As seen in a local Target store, these three doors were clearly marked ‘Fire Door: Do Not Block’. Of course, the doors were blocked with two children’s bicycles. I have no idea if this was done intentionally by pranksters, out of malice by jerks, or out of stupidity by idiots . . . but it was done, and it was funny.
It’s not that big a deal though. In the event of a fire, I assume those bikes would be a faster mode of escape than walking.
I’ve been saying it for years: truck and SUV bumpers should follow the same standards as car bumpers. I’ve been in only two accidents since I started driving nearly ten years ago now—one that wasn’t my fault (a Jeep Wrangler rear-ended my Mercury Sable) and one that was (my Chrysler Cirrus rear-ended a Ford Escape). Both times, my sedan was seriously damaged by the SUV on the other side of the accident that escaped essentially unscathed. Both accidents were low-speed and would have caused negligible damage had the bumpers of the two vehicles been aligned with one another, but instead caused ended up costing me and the insurance companies more than $3,000.
Curiously enough, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has long held passenger cars to a consistent bumper standard. Currently, bumpers must be 16-20 inches from the ground and withstand an impact of 5 miles-per-hour with only minimal/superficial damage. Trucks and SUVs, however, are exempt from this standard.
Well, that was all well-and-good when trucks and SUVs were a small percentage of the cars on the road and were used pretty-much exclusively for, well, the off-roading and heavy-duty work they were designed for. Today, these are the mommy-mobiles that minivans used to be, and their bumpers should follow the same standard as other passenger cars. The Insurance Instititute for Highway Safety (IIHS), representing insurance companies that may have finally tired of paying out over $3,000 for minor, low-speed crashes, is joining my bandwagon and petitioning the NHTSA to apply their bumper standards to all vehicles, including trucks and SUVs. It is about darn time!
I mentioned last month that Melissa and I took an introductory pistol class at Blue Ridge Arsenal and were considering buying a gun for home/personal protection (and, as a secondary purpose, to actively utilize our Second Amendment rights). Now that those rights have been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court, we figured it was time. We dropped by the aforementioned Blue Ridge Arsenal on Friday, only to learn that they didn’t carry revolvers except when they are traded in used . . . oops. They recommended Virginia Arms in Manassas, which was closed already so we stopped by Saturday morning.
After looking at a few options, we settled on a Smith & Wesson Model 620 revolver (which was actually quite a bit cheaper than the list-price on S&W’s web site). It’s a 7-shot .357 magnum, which is also capable of firing the less-powerful (and less-expensive) .38 special rounds. We also picked up the requisite accessories—ammo, holster, cleaning equipment, speedloader, snap caps (for loading/unloading practice and dry firing), etc. Because we had a friend over yesterday we didn’t make it out to the range to try it out, but we’ll be doing that later this afternoon. Fun stuff!
So, if you were planning to rob or kill me any time soon, you should bear in mind that you will now need to contend with return fire.
The pastor of our church is a trained and certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), which is pretty cool if you ask me. After church this morning, I and several other churchgoers gathered for a Staff-Parish Relations Committee meeting (we’re sorta like the church’s HR department). Afterward, as we were headed out to our cars, we heard a God-awful crash from the nearby intersection of Fairfax County Parkway and Franklin Farm Road.
Almost before it even registered with me that I had just heard a car accident, Pastor Rob was in his car heading over to check it out. I ran over myself on the off-chance that I could render some useful assistance (I couldn’t—Rob already had it well under control—but I did get to answer Rob’s cell phone for him while he was occupied, lol!).
A woman in a Jeep Grand Cherokee making a left turn from Franklin Farm Road onto the Parkway had been t-boned by Toyota Corolla going straight on Franklin Farm in the opposite direction. Both drivers gave conflicting reports to the police—the woman in the Jeep said she had a green arrow, while the man in the Toyota claimed he had a green light. No witnesses who actually saw the accident bothered to stop, so I couldn’t tell you who was lying. The man in the Toyota had a minor burn on his arm from the airbag deployment, but he was otherwise just fine. The woman in the Jeep seemed to be pretty much okay too, but I think they took her to the hospital to be sure (I’m not sure about this, since I left before they did).
For the fifth time, I had the honor of representing this congregation as one of your lay delegates to the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. The conference—which is an annual gathering of United Methodist clergy and laity from throughout the conference for mission, worship, policy-making, administration, and fellowship—was held in Roanoke from June 15th through the 18th. It was presided over by our bishop, Bishop Charlene Kammerer.
Following up on last year’s theme of ‘Let’s Get Growing’, which put a focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ and establishing 250 new faith communities over the next 30 years, this year’s Annual Conference theme was ‘More Young People’. It is an unfortunate fact that Methodism in Virginia is being affected by a trend that is also affecting the broader Christian movement in the United States: the average age of our congregations is going up, and the number of youth and young adults participating in church life is dropping.
But you wouldn’t have known it at Annual Conference.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.
