Lucky me, I get to sleep in a little bit so that I leave Toronto after rush hour in order to make it to Guelph for my meeting with Ben, Kirsten, and Sean. I get to go to Guelph to talk to wonderful friends about Summit next year! How did I manage to land myself this job?

Yesterday, seeing some good friends who went to N. Africa with me was definitely refreshing. Brad’s house, pool, hot tub, a few too many cheeseburgers for me, but good times with awesome people.

Ok, commuting to work across the 401 is one of the biggest challenges each day for me. I’m still recovering psychologically from the accident about a week ago now, and it’s been interesting “getting back on the horse” we know as one of the busiest highways in North America. My main problem when I rear-ended the dude was that I was tired and wasn’t paying attention. Therefore, my main task when I’m driving is to make sure I’m alert and awake. I’ve employed a few methods to making sure my eyes don’t close on me while I’m driving.

1) Try to go to bed earlier. Midnight is way too late. 11:30 or 11:15 is maybe standard, but I’m trying to lay my head on my pillow earlier still.

2) Crank up the music. It seems the band of choice right now is Switchfoot’s “Nothing is Sound” CD which I purchased soon after I arrived back from Africa. Usually the louder the better, because I will get really into it and sing at the top of my lungs or air guitar or air drum or headbang. This usually keeps me awake.

3) Open the windows all the way. This helps with air circulation and keeps my lungs from filling up with warm CO2, reducing the possibility of yawning and drowsiness. However, this means that my singing is sometimes audible to other drivers in the traffic, and I breathe in VOC’s and O3 from the pollution, but I think it’s a reasonable sacrifice to make to stay alive.

4) Smile. For some reason when I smile, it also exercises some of the muscles around my eyes (maybe it does for you too) and this for some reason lets me stay awake. Smiling also reduces the likelihood of road rage, boredom, and judgement upon other drivers who cut into your lane or brake abruptly when traffic is moving smoothly.

It’s usually not smooth traffic that I find difficult, of course. Traffic that is smooth is usually very active driving, as the speeds are high and everyone is changing lanes periodically. The tough driving is when it’s stop and go traffic, you are constantly staring at the one car in front of you at a distance of about 10-20 metres away, and all you do is step on and release the brake pedal from “next transfer” to “next transfer”. This kind of traffic makes me want to fall asleep. Kind of like public transit on the bus or subway. I could always doze off on the commute to high school, no problem.

Traffic times are pretty variable. This morning I left after rush hour at about 9am, and it took me about 30 minutes to get to work (approximately half the Switchfoot CD). However, the trip to get back home took about 2 hours (approximately the whole Switchfoot CD, the whole Hillsong “United We Stand” CD, and a few extra songs).

Today it took so long to get home, as I sat on the 401 before the 427 near the airport, I watched about 8 or 9 airplanes take-off from the runway — that’s cool stuff. It took me so long that when I was almost home, I decided I would drive about 20 minutes more to the 407 area and take some photos of the massive cumulonimbus clouds that were rising in the northeast of Toronto.

Do you know anyone else who would deliberately drive some distance to get a photo… without knowledge of whether the photo would turn out on film?… I know very few people who would be comfortable with purposely getting into a vehicle in order to go somewhere to take pictures. I want those days again.

I wanted to blog today, but it’s now too late. I wanted to talk about commuting on the 401 and techniques I use to keep myself awake, and Switchfoot, and other stuff. But I’m too tired. Perhaps tomorrow.

Car “accident” (I’m starting to get used to this term, as a means to make myself feel a little better about the situation). We’ve decided to let insurance take care of the damage. The damage on the other car was about $3000 worth, weird but it’s probably because his Jeep is about 1 year old. The damage on my car will be about the same. In total, it could add up to $7000. And we don’t have that kind of cash lying around in liquid assets. So we’re going to let the insurance agency pay for the car repairs, the temporary car rental for the other guy, and the tow truck fees. Perhaps my (our family) insurance will rise, but at least we will have a few years to recover, instead of leaving a hole in my family’s life savings. I think this is a good conclusion.

I delved into a huge world of the car garage industry that I didn’t know about. And a deep world of Chinese contacts. Through my Chinese family friends, who helped me a great deal during the incident, I met this Chinese guy who owns a body shop/garage. He in turn brought in a Chinese tow truck driver. They were all very helpful. As I sat in the tow truck to go to the collision report centre, I realized there’s this whole radio channel of a network of Chinese tow truck drivers and such. They’re all connected, and it’s really kind of neat.

Yesterday, I wasn’t totally successful in completing my plan of biking, reading the Word, and writing up a support letter update. I did manage to get on the road bike and bike up to the end of Leslie St to Gormley. In total, I think I biked about 40K in just less than 2 hours. There was a really nice sunset as I biked back south on Leslie at full tilt. Kind of the place where I would go back to take photos in the future.

I ended up reading some of the Word, got into some of the Psalms. It’s very refreshing, as admittedly the Word has been neglected in the difficulty of the transition back from project. What I read said:

“For great is your love, higher than the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens,
and let your glory be over all the earth.”

Today I ended up going to Ayr to visit Lindi (from NAP) under the assumption that there was going to be a gathering of Nappy’s there. But lo and behold, Bahy and others had decided to cancel going to Ayr, after leaving me the message that there was going to be a gathering. Bahy had forgotten to tell me that there wasn’t going to be anything going on.

So I rang Lindi’s doorbell, and her brother answered the door, and she wasn’t expecting anyone to come at all. It was quite the hilarious thing, as Lindi was chuckling about it every 15 minutes or so, as we hung out in the basement, played a little bit of pool, and she stole about 350 photos and videos from my 7 CD’s of digital memories. I’m glad she had a chance to get them as she didn’t bring a camera to North Africa. I think it made the trip worthwhile to see her reactions to some of the photos… for instance a picture of her on a camel. Gold, I say.

To make the trip extra worthwhile, I spontaneously drove into Ayr (instead of away from the town towards the 401) and decided to stop to take photographs. I almost finished the roll. The last frame I used on a very interesting field just before I reached the 401, a drastic colour contrast between a green field and a yellow field. Hopefully that one turned out, or else I will be forced to take another trip out to Ayr just to retake that photo!

Tonight I could:

a) waste the evening by sitting in front of the TV or computer screen
b) watch a movie
c) watch the sun go down
d) go for a long bike ride, as I watch the sun go down, read some of the Bible, and then do a support update.

I think I’ll pick option D. That might take care of my physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. If I don’t prod myself, I’m going to to fall so far back in every aspect that it’s going to really suck.

Verse of the day

“The LORD will keep you from all harm - he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” Psalm 121:7-8