The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Owning a car can be a real pain in the neck, sometimes.

Mentioned about a month ago, there’s a ‘recall part’ which Toyota is obligated to replace under the hood of my car, and the last time I made an appointment for the work to be done the local ‘stealership’ it turned out that they had neglected to order the replacement part.

That’s how and why I found myself up early in the morning and dropping the Mobile Oppression Platform off at the mechanic a month later, and then walking down Pittsburgh’s (Route 19 Truck) West Liberty Avenue during a thunderstorm, again.

This storm was accompanied by a sudden and noticeable change in climate, and it had actually become quite warm and humid at ground level. I was shvitzing, but I was still all wrapped up in insulating garments and ready for winter.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Some jackass in a pickup truck was driving through here at 80 mph recently, whereupon they lost control of the vehicle and smashed into several utility poles. Knocked out power for hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses for an entire day, that Yinzer did.

If you ever find yourself driving around these parts, give the pickups a wide berth. Something happens to drivers behind the wheels of those things, wherein they want to teach strangers ‘lessons.’ Not allowing other drivers to merge towards highway exits, or signaling a right turn when they’re going to make a left, if they happen to use the directional indicators at all. Driving about like self entitled jerks, in general.

It’s one thing when somebody has to drive a truck for work, and there’s plenty of those folks on the roads, but what you really need to watch out for are those ‘somebodies’ who pull up next to you in a giant vehicle covered in ‘don’t tread on me’ or ‘let’s go brandon’ stickers which they paid north of 50-70k for, and which only gets 26 mpg. The truck is used exclusively for driving to and from an office job, on a high speed road, despite wearing ‘mud tires.’ This sort of vehicle is referred to as a ‘pavement princess’ and conspicuous consumption is why it was purchased. This is the sort of truck which wiped out at 80 mph on a local street and knocked out electricity to an entire neighborhood.

All of this represents high levels of cognitive static, to me.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Sweet signage, I’d mention.

My plan for the morning was… well… it was to wait for the mechanic to tell me that their repair process had finished. Wasn’t expecting ‘the call’ until the afternoon, at any rate.

It seems there’s a sort of master cable which electrically connects all the disparate computer controlled mechanisms under the hood of the car. It also seems that the initial ‘manufactured and shipped’ version of this cable is quite vulnerable to salt corrosion, and Toyota is on the hook for replacing them all due to a lawsuit. I haven’t had any problems with the thing, so the repair was proactive.

No matter what happens, I always end up walking in the rain.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My rainy walk carried me over to a spot called ‘Dawn Avenue,’ where a series of overlaying infrastructural bits can be observed. It was an extremely unpleasant spot to be on this particular morning, due to the rain and concurrent muddy conditions. I had decided to ‘give it a half hour’ and see if I’d be lucky enough to spot a Wheeling & Lake Erie locomotive moving through here, but came up empty again.

At least I got to peel off my coat and hat, and cool off while sheltering from the rain under that elevated causeway, which carries one of Pittsburgh’s Busways as well as a right of way for the T light Rail. It made for a sound umbrella.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking up Dawn Avenue, towards a residential pocket in the Beechview section. I really have to get up there and explore that section, one of these days.

There’s some very fresh content coming down the pipeline, I’d mention. I’ve visited a few really interesting spots, since this rainy day morning.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After a fruitless half hour, one slopped his way up a set of stairs, shambled horribly across the busway, and then cast my putrid shadow upon the innocent pavement while waiting for a T light rail unit to arrive, and carry the pre-corpse back to HQ in nearby Dormont. The car was ready later in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t my only car maintenance chore for the week.

Back tomorrow with something different.

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