“Get outta the way!”

-1) So here I am last Sunday afternoon (July 1, 2007) being dragged north by Killian up the right (eastern) side of State Route 65 — we are returning from Michael Prouty Park after our daily walk.
Of course, I probably have this completely wrong, being a pathetic and utterly clueless Democrat Liberial-loser, instead of an all-supreme and superior tub-thumping conservative REPUBLICAN.
I’ve always thought of State Route 65, at least the part we live on, as a south-to-north “rode.”
Walking north, the sun dawns to the right (east), and sets to the left (which is west).
But apparently not to a proper REPUBLICAN. That makes Route 65 west-to-east, and I am reprehensible to think it goes south-to-north.
Anyway, here we are trudging north (south, east, west; WHATEVER), back to our house.......
......when a giant beige Chrysler Pacifica, same direction as us, brushes by, headed off the “rode” toward our property.
Route 65 is a slab of asphalt (bituminous-concrete, rebar; WHATEVER) 30 feet wide without gravel shoulders. The traffic-lanes are 12 feet wide, leaving three feet on each side of the traffic-lanes.
That three-foot area is where I walk the dog, but the Pacifica had clearly crossed into it and was headed for our shrubbery.
If I had been about 20 yards further ahead, I would have been hit.
Suddenly GramPop realized where he was headed, and arrowed the Pacifica back toward the traffic-lane.
Or maybe it was a teenybopper looking up a cell-number.
As the Pacifica disappeared I looked on the back. NOPE, no Dubya-sticker.
Sure fit the mold of a Dubya-supporter. Maybe he tore off the sticker, knowing what hot water it might cause.
-2) Yesterday (Monday, July 2, 2007), as I was entering Bloomfield returning from mighty Weggers and the Canandaigua YMCA, an ancient Ford pickup, stripped of its pickup-box and wooden platform installed, pulled out of a side-street onto 5&20 right in front of a giant Chevy van headed east (I was headed west).
The van-driver lunged for the shoulder — he didn’t even have time to blow the horn.
Dust flew as the right-front tire of the van jumped the curb, and ended up on somebody’s lawn.
Apparently the van hit the Ford, but only slightly. Both were pulling over as I drove by.
I glanced in my mirror as I kept going, but it was too late.
I couldn’t see if the Ford had a Dubya-sticker, but I did see the tiny white cartoon of Calvin peeing on a Chevy bow-tie. And that was despite the Confederate-flag in the rear-window.
He sure drove like a Dubya-supporter. “Get outta the way!”

(As our Tioga-Central excursion-train crossed Route 15 south of Lawrenceville, the people stopped at the grade-crossing were angrily blowing their horns.)

“Killian” is our dog; an Irish-Setter.

My loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston, a “tub-thumping conservative REPUBLICAN,” loudly excoriates me for having the wrong politics. He also insists “road” is spelled “rode;” and “liberal” is spelled “liberial.”

RE: compass-directions: my brother (in-Boston) and I have been having a torrid argument over whether I can sense direction as well as he. It started when I mentioned that a certain road in northern-Delaware went mainly west-east. He loudly claims it’s north-south. Actually it’s mainly northwest-southeast. But next to the suburban development we lived in it mainly went west-east. (So that walking eastward along it, you were walking into the dawning sun.)

RE: “Asphalt (bituminous-concrete, rebar).......” I was loudly instructed the kerreck engineering-nomenclature for asphalt used in road-paving is “bituminous-concrete.” —“Rebar” is the kerreck engineering-nomenclature for reinforcing-rod. I once called it “rerod;” yet wasn’t thrown out of the metal-supply store when I did. The builder who built our house called it “rerod.”

“Dubya-sticker” equals “Bush-Cheney ‘04.”

“Mighty Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at.

“Tioga-Central excursion-train” is the train we rode last Saturday (June 30) with the Rochester Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.