I had to look up Adam Gopnick's age, just to see what the New Yorker writer was going on about in his recent piece. Not that I didn't really know. At age 57, it turns out, he was learning to drive. His article arrived at just the right moment in my re-learning the road. For there was enough in our shared experiences to strike a chord of recognition, and make me feel relieved. Why at 57? He's a New Yorker. He doesn't need a car in a city of subways. He does need, it turns out, to drive...for reasons Read more [...]

He who hesitates.... Well, there are various ways to look at 'lost.'  Let's start with the most recent. Wheelchairs and construction sites generally don't mesh. An electric vehicle with the mechanical properties of a forklift...made for a world of paved and flat surfaces...does not fare well rumbling over a semi-discarded world of pipes, boards and tiles. That's what one sees inside the opening - let us not call it a door - to the bomb site that promises to be our home. Still, I am a regular Read more [...]

Northbound in daylight, the undulations of Interstate 280 seemed less daunting. My foot nervously pivoted from brake to accelerator with only the occasional misstep. Yes, there was that sinking out-of-control feeling on the downslopes, but not as bad. The red splotch on the concrete near Milbrae did have its usual effect, a warning of blood, but the symbolism has waned as the spilled paint has succumbed to millions of tires. It was a pleasure to slow as traffic coagulated at Daly City. Soon we were Read more [...]

I am not sure why the drive to San Francisco Airport was relatively effortless. Perhaps that journey was dwarfed by the longer and more epic voyage toward a mortgage. The latter has involved good chunks of a lifetime, the nature of the expedition so vast that en route one settles on continents, puts down roots, raises a family or two...before being roused to return to the docks and embark on the journey's next phase. The mortgage industry, by the way, is run by manic-depressive binge drinkers, who Read more [...]

As a story, it is shapeless, having neither highs nor lows, or nothing but highs and lows…without resolution. Unless, perhaps, a New Year's resolution, to accept anxiety as the price of progress, or the price of aging. The car again, driving it, that is. In anticipation, the entire journey seemed an epic one. Menlo Park, California, to Monterey, California, and thence to Inverness, California. The latter loomed quite as far as its Scottish original. So that's probably the place to start, or Read more [...]

How easily one gets knocked off one's neuromuscular perch. Only yesterday I was en route to have a long overdue lunch with my old friend Arnie. When damned if my one working foot didn't keep snagging on the brake. When you put a finer point on this, the edge of the sole of my left shoe would briefly catch just under the pedal. And to be clear, for a reaction-compromised driver, to have one's limbs mispositioned 'briefly' is way too long. I would like to think that time and experience will help me Read more [...]