Another week slips away

The new pedestrian bridge connecting the city parking lot with what was once Austin Park is now open for use, though the permanent railing has not yet been installed. Here two little girls enjoy the view of the water.

Besides the railings, an area by the street needs to be finished with concrete and pavers. At least one of the three utility or light poles needs to be moved before that can be done.

I hope that there are also plans to connect the sidewalks on the south side to the sidewalk along College Avenue.

I had a unexpected adventure last week. Coming back from a trip to Lebanon, I stopped in the Walgreen's parking lot. When I tried to start the car, it made a funny noise and would not start. A gentleman who was parked nearby was kind enough to stop by Jack's Uptown Service and tell them of my problems. Very quickly one of the mechanics arrived, but he was unable to do anything on the spot. My car had to be towed to the garage.

The problem turned out to be a fuel pump, which is located in the gas tank. The next day Marvin and crew fixed it. It is never pleasant to have a car failure, but if you are going to have the car fail, it is nice when it happens in town during the day and you get a quick response for help. It is also good when the mechanics locate the problem and fix it, rather than have the car begin to operate again without knowing why it failed. That happened to me with one car and I could never be sure that I would be able to get back home when I drove somewhere with it. (It eventually failed enough so that the problem could be found--it was a faulty sensor.)

Two of my sons have had fuel pumps fail. One had a failure in a mountain pass in Wyoming when he was on the way to California. It delayed his arrival a day or two and tested his problem-solving abilities. The other had the problem when driving a car back to college in Illinois. I drove over to pick him up and then took him back the next day when the car was fixed. I bet some of you have had much more interesting car adventures.

This past week was probably the week of peak fall color. The rains the past few days brought down a lot of leaves and some of the trees are now bare, like the one below, shown just after sunset this evening.