Floyd Town Jubilee Video
This video went up on The Floyd Press web site right after Floyd’s Town Jubilee last month but that version wasn’t available in High Definition (HD). Here’s an updated version. If he video doesn’t play smoothly, try turning off HD by moving your cursor over the video frame and clicking on “HD is on” on [...]
Texting while driving becomes illegal…sort of
A statewide ban on texting on cell phones goes into effect Wednesday — July 1.
The law is long overdue but it fails to go far enough and will be difficult to enforce because the driver must be doing something else illegal or stupid before a cop can pull them over.
In other words, texting while driving is illegal, but you can’t get a ticket for it unless you are breaking at least one other law.
As Forest Gump would say: "Stupid is as stupid does."
Message to drivers who text or e-mail on the road: put the phone down or pay up.
Virginia will join 13 other states and the District of Columbia that have banned texting while driving when the new law and hundreds of others legislators passed this winter take effect Wednesday.
Safe driving advocates said texting or e-mailing while driving significantly increases the chances of getting into a wreck.
Del. John A. Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake and the bill’s sponsor, cited a crash in Florida this spring when the driver of a tractor-trailer hit a school bus while text messaging his wife, killing one student and injuring several others.
“There is no message other than ‘I’m in serious, serious jeopardy’ that is worth that type of risk,” he said.
Those who text or e-mail while driving can receive a $20 fine or $50 for a second offense, but drivers can only receive a citation if they were pulled over for another offense. The law makes an exception for emergency responders such as paramedics or police officers, or those reporting an emergency.
A law that says a driver has to be doing something else illegal before a cop can hit the blue lights and pull the texting idiot over is as stupid a limitation as Virginia’s law which says a cop can’t pull someone over for not using a seat belt only if they are breaking another law.
Another typical loophole from Virginia’s brain-dead General Assembly. It’s too bad the loons in Richmond didn’t have the balls to pass an outright ban on cell phone usage while driving. A woman holding a cell phone to her ear with her shoulder so she could light a cigarette while driving pulled out in front of me on U.S. 221 Sunday. I had to hit my brakes and swerve my motorcycle into the oncoming lane to avoid hitting her. Fortunately, there was no traffic in that lane.
Is texting dangerous? Damn right is is. Consider this press release from a law firm in Texas:
In San Antonio, a public bus driver sending text messages on his phone plowed the 12-ton vehicle he was driving into the back of a stopped SUV. After an accident injuring dozens of people, a Boston trolley driver admitted he was texting his girlfriend when the crash occurred. In California, a commuter train engineer was sending and receiving text messages moments before a head-on collision with a freight train killed 25 people and injured 135 more.
As tragedies involving public transit and text-messaging drivers add up, so does the research indicating that more and more people are using their cell phones to send text messages while driving.
New research shows 26 percent of cell phone users nationwide send text messages while they’re behind the wheel (28 percent of Texas drivers admit to using their cell phones while driving). Almost 60 percent of teenage drivers admit to driving while texting (DWT) and 49 percent of those between 20 and 29 admit to DWT.
(Photo courtesy of The Associated Press. I’m not crazy enough to ride in a car with someone texting while driving, even for a photo op. My mama drowned the dumb ones.)
Death of a state trooper and fellow motorcyclist
A little while back, at an event for riders of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, I met Ralph William Carroll Jr., (right) a 59-year-old Master State Trooper from Stanleytown who enjoyed riding Harleys.
Caroll, of Stanleytown, died Friday when his northbound bike collided with a southbound car making a left turn on U.S. 220 in Henry County.
Carrolll was just two years younger than me and, when we met, we talked at length about older riders, reaction times and the dangers of riding bikes on roads where cars change lanes and make turns without looking.
"We can have all the training in the world but when a car pulls out or turns in front of you the force of physics takes over," he said.
According to WSLS, Channel 10:
State Police Sgt. Bob Carpentieri says around 1:00 p.m., a car driven by 20-year-old Christopher Cunningham was in the center turn lane on Route 220 in Bassett Forks. Cunningham then turned left, in front of Trooper Carroll, who was riding his 1986 Harley Davidson motorcycle southbound on Rt. 220.
Carroll hit the passenger side of the car, and was thrown from his motorcycle.
EMTs airlifted Trooper Carroll to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, but he later died.
At least once a week, I have to take evasive action on my motorcycle because some inattentive driver pulls out in front of me, changes lanes without signalling or turns in front of me. All to often the drivers of these cars are talking on cell phones, talking to a passenger or doing something else that distracts them from concentrating on the road.
A lot of State Troopers ride bikes. Master trooper Keith Gregory, assigned to Floyd County, rides a Yamaha and we talk often about bikes and traffic safety.
Carpentieri says charges are pending against the 20-year-old driver of the car.
I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to know Carroll. Bikers are a close-knit group. It’s always tough when we lose one.
(Photo courtesy of Virginia State Police)
Citizen Wireless: Can you find me now?
Citizens Telephone is getting out of the wireless phone business and becoming an "authorized dealer" for Verizon Wireless — the dominant cell service provider in Floyd County.
Citizens has not yet told its customers — who are also its owners — of the change but Verizon Wireless now lists Citizens as its Floyd representative on their web site.
Verizon customers who used to pay their bills at the "authorized reseller" that operated out of Floyd Pharmacy found out something was changing a few weeks ago when the Verizon counter closed and those who wanted to pay up were directed to the Village Green, home of the Citizens Telephone retail office.
But sales agents at the Village Green had not yet been told of the changeover and told Verizon customers they could not accept payments.
Citizens employees finally learned of the change just last week. I’m told the official changeover comes July 1.
As I understand the coming change, Citizens will no longer offer cell service under their own brand. The co-op has quietly dropped cell service from their web site’s menu of services and wireless service is no longer included in the "bundled" services. Existing Citizens cell phone customers can keep their phones and continue paying Citizens but new accounts will not be opened.
The retreat from the cell phone business is another blow to Citizens’ once-ambitious plan to become a telecommunications player. Last year, the company shut down its money-draining wireless broadband service in the New River Valley, writing off considerable losses and the company’s county-wide deployment of fiber optic is so far behind schedule that they no longer even promote a target date for completion.
“Quite a happening little town’
Connie Harland of Portsmouth rode her Harley-Davidson into Floyd Friday last afternoon and decided to stick around for the Friday Night Jamboree. After an evening of flatfooting to country music, she headed back to Roanoke and the Virginia State Harley Owners Group Rally but she came back Saturday with friends for the Town Jubilee.
"Quite a happening little town," she said after buying some pottery from local artisian Tom Phelps. "It’s really nice here."
Yes, one-stoplight Floyd has become a happening little town. From the Friday Night Jamboree to Saturday concerts at various venues like Oak Grove Pavilion, Winter Sun, Pine Tavern and the Floyd County Store — along with regular entertainment all weekend at Oddfellas Cantina and Over the Moon — Floyd is alive with the sound of music (sorry, couldn’t resist).
With the opening of the town’s first public park and the success of the Town Jubilee, Floyd may be hitting its stride and the future could be something to watch.
Scenes from a town jubilee
By most measures, Floyd’s first annual Town Jubilee was a success. Estimates of the attendance ranged from 1,500 to 2,500. Wind and a chance of rain did not deter those who visited the vendors, sampled the food and enjoyed the music.
I’ll have more details and photos in this week’s Floyd Press.
The phone is ringing? So what? Let it ring
Oh misery, misery, mumble and moan;
Someone invented the telephone.
Awakening a nation from its slumbers;
Ringing wrong, but similar numbers.
(Odgen Nash: The History of America)
"Tried reaching you on your cell phone the other day," an agitated friend said. "You didn’t answer."
Told him I was probably in the car…or possibly on my motorcycle: Two places where I never answer the cell phone.
"I don’t understand," he said. "The whole point of a cell phone is so people can get ahold of you."
I disagree. If you stop whatever you’re doing — or put yourself or other motorists at risk by answering a ringing phone — you are letting the phone rule your life.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
When I get home at night, I turn my cell phone off and stick it in the charger. When I turn it back on in the morning, there might be a half-dozen calls and/or voice mails that came in overnight. Not one tried me on our home phone.
Same for the office phone. People call your cell phone first and some don’t try a landline if you don’t answer the cell.
My cell phone is always set to vibrate, not ring. If it’s laying on a desk or in a jacket pocket, I won’t hear it while I’m sitting at my desk. Sometimes, when the phone is in the holster on my belt, it will vibrate with an incoming call while I’m on my office phone. I don’t stop talking on one phone to answer another. For one thing, it’s rude.
How many times have you waited in line to pay a check or make a deposit at a bank only to have the phone ring right when you get to the cashier or teller and they answer the phone rather than help you? Happens to me more often than it should.
Many people can’t ignore a ringing phone. I can. Those with something to say can use voice mail to leave a message or simply call back. I don’t answer phones when I’m driving or riding, I don’t answer phones when I’m busy and I don’t answer phones when I’m at home enjoying quality time with my wife. I don’t answer calls that show up as "unavailable" on caller ID or those with 800 numbers that don’t identify the caller. Most are sales calls that find a way to get around the "don’t call" registry and they never, ever, leave a message.
Phones don’t control my life. Never have, never will.
The changing face of Floyd
With luck, the weather will cooperate Saturday for the Floyd Town Jubilee that will celebrate, among other things, the town’s first public park while spotlighting the other changes in the face of our community.
The Warren G. Lineberry Park between the Winter Sun and Angels in the Attic fills a gap in the town’s landscape. Most towns have a public park. Floyd didn’t — until now.
Amid the music, the events and the vendors hawking various wares is the slow, if sometimes begrudging, acceptance of change in our little burg and a continuation of the town’s struggle to identify and classify itself.
Like it or not, Floyd is already a tourist town, despite the reluctance of some on the town council and board of supervisors to accept this reality. Visitors flock here not only for The Friday Night Jamboree but also to eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores and enjoy — if only for a brief moment — a little relaxed country living.
While the struggling economy has slowed migration of new residents to the county, Floyd increasingly becomes an area defined more by those who moved here than those who call themselves natives. Our economy is driven by businesses owned and/or run by transplants while the initiatives that define change originate with those who come from somewhere else.
Some die-hard locals still decry the "hippies" who moved here in the 70s but many of the town’s businesses are run by those former alternative lifestylers who now represent the status quo.
When the Village Square — now called The Station on South Locust — opens across the street from the Floyd Country Store, the businesses there will be run by those who discovered Floyd County at some point in their lives and now call it home. The apartments upstairs will be rented mostly by new residents of the community.
And many of those who shop at the new stores or eat at new resturants will be visitors who want to see what this town is all about.
The future of Floyd County does not lie in outmoded concepts like the mostly-empty Industrial Park on Christiansburg Pike but in the booming construction and changes along Locust and Main Streets in downtown.
It’s time those who cling to the past accept this reality and get with the program. They can start by joining in the celebration Saturday.
(Updated at 10:36 p.m. on Saturday, June 20, to reflect a change in the restaurant lease status at the Station on South Locust.)
All right! Enough already!
OK Lord. You’ve made your point. You can make it rain for 40 days and 40 nights and flood us out again any time you want. We get the picture. But the ground is soaked, streams swollen from the constant battering of rain overflow their banks and trees topple from the slightest wind.
In less than a year we’ve gone from too little rain to too much. Gardens have drowned. Mud covers paved roads. Gravel driveways resemble logging roads. Grey, depressing days have driven moods into the cellar.
You win. You’re still the boss. Now give us a friggin’ break.
Who let the HOGs out?
The thunder you may hear over the next four days won’t just be coming from the storms that continue to batter Floyd County and the rest of Southwestern Virginia. A couple thousand Harley-Davidsons will descend on Roanoke on Wednesday for the beginning of the 2009 Virginia Harley Owners Group (HOG) rally.
Two planned group rides will venture up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mabry Mill and Floyd is listed as a place to visit for those attending the rally.
As a member of the Roanoke Valley HOG chapter, I’ll be helping out with the rally Wednesday-Friday and will be away from the studio but will be back in Floyd Saturday to cover the Town Jubilee for The Floyd Press.