I was stationed there for the last two years of it being a Navy base, 95-97. It was flipped from Navy to Marines in the fall of 97 around Sept/Oct.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
lucky kids got to do the family Christmas card photo in their Dad’s jet on Miramar
On February 3, 2026, a Kyrgyzstan national who entered the United States through the Biden administration’s CBP One application, was driving a commercial truck in Indiana
he failed to slow for traffic and swerved into the westbound lane.
He held a Pennsylvania non-domiciled CDL issued in July 2025.
The van he struck was carrying six Amish people. Four of them died.
He had been employed by AJ Partners, a carrier connected to the Sam Express and Tutash Express chameleon network.
The CDL training school that certified his competency was Aydana Inc., operating as U.S. CDL, incorporated in August 2022 at 524 Continental Road in Hatboro, Pennsylvania.
Aydana Inc. had no presence on the FMCSA Training Provider Registry.
Aydana Inc. had no presence on the FMCSA Training Provider Registry.
It had no presence on Pennsylvania’s list of licensed CDL training providers maintained by the State Board of Private Licensed Schools.
It had no website, no Google Business listing, no Yelp listing, and no discernible digital footprint of any kind for an entity incorporated for more than 3 years.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education states explicitly that providers on its licensed list are the only training providers in Pennsylvania legally permitted to offer ELDT instruction.
PennDOT accepted the certification from this entity and issued a commercial driver’s license.
There are approximately 700,000 active motor carriers in the United States. Roughly four million people hold commercial driver’s licenses. The question the Jay County crash forces is not complicated. If a ghost school with no registry listing, no state license, and no digital presence can produce a CDL that a state agency accepts and a carrier relies on to put a driver on the road, and four people die before the system notices, how many variations of that sequence are currently active across an industry this size?
American drive-in restaurants, iconic for 1950s carhop service, neon lights, and parking lot dining, every little town used to have one or two, and teens in the late 60s used to pick a direction and hit everyone to test the shakes/malts and burgers
I don't have enough time to do a proper post on just how damn cool I think it must have been to be a teen in 1969-70, too young for the draft, hanging with friends in a cheap car, with cheap gas, paid for with a gas station mechanic job changing oil, tires, batteries, and having a LOT of fun on weekends with friends
Neon, great fries and burgers, shakes and ice cream cones, seeing who else showed up to hang out as planned, seeing what cars were getting shown off
Eventually, however, drive-in restaurants went into decline, replaced by the introduction of the drive-through, which negated the need for hiring carhops and saved on money and time.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/timley-return-drive-in-restaurant-180974973
In the 1978 film The Wiz, the Lion is named Fleetwood Coupe De Ville, and he's got a pretty cool rear view mirror
One of my favorite childhoood movies... the graffiti people, the lion, scarecrow and tin man, the monster trash cans, walking cameras in the Emerald City, those cool taxi cabs, and the very cool motorcycle gorillas!
And the great songs, No Bad News, and Ease On Down the Road!
But I'd never noticed that the lion's name is Fleetwood Coupe De Ville until now
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Colorado troopers pulled over 2,540 drivers for ‘hanging out’ in the left lane and failing to move right while traveling at slower speeds than the flow of traffic, in 2025
The top roadways for traffic stops for “hanging out” in the left lane in 2025 are as follows:
I-70 (962 contacts)
I-25 (564 contacts)
Hwy 50 (297 contacts)
Hwy 160 (190 contacts)
E-470 (149 contacts)
Troopers are reminding drivers that in Colorado, multi-lane roads with a posted speed limit of 65 m.p.h. or greater designate the furthest left lane as the “passing lane.”
I-70 (962 contacts)
I-25 (564 contacts)
Hwy 50 (297 contacts)
Hwy 160 (190 contacts)
E-470 (149 contacts)
Troopers are reminding drivers that in Colorado, multi-lane roads with a posted speed limit of 65 m.p.h. or greater designate the furthest left lane as the “passing lane.”
The Great Redwood Trail will connect the San Francisco Bay to the Humboldt Bay via a 300-mile multi-use trail.
The plan is to build a 300-mile trail along the route of the disused Northwestern Pacific Railroad, stretching from the San Francisco Bay in the south to the Humboldt Bay in the north. It will be designed for non-motorized uses like walking, cycling, and horseback riding.
I love this graffiti spoof of the Peanuts gang, in Batu Satu Brunei, by artists Guerrilla Architects (thanks to Larry Chen for showing this in his trip to Brunei!) the only commercial street art studio in Brunei
The transposition of a staple, to a new variant of style, it what makes art and artists, so appealing. That something that the original artist never conceived of doing with their characters, was imagined and brought into being by another, is cool.
Imagine the Peanuts gang in Grease, Jurassic Park, Fast and Furious... etc.
I find this type of art, maybe it's satire, maybe it's tribute, often done with Lilo and Stitch, but this is the first time I've seen the Peanuts gang in another universe
See the making of in this video
Also see the commissioned mural in the Motul outlet in Brunei: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwrBfisJgni/
Saturday, March 28, 2026
New York had a 2,000-mile bicycle highway system by the year 1900, known as the sidepath system of the 1890s. By the 1920s, most sidepaths had been swallowed by widening roads, repurposed by railroads or overtaken by vegetation.
the State of New York under the Side Path Law / compiled by New York State Division, League of American Wheelmen ; drawn by Walter M. Meserole
https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agdm/id/2587 for an interactive zoomable map
Charles Raymond, a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute-trained engineer and founding member of the Lockport Wheelmen, with a radical yet pragmatic idea: instead of waiting for expensive, politically contentious road reform, what if cyclists built their own dedicated paths alongside existing roads?
in 1892, when Niagara County cyclists raised private funds to construct one of the nation’s first purpose-built bicycle facilities: a 12-mile crushed-stone sidepath from Lockport to Olcott Beach on Lake Ontario. Far from a simple dirt track, the path incorporated thoughtful engineering, with graded surfaces for smooth riding, drainage ditches and culverts to manage water runoff, and carefully tested surfacing materials that proved durable under repeated use.
Recognizing that volunteer labor and private donations alone could not sustain expansion, Raymond took an unprecedented step: he drafted legislation. In 1896, New York State passed a law authorizing Niagara County to create a Sidepath Commission to raise funds by taxing bicycles to keep building out the network.
Other counties took note, and momentum accelerated with the statewide enabling legislation in 1899, signed by Gov. Theodore Roosevelt, which created the first statewide framework for dedicated bicycle infrastructure in the United States.
The New York cities of Rochester and Niagara, as well as Minnesota’s Minneapolis and St. Paul, each built hundreds of miles of these hard-surfaced paths.
Sidepaths multiplied county by county, growing from short recreational segments into connected regional corridors. Cyclists paid small annual fees for sidepath licenses, creating a dedicated, if ultimately fragile, funding stream. Engineering standards spread rapidly, construction costs dropped through economies of scale and counties competed enthusiastically to report new mileage at annual conventions.
By 1901, New York State boasted more than 2,000 miles of sidepaths, the most extensive bicycle path network in the nation.
Riders could travel from village streets to rural highways, from industrial towns to scenic destinations and, remarkably, from Brooklyn all the way to Niagara Falls on nearly continuous bicycle infrastructure
https://www.railstotrails.org/trailblog/history-happened-here-sidepaths-and-the-persistent-dreams-of-trail-building/https://bikebattles.net/2018/01/finding-sidepaths/ includes PDFs of Sidepaths magazine
Sidepaths multiplied county by county, growing from short recreational segments into connected regional corridors. Cyclists paid small annual fees for sidepath licenses, creating a dedicated, if ultimately fragile, funding stream. Engineering standards spread rapidly, construction costs dropped through economies of scale and counties competed enthusiastically to report new mileage at annual conventions.
By 1901, New York State boasted more than 2,000 miles of sidepaths, the most extensive bicycle path network in the nation.
Riders could travel from village streets to rural highways, from industrial towns to scenic destinations and, remarkably, from Brooklyn all the way to Niagara Falls on nearly continuous bicycle infrastructure
six issues of the Sidepaths magazine: from volume 3 (1900), numbers 22, 23, and 24, and from volume 4 (1901), numbers 2, 3, and 4 are known to exist.
These issues are collected in the U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters library, under call number GV1040 .S53 1901.
1901 issue of Good Roads remarked of side paths: "The cycle paths of Albany, Rochester, Minneapolis, Seattle and Spokane have done more to keep alive the fraternal feeling among cyclists and to boom the bicycle trade in those cities than any other issue elsewhere."
Of course, you know how this turns out. The dawn of the motor age quickly arrived. Bicycles, as well as trolleys, were overtaken. And the side path law was repealed.
As with any fad, interest in bicycling for the general public began to decline and by 1903 there was no longer enough money for repair and maintenance from sales of side path badges.
A 1917 edition of that Albany guide book -- the one that had reported thousands of bicycles in Albany in 1900 -- said of the city's once multiple bicycle clubs: "These all now are practically out of existence."
A 1917 edition of that Albany guide book -- the one that had reported thousands of bicycles in Albany in 1900 -- said of the city's once multiple bicycle clubs: "These all now are practically out of existence."
By 1964, Secretary Stewart Udall’s Department of the Interior was promoting trails, paths, lanes and routes under that catch-all term. The next year, Udall commissioned the study that would eventually produce the Trails for America report, calling for new hiking trails and bikeways. “To avoid crossing motor vehicle traffic,” said the report, “bikeways would be located along landscaped shoulder areas on frontage roads next to freeways and expressways, along shorelines, and on abandoned railroad rights-of-way,” or “along quiet back streets and alleys.” It was a fine idea, but there wasn’t a lot of federal money available. While some bikeways were built, it wasn’t until later decades that “rail-trails” emerged out of the list of suggested bikeway locations as the more successful model.
officially, 1971 was the last great year for the Hemi and 440 Six-Pack. The factory moved the few left overs out the doors anyway. A small number of Charger Rallye and Road Runner GTX cars slipped through in 1972 with 440 Six-Pack/6BBL
Until that point, nobody even thought such a car could exist, but it turns out that 3 were actually built, and it's likely that only tin the Brothers Collection still exists.
That car pictured above was listed on Mecum in 2013 and billed as a 1972 Charger Rallye with a 390-horsepower 440ci Six Pack V-8.
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