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My parents had a Biscayne, which I remember, though I don't recall whether I ever drove it. My dad said later that it was a piece of crap. But most US built cars in the 60s were crap.

Nah, everybody does it. So WTF.

I used to live across the street from a woman who climbed into her van to drive across the street (mailboxes were on my side) to get her mail. She claimed some sort of disability, but I never saw any signs of that.

You all can dismiss this as a personal peeve/nit picking, but here goes: I get annoyed when some piece of advice urges me to "consider" doing something. Such as "consider wearing a helmet." Why not just say "Wear a helmet." Okay, that's enough venting for today.

In your avatar you look much younger than 74. How do you do it?

Hate to be picky, but I still have the instincts or reflexes of a (retired) career English teacher. There is a significant difference between "dual" and "duel".

I ride a step-thru (Ariel Rider C class), and often carry a load of groceries. I read a lot of comments on the need to balance loads left and right, but I do not find this true at all. I often load everything in the left basket (because that's the side from which I approach the bike), and...

When I got my first driver's license at age 16, the brakes went out on my parents' '41 Pontiac one block from the police station (where I took my driver's test--small town, of course). Many of the cars I drove in those days ('30 Model A Ford, for example), had lousy brakes. On the Ford, the...

Stainless steel is notorious for galling. Once the nut starts to gall on the bolt, it's almost impossible to tighten it further, or back it off. Don't know about SS together with other metals, though.

I had a friend who always pronounced it "whales." Maybe he wasn't wrong, then?

When I'm dealing with someone over the phone, I now always ask "Are you a robot, or a human? The reason this has become necessary is that many organizations, businesses, etc. don't actually want to talk to their customers or clients. There is always the possibility that it may be a robot that's...

Yeah, I'm with her on the narrow gateways at trail heads. I always tense up, feeling that I'm going to run into one of those posts. Seems to work best to focus on area beyond the gate posts, rather than looking right at them. One of the first principles you are taught in the motorcycle safety...

I was an excellent speller at one time, but 27 years of reading and correcting student writing put an end to that. Double letters are the ones that perplex me most.

I ride a step-thru, and will arm-wrestle any 86 yo retired high school English teacher for my right to continue to do so. I sympathize with your riding incident. We (Bellingham) have a narrow ped bridge that crosses the freeway, and it always makes me feel nervous and wobbly. If someone on foot...

I went to college in Tacoma, way back when. Being very poor, some of used to frequent a chinese restaurant that still had "Office of Price Stabilization" signs left over from WWII (OPS was an attempt to keep inflation under control during the war). You could get a bowl of rice for 10 cents. Not...

A more polite word than "half-assed" is "desultory." I use it all the time, because it means "half-assed." But sounds more polite. I do a lot of stuff that is really desultory. See what I mean?

Grandkids have Lego, and after seeing how many unique individual bits there are (in the millions?), and how much they cost, I'm glad they didn't exist when I was a kid. All that was available were Erector set (too expensive), Lincoln Logs, and Tinker Toys. I did have a minimal Lincoln Logs set...

When I crashed a few years ago (T-boned a car, not vice versa), it knocked me out. Came to as I was being loaded onto the gurney, and saw the fire truck driving off with my bike, which they delivered to my house. The beer came through intact, not even shaken enough to foam up (I had been on my...

The one time I walked impaired (and I had not driven for this express eventuality), I had two pints of a triple IPA that was the smoothest, best tasking beer I've ever had (and I stupidly didn't bother to find out who the brewer was). To get home I only had to stagger and weave about 3 or 4...

And the paper on the photoelectric effect is I believe what won him the Nobel prize.