I never got to follow up on my trip report, so here it is...

Friday, May 3rd, 6:30 P.M....  
I left the FORE Systems Parking lot, to the exit of the Ofiice park complex, 
stopped at the stop sign -- the 4x4 behind me, driven by a co-worker's wife,
did not.  A loud crash, and my '87's rear bumper and the 4x4's front bumper
are both 
bashed in....  We'll see how much of it the insurance will pay -- I had a
cop come over and make a full report, so I should be able to get it fully
paid -- I hope...

I guess there's no hiding from Mr. Murphy :-(  .......

Aside from this, the over-the-weekend round trip to Bethlehem, PA was
uneventful, the '87 (knock on wood) gave me no trouble at all, and got
around 20mpg once again (even with one mattress, one table, four chairs,
cookware, dinnerware, two bicycles, etc. in it :-).  It turns 130,000 miles
on this coming weekend's trip, I may even celebrate by getting it a new set
of tires -- I put 41,000 miles on the current set, I do not know how much
the P.O. put on them, but they were definitely not brand new when I got the
van...

BTW, did anyone listen to "Car Talk" on NPR this weekend?  A caller to the
show had a great theory that went something like:
 'maximum allowable share of misery' .. or something like that,

which stated that, according to the laws of karma, or whatever you might
want to call it, has a maximum allowable share of the overall available
misery.  This means that, things can only get so bad before your allowable
amount of misery is exhausted, and then they turn better.  So, if your brick
is giving you a hard time these days, just remember how much it is saving
you from other misery by attracting it al... :-)

Cetin