Look how cute this amazing dog is! The cart is empty, but I’m picturing it full of bright flowers, or lots of puppies. They got to the crosswalk and the owner stopped the dog, took out the leash and helped across the road, but this lovely dog was just calmly walking down the sidewalk next to the owner, looking happy as can be. Love Main St.
Category: Main Street Mondays
Blue Warm Fuzzy
I have always had nothing but respect for our men and women in blue. Our local police consistently go above and beyond the call of duty to keep us safe and be of help to our community. Lately, I have had several reasons to make my beliefs even stronger.
First, a huge burst of gratitude for my favorite local police officer, Chief Fisher, who I often refer to as either a rock star or Superman. He is a respected police chief, SWAT leader, parent of three amazing boys, (all of whom I got to teach how to drive,) tireless volunteer, coach of two high school sports teams, and somehow always make time out his incredibly busy schedule to come a talk to my driver’s ed classes. He is knowledgeable, approachable, funny, firm and yet friendly. He is the perfect positive police presence for my students, and I could not be more impressed every time he speaks. (That was a lot of P’s.)
Next, on one of our typical trips down Main St., in a quest for the most interesting thing we can fine, we spotted one of our illustrious bicycle police officers walking his bike as he helped a little old lady slowly cross in the crosswalk. He carried her oxygen tank for her balanced on one of his handlebars as he smiled and patiently chatted as they strolled. Totally made my day! I wish I had a video of that for you.
Lastly, yesterday, (I still can’t get over it!) we got pulled over in the driver’s ed car. My student was driving perfectly nicely down a busy road. We stopped at a traffic light, and as I always tell my students to do when stopping, we checked our rear view mirror. We casually noticed a police cruiser behind us. As the traffic light turned green, we went on through the intersection, and then came the flashing blues behind us. We smoothly and quickly pulled over to the right, we thought, to get out of his way. A little flicker of nerves came up in the car as he pulled in behind us. We waited as the officer got out and walked up to my instructors-side window. I rolled it down and took a deep breath. He asked us if we had recently been on a specific local road, where we had not. He then explained that he was looking for a car exactly matching the make, model and color of ours, minus the big yellow sign of course. He was incredibly polite, and further explained that he was pretty sure it wasn’t us, and reassured my student that he had not done a single thing wrong. He had been driving well, pulled right over, and had nothing to worry about. We wished him luck in his search for whomever he was looking for, and with one last smile and equally wishing us luck with our drive, got back in his cruiser and drove away. With a nervous laugh and look of disbelief, we pulled back out into traffic and went on our merry way.
In all my years as the driver’s ed lady, I have had so many positive interactions with police officers. We’ll have to do a post about what to do when pulled over soon… In the meantime, one last big thank you to all the police officers in our area for all that they do for me, my students, and our community.
Bicycle texting
This week’s winner for Main Street Monday is… bicycle texting boy.
Joe and I were driving down Main St. and stopped at a red light. We looked over to see a man riding his bicycle down the wrong side of the road. Now, lot of people think that bicycles are supposed to be on the sidewalk, which is not true. On Main St., I may occasionally feel that with all the traffic the sidewalk looks like a safer place to ride but this is not technically correct. Bicycles are supposed to be just like cars, on the road, following all the same rules. He should have been on the right side of the road going with traffic. We do give him thumbs up for wearing a helmet.
Not only was this man on the wrong side of the road, but he was out in the middle of an oncoming lane. He may not have noticed since he was staring at his phone, texting. Look ma, no hands! Thankfully, it was a red light because pointed straight at him in the lane in which he was biking was a big blue city bus.
We watched and waited, and while it was close, he didn’t actually ride his bike straight into the front of the bus. It would have been pretty funny, since the bus wasn’t moving and he probably wouldn’t have gotten too hurt. We think it might have been the wake-up call he needed though. So, once again the winner for craziest thing we saw this week on Main St. is… bicycle texting man who almost hit a city bus. Thanks for playing, tune in to see who it might be next week!
One way
This week the strange thing we saw the most, believe it or not, was people driving straight at us on one way streets.
I know this leaves me thinking, how is that possible? There are always signs telling you that a street is one way. There are pavement markings to reinforce the idea. You should always have a yellow line on your left and a white line on your right. If this is not true, you are going the wrong way. The biggest clue should be if you make a turn and there are cars driving straight towards you.
I can make excuses for these folks. It might be that they were simply following directions from their magic phones that mislead them. It could be that they were lost and confused, and not thinking clearly enough to recognize the signs. It could be that they thought that one way meant any one way that they chose as opposed to that specific way designated by “the man.”
In any case, once headed the wrong way, it was not easy to right themselves, no pun intended. They had to make a quick turn in each case onto a nearby street, in one case I’m pretty sure it was also a one way street the wrong way, but once they were committed to process, I guess they chose to see it through. In another case, pedestrians in the crosswalk waved madly at them and got them to realize their error and turn onto another road. It’s very hard to watch this happened, because there is no way to help them really.
If you find yourself in this position, you really want to find a way out as soon as possible. Stop, turn around, turn onto a close street and get yourself pointed in the right direction. We all make mistakes so stay safe, watch for signs, be aware of your surroundings, and use your pavement markings. Good luck, friends!
Iguana Bicycle Man
Memorial Day weekend is a great time to check out all of the improvements our fair city has made. Warm weather on Saturday had lots of people strolling around, eating out on the patios of the many cool restaurants, checking out the murals, playing the street pianos, (one of my favorite things,) and riding bicycles. While stopped at a red light, we noticed one man on a bicycle wearing what I first assumed was an eccentric hat. He was talking with a pedestrian who was smiling and gesturing to the hat. I thought it was a plastic iguana somehow stuck to the top of this hat, when it turned and looked in my direction. Yup, that’s a real iguana up there.
So many questions. Would an iguana like to go for a bike ride? How does he know it will stay there and not hop off at some point? What about passing dogs on leashes expressing curiosity? How did he think to try this the first time, and why? All of these questions will have to go unanswered, but they will continue to plague me as the light turned green and we went on our merry way. Good day to you, iguana bicycle man.
And the winner is… Drunken Pirate Man
Drunken pirate man. This week the winner for the craziest thing we saw downtown is, no joke, a drunken pirate. Ilysa and I were driving down Kinsley Street and stopped at a red light, which is, by the way, the correct thing to do at a red light, in case you were wondering. Kinsley is getting harder and harder to navigate these days as construction takes over with a lovely trench now running most of the length of the left lane, cars park haphazardly on both sides of this two lane, one way street, and traffic is pushed closer and closer to each other. Imagine our surprise when we saw in front of us, in the middle of the our lane rather than on the sidewalk where one might expect to see a pedestrian, a man doing what could only loosely be referred to as walking. He was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, and carrying a full milk jug in one hand and a plastic grocery bag with bread in the other. Looking up from the bags we noticed he was smiling a great big smile and had a red bandanna on his head and, yes, an eye patch over his right eye. His slow and staggered steps thankfully drifted him closer to the parked cars as our light turned green and we tried slowly and carefully to go around him. We’re not 100% sure, but we are thinking this was our first sighting of a drunken pirate downtown. We’ll see if it’s the last.
Main Street Monday
To the man walking down Main Street yesterday looking dapper in the kilt, our question to you was, “Can you ride a motorcycle in a kilt?”
And I have to say we saw the happiest man I’ve ever seen walking all by himself down the sidewalk. He had on little round sunglasses, and sported a bald head and a very full beard. His mustache was twirled up and waxed in place to match the huge smile he wore as he trudged with purpose, dare I say glee. He wasn’t listening to music, or staring at his phone. We had no idea where he was going, or why he was so happy. I’m sorry to say the first response from my students was that he must be intoxicated. I will choose to believe he was just really, really happy.
I love people watching on Main Street.
Drunken Tricycle Man
You heard me right, Drunken Tricycle Man. I’m sure he has a real name and a whole story to his life that I don’t know, but since I don’t know it, he remains Drunken Tricycle Man. Any time you drive the same streets day in and day out, you are likely to see some of the same people. There is one gentleman who I see often riding what I can only refer to as a grown-up tricycle. It has two wheels in the back, and one up front like those Big Wheels some of us who are old enough (ehem,) used to ride when we were little. He has a flag off of the back so he can be seen, and always wears a hat. There’s a wide basket for anything he might need to carry. It is a sturdy thing that looks like it would be easy to balance, unlike traditional bikes, which might come in handy if you were, say, a little inebriated.
The drivers ed car was stopped at a red light one day, minding its own business, when out of the blue, Drunken Tricycle Man came barreling out from two buildings and careened right into the side of the luckily, stopped, drivers ed car! With quite a bang, he hit hard enough that he fell over, toppling the trike on it’s side. You can imagine, this is pretty startling if you are a new driver and a teacher just hanging out waiting for a light to change.
Drunken Tricycle Man sat there for a minute in a daze, stood up and shook himself off. The teacher could not really open the door without hitting him or the trike, so as he staggered his way back onto his seat, he just teetered off before she could even get out. He rode off into the sunset, and when they could safely pull over to check on things, there was a big dent in the side of the passenger door, which had to be repaired.
The car was fine after minor repairs, and presumably Drunken Tricycle Man was also fine since he is still seen often riding his tricycle around town. You never know what will happen on a fine day on Main Street.