brakes and battery

Some lessons, we need to learn over and over. Even though I enjoy cars, I have never been as enamored with them as some of my friends. They fall into the same category of "nice to have" -- like wash and wear pants.

I live close to work and I do not drive far from Salem these days as Professor Jiggs ages. I have had my current truck for seven years now and it has 50,000 miles on it.

Here is how much I take my truck for granted. I have received two recall notices and I have avoided taking the truck to the dealer -- until today. The recall notices are two years old -- a fact I noticed only when turning the truck over to the shop. And after two years, what convinced me to take it to the shop? When two red warning lights on the dashboard simply could no longer be ignored. Two bad Bs: battery and brakes.

So, I walked the two miles from the shop to work. It was a great morning. Crisp. A few clouds. But it was a true spring day. Oregon knows how to do spring. There were flowers everywhere. Yellow. Pink. White. Purple. Blue. Crows croaked on fleshly-mown lawns. Pairs of squirrels ran serpentine tracks up oak trunks. Everything was crying out: I live. (There is a poem hidden in there that I wll need to parse out one of these days.)

And I missed every bit of that as I drove to the shop. I came back the exact same route where I witnessed spring incarnate.

We all know that cars isolate us from the rest of life. Yet, we need to be reminded now and then that life is still there.

That is why I enjoy my walks with Jiggs. As a dog, he only knows what he senses in the moment.

Note to self: get out of the car -- and get to Mexico.