Goodbye ?

Christmas day was a fairly quiet affair. Travelled a whole 20 Kms to see a friend from long ago and one I hadn't seen for a few years. Met him in Vietnam and later was best man at his wedding. Sort of kept in contact, but after his son left home for the big wide world, Tom took up farming in a serious form and spent most of his time away.

Guess it's about 3 years since I saw him last, in fact, I fixed up his computer and caught up with a lot of events and yarned of yesterday. He was dead keen to document his experiences of Vietnam and had endless number of archival projects going.

Seen his wife a few times and caught up with his news, but it never prepared me for the shock of seeing him yesterday. He was drawn and had no body tone and had lost a lot of weight. Barely recognized him and he never mentioned Vietnam once. It was the farm and whether his son would be interested in it. John Donne came to mind

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

We said our farwells, they are always the same in my mind "We must all get together some time...", but we never have, not since 1970 when they were married.

Keeping track of people

So our travellers know what is going on

26 Dec

So far all seems to be well and things going to itinenary

Lollipop Man

Big bike ride on the weekend, well, for us, 350 odd people is big :-)
My duty, together with 7 others was to control the traffic as the riders came through the Russell Roundabout.

This one is a bigun. It is a dual carriageway roundabout, some 50 metres across with four incoming roads. Furthermore, it would be one of the busiest being an arterial road feeding (and pouring out at knock off time) all the Defence traffic in one axis and being a major arterial road on the other axis.

In fact, if you are riding your bike a 8:30 on a weekday morning, it is almost impossible to get across. But on this Sunday there was little Defence traffic, just the "airport" type stuff.

Cyclist came from the West, so we bunched them at the roundabout, then with frantic waving of arms by a controller in the bang dead centre of the monstrocity, we did our lollipop duties and stopped the traffic. Once stopped the cyclist were let through. This happened four times before they all got past the obstacle, and thankfully, all safely.

It was in fact a family affair, not a race, and the organizers didn't want any accidents. All but one of the cars I stopped were considerate, the one that wasn't was driven by an 80 yo complaine "Why the hell do I have to stop for thes *!&*?>/ cyclist. Sheesh, he's been alive some 42 million minutes and he complains about losing one of them.