There are companies so small nobody’s heard of them that have huge stockpiles of materials and the trucks to move them all. I can’t help recalling this is what Yamamoto must have seen prior to disapproving of the attack on Pearle Harbor. Take this company, “Aramark”. Never heard of it, but look at this fleet of brand new delivery trucks.I also saw miles after mile of sidings with idle truck trailer cars. You know, the ones that move the trucking containers. I did not know they have a telescoping section that is matched to the length of the unit. There must have been 1,000 of them rusting away, unless they naturally look all rusty.
I call such trips “Apollo 10”, just there and back. It is not possible to take a bicycle onto the Metro without a prearranged monthly pass. There was a small café near the depot where I sat and watched the patterns for an hour, then just came home. I biked past Hollywood Station, the insta-slum on Dixie but didn’t waste another digital photo on it. There is a sign on the curb over a month now about a two-bedroom house for rent for $845, no takers. It is just too expensive for this area.
So much for the theory that trailer rooms rent for $1200 per month around here. Here is another photo, this time it is the stump of a perfectly good tree the city cut down. It was healthy and not uprooting any sidewalks. A crew of five men toppled it with chainsaws and fed it into the chopper. On the way past, I asked the foreman, out of curiosity, why they chopped it down. He said, “Cause we don’t like it.”It was a little warmer today so I took the time to completely overhaul all the working parts on the Coleman lantern. It was sputtering a bit causing the light to flicker not bad but perceptibly when reading. Now it burns like new, with a blinding white light you can’t look at directly. If I go cross-country, this is the lamp coming with me. On full blast it lights up a twelve yard radius.
In the news is America’s largest new ship with cruises from $599. The “Allure of the Sea” is new, but the pricing is 1950 with the old “double occupancy” scam. That means the cruises are really from $1,198. I’ve talked before about my preference for traveling alone, and part of my reasons are that you do not necessarily want anybody from back home knowing everything you do while on holidays. At least I don’t.
[Author’s note: I always meet nicer women when I’m on a trip. Introspection tells me that may be for the reason that the women travel in pairs themselves and the only privacy they get is meeting a man with his own room. That plus they know you must have enough money to pay for it. I did not set out to discover this, it was a gradual realization. Men with their own private room have an advantage. Don’t document me on this theory, it is just a hunch I get from experience because lots of other men travel alone and never get any. Ask my brothers.]
I’m the adventuresome sort that doesn’t care for itineraries. When I travel with a companion I find my experiences are continually cut short by what they don’t want to do. Thus, I wind up climbing the pyramid by myself anyway while they sit in the hotel watching Green Acres re-runs. One has to smile at the ship itself, it is proof that people with packaged lives want packaged holidays. It seems they don’t go on a cruise to cruise, but to gamble, shop, golf, watch movies, surf the net and generally otherwise make asses of themselves.
They appear to like anything that takes their minds off being on a boat. The brochure shows one stupid jock actually riding a pulley along a cable strung between the uptakes (smokestacks). I’ve always associated ocean sailing with relaxation, miles away from these types of people. Can you imagine trying to relax on deck with a good book while the Flying Bastard of Boston is dangling fifty feet over your head and wondering if he does manage to scare the shit out of himself, where is it going to land?
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