own tire. Never one to look too far ahead, I had to do some “just-in-time compiling” of the instructions on how to do this seemingly simple repair. After one fairly poor video tutorial, I found one that made more sense and I was on my way to bike maintenance glory. Well, that is after I realized that sizing of bike tubes is a little strange and that I wasn’t going insane when I thought the tube was too big. What should have been a 5 minute repair ended up taking an hour but at least now I am actually equipped to handle this kind of thing in the future.

I guess that’s enough for now. I’ll catch you up on my first couple days of TA’ing tomorrow or the next day.

- Sat

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