In contrast to the rest of the world, the weather in San Jose has been consistently cool and beautiful this summer. But Sheep Systems engineering lost a couple hours of development time yesterday as the driver of a truck pulling a 53-foot van got stuck trying to turn the thing around in front of our house.
We live on the corner of a 60-foot street and a 40-foot street; the latter is the narrowest in San Jose. We also have lots of parked cars, trees, and utility poles that are right at the curb. To accomplish such a feat takes requires the contemplation of a chess master, carefully considering all the obstacles and angles present and future. Unfortunately the poor guy driving this one was thinking more like a 100-yard dash, and was getting too much "help" from bystanders that were each looking at their patch of the trees in the forest.The photo on the left shows when he was just starting to get in deep. A similar circus was going across the street, at the front end. I wanted to take more photos but things quickly went from bad to worse; I ended up having to fetch a ladder and some tools to remove that sign from the lamppost and then help him do the mental math needed to engineer his way out of there.He wanted to give me $40 for the damage to our tomato and pepper plants, but I only took $20 because I know that since trucking deregulation many of these guys are non-union and barely get a minimum wage with no health insurance.
Actually, the cause of this whole mess was that neighbors who are fearful of other people using "our" streets and "our" parking spaces prevailed upon the city government a few years back to close the next intersection, making our neighborhood a dead-end which often confuses visitors. When will this country learn that Government by Fear and Childish Selfishness are bad for us?Oh, well. Back in Detroit we would have called this a "snow day" and stayed home from school. Anyone want some green tomatoes?