Good Times Rolling

Just heard Let The Good Times Roll on Rock 101 today.  They play Cars fairly frequently.  I also listen to The Cars fairly regularly in the course of life.  Ha ha, no, I don't refer to the noise of vehicles passing by, or indeed to the sound of my own Honda's squeaky brakes.  I mean the group of which I speak in this particular posting.

Queen proclaimed that they were in love with their car.  Freddie famously 'loved' many... nouns.

Golden Ears

Golden Ears Bridge costing $5-million more a year than expected

I use the bridge often, and am always surprised at how low the traffic flow is.  Huge roadway, mostly empty. 

Looking at some of the comments after this article, I'm bemused at people's rage about the toll.  Unless you are coming from Abbotsford, the fuel cost more than outweighs the toll cost.  Coming from Coquitlam or PoCo, same thing.  And those are the two closest cities across the river!  From Langley you'd either spend 2-3x the amount in gas dollars, or have to wait for the Albion ferry, which was more often than not, full.

The gas cost is one thing, but the time saving is astonishing.  From downtown Langley it's about 10-15 minutes, now, to either Pitt Meadows or Maple Ridge.  I can go from Abbotsford to PM or MR in about the same time taking Loughheed from Mission or the Golden Ears, so it isn't decisive.  But from Surrey or Langley--!  Having a business in Langley which requires frequent trips to Maple Ridge, this bridge is a dream-world for me.  Now I just need to register with TransLink....

Plum 350Z

The other afternoon I was zipping along when up ahead I saw this gorgeous plum-coloured 350Z.  I've seen these cars in many colours:  shiny light blue, yellow, silver.  But this is the first time that I understood on a gut level why these cars are so popular.  Somehow the plum added just the touch of class that my particular aesthetic sense desires.  The standard sporty colours make it seem 'light' to me, insufficiently weighty, frivolous.  The plum gave it more heft, and really allowed the gorgeous contours of the body to show to advantage.  At a red light I slowed close to the driver and complimented him on the vehicle.  I felt his wise colour judgment should be reinforced.#

May 12

On this day in 1941 Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin.  In a sense one could trace this post's genesis to that red-letter day.