Blogger 365 Day 222 - Keeping me up at night

      As per yesterday's blog, I did make the venture outside last night in hopes of catching some of the Perseid meteor shower.  I waited until a little after 12am before leaving, my plan was that I would take my headphone, and my iPad, grab a coffee on the way and then go sit outside for a while atop the Schenley overlook and see what I could see,  Of course, plans are different than realities and last night was no exception.

     I went as far as to check weather.com to see what the conditions would be like, there would be little to no reason to go out if it would be overcast with the possibility of rain.  But the forecast was all clear, a cloudless night (or close to it) and temps in the lower 70s, so it would be comfortable out as well as clear.  I threw some clothes on around midnight, pack up all of my things in my bag and made my way out the door.  First stop was to be the corner store (One Stop) where I might chat with Numan, the owner, for a minute, then grab a coffee and be on my way.  Sometimes I will just say hi and be on my way, other times Numan and I will talk shop, since we are both running similar type stores.  The stores are far enough apart that they are not direct comeptition with each other, so I might poke my head around when inside and see what he has that maybe we should get.    Plus given the location, Numan tends to be open late, usually the store will open at 8am and close somewhere around 2am, so leaving at midnight should give me plenty of time to get my coffee or what have you.  Except when I walked down the street and made the turn to go into his store it was already closed.  Not sure what happened that he would have closed that early, with college students slowly trickling back in, if anything I would have thought he would have made sure to stay open on a Saturday night.  Guess not.

     Sans coffee I went ahead and started the walk to the Schenley overlook.  The thought was that being up that high hopefully I could escape some of the city lights that would wash out the night sky.  There are light in the park, but most of those are along the roads through the park and there is plenty of darkness to be had along the hillside of the overlook that views both the skylines of Oakland and downtown.  But as I am walking to my destination I notice how bright it is outside.  A day before the super moon (whatever that is), the moon was incredibly bright in the night sky, so much so that it was helping to make seeing stars and shooting stars even harder than was expected.

     The walk up to the overlook took maybe 20-25 minutes and I found a spot on the hillside just below the turnaround where I plopped my bag down and just laid down in the wet grass.  There was no escaping the city lights, the air was hazy enough that the lights from the city were giving off an orangish hue, combined with a bright moon that was effectively washing out most of the sky to the south and seeing things was hard, you really had to focus in order to see a handful of stars that able to penetrate the light bubble that ruining most of the visibility.  Another thing that didn't help was my glasses.  I never really thought they would be an issue and without them I am pretty much blind as a bat, but because they are metal framed, if I turned my head I had to make sure that if I did see a streak of light, it was actually in the sky and not just light reflecting off of my frames.  After about an hour of this I can maybe confirm seeing 3 shooting stars and I made the mental calculation that the ends weren't justifying the means, so I made my way home, thinking I would just go to bed when I got in.  I was pretty sleepy when I left and figured it wouldn't be long after I got home that I would be sound asleep.

     Except that is when the train wreck that is the internet happened.  I got home and was just doing a little late night web surfing and the story of Tony Stewart hitting a race car driver was really starting to blow up online.  I went to check ESPN first, but they were useless most of the night.  I should have known better, ESPN shows journalistic integrity about as often as I get laid and since NASCAR is one of thing things ESPN has a contract with, far be it for them to get immersed in a story regarding a NASCAR driver unless they absolutely have to.  Much like the joint venture ESPN was doing with PBS, they were going to do an in depth piece on how concussions affect NFL players after their time in the league.  AS soon as ESPN started getting pressure from the NFL they backed off, jettisoning the joint project and some more of their integrity as well.  So I went to some other sources, Fox Sports, Deadspin, Sporting News, bouncing between them to see if I could hear the latest on the news.  For those not in the know, a quick synposis; Tony Stewart was iracing in a sprint car race in upstate New York, a race not sanctioned by NASCAR.  This is nothing unusual for Stewart, there are many times when he will race at local tracks prior to larger events, and Stewart spent some of his early years in motorsports racing sprint cars.  With the NASCAR race Sunday at Watkins Glen, Stewart used the opportunity to race at a smaller dirt track on Saturday night.

      During the course of the 25 lap feature race, Stewart and Kevin Ward Jr were jockeying for position going into the first turn of the track, Stewart's line forced ward into the wall, wrecking Ward's car and ending his racing for the night.  The race went under a yellow flag (caution) in order for ward to try to restart his car and get it off of the track, but rather than restart his car, Ward climbed out of his vehicle and made his way angrily down the track to confront Stewart on his next pass under caution.  As Stewart's car approached him, Ward got closer to the car, pointing his finger and yelling at Stewart.  Just as Stewart's car was about to pass Ward, there was a slight revving of the engine and the back end slid, catching Ward underneath the car and subsequently throwing Ward a good 50 feet from Stewart's car. 

     The story kept unfolding through the night, actual video was posted online of the accident, and there were rumors and speculation over what was unfolding.  Did Stewart hit him on purpose?  Is Ward okay?  Will there be criminal charges?  And me, rather than going to bed, was hooked on this story for most of the night.  So far what we know is Ward was dead on arrival at the hospital (which comes as no shock to those who have seen the video), so far there are no charges against Stewart though the DA is still investigating, and Stewart pulled out of the race today at Watkins Glen, after his publicist originally said they would race, "business as usual" was the rather poor choice of words he uttered. 

      Right about now we have reached the opinions are like assholes stage of things, everybody has one.  I even have one, but I do not know enough about racing or how sprint cars operate to even begin to suggest that mine would be any more valid than anyone else's, and if you want to just grab an opinion of any uneducated layperson, there are tens of thousands out there right now to choose from.  No need for me to enter that mass of stupidity.  It is one of the reason I have never been a fan of letting readers comment on new stories on TV or newpaper web sites, rarely do those comments amount to anything, the only reason that section is there is so that the site can generate more traffic for its online advertising. 

      I think I finally fell asleep around 5am, woke back up at 7am, went back to sleep at 9am, woke back up at noon and have felt pretty miserable all day.  The only good news I could take from today is that my package is now in Pittsburgh according to Fed Ex, so the timing thing may just play out pretty well after all.

     For now though I am going to call it a night, I need to see if I can get myself back on something of a normal sleeping schedule after I fucked it up yesterday.