In PA, you can kill someone after you're dead

What happened to me this morning was one of the most bogus things I have seen in a while.

I was driving down Braddock and approaching Forbes. There was a car in front me and a car to the side. There were also cars in the other direction. As I approach the light, it turns to protected green. So I start making my left turn after the guy in front of me. The guy to my side also begins to proceed.

The cars coming down Forbes don't stop.

Brakes and honking ensue.

The cars coming down Forbes STILL don't stop.

I eventually follow the guy in front of me by hitting the gas and getting out of these jerks way.

Turns out, it was a funeral procession of about 30 or so cars. And PA law allows them to drive through a red light. (Refer to 75 Pa. Cons. Stat. 3107) Oddly, it NOT state that they have right-of-way, it just states that if the lead car went through legally, the others may follow during a red light. They have to have their lights on and a little "funeral" flag. If you have not seen said flags, they are about 4 inches across, purple, and say "Funeral". Michelle has noted that given how many people around here have Steelers flags, they aren't very obvious. Less so on a rainy day. I usually don't make a habit of checking every window of a car to see if it has a purple flag. Of course, it doesn't specify where the flag has to be, and at least one car (the one that nearly ran me over) did not have one. Presumably they ran out give that this was a large funeral procession.

Let's get this straight now. The only other vehicles allowed to run a read light are ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. These are highly visibly marked vehicles with lots of flashing lights and loud sirens. And they are driven by professionals with training. Even still, an ambulance driver slows down when approaching a red just in case, and that's even when he's racing to the hospital.

Yet the geniuses of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have decided that an UNTRAINED driver with an UNMARKED car and NO lights or sirens can run a red light at normal speed.

Does this seem stupid to anyone else? Yes, you lost a loved one. But that person is dead, and they are not getting any deader. There is no need to run a red light and nearly kill other people in the process. Dying should not allow your family members to commit vehicular manslaughter.

My new favorite study cafe

I love Te Cafe. Best study cafe ever. Reasons:

• Wireless.
• A power strip running around the entire place. There are more outlets than there are seats.
• Smells yummy.
• Soft study music.
• Good acoustics. You can hear people talking, but not what they are saying.
• No espressos means no noisy machines. Tea is quiet.
• Healthy food from Mung Dynasty if I'm there at lunch.
  

I hesitate to write this, because I don't want the place to become packed. :) But it's a great little cafe.

Nine Mile Run Watershed

I've been spending a lot of time learning about the Nine-Mile Run watershed recently. The watershed association has lots of information on this, but here's the short version:

1. There's a creek that runs through Pittsburgh called Nine Mile Run. Most is underground, but the above ground section runs through Frick Park.
2. Pittsburgh, being an old city, has a combined sewer system. That means storm water and sweage run through the same pipes.
3. A lot of the watershed (the area that goes into the creek) is paved. That means the water can't seep into the ground, so it accumulates. In the combined sewer system...
4. ...which overflows into Nine Mile Run creek. (On a rainy day, it smells like sewage for a reason. This type of sewage system was discontinued in the 1930's.)
   
5. Swissvale, Edgewood, and Wilkinsburg have separate sewage and storm systems. However, a lot of homes accidentally have their storm water connected to the sewage pipes. Guess where overflow goes when you have a small sewage pipe that's not meant to handle rainwater?
6. To make matters worse, the amount of paved area on the watershed means that the water picks up a lot of pollutants, all of which are dumped into this small area. Additionally, the sheer volume of water coming in erodes the entire creek. Normally, a lot of the water would have soaked into a permeable surface.
   

So, residents in the watershed are encouraged to contain as much water on their property as possible in order to prevent the systems from overflowing. They actually do dye tests in our borough to make sure you are containing your storm water. Many years ago, the people who owned our house had to retrofit their drainage system in order to comply.

Their solution was to put 3 feet of solid pvc in the ground and put the down spout in it.

Obviously, this fills up and overflows.

Back to our foundation.

Ooops.

So, we are spending the next week digging a 10 foot trench, laying down gravel and a perforated PVC pipe, and re-routing the water to the big sycamore tree. We're also putting in a 100 gallon rain barrel to capture the rainwater and use it in the garden during dry spells.

Rain barrels are available, with installation, from the watershed association.