All aboard!

Train entering the new Don Bosco trainstation
Originally uploaded by theowl84

Hey…good news for the stupid drunk chick who hit my house with her gigantic SUV over the weekend (yep, that really happened). Ok, well, actually, the bad news first: hit and run is against the law, and you might have to go to jail.

I try really hard not to judge other people’s choices, but honestly, I have been thinking for four straight days now, and I cannot for the life of me imagine why somebody would need to drive a vehicle that large to go out and get wasted beyond belief. I guess the punishment does fit the crime; she should definitely lose her license. Forever.

As you can tell, I’m a little bitter about this whole thing. I'm too angry to even write very well. I mean, who hits a house hard enough to take a piece out of it, and then drives away?!?!?! She clearly should not have been driving, period...we're actually lucky that it was our house she hit and not another car or pedestrian.

I feel that somebody as blatantly selfish and irresponsible as this person has proven herself to be has lost some of her rights to make choices...maybe we should have a law that if you can't keep your giant SUV under control, you can't have one. If she’d been driving a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle, it wouldn’t have been able to climb the six inch curb in front of the house, it wouldn’t have been able to run over the three foot hedge between the house and the sidewalk, and it wouldn’t have been tall enough to take out the window sill in my office.

Even if she was running that thing on alternative fuels (somehow I doubt it), one source points out that the corn needed to produce one tank of biofuel is enough to feed a person for an entire year. That makes me feel sick to think about.

Anyway, I digress. The good news for stupid drunk chick who hit my house with her gigantic SUV is that we actually have public transportation in this area…so smile lady, because when you get out of jail, you’ll have a way to get around town.

I decided that to get to the Earth Day event today, I’d finally take the plunge and get on the train instead of driving. It’s only about four or five miles, and according to google maps (which now allows you to plan your trip using public transportation) it was going to take about forty-five minutes.

Well, to make a long story short, I walked for forty minutes, went to the first train station, found it was closed, walked to a second train station, which was also closed, and found out I had to take a bus before I finally was able to board a train. It took just under two hours total - I was exhausted! It was an ordeal, but in the end I was glad I did it. The trains were immaculate, it saves money over driving, and the Earth Day event was full of farmers, vendors, music, snacks, and booths with lots of info about how to help the planet. Getting home was an adventure too…but I made it.

I'd like to end by giving a tip of the hat, as Mr. Colbert would say, to Mom. She heard her local radio host talking about how his wife and kid picked up some trash off the street for Earth Day. The co-host commented something to the effect of "yeah, since it's still too cold to plant anything, I guess that's about all we can do." Instead of just thinking about how totally not true that is, Mom called up the radio station and, using her best teacher voice, I'm sure, educated them on various other things they could do to celebrate Earth Day, cold weather and all, such as bringing reusable bags to the store, and not drinking bottled water. Good job!