Posts Tagged ‘cars’
Soo, somehow I’ve managed to angle my other entries mainly to animals, and this was not intended. But neither was I avoiding it! So with “Speed Bumps” as the title to this entry of awesomeness, (no!?) I’m going to tell you about the speed bumps in Trondheim… Starting with me becoming a taxi driver I had to drive around in the City to pass all the tests to get my taxi drivers license.
While driving around getting to know the city I started noticing that there were speed bumps every-fucking-where! Speed bumps is clearly the devils gift to small and lowered cars. Most speed bumps in this godforsaken town are meant for buses to drive over without bumping (insert whichever word you think describes it best.) Well, the thing is, these bus bumps are so narrow almost no one needs to adjust their speed to get past them. Most modern cars are wide enough to avoid the bump, but sadly, not allways tall enough not to scratch down on it. Myself, I do not notice them at all actually, but this makes me think… Why the hell do they make speed bumps like this, when i can drive over it in more than three times the speed limit without feeling it. This clearly makes it loose it’s purpose. It’s supposed to make me lower my speed, but I don’t, and I doubt there are many that do…
Other places they’ve managed to make the regular full-width-of-the-road speed bumps but these are so fucking pointy I can’t even drive over them in half of the speed limit without it being uncomfortable and destructive to my car. What the hell? And again, other of the same kind are so low or long I don’t even notice the effect they’re supposed to have.
You’d have to be driving a Nissan Micra or a minimalistic car like that to be bothered by most speed bumps around here! I am sure this is why we can’t have nice things around here. On average there are 1 speed bump in every single street in Trondheim. This makes around 3000 of the motherfuckers, and I got to learn the name of every one of them on my test this upcoming Tuesday! The sad part is: Now my car is halfway broken, and the lack of brakes are not very funny…
As you were!
As a tribute to mine and my family’s cat, Snurre, I would like to dedicate this entry to him, and them!
This cat was truly a good, and rather special, companion through the past 5 years. Through my childhood and youth, my parents have taken cats from outside into our warm friendly home, connected with them, and become good friends, even though every cat we had, suffered the same outcome at last. Killed in traffic. Such a tragedy happens to a lot of cats here, and everywhere with traffic, I assume.
Well, the tales of this one last kitty are many, and this cat has barely survived through a short but colorful life. Many times we’ve sat in the living room stumbled by this cat bringing its prey for the evening home, or hunted birds in our back yard, to the amusement of our utterly weird but amazing dog. This cute little thing would hide in spots people would never even imagine looking, it would mew over noting, and mess with our dogs mind, and play games with it, letting the dog chase him, and then disappear, only to make the dog completely crazy by not finding the cat. This Changed, even though our cat never was the kind of guy to be lying in our lap, we easily saw his mind was changed after the one time he disappeared for 3 to 4 months or so.
A few times before, he’d be gone a while, and whilst on vacation in Trøndelag, we had to leave without him. Then one day, this young boy called the number on his collar, and my dad picked up. The kid asked where he’d come, and my dad said Bodø, and the kid just barely believed him, since this is 700km away. Snurre got a taxi drive from Trøndelag the next day. But this one day he was gone, we waited, and waited, but Snurre never came. After a couple of weeks we assumed the worst, and got through the grief of losing our friend. After 3 months we saw him 6km away from our house, but didn’t stop, because the cat couldn’t be this far away. A month later we got a call by a woman seeing one of our old posters. She had a black cat, that looked like he was lost, our cat was, so we naturally went to see him. It was him.
By that time he changed a lot, and he had lately gone back to a normal state of mind, though he was the weirdest pet I’ve ever had. If you let him out one door, he would walk around the house, and mew to get in, only to go out the same way he did last time. Sometimes Snurre made me fucking crazy. Hunting birds he stuck one of his teeth’s to his lip wile falling from a tree. Later he disappeared again, and someone came by and said they found this female cat in the ditch after being struck by a car. I saw the cat, but didn’t have no female pet, so I said sorry, and they went along. A week later my sister saw a poster, and we got our cat back, again… He was hurt badly, but survived. This time, he changed even more, and reacted to our dog, never played, and avoided everyone but my sister. He slept in her bed. Now this last incident happened, yesterday that is. Again, he was run over by a car, destroying his leg. The damages were too severe. At least the driver stopped after seeing him running into our garage, and informed us of this. He bled, and mewed a lot, until he went to the vet. After that, silence. I will never forget the look in my sisters’ eyes when she told me.
Thank you, for being a good friend, a soft pillow, the weirdest cat I ever knew, and the cute little kitty we had.
As you were, soldier
Steinar