The good life

32,000 km in, I looked under the hood of my '06 Matrix for the first time. To my surprise, design modifications had resulted, apparently, in the rotation of the waterpump and fan belt 90 degrees to the left as I faced them. I could hear a high-pitched peach. That was Friday.

This morning I handed over the key to the boys at Taylor Toyota and ran home. The first leg took me south through the warehouse district until--what the H.!--no sidewalk on the east side of Broad. By the end of the second leg I'd passed downtown. One more leg to Hillsdale.

Here I considered the principles of urban development, whereby the developer calls for a new bridge to feed its planned subdivision south of Wascana creek in the 50s. The City refuses; the developer builds it anyway, a quarter-mile east, and tries for the next 20 years (without sucess) to the get the City to pay for it.

I crossed that bridge when I came to it and splintered on home past houses new in '59, easements fenced shut.