Well, some say that's what I am, an old air bag. But I'm in this case referring to a recall notice for our 2010 Toyota Corolla, to fix faulty air bags. (Have they been faulty since 2010, I wonder - a scary thought - or did they only become faulty over time?)
The notice was waiting for us when we got home from England. There were two in fact. The second, a card, shouted in bold print: "Why haven't we heard from you?" I reckon Toyota is afraid somebody (else?) will be killed as a result of the faulty air bags and they'd like to avoid being sued.
In any case, I called and made an appointment at the local dealer. It's about seven kilometers from where we are. The work takes over two hours, they said. This is our only car. I didn't want to wait inside at the dealer - it turns out you can't anyway. I didn't want to ask a friend to come and pick me up in the middle of a pandemic lockdown, and the dealer doesn't offer a courtesy car service - because of Covid, they say. So I'm going to walk, or run and walk, I've not decided yet.
I wanted to figure out a route that would keep me off major arteries. Google Maps has a feature that should let you manually create custom turn-by-turn directions, by indicating a start point, then adding "destinations" for each zig or zag in the route. The catch 22 is that you can only add so many "destinations." I ran out before I had myself a quarter of the way home.
Now, why would Google do that? If the most direct driving route, automatically calculated by Google, has more than seven (or whatever the number is) turns, it doesn't tell you, "Sorry, we can only get you this far, now you have to find your own way." Stupid.
Anyway, I pored over Google Maps satellite view to figure out a route that takes me along residential streets, through parking lots and down walkways, and wrote the directions in bullet points, which I've printed, and will carry with me. I'll report later on how it goes.
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Every picture tells a story I suspect Caitlin won't thank me for featuring this picture, but I love it.
Our first evening in the city, we took her over to the Santa Croce area, where Karen and I had stayed when we were in Venice a few years before - also a very un-touristy neighbourhood. We sat outside at one of several restaurants along the Fondamenta Rio Croce, just down from the Marco Polo House. She was relaxed and happy, and indulging her Pa. The expression is very Caitlin.
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I'm back from Toyotatown. I now know that fences, even when they're 12-feet high, do not show up as fences in Google Maps satellite view. (Think about it: the view is straight down - all you see is the top surface of the fence which looks like a thin line, easily stepped over. But no.)
In two spots in my painstakingly calculated route home, I couldn't go where I wanted because of gateless fences. It meant going a long way around in one case and doubling back in the other. Never mind. I made it: nine-plus kilometers in all, of which I ran over six. It was damn cold on the heights above Commissioner's Road - -5C with a north wind in my face and snow in the air.
When I got home - about 50 minutes after leaving Toyotatown - Karen told me the dealership had been on the phone to say the car was ready. Huh? What happened to it taking over two hours? I'll walk back out tomorrow.
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Music recommendation I fairly regularly dip into Apple Music's New Releases sections in Classical and Jazz, searching for new music. Last night, I hit pay dirt.
Joe Lovano is a jazz saxophonist I've known for years - I already have a couple of his albums. He's a guy about my age, with a discography that goes on for pages. His latest is a collaboration with the pianist and composer Marilyn Crispell, one of the relatively rare non-singing women jazz notables. She's also of my generation.
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Amusing - and/or amazing - bird facts In the latest chapter I've read of Jennifer Ackerman's The Bird Way, she talks about the astonishing behaviour of some kites and falcons in the Australia outback, and possibly elsewhere.
Raptors everywhere are great fire chasers. They've learned that grass and brush fires will flush out prey - small mammals, birds, snakes - that make easy pickings as they flee, panic-stricken and sometimes injured, from the fire. Sometimes hundreds of raptors, of different species, will show up at a fire front, swooping into the smoke and flames to claim their meals.
But ornithologists and other observers now believe some falcon and kite species in the Northern Territories and elsewhere in the Australian outback deliberately start fires. They'll go to a fire front, pick up a burning twig, carry it some distance away, and drop it where it's likely to start another fire. It's a good strategy because it means the fire-starter gets first dibs on prey fleeing the new fire. There is some thought that only some birds within a community have figured out how to do this, though, and can physically carry it off.
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| Black kite, one of the species believed to deliberately start fires in Australia (Photo by Owen Deutsch) |
This behaviour has been observed on numerous occasions by sheep station owners, firefighters and researchers. Some scientists remain skeptical, but more and more are coming around to believing that avian pyromania is real. Australian aborigines have long reported observing it. They call the birds firehawks.
As Ackerman writes, "...this would be the first known use of fire as a tool by any nonhuman animal, overturning some old entrenched assumptions - the orthodoxy that only humans spread fire, and that our singular mastery of fire was largely what made us masters of the environment."
Some have even speculated that birds were the original fire-starters - and taught humans!
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