Weekend Report
Friday was the BoTS (Bells on Temple Square) concert. I ended up driving, which, by common consent, was apparently a good thing. In addition to myself we had my wife, the number 1 daughter and my parents-in-law. There are two ways to get downtown, the main way and then a special HOV (carpools and such) only exit. Initially the main freeway seemed pretty clogged and the carpool lane was wide open so I decided to take it in, and take that exit, by the time we got close to downtown it was the carpool lane that was slow and the rest of the freeway was more open. But the worst was yet to come.
There's a fairly significant curve to the left (the same side as the HOV lane) right before you get to downtown. As I came around the curve I noticed that there were lots of brake lights, and the the people in front of me were veering off onto the shoulder to avoid hitting the cars in front of them. I couldn't use the shoulder myself because then I would hit the people who were veering. So I made a risky decision and decided to veer right. I didn't have time to do a head check, so I tried to stay in my lane as much as possible, but by the time the van screeched to a halt I was about 1/3 into the other lane, and yeah some people did honk at me, but I didn't hit anyone and no one hit me so I called it a success.
Overall the experience rattled me a little bit, but I think it freaked my passangers out even more. I was honored to hear that my 84(?) year old step-father-in-law had expressed his relief that I was driving rather than him. In any case with the exception of some truly awful traffic the rest of the night passed relatively uneventfully.
On Saturday I went and saw Casino Royale with a friend, and then we met up with another friend later for some dinner. Before the movie I had heard that the last 20-25 minutes felt kind of tacked on, and that the initial chase scene (on foot, if you can believe it) will go down as one of the great chases in cinema. Other than that I thought Daniel Craig did very well as the newest Bond, and that despite much of the movie revolving around a poker game (texas hold-em of course), the pacing never flagged.
On Sunday I ended up using the question from Friday's blog about the number of nations who survived from 1911 to the present as my opening monologue for Sunday School. It actually worked quite well, since we were covering Nebechanezzer's dream about the statue (head of gold, upper body of silver, etc.) Later we went up to my parents house in Ogden and had a great meal. The drive back was through a pretty bad snow storm, it wouldn't have been so bad if my youngest daughter hadn't kept kicking the back of my seat...
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December...
There's a fairly significant curve to the left (the same side as the HOV lane) right before you get to downtown. As I came around the curve I noticed that there were lots of brake lights, and the the people in front of me were veering off onto the shoulder to avoid hitting the cars in front of them. I couldn't use the shoulder myself because then I would hit the people who were veering. So I made a risky decision and decided to veer right. I didn't have time to do a head check, so I tried to stay in my lane as much as possible, but by the time the van screeched to a halt I was about 1/3 into the other lane, and yeah some people did honk at me, but I didn't hit anyone and no one hit me so I called it a success.
Overall the experience rattled me a little bit, but I think it freaked my passangers out even more. I was honored to hear that my 84(?) year old step-father-in-law had expressed his relief that I was driving rather than him. In any case with the exception of some truly awful traffic the rest of the night passed relatively uneventfully.
On Saturday I went and saw Casino Royale with a friend, and then we met up with another friend later for some dinner. Before the movie I had heard that the last 20-25 minutes felt kind of tacked on, and that the initial chase scene (on foot, if you can believe it) will go down as one of the great chases in cinema. Other than that I thought Daniel Craig did very well as the newest Bond, and that despite much of the movie revolving around a poker game (texas hold-em of course), the pacing never flagged.
On Sunday I ended up using the question from Friday's blog about the number of nations who survived from 1911 to the present as my opening monologue for Sunday School. It actually worked quite well, since we were covering Nebechanezzer's dream about the statue (head of gold, upper body of silver, etc.) Later we went up to my parents house in Ogden and had a great meal. The drive back was through a pretty bad snow storm, it wouldn't have been so bad if my youngest daughter hadn't kept kicking the back of my seat...
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December...
posted by DireKobold at 10:00 AM
2 Comments:
I just remember what I learned in the Navy: the first rule of maneuvering a ship is to avoid accidents at all costs. If breaking any other rule can prevent an accident, do so.
That's not to say that you should break the rules (that would likely cause more accidents). But hey, if everyone's safe, job well done.
Ah, Navy people, I should've known the company was good here for a reason.
Nice work with the gnarly traffic. A metal filing cabinet fell off a pickup in front of me on I-5 once and taught me a real lesson about the unexpected.
I'm happy to be car-less now.
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