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Blue broken down bus: un progetto fotografico che documenta la vita dei senza tetto



The blue Lothian Bus was restricting traffic on Bruntsfield Place after reportedly breaking down, as a passer-by captured images of the vehicle stopped awkwardly on one side of the road on Monday afternoon.




Blue broken down bus




One passer-by who came across the incident, said: "I don't think it was carrying any passengers as it says trial bus on the front but it had broken down at Bruntsfield Place right next to a bus stop and cars couldn't get past.


This is where Norris has chosen to live while he tries to win a job in the Blue Jays' rotation: in a broken-down van parked under the blue fluorescent lights of a Wal-Mart in the Florida suburbs. There, every morning, is one of baseball's top-ranked prospects, doing pull-ups and resistance exercises on abandoned grocery carts. There he is each evening, making French press coffee and organic stir-fry on his portable stove. There he is at night, wearing a spelunking headlamp to go with his unkempt beard, writing in his "thought journal" or rereading Kerouac.


But all professional sports value their conformists -- athletes who sacrifice individuality for team, and whose predictable behavior elicits predictable results. Perhaps nowhere is consistency more valued than in baseball, a game whose self-reverence for tradition and purity might be contributing to its fading place as America's pastime. The history of the game is valued above any one major league season; the integrity of a season is valued beyond any one team; the identity of a team is more important than that of its players. Flashiness of any kind is discouraged, and so players such as Yasiel Puig have to defend themselves simply for celebrating a home run. In the game's unwritten code, drawing individual attention is considered unbecoming, if not downright unsportsmanlike.


But before he can throw off the mound, there is an intensive warm-up that takes at least an hour. He weighs in at 192 pounds, with 6 percent body fat. He showers to relax his muscles. He loosens his shoulder. He stretches with the help of a trainer and walks out to a field of artificial turf, where the yardage is marked. He plays catch with a teammate: 10 throws from 30 feet, 10 from 60, 15 from 120 and another 10 from 60 feet. He walks to the bullpen and digs into the mound. Two trainers and four coaches watch as he finds his footing. One records a video from the left, another records from the right. "Twenty-five pitches," says Dane Johnson, the team's bullpen coach, and Norris stares down the catcher and counts the pitches in his head as he throws.


"Go cool down," says George Poulis, the trainer, and Norris returns to the team's indoor facility for another stretching routine, another shower, another massage. By the time he finally leaves the facility, it is early afternoon, and he has thrown 25 pitches in six hours. He opens Shaggy's driver-side door, and his cellphone vibrates with a new text from a coach. It is the slow-motion video of his workout, accompanied by a short message of instruction: "Focus on the details."


- Daniel NorrisNow he watches the sun dip toward the horizon as his dinner cooks on a portable stove. He calls his father and lets him listen to Shaggy's engine over the phone. "Sounds pretty good, right?" he says. He receives a message from his mother: "We're proud of you for being you," she tells him. He sets down his phone and puts on sunglasses. Gulls dive into the water. Waves crash onto the beach. The sunset paints his van in oranges and blues.


This was about the fourth time the bus had stranded a group in the past 12 months. After each occurrence we invested a few thousand dollars, thinking we fixed the issue only to be surprised again. The frustration was compounded by the fact that our 2001 15-passenger Dodge van had broken down on the last two of three trips out of town that same year.


We are in a unique season in the history of our church. We are rolling into a capital campaign to pay down facility debt. We grew by 30 percent last year and continue to feel the stretch of needing more cash for a growing ministry, yet less cash flow to make it happen. These are just two factors in our church situation that make outlaying large chunks of cash to buy vehicles unattractive. We would prefer to pay as we go for flexibility and keep our cash in the bank.


You can file a complaint about any bus company violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act such as a bus with a broken wheelchair lift, or a driver or bus employee not offering required assistance to a passenger with a disability.


I'm pondering blue this morning as I walk the dogs along the bicycle path by the motorway. Not a lot to be seen in the sky, really. But, as someone used to say in my childhood, there's "just enough" in those sporadic inter-cloud patches to "make a sailor a pair of trousers."


When we tried to paint the sky at school, imagining ourselves budding Constables, we were told to notice "how the blue is deeper and darker in the higher parts, but much lighter and more transparent near the horizon."


Since I am thinking about blue as I walk, blues accost me from several places. The smart, newish signs, strategically erected for the topographical edification of the cycling fraternity, pointing to "Pollok" or "Paisley" or "Maxwell Park," have strong blue backgrounds. Royal blue, I'd say.


On the motorway, a rescue truck is hitching onto the front of a broken-down bus whose sign ("FAST DIRECT SERVICE") is now a touch ironic. Both vehicles were variously painted in vivid commercial blues, cobalt that is almost turquoise, then ultramarine, then Prussian blue. But none of these sign-painters' blues, however bold, has the exciting effect on me that one minuscule flower in our front garden has.


But the tiny star-shaped flower, and there are very few showing so far this year, is no bigger than one-third of a little fingernail, and looks more like a veronica or speedwell. It has a white pinpoint center, which enlivens the blue, as if it weren't already a startling, lucidly bright, indescribable blue on its own account.


Each year, this blue flower is a sign that spring is imminent. I wonder if we don't think of typical spring flower colors as yellows (aconites and daffodils), purples (crocuses), and whites (snowdrops).


The scillas and chionodoxa, the blue anemone blanda, the pulmonaria, and the hepatica: If these elated, enlightening blues don't make your heart go pita-pat, I want to know why. They are all "true" blues, and all fizz in the cool air like "little low heavens" as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, talking about a clutch of thrush's eggs.


My Uncle Leslie, smitten with the glamour of taking color photos of flowers, was always apologizing as he clicked the next slide in the carousel. "This pink Meconopsis is actually a blue poppy. You'll have to take my word for it" or words to that effect.


The Ektachrome and Kodachrome of those early days, strangely, was not a million miles from a peculiar fact when it read "blue" as "pink." Of the comparatively few plants in the vast plant kingdom that naturally produce blue flowers, quite a number also produce pink flowers. Borage, for instance, and hydrangea. Forget-me-nots, the anemone blandas already mentioned, and the annual cornflowers.


Professor Geneve's book discusses and illustrates the most difficult characteristic of blue flowers (and it is in flowers, he points out, not in leaves or stems, that plants sing the blues). This difficulty is that no one quite agrees when a blue flower is indisputably blue. A great many "blues" are really violets or purples or greens. Working on his book, he asked his wife numerous times, "Is that flower blue?"


But there is a color chart in the book (the sort of circular chart that painters and color theorists fancy) that distinctly separates "blue" from "blue-green" and "blue-purple." Looking at flowers, however, the distinction is infinitely subtler and more tenuous.


But in the final analysis (and this is a stimulating game to play when confronted by a rattling good bed of delphinium hybrids, those gothic spires of flower-display), you do know, when you see it, which blue is neither a touch too violet nor fractionally too green, but is precisely, exactly, unfalteringly and piercingly blue.


On the rare occasion this happens our driver will tell you what to do, but you should tap off of the bus you started your journey on, i.e the bus that broke down and do not tap on or off of the bus you are transferred to. For any additional trips you make that day, please tap on and tap off as normal.


Ask to see the driver's license of the other drivers involved in the crash so that you can take down their license numbers. Also get their name, address, phone number, insurance company, insurance policy number, and license plate number. If the other driver doesn't own the vehicle involved, be sure to get the owner's info as well.


Try to draw a diagram of the exact crash site and mark where each car was, what direction the car was coming from, and what lane it was in. Write down the date, time, and weather conditions. If there were any witnesses, try to get their names and contact info so that they can help clear up matters if one of the other drivers isn't completely honest about what really happened.


Lines that separate traffic that moves in opposite directions are yellow. There may be two lines between lanes and lines can be solid or broken. Read Chapter 6 for the rules on how to pass other vehicles.


Solid line with broken line: If you are on the side with the solid line, you cannot pass other vehicles or go across the line except to make a left turn into a driveway. If you are on the side with the broken line, you can pass if it is safe to and you will not interfere with traffic. 2ff7e9595c


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