Man, that whole muffler thing made me crazy. All that cursing and what-not; shameful!
It did remind me of a funny story from several years ago, though.
I was living in Chattanooga at the time and was driving back home from Ohio. As is my custom, the music was loud and I was passing everyone in sight. And they were all giving me an inordinate amount of leeway; politely moving aside to let me by, changing lanes to avoid being behind me, slowing way down as I passed them, etc. I didn’t think much of it and it wasn’t until I slowed to exit for gas in Kentucky that I heard the muffler dragging. When I got stopped and took a look, the pavement had ground a hole in the bottom of the muffler about 6 inches wide by 3 inches long, so I imagine it was spraying some serious sparks. I left the remains of the muffler beside the gas station trash can and chuckled all the way home at the spectre of my ‘87 Sentra barrelling down the highway, spewing sparks, with me totally oblivious.
That’s just how I roll, boyyyyyyy!
So, I’m driving home from work today, and as I come across one of the speed-bumps by the park, the whole goddamned exhaust falls off of my beloved Maxima. Well, not off exactly, but down, as in ’suddenly my car sounds like my idiot neighbor’s far-too-loud-to-be-legal-jackass-mobile’ and I can hear shit dragging the ground.
Crawling under the car upon arriving home, I discover that that the intermediate pipe has rusted completely through (thanks, road salt!) and the resonator is now dragging the ground. At a minimum, everything downstream from the catalytic converter will have to be replaced. Oh, joy! Looks like the new bike will have to wait. Thankfully the money that I had saved up for the new bike should just about cover it. Let me just say:
“Shit!”
As I was getting ready to head out for a bike ride yesterday, I thought about bringing my digital camera, but decided not to, primarily because it doesn’t fit very comfortably into a jersey pocket, plus I was getting a late start and figured I wouldn’t really have time to take pictures, anyway.
Once I got out into the countryside I noted that the birds seemed especially active. First it was groups of Barn Swallows swooping down, time and again to catch bugs, then the Goldfinches were out en masse to flaunt their brilliant summer plumage.
Then as I rounded the sharp left-hand curve riding west on Stewart, there they were. Two fawns, contentedly munching grass in the field to my right, just beyond the split rail fence. They didn’t seem particularly concerned with my presence, so I stopped to watch them for a bit, expecting their mother to come rushing out to escort them to safety at any moment. A few minutes passed, their mother was still nowhere to be seen, and the youngsters’ grazing was actually bringing them closer to me, so I decided to ride a bit further around the curve to give them some space then went back to watching them. A few more minutes passed, a few cars drove by, and the two little deer continued to eat, despite my admonishment that they were supposed to be afraid of me and really should be running away.
Today I went for a ride again; same exact course, same time of day, same weather. The only difference was that today I decided to shoe-horn my camera into my pocket; well, that and the fact that were only a very few run-of-the-mill type birds to be seen, and, of course, no deer.
I did see the same lady walking by the park who just scowled at me yesterday when I said “Howdy” to her. Today I didn’t say anything. She scowled. Maybe I should have taken her picture.