Tiny tidbits from the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA

I went to the Canandaigua YMCA yesterday (Monday, May 19, 2008) noting the following:

—1) The traffic-light at the intersection Pearl St. and West Ave. is finally working.
This ain’t actually the YMCA, but on the way.
The intersection of Pearl St. and West Ave. in Canandaigua is fairly substantial.
Pearl St. is a main north-south street that runs through Canandaigua parallel to state Route 332, the main north-south drag.
West Ave. used to be the main entrance of 5&20 into downtown Canandaigua before the bypass was built.
It was bypassed to -a) avoid traffic into downtown Canandaigua, and -b) avoid a low-clearance railroad bridge that often decapitated trailers — it’s only 10-feet six-inches.
West Ave. was recently widened at the intersection to five lanes (actually seven; if you include the streetside parking).
Large curbside shady trees had to be cut down, causing weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and noisy protests and tree-hugging by the environmental lobby.
Finally complete, a traffic-light was installed, but on four-way stop flash.
I had a phenomenal avoidance there once. Almost got T-boned by an enraged Caprice. It’s grizzled driver gave me the finger.
The intersection was widened to add left-turn lanes on West Ave.
It’s nice the traffic-light is finally working, lowering the possibility of phenomenal avoidances.
But West Ave. still needs its final top-coat of paving.

—2) Amazon-Lady’s son will attend Rochester Institute of Technology.
I usually avoid Amazon-Lady, since she looks and can be rather nasty.
She’s a YMCA employee, and actually quite nice.
Overlook her angry grimace and rippling muscles, and she’s great.
Amazon-Lady is on the fantabulous new running-in-sand machine next to me, pumping away.
“Lemme know if your son decided to go to RIT,” I say, as I departed the sand-machines.
“He did,” she beams. “He’s so excited.”
“Well, hooray,” I say; “good for him!”
This goes back to a long-ago discussion where Amazon-Lady allowed that her son had been accepted at all five colleges he applied to; one being RIT.
“Here’s one vote for RIT,” I said at that time.
“Boy-oh-boy, do I wish that school had been around when I was that age,” I said.
But in the middle-‘60s RIT was still a small technical-school based in Rochester. It had been supported by George Eastman of Kodak.
I remember RIT students trudging between buildings in the snow on the west side of Rochester.
But in 1968, shortly after I graduated college (1966), RIT moved to a new campus in the suburb of Henrietta, and it was fabulous.
I took photography-courses at the new RIT in the early ‘70s; partly because it was a school slanted toward photography and printing. It reflected its Kodak support, as well as support by Rochester-based Gannett Newspapers (Frank Gannett).
I probably would have been refused by RIT, and don’t regret attending Houghton instead.
If I had attended RIT, I woulda majored in photography; probably a slight misfit.
Anyway, photography has come way beyond what RIT taught, so that -a) if I had majored in photography, I woulda been ill-prepared for the changes that were in store, and -b) RIT is no longer a photography/printing school. It’s more a college.
Houghton was a liberial-arts college (dread); more attuned to teaching the advance of western thought.
I started as a Physics-major, but switched, due to -a) the fact the Physics labs were in the cellar of an old building — what we called dungeons. Even though I nearly aced Physics, having suddenly got the hang of it (and I was the onliest one that did), I knew labs in the dungeons would be drudgery.
There also was the fact that -b) all the good professors were in History; so I switched to a History-major.
What I do more now is write; which to me was advanced by a so-called liberial-arts education.
So I don’t regret Houghton at all, although at that time I woulda preferred the RIT of the ‘70s.
I barely made Houghton at all; I was part of the dreaded “Summer-School Gang;” those that had to attend Houghton Summer-School to prove they could do college-level work.
I succeeded, but mainly because the alternative was the Vietnam quagmire.
A number of roads-not-taken always dangle in front of me: one being photography at RIT. Another is moving to Los Angeles.
But compared to Ithaca College, Monroe Community College, etc., RIT is a slam-dunk.
“Tell him RIT,” I long-ago said.

—3) McCain is not McBush.
“The View” is on the cardio-theater next to me, closed-captioned of course.
“Everyone knows McCain is Bush,” says the Woopster.
“Oh, puh-leeze,” says co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
“Oh, come on,” says the Woopster. “Everyone knows McCain and Bush are attached at the hip!”
“They are not!” Hasselbeck asserts.
Perish-the-thought, I agree with Hasselbeck. She listed a slew of disagreements between Dubya and the McCaniacs.
If it comes down to McCain versus Hillary, I’ll vote for McCain. McCain versus Obama, I’ll probably vote for Obama.
Hillary-dillery is the old politics — a shyster.
Both McCain and Obama are at least respectable.

—4) Spike’s Amazing Videos.
I’m on a cardio-theater treadmill.
Mine is off, but the one next to me (unused) is on.
An Illinois Central freight-train is bearing down on a grade-crossing. The gates are down, crossing-signal lights flashing, but a large truck-trailer is partially blocking the tracks.
Sparks are flying off the train-wheels — the engineer has it in emergency; the wheels are locked, and momentum is sliding the train down the tracks.
BAM! The lead locomotive, a Geep, hits the rear of the trailer, and shoves everything down the tracks. It doesn’t derail — I bet the crew is under the control-stands.
Welcome to Spike’s Amazing videos.
Amazing car-crashes, sky-high racing-car flips, motorcycles flying riderless through the air, and then cart-wheeling madly through the dirt.
A steeplechase horse hits a jump and flips its rider 25 feet in the air. He tumbles on the ground like a ragdoll, and gets trampled by following horses.
The camera pans an Amtrak train doing about 40 mph toward a grade-crossing. Twin silhouetted Genesis units, elephant style.
A small car is hung up on the tracks.
The train hits the car, and suddenly a massive fireball of yellow flame fills the screen.
Wait a minute — a Genesis unit doesn’t just blow up. Amtrak required the locomotive-designers to hide the fuel-tank away from where it could be penetrated. It ain’t like the common freight-diesel, where the fuel-tank is slung between the wheel-trucks.
PHOTOSHOP® ALERT! —Or whatever the video-equivalent of Photoshop is.
Flaming fireballs! Seems like every crash ends in a flaming fireball. And every fireball looks the same. Spike seems to wanna paste that fireball onto everything.

—5) The earphone-jack is down here.
Same treadmill.
A girl gets on the treadmill next to me and wonders where to connect her earbuds.
Boyfriend is consulted. “Insert earphone plug in jack below.” They poke around, trying to find a jack up near the cardio-theater.
Finally I reach over and point out the secret earphone jack which is down between the hand-grabs. I.e. nowhere near where they were looking.
“Oh,” the girl laughs.

I work out in the exercise-gym at the Canandaigua YMCA.

“5&20” is the main east-west road through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same road. 5&20 is just south of where we live.

“Amazon-Lady” is a YMCA-employee. We call her that because she is extremely muscle-bound.

“Houghton” is Houghton College, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it. Houghton is a religious college.

RE: “Liberial-arts college (dread).......” “Liberial” is how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insisted “liberal” was spelled. (Now it’s “liberila.”) He loudly insists a liberal-arts education is inferior to being trained as an engineer. He of course was trained as an engineer.

A “cardio-theater” is a small flat-screen TV on your exercise-machine, so you can watch TV while exercising.

“The Woopster” is Whoopi Goldberg.

Illinois Central Railroad.

“Dubya” is George W. Bush, our current president.

RE: “The engineer has it in emergency........” —The guy driving the train (the engineer), has dumped the air in the trainline, so all the train-wheels are locked, including the freightcars — full braking (“emergency”).

“Geep” is the nickname given to ElectroMotive Division (GM) GP road-switchers (four axles). These looked like GP40s.

RE: “Genesis units, elephant style......” —General-Electric makes a passenger diesel-locomotive for Amtrak called the P-42. They call them “Genesis units.” “Elephant style” is nose-to-tail. The nose of the follower is coupled to the rear of the locomotive ahead.