I took my dinky little chainsaw out into the back yard and cut some more of the live oak into burnable sized pieces that would fit the church’s fire pit. I referred to it in the headline as “gnawing” because the live oak wood is so tough and hard to cut with a $45 electric chainsaw. Part of the reason it takes so long is I’m trying to keep the pieces small enough to not block the sidewalk so our neighbors can get where they’re going without walking in the street unlike most of the other houses where the branches extend all the way from the street to the yard on the other side of the sidewalk. Also this way allows me to extract the maximum amount of burnable firewood from the fallen branches. I haven’t even gotten to the big stuff yet and I already have about a half cord of wood sitting in the driveway. Funny ha-ha thing was I filled the tank with bar oil and ran the thing dry cutting up all the branches to make them fit the space between the curb and the sidewalk in about 4 hours of work.
Lots of stuff today is updates on wrecks in CA, like this report on the Aussie killed riding in the bike lane by a drunk minor who was also texting at the time. Melbourne man James Rapley, killed in LA crash, was on his way home for Christmas I’m not sure if the lane the cyclist was killed in was next to a cliff wall or a cliff fall, but there was very little room to exercise an escape when the driver attempted to drive his motor vehicle in the bike lane.
More on the NAPSTER exec killed while riding in the bike lane. Deputy identified in cyclist’s death Once again Olin was killed with what must have been the only cruiser in the fleet not equipped with a dash cam.
And moving north from those wrecks we get an update on a wreck from last week. Berkeley: Cyclist killed in crash Friday; was UC employee The word on this wreck was the cyclist was having a medical issue when he crashed, and the crash was incidental to the death.
Moving down way south of that is a cyclist hit by a genuinely blind driver, that could not see because of an oncoming idiot with his high beams on. Young Cyclist Knocked Down By Bus, Seriously Injured The driver took avoidance to the left but still clipped the cyclist from behind. There was nothing the cyclist could have done differently to avoid this as he was properly equipped but the driver could not see lights or reflectors because of the oncoming high beams. The report stated that there were several police officers on the bus that observed the oncoming high beams and the otherwise perspicuous cyclist and blamed the other driver for blinding the bus driver.
And after checking back twice I find that those are all the links I have today. The post-Christmas spike still hasn’t hit yet.
Billed @€0.02, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 