Driving A Fred Flintstone Car Over A Glass Bridge

 Fred's Car

​​Random Ramble 4.2 – Driving Over Glass Bridges in my Fred Flintstone Car.

We have a new bridge over the river. It opened this past summer. The old bridge was built a long time ago when the river was a lake and the water barely moved underneath it. When they tore down the dams, the lake became a river again and the engineers worried the old bridge would be swept away by the fast current. The river runs free now. The fish can swim upstream to spawn and their babies can swim out to the ocean.

The new bridge is nice enough. The approach from the east is straighter and it seems likely that the new bridge will hold up to the fast water that flows through the old lake bed. The thing I dislike about the new bridge are the high concrete guard walls that block the view of the spot where the local elk herd hangs out before crossing the river. It’s the spot where I saw my first Roosevelt Elk a decade ago while I was driving with my nephew to go fishing. Now it’s pointless to look for the elk anymore when I go over the new bridge. It makes me a little sad.

 I’d like to have a car without a floor, like Fred Flintstone. If I went out for a drive, I’d give myself a running start, jump into my Fred Flintstone car and search the highways and byways of the countryside for glass bridges with glass decks. Every time I crossed a glass bridge in my Fred Flintstone car, I’d look down between my legs and enjoy the view below. When I crossed a beautiful river, I would see the fish swimming upstream. If there was a fisherman on the river, I’d wave to him (or her) with my toes and shout, “Hey Buddy, you’re fishing in the wrong spot. The fish are over there.” I’d point with my leg and he (or she) would wave back and catch a fish. That would me feel good.

If I drove to the city in my Fred Flintstone car, I would find a glass bridge that spans an expressway. When I drove over the expressway on the glass bridge, a cool breeze would waft up underneath my official Fred Flintstone loin cloth and I’d feel like Marilynn Monroe for a moment. When I looked past my feet, I’d ogle at a convoy of pretty girls below, all sitting in their convertibles in short dresses waiting for the convertible in front of them to move a foot or two. Maybe one would look up at me from her smart phone and wink.

Epilogue

The closest I ever came to owning a real Fred Flintstone car was the 1976 Dodge Aspen station wagon that I bought used with the 450 bucks my parents gave me for almost graduating from college. My sister gave me fuzzy dice (as a joke…..I think) and I hung them proudly from my rear view of my Aspen. After I drove my Aspen for a couple of years, the road salt started to rot out the floor on the driver’s side. A hole grew large enough for me to see the road between my feet when I was driving. If someone was tailgating me, I could drop an empty soda can on floor of my Aspen and launch it through the hole, like a depth charge, to fend the impatient jerk behind me.

One rainy night after a long day of fishing with my brother, my Aspen station wagon saved my life. I was driving home on three hours of sleep when I started nodding off. During one of my nods, I hit a pot hole with my front driver’s side wheel and a geyser of cold, muddy water to shot up through the floor onto my face and into my mouth (which was apparently open). I woke up drifting onto the shoulder spitting out gravel and pot-hole-water. I loved that car. It was my Fred-Flintstone-wannabe-car until I replaced the floor with some old metal shelves. 

I’ll never get to drive over a glass bridge in a bottomless car. Oh well.

 

What are they building?

Not that many, if any, humans noticed but I pulled my blog offline for a couple of weeks.  This is why I pulled it down. 

I started creating the material published in this blog a long time ago when things were changing in my life, my eyes were wide open, and I was learning. Writing for this blog has really helped me navigate some tough times and establish some clarity for myself.  I don't write nearly as  much now, but my eyes are still wide open and I am still learning. 

There was a time when I wrote daily and posted entries often. I only publish posts few times a year now. When I write now, it's more of a self indulgent brain exercise to let the world know that I am still here and learning. I like to believe that there's a handful of anonymous people out there who check in on me via my blog and few more who blog surf and land on "The Stuff That Makes a Firefly Glow." I can only hope that they read something in one of my posts that makes them feel something and/or maybe even smile.  I'll never really know. I am OK with this. 

I am a musician. When I perform music, I thrive on the validation I get from the folks I am playing for.  When it comes to my writing, I equate it more to the falling tree in the forest that is beyond earshotof humans. That said, I am curious about the who and where of the eyes that find this blog.  I check my blog often to see if anybody is reading it. On  most days, this blog is the falling tree in the forest.

A few months ago I noticed in my blog stats that it was getting A LOT more traffic I had more views in one month than I've had in the past 15 years. I was confused to see that nearly all the views where coming from Hong Kong....Why? 

When it comes to social media, I tend to be pretty private. I publish this blog under my nom de plume and and I am very careful about maintaining privacy  (and others) in my posts. The Hong phenomena peaked my curiosity so I did some research.  I learned a little about Hong Kong, intellectual property protections for digital content creators and data mining efforts underway for building Artificial Intelligence. Apparently, Hong Kong is a hotbed for the latter.

I will concede that I may be climbing the ladder of inference here but the thought of of a computer mining my blog for A.I. pisses me off to the point of wanting to take a shower. 

I took the blog off line for a while, changed the search engine settings and checked the my stats.  It seems to have worked for now.  If you know how to find my blog, kudos to you and thank you for stopping by.

I will be back to writing about life soon.

Cheeks

 

  

Sheets of Rain and 44 year-old Shadows That Don't Scare Me -originally posted April, 2007

I think I might be getting comfortable with my age. Did I survive Mid-life Crises? Who the hell knows. I’m not sure if it’s over or if I’ll ever know when it is. It’s been a pretty interesting ride so far and I think I have changed quite a bit, especially during the last couple of years. Having my shell cracked few times has certainly let some goopy shit inside of me slip out into plain view for the world to see, for me to see. Yikes!! All these cracks in my armor have me thinking it might be better to chuck the whole thing into the recyclable bin and save my energy for something better, like some time on the river with my kids.

Ahh…. I am fortunate to have had good people in my life. I am blessed to have some new-old souls and good folks who have returned after a hiatus of my own doing. I have enough X’s to win easily in tic-tac-toe without even going first. Each one has taught me a whole lot about myself and life. I’ve learned that my kids can be right sometimes when they argue with me and sometimes it really doesn’t matter if they aren’t.

I’ve certainly developed a deep appreciation for the magnitude of suffering that people endure in their lives. I think other people's crap always scared me because it reminded me so much of my own.

So really, whose crap was I really scared of? Its weird but, when I don’t run from it all the time, I start seeing some beauty in it. I see its beauty because I know where loss has led me. It’s made me sad, lonely, guilty, angry at myself and confused but,in the end, it has changed me in a good way. I can now look back to when I believed that really had my shit together and see that I was putting everything I had into duct tape to keep the outhouse from caving in on me.

As I am learning about compassion and sacrifice, I am also learning about those things that I should never give away, things that make me who I am. Without these things, I don’t really have much to offer to myself or those whom I love. I am talking about my music, my time outdoors and being able to jazz on very beautiful yet, seemingly unimportant things. I am talking about the rain was coming down in sheets tonight, a good day with my girls and my dog plunking his fury mug on my shoulder when we drive.

I am learning about balance and I am learning that it is fleeting. Nobody ever really had it for any length of time, certainly not me. Sometimes I think the rug is there and then, its gone. It doesn’t get pulled out from underneath me, it just goes. When it does, it kinda sucks to have admit that its not there. It sucks more to realize that I have been pretending stand on it. It really, really sucks to acknowledge the truth that it was never there in first place. These are "good kinda sucks" because they remind me and make me notice...... Humbled once more

These are a few of My Favorite Things - 1/30/24

I was thinking this morning that the postings on this blog span 20 plus years of my life.  That's a long time.

These are some of my favorite things today:

Hikes through the forest on rainy, misty days.

 

An hour of light sleep in the morning after waking up to let dawg out.

Being a part of something much bigger than myself. 

Waves crashing.

Pressing the first footprints onto a snowy trail or a sandy beach.

 

Celebrating another day of being alive with my first sip of coffee. 

Basking in the afterglow of an evening of making music with my bandmates for a bar full of music lovers. 

The treasued moments when my brain gives me respite from it's endless clamor to focus on the task at hand or the person I am with

 

The afternoon sun in the winter.

 

Being in Love with someone who loves me just as much.

2024 is here

I know that the passage of time doesn't speed up or slow down. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year (except leap years). How it feels to me is not so constant though.  I suspect a strict daily routine might slow the passage of time for some due the monotony of repetition. For others, routine might hasten it with days rich with meaningful things to do. I wonder how the passage of time feels to people who are highly organized, rarely waste a move and do more in a day than I do in week.  I can only wonder. I waste too much time doing nothing this time of year. It feels like time is crawling along, but when I look at the calendar I can see that it's flying by.

I stay up late binge watching documentaries, sleep away precious daylight and spend too much time mulling awake in bed. I guess you could say I feel guilty about it. I do.  The thing is, I have never in my life enjoyed sleep so much.

The days are getting longer again. We finally have some weather coming that will marginally resemble winter. I have even felt a little more motivated of late. The gig schedule is filling in and we have some getaways planned. I am excited about the bands I am working with and working hard to get better at playing. The home front feels very secure and fullfilling. The cavalcade of wonderful people never ceases and  I know I an blessed, even on my worst days. Onward and Happy New Year 

I am really looking forward for to the next 12 months.

Shorter Days, longer nights and many more clouds

The Summer weather was amazing.  There were days on days without a cloud in the sky, no bugs, a healthy routine of biking, hiking, fishin, playing music and the company of good people.  

Now, the trees with leaves will soon lose them soon.  The Salmon that were spawning a couple of weeks ago are laying dead now, rotting away at the bottom of the river. The blue skies are yielding to gray and we are losing daylight at a ferocious pace every day.

This is life and a sobering reminder of its impermanence. My love/hate relationship with the Fall.

Spring 2023 Re-entry into retirement AKA "Re-retired"

 The monkey needed a little help exiting after a gross overstay on my back.  Its late spring now.  The weather has been spectacular, re-retirement is fullfilling, finances are better,  music (albeit a little slow) has been more fun than ever.  More importantly, I am really enjoying the company of my fellow humans in this dirty ole PNW town, one in particlar.

Goodbye New York House. You treated me well and taught me much.  Most recently you pointed out out how hard it is to manage a property from 3k miles away AND that I never want to be a landlord.  You provided for my grown daughters  and gave me the financial security to re-retire and buy a boat.

Goodbye day jobs.  I am done with you. If I want play money,  I will earn it by playing.  End of story. 

 Hello beautiful world and beautiful girl.  I am all yours for as long you want me around.