Watch the jingle jangle start to chime

[austin_dern]

The epilogues: first, came the Tuesday after my visit ended, and alongside the process of my shopping for a car. That time I went to a spot near work, trying out some used cars, and after that I went to a mall nearby with a vague notion that I needed a new belt. The old had gotten to where I was on the smallest notch, and still had several inches free in defiance of the whole point of a belt. My father was promising that if I would just get his leather kit out of the attic he would punch more holes. I thought it better to buy a less oversized belt, and this was a convenient mall. I found one in Sears, where the customer ahead of me got a long spiel from the cashier regarding how one could potentially win money for answering the online survey the receipt indicated, and which he didn't quite get the first time. He got it halfway through the second, and I used that experience to insist I didn't need to hear it again. I didn't enter the survey contest.

Wandering around the mall I noticed in the coin-op rides for kids the ``Kiddie Coaster''; I didn't notice that so much as the Cedar Point logo on the screen. The ride offers the chance to simulate riding Gemini and Mean Streak, by way of a seat and monitor that shakes around. I couldn't help smiling over this echo of my visit just days earlier, and was admiring it when a kid and mother (I assume) came and took a ride. He chose to ride Gemini, which turned out to be video of the other coaster, the one I didn't take. But I was able to assure the mother that the ride really did look like that, and the kid very nearly sat still for the whole initial climb, and again for parts of the racing around the track. Both seemed to appreciate this abnormal burst of small talk on my part.

The other epilogue came later, as bunny_hugger reported the discovery of a pair of shorts much too large to fit her. Somewhere in the laundry I lost it. I suppose I could probably have used the space room in my luggage on the way back anyway. It's a little impressive I didn't lose more, or something more critically necessary.

Trivia: About 72,000 United States railroad employees were killed on the tracks between 1890 and 1917; close to two million were injured. Another 158,000 were killed in repair shops and roadhouses. Source: The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, Alan Trachtenberg.

Currently Reading: A Century of Subways: Celebrating 100 Years Of New York's Underground Railways, Brian J Cudahy.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I think I have ended up with a pair of shorts and a pair of pants. They might not be much good to you at this point; are you going to want them back?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't feel any big rush to get them back, anyway. No need to waste baggage space on them. I'm kind of looking forward to when I can move from weight-loss to weight-maintenance in part so I don't have to keep buying new pants and belts.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I only asked because if you were rather rid of them, I could cut them up for polishing cloths. >:) But if you think you might want them I will keep them.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, hm. I don't know. I don't think there's any particular sentimental attachment to them other than their being clothes I've worn around you. I suppose none of it could be what I wore to Seaside Heights with you last summer so go ahead and do as you like, although it's probably better if I don't know about it. You know how I get attached.

[orv.livejournal.com]

I remember being told, when I worked at BNSF, that nearly every rule in the General Code of Operating Rules (http://www.sdrm.org/faqs/rulebook/) was the result of someone getting injured or killed.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I could believe it, even if there is a faintly urban-legendary aspect to it. But it does seem like past the most obvious moves it's hard to foresee combinations of things that prove really hazardous until you've got an example of it leading to catastrophe.

There's probably an interesting parallel to be drawn between railroad operating rules and their development with the increase of safety procedures for kids based on their injury or death on things like playground equipment.