Being a good neighbour

Hank's occasional snoring sounds like someone gently dragging a heavy shovel along a gravel path.  I can make that comparison because, of the two of us, I'm the one shoveling the iced-over sidewalk in front of our house this morning.  Turns out Hank is a feminist too, especially when he's late for work.

Snow Diggers: more than meets the eye

It is customary in the US to shovel the area in front of your home to prevent the embarrassing slipping over of neighbours and the irritation of blood shed on one's doorstep.  Whilst huffin' and puffin' this morning, I noticed something really nice about my new neighbourhood:

When your neighbour hears you grafting to keep their street hazard-free, they come out and do the same right alongside you.   I met a couple of new neighbours doing this, and we joked about the joys of winter. Pretty soon, between us, our block was looking rather good.

DC law requires property owners to clear snow and ice from sidewalks within eight daylight hours of the snow stopping falling. Perhaps we Brits should all have got our shovels out, sledded over to Heathrow Airport and made the 2010 Xmas holidays memorable for the right reasons!  Manual labour for the public good is just not the kind of civic duty I'm used to in the UK.  

I'm trying to work out if a shoveling law would work in England.  I remember one afternoon, sliding to my friend Emma's home in Kent along a snowy, main road.   Cars were stalling, one after the other, on a single black spot on the icy road.  One bewildered driver had his phone blaring out on hands-free, gripping the wheel whilst a friend talked him through a steep "hill start" on icy tarmac in a manual transmission vehicle.  I noticed the driver's window was open and the terrified chap was chain-smoking, presumably to avoid hyperventilating.

Emma and I wondered if we could help in some way.  Although we couldn't think of any actual assistance we could offer, we waited until the chain-smoker had successfully pulled away before moving on.  As we left, I noticed that the adjacent home had a bedroom light on and a person could be seen, clearly watching the drivers struggling.  I wonder why that person did not come down with some table salt and shake a little into the icy patch.  It also seems unlikely they did not have a shovel, given the size of their well-manicured front garden.  Maybe it just didn't occur to them to take personal responsibility for a public road.  We Brits rely on Government to do this for us - and boy did we feel the consequences of that dependancy in 2011!  Maybe UK residents paid such large taxes last year that we really feel we shouldn't have to help each other out?  Or maybe we just don't want to interfere in the lives of strangers?

I think, of all those options, the last one is actually probably the most likely.  The willingness of a citizen to interfere (for better or worse) in someone else's business might make for some interesting anthropological studies.   Since I'm too lazy to do any such studies, I will now use anecdotes instead.  Call it a perk of being a non-salaried writer.  

***

Japan. 2000. I'm waiting at a pedestrian crossing on a busy Freeway. A schoolboy on a bike pulls up on the sidewalk beside me as I and a group of Japanese adults wait for the light to change.   The boy looks right, then left.  Seeing no traffic, he prepares to cross illegally.  A car coming from behind us on the right is indicating left onto the Freeway, speeding to make the green light.  The boy on the bike doesn't see the car. Everyone else does.  The boy sets off.  None of the Japanese bystanders move.  The bike clatters to the ground. 

Was the kid hit?

No. 

The boy's collar is firmly in my hand.  I'm a hero (at last!) The other pedestrians cheer!   They had been within reach of the child but none of them shouted for him to stop; none of them had grabbed him, although many of them were closer than I was.  My feeling is that the engrained instinct not to interfere in someone else's business delayed them from acting quickly enough to protect the boy themselves. 

The child thanks me and wheels his buckled bike off.  The adults fall silent.

***

California. 2010.  Hank and I are parking our campervan in the Safeway parking lot when we hear a crunch from above.  A low-hanging tree branch.  Hank climbs up to lift the branch while I reverse.  No progress.  We try to go forwards but all we get is revving and burnt rubber.  Sap seeps down the side of the van.   We are miles away from home and stuck fast.   I feel the hysteria rising.

Could we fix this on our own?

No.

A guy in a green pick-up truck sees our predicament and, unprompted, offer us a chunky, saw-toothed knife.   Hank climbs up and starts hacking.  A crowd gathers.  Do we need a ride home?  A guy in a yellow pick-up asks if we need any help.  We say thank you but we have a saw.  The yellow pick-up driver drives off.  Hank carries on sawing.  The knife is having about the same effect as a nail file.  Onlookers start to be concerned.  At this rate, the guy who lent us the knife will be waiting all day for us to return a blunt stub.

About 15 minutes later, the yellow pick-up returns.   Out of the passenger door emerges a beefy young man carrying a huge tree-saw.

"I couldn't very well leave you out here on your own," yells the driver, over the sound of Hank manicuring the tree.  "So I thought I'd go home and fetch my saw, just in case you hadn't managed to get free.  I brought my nephew here, to give you a hand."

Hank's face lights up.  With the new saw, he lops off the branch within minutes.  I buy the yellow pick-up team a 16-pack of Bud.   

Hank is exhausted as we wave them off.  We decide to camp right there in Safeway's parking lot for the night.  We all sleep soundly. 

    

How to survive in the wilderness

Hank and I just saw "127 Hours", a Danny Boyle movie about a guy who insists on going canyoning on his own, falls into a deep hole, gets his hand trapped under an unfriendly boulder and decides to hack it off (the hand) after 127 hours of being trapped without any sign of rescue.  You may think that synopsis was what Americans call a "spoiler" but the joy of the film (if you can call it joy) resides in the suspense created when you know what's coming and are just waiting for it ... wait for it ... wait for it... Hack! You get the idea. 


There are some great bits of the movie, like when the trapped hero Aron reflects ironically on the opportunities he had to tell people where he was going canyoning and stubbornly refused; how he almost packed his Swiss Army knife but couldn't quite reach it on the top shelf at home, so left it behind; and, as his water supplies deplete, he contemplates the solitary litre of Gatorade he left in his car, oh about a hundred miles that-a-way.  The movie is good but not for the faint-hearted: if you are the kind of person who wouldn't trust the ship's barber to hack any of your limbs off at sea then perhaps take a strong swig of rum before you go into the cinema.


The idea of emergency preparedness reminded me of a recent trip to Glacier National Park (USA) with Hank.  It was June but there was still an iciness in the air and the mountains looked less than welcoming.  Hank suggested a day hike to a tarn named "Avalanche Lake", reassuringly sited at the end of "Avalanche Gorge".  Darkness was already falling as we set out.  The trailhead was roped off with a sign which stated that a recent storm had forced its closure.  Hank pressed on.  I was nervous.  

Avalanche Lake - a lovely place for a lone walk at dusk

As per usual I had packed a careful day sack, containing 1.5 litres of water, a survival bag, snack bars, warm, brightly-coloured clothing, waterproofs and a wind-up light (I never trust batteries in an emergency).  As we raced along under the forest canopy, slipping on wet rocks and icy, part-frozen mud, the light dwindled and I asked Hank what we would do in an emergency.  He said he was well prepared.  I felt relieved at first.  Then I realised he was "pretending" (pretending is our word for "lying").  I grabbed his bag and, relieved, found it reassuringly heavy.  I unzipped the front pocket and discovered the following potentially life-saving contents:


1.  Hank's Invisalign retainer
2.  His London apartment's front door keys (quite a heavy bunch) 
3.  His London office swipe passes (on bulky chains)

Hank stops to photograph the scenery along Avalanche Gorge Trail.  Fear not! He has his office swipe pass!

Ok he did have some useful kit but those were the first three things I found, so I freaked out.  At that point Hank gave me permission to leave him behind if he got into trouble.  I knew I would, in all seriousness, never be able to do that, so it was fortunate that we both made it to the tarn and back in one piece - and before nightfall.  As we returned to the road, Hank laughed at my European fear of Mother Nature. Until we saw a sign by the trailhead.


Barely a year earlier, a 27-year old man named Yi Jien Hwa had gone missing hiking in the mountains around the tarn we had just visited.  The sign requested hikers keep an eye out for his body, his clothes, his backpack, his shoes.  My scepticism of American notions of outdoors "rugged individualism" probably only sank in for Hank at that point.  We were devastated.


I have today googled Yo Jien Hwa and found no indication that any trace of him was ever recovered.  His wife had apparently been due to accompany him hiking but had been called away to a family emergency. Unable or perhaps just unwilling to postpone the trip of a lifetime, Yi Jien Hwa had gone ahead, on his own.


With the recent shootings in Arizona, I have been contemplating the New World belief that a true hero can rely on their own resourcefulness to survive any situation.  This confers the right to bear arms (you may need to protect yourself against a crazed gunman) and seems to originate in a profound belief that Government cannot solve all of society's problems, and that society cannot solve individuals' problems.  The Europeans reading this will probably take a different view: where Governments control firearms and ammunition effectively, crazed gunmen (and accidental discharges) pose less of a threat to society; when well-socialised individuals tell our peers where we're going, we're less likely to be alone relying on ourselves to survive in a canyon for very long.  So, Hank I hope you will forgive me but there will be no solitary Utah man-cave for you.  I can't protect you against a lunatic with a gun in Safeway, but I can legislate so that you won't be leaving your hand in a canyon.  Will you do me a wee favour? Please take a friend and a GPS trackable device when you square off against Mother Nature - and come back to your fiancee in one piece.  That's my American Dream xx 

The Presidents say: Your mom was right!  Don't lose your head!
Tell someone where you're going when exploring the great outdoors.  Thank you, good people of the USA!

Drug dealers- please pay tax on your profits!

It's a Saturday afternoon and I'm blog tired.  Hank has politely confirmed that yesterday's tips on saving money were a wee bit boring and obvious.  Another friend bemoaned the lack of cute animal pics since Kosmo left our house.   So I apologise to the seventy people who faithfully read this blog yesterday - and I promise you a real gem tomorrow.  For now, I'll direct you to a real, published journalist writing about America's weirdest taxes: Huffington Post article on strange taxes

PS Cute animal pic.  A crowd-pleasing hare Hank and I saw in Yellowstone Park.