November 21, 2009

  • Roads

    I love freshly paved roads.  Recently, through a stretch of relatively undesirable real estate, judging by the boarded-up windows and houses in ill-repair, the city has repaved the roads.

    With a light-absorbing black surface, the road grips one's tires with new found vigour, allowing a quiet and satisfying ride through once pot-hole laden stretches. 

    Somehow, it transforms the area from decrepit to a place with some modicum of hope.

    I smile to myself, enjoying the change.  Renewal for this city would come with no mean cost.  It's been in such a protracted spiral into an everpresent gloom.

    My car wheels onto the highway, and I find myself obeying the speed limit, staring off into dove-gray winter-ish skies.  Age has that effect on you. 

    To my left, I notice a blur of black bobbing across the short concrete wall separating the flow of high speed traffic.  My eye is drawn to it, as I accelerate to 70 mph.  At the angle it makes with my vision, it looks like a rectangle of black rubber.  But the bounce suggests something I find preposterous.  It's a tire, spinning and bouncing in the opposite direction as my car.

    As it passes my car, and into my rear view mirror, I find myself wondering what it might have been like had the tire, complete with metal hub, collided with my windshield.  It looked as if it had flown free from a car traveling on the opposite side, with a velocity of around 30-40 mph.  A collision with my windshield might well have been fatal.

    What a morning.