A while back, I made up two rules motorcyclists have to remember. They were as follows:
1. Never trust a blind idiot driving a cage.
2. Everyone driving a cage is a blind idiot.
I'm sure someone elsewhere has expressed a similar sentiment, but I'm the first person to post it on The Great Motorcycle Pizza Tour. Anyways, it was an off-hand joke I made after some guy decided that the laws of physics didn't apply to him and that he could occupy the same space as another object at the same time (that object being me).
I've been thinking about it some more lately, and I think my rules go a little deeper than the surface meaning. Cagers tend to be blind idiots, in more than one sense. These are the people who don't see motorcyclists because they aren't expecting to see anything out of the ordinary. These are the people who don't want to see motorcyclists. And these people are in the majority.
Obviously, I don't think that driving the cage is what makes people blind idiots. In fact, I happen to be friends with several cagers. My parents are cagers. Hell, Coop is a cager (granted, it's an especially cool cage.).
Since the cage isn't what turns people into blind idiots, I can only assume that majority of people, even outside of their cars, are blind idiots. Given my daily interactions in the cube farm I work in (more cages), that seems to be an accurate assessment of the world. I mean, there are people out there (and in my office) who enjoy listening to elevator music.
Personally, I prefer to avoid idiots and I especially want to avoid working to make some other idiot rich. Of course, until I can get my own company up and running (I'm working on it, ok? Product development is more work than you'd think.) I'm going to have to earn an income somehow.
I've been thinking about going back to school, possibly for some kind of Electrical Engineering degree. It's a tough call, because on the one hand it sounds interesting and I can get my mad scientist, gigantic death robot kicks while getting college credit. On the other hand, I'm worried I'll just end up in another retarded office, doing stupid work for people I really don't like.
Of course, I'll have significant electrical engineering knowledge, which would might make getting my own company going( "Giant Death Robots R Us") slightly easier.
I could also get a little blacksmith shop going in my garage and keep plugging away at it until I'm good enough at it that I can sell my work ("Giant Doomy Gates R Us"). I'll definitely avoid spending the majority of my day in a soulless office that way, plus I'll be one of the happiest men you'll ever meet, on account of getting all my frustrations out on hot steel.
For the last week I've been feeling kind of paralyzed. As that one smart guy said "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step." And as Bugs Bunny said "watch out, that first step is a doozy."
The question for this weekend is, what the hell do I do?
2 comments:
Your'e not alone, dude. I've been wondering what I should be doing for a long time. Find my bliss? (so to speak), make a ton of money?, make cool shit that the majority of the population has no idea what it even is?
Good luck, I'm pullin for ya.
I worked for Volkswagen, and I can agree with you, cagers are dangerous. Even though I worked for an automobile company, I drove a motorcycle. 18 years of riding, many years daily, thousands and thousands of miles a year. Never crashed, never had the bike down, but had to watch the cagers constantly. About a year and a half ago, while I was in a pickup truck going 15 miles an hour, I got rear-ended by a cager going 85, swerving through traffic. He's fine. My father lost his leg above the knee, and I snapped my back. We're both confined to wheelchairs, both still recovering. I always felt safer on a bike, more control, more attention needed, more skill. It seems anyone with $35 who can push a gas pedal down can get a licence. Keep up the good work. I really enjoy your blog.
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