Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around

Driving as far as we do each day provides endless scene changes. We start the day surrounded by single wides, farm houses, and acreage. Some mornings are like playing a Bizarro World game of Frogger as you swerve back and forth trying to avoid the animals crossing the road.

Once we get off the Peninsula and turn onto SR-16, the drive opens up to the small town of Gig Harbor and the road slowly widens to freeway size as you approach the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. One of these days I'll do a post about this bridge, but not today. Follow that link if you want to get a preview. For now let me say that crossing this bridge and moving through North Tacoma provides some of the most spectacular sunrise scenes you can imagine. As you climb the hill after the bridge deck, on a clear day, you are greeted by Mount Rainier to the east. If you still have enough sleep in your eyes and the light is just right it seems like the mountain rises up out of bed just in time to say hello. More than once I've been tempted to pull over and take some pictures of this view point as SR-16 winds its way to I-5. Simply amazing.

From here on it's all about people watching. If you aren't driving you get time to see stuff that will make you feel like you've just finished a face acting exercise. "Show me happy, now terror, now desire, ok, ok, now gimme shy, winsome, panic". At one point on the bus I looked down at the car next to me and saw the driver texting on her Blackberry in one hand (the one resting on the steering wheel) and eating an apple with the other. She was passing us. It still makes me grind my teeth and tense my shoulders.

It is really worth the time though to watch the world and people around you. It's something that I haven't gotten the chance to do in many years. I spend most of my day tapping on this piece of plastic and trying not to get to devolve into caveman-nerd.

One of the things that I want to do with this blog is to share those experiences when I see them and so today I thought I'd start. Oddly enough however, the thing that stood out for me today didn't occur until the very end of my commute. Prior to my increased in-office days I would make the drive to Redmond on my own. I parked in the garage, walked in the door and sat down. Riding the bus has given me the chance to see that part of my trip differently too. I walk from the Overlake Transit Center to my building and into a door that until now I had never been through. This morning as I started up the stairs I noticed something hanging on the wall that made me pause for a moment.

This is the Garaventa Evacu-Trac CD7 - Evacuation Chair

From reading the website, this device "provides safe, reliable and fast emergency evacuation." Wow, crammed in this little box is a sleigh that lets you give rides down the stairs. I have to admit my first thought was to break this bad boy out and give it a whirl. I don't often indulge my adventuresome side, but I was sorely tempted here. The adult in me took over and I began to consider the practical aspects of this device. First, let me say that I've never seen one of these before. I've worked in a ton of "my company's" buildings and this is the first time I've encountered anything of this sort. So, what are the folks in all the other buildings to do in case of emergency? I guess they just roll their injured down the stairs, how blessed am I to work in this building! Then I took a step back and got a little more puzzled as I saw this.

Allow me to rewind for just a moment. My observation is taking place as I enter the building. This means I'm at the bottom of the stairs. The coolness meter for working in this building took a sudden dip. Why didn't they put this device at the top of the stairs? I may just be ignoring another fine opportunity to get a little cardio here, but I'm thinking it would be a lot more helpful if they had placed this closer to where it might be used, that's just me I guess.

That's it for today. I'll let you know if I ever get the nerve to ride the sleigh down the stairs.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!