Worldwide automobile recall

Look for an upcoming recall of every motorized vehicle ever driven on the American highways. It's coming soon. It appears that every car, truck, van, semi, or motor home is defective. here are some of the findings:

Vehicles consistently fail to stop and hit other vehicles, signs, buildings or other obstacles.
They accelerate beyond the legal speed limit without cause in radar zones.
They wander aimlessly all over the road. (This malady is most apparent on Friday and Saturday nights.)
They wear out over time and cost money to fix immediately following the end of the warranty period.
Just before accidents the steering inexplicably becomes defective.
They fail to fit into parking spots on busy streets without extreme effort.
They run out of gas at unexpected times.
No matter the type, style or color of vehicle, most lose value at an uncontrollably fast rate.

It's pretty obvious from this intense research that motorized vehicles are all defective and should be recalled and replaced at no charge to the owner. I, of course remain neutral on the subject as I am not particularly knowledgeable on the intricacies involved here. My resources are limited to news reports and my own vehicles that provide me with personal transportation. All these recalls befuddle me but I can see that through diligence and research by wise people we learn about such stuff. Incredible!.....................Joe

Lesson learned from a kid

The annual Silver Treasure Riddle game becomes 30 this year on November 2nd 2010. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the beginning. Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in some way. I've seen three generations of treasure seekers walk through my door. All of these people have had an opportunity to have a lot of free fun and learn a little more about carbon monoxide poisoning. It's been a lot of fun for me too. I also learned a couple of life lessons along the way. Some of them rather humbling.

I ride a bicycle, a lot. I can be seen all times of the daylight hours riding around somewhere in the Greater Grand Rapids Michigan area. Mostly I am simply another anonymous biker amongst hundreds, once in a while someone recognizes me and says hi. Around here I am also known as the Wyoming Riddler, a name placed on me back in the early 1980's by one of the newspaper reporters that have covered this game over the years. At first I kind of shied away from it. It sounded a little corny, but after a year or two I began to savor the notoriety. Yeah, I'm the Riddler. Felt sort of good. Then it began to go to my head a little too much. I began to feel important instead of being just one of the crowd. Then I learned a lesson from a small child that brought me back to reality.

I was riding along a busy 4 lane street and came to a stop at a red light. A car with heavily tinted windows stopped alongside and the rear window was rolled down about 4 inches. Little fingers folded around the top edge and a set of eyes looks intently at me. The front window rolled down and the woman in the seat asked me if I could pull over and sign an autograph, her daughter had recognized me and I was a favorite TV star of hers. I nodded yes and pointed to a parking lot across the intersection, we met there after the light changed. The woman handed me a small note pad and with my chest stuck out and head held high I wrote, "Have a wonderful day, The Wyoming Riddler" and proudly handed it back to the woman. She read the autograph with a puzzled look on her face. After a moment of apparent confusion she asked, "Why did you write Wyoming Riddler" we thought you were the cook on TV called Mr. Food? It took me a moment to recover and admit that I wasn't and rode off in complete embarrassment. My head deflated as I continued my ride home. Lesson learned!

So here I am, working on the final details of the 30th annual treasure hunt. A little humble in my memories at being able to meet so many wonderful people over the years. Thankfully I've learned that it has little to do with me but more to do with a free game and the coverage of the local and national news media. It's a lot easier to buy hats for a smaller head too............Joe

Blogging subjects

Some people can blog every day and always have an interesting subject to blog about. Just like some people always know what to tweet or write on face book. I envy them, they are my cellphone, Internet, notepad and blackberry heroes. In scanning over different sites I find that, when it comes to blogging, the limit has not been reached yet on subject matter. There are blogs covering flowers, food, books, movies, cars, bicycles, blood pressure medicine, post WWII military poetry, horses, cats, gerbils, gardening, jokes, batteries, electric lighting, furniture, psychology, diamonds, pianos, all kinds of art, writing, any college or university you can find, aging, staying young, running, passing gas, hiking, shoes, ink pens, and feet just to name a few. Makes me feel a little inadequate. I find some of these and other subjects would be difficult, if not impossible for me to bring into any conversation, let alone blog about on a daily basis because I know nothing about them I can't even ask an intelligent question.

I did find a favorite though, magnets. What do you know about magnets? Do you find them attractive? They do have their positive as well as negative sides to them don't they? A lot of people don't like to discuss magnets though. Yeah, they can be very polarizing can't they? The favorite movie of magnet lovers was the Golden Compass so controversy is not unknown to them as you can see. If a person is opposed to the benefits of magnets it seems that they are still drawn to them anyway, attracted by forces unseen. Kind of spooky.

I, on the other hand, find myself bereft of a subject to write about today. I guess I'll have to spend a little more time checking out the subjects available until I settle on something interesting...........Joe