For me it was a Coke machine.
Long time ago I lived in a town miles from anywhere interesting and so used to ride my motorcycle into Sydney (760 km away) on a weekend just to see something approaching civilisation. Start 5am on Sat, leave to go home before lunch on Sun.
(Note because it is important... I'm a morning person. I get sleepy after 9pm!)
One time after a really late (and possibly drunken...) Saturday night I got sidetracked and didn't leave till around 4pm.
So I was heading home through the cane country and got to a town called Broadmeadow. It was fast asleep latish on a Sunday evening, nothing and no one moving. I was noticing with a sort of quiet interest that it was really pleasant to trundle the bike at a decorous 60km/h through the main street with my eyes closed. I did sort of note that this was maybe a *silly* way to travel, but only in passing....
Besides it was only about 150km from home and I could do 150km, that's easy.
As I was leaving Broadmeadow (with, for a change, my eyes mostly open) I saw the (closed) service station had a Coke machine all lit up, and unusually it was on the outside of the building.
Aha! A Coke would be good, wake me up a bit!
So I rolled the motorcycle up by the Coke machine, flicked my leg to put the sidestand down...
And woke up about 15 minutes later, sprawled on the ground.
I had fallen dead asleep as I was getting off the bike.
I got the Coke and sat on the kerbing looking at the machine and at my bike. Thinking about how if that servo hadn't had the Coke machine in the open air that I might have fallen asleep at 110km/h and either gone into a ditch or a tree or the front of a truck at a closing speed of "scrape small pieces off the windscreen".
That Coke machine saved my life. And whenever I passed it thereafter I stopped and patted it hello.
Zebee
I've been following it and I cried during Obama's speech too. I wasn't the only one, http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200811/r310495_1365344.asx is footage from Australia showing Americans here celebrating, and some moving comments from a black man who has lived here for 20 years because Australia gave him a fair go - he never thought he'd see what he just saw.
America lost its way. It was the beacon of hope, it turned into the something grey and ugly. Let's hope Obama can turn that around.
I fear he's a politician though - will any polly give themselves less power? Will he find that Patriot acts and wiretapping and detention are useful tools? Will he find he faces a choice between selling his soul and not being able to pursue his agenda?
every now and then some Australians complain and say they don't want compulsory voting.
My mother lived in Chicago in the early 1960s and says "they don't realise that if voting is compulsory there's no percentage in stopping groups of people from voting"
To me that's a very important point. Most Australians (especially Anglo ones, who are the main complainers) can't comprehend that they might be stopped from voting if they wanted to.
The amount of work done by the Australian Electoral Commission to ensure everyone can vote is impressive. They have portable polling places travelling by helicopter and 4WD to the outback, and a special form of enrolment for the homeless.
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