The freeways are filled with speedy drivers. They pass one another, swerve in and out of traffic. They sometimes tailgate, honk, cut in in front of you. Or, in other words they appear to be impatient.

That is one of the reasons that I avoid the interstate highway. The frontage road is okay by me. I am not a little old lady driver, I’m just in no hurry to get somewhere. Unless it’s a trip to the hospital emergency room, in which case I sometimes beat the ambulance.

A few years back I was driving an older van that had a wobble in the front end. We had gotten some opinions on what was wrong and got several ideas of what to expect. It all went from bad to extremely bad. I was on one of the state roads in our town – not the main drag by the way. As I was driving along, a police officer pulled in behind me. I did not have to worry about a speeding ticket as I was going only 30 in a 55 mph zone. The officer came off of a crossroad. he followed for a while then put his lights on. There was no other traffic and I wondered what the matter was. When he walked up to the window he asked if I knew that I was going only 30 in a 55 zone. When I told him yes, he asked me why.

We had been told that a tire rod could be going out on the van and we didn’t have the money, yet, to fix it. We had also been told that part of the suspension was fixing to give way. When I told him about what we had been told, he said that is logical and safer to drive slower. He still ran the plate and the insurance, oh well. When he was done, he said that we were free to go, and he hoped that we would get home safely. I carried tracts with me then to witness about Jesus, so I handed him one. When he read it, he burst out laughing. The tract was designed to look like a free ticket. He got a ticket, I didn’t, plus I gave him something to cheer up about. We later found out that the wobble in the van was from a tire that had gone out of round, still possibly a bad thing, but easily fixed even with limited money.

There are a lot of people out there that are losing their homes. Mortgages can be confusing things. My sis and her former husband had a mortgage on their home (at the time). They were stuck with a balloon payment, YUK to the extreme. I’ve also heard about variable mortgage rates. That is an ugly way to go bankrupt.

There is talk of fannie mae and freddie mac having trouble. some politicians want to help bail them out to save the homes of many Americans. For some it is too late, they have already lost their homes. There are some mortgage lenders that are still making loans. Some will refinance, which can help. Some won’t take the chance. I’m not in that particular boat, so I don’t know what people can do. Having a family and losing your home has got to be the worst nightmare possible right now.

I hope that I’m not being naive in hoping that things can be fixed. My husband and I rent where we live. Right now, moving is not an option because of our health. All we can do is pray for those in dire need. I’m not in the know as to how this all happened, but it is here and people are trying to adapt.

Believe it or not, I’m not talking about myself here.

My husband has been given a bunch of motorcycle parts: engines, frames, pistons, electrical wiring, and other items. When he finally gets it sorted out, and starts to work on the parts to make a running bike, it will be called a ‘basket case’ motorcycle.

His has talked about swap meet specials; where bikers will swap out parts they don’t need for parts they do need. I had to ask him what he was talking about. Then he talked about basket cases, where the bike is broken down to its basic parts and has to be reassembled. When he is done, he will know his bike very closely from the inside-out. He won’t have to worry about having bought a used bike that might have problems, because any problems will have been taken care of just by assembling the new bike. His adopted brother helped to put these items into a new storage unit that we got. It took two trips with our station wagon to get all of these things in one location.

He wants to make the new bike a chopper. He and another friend had done this before. He ended up with a bike that was over 8 foot long. The front end was stretched way out in front. That was called the ‘rake’ of the bike. All of this means that I am learning a new language. I haven’t even gotten English down pat, I still make bloopers. Oh well, in this world, slang is a new language almost every other day anyhow.