Roadside attraction
Police in Japan see some odd things, but a senior citizen riding a silver girls-style bike down the highway carrying paper bags full of old clothes still managed to stick out.
The 66-year-old homeless man swiped a high school girl's bicycle from a parking lot in front of a train station and then took it on a 90-mile getaway.
After three weeks of pedaling, Yasuji Sugimura was spotted by police. Thinking maybe he had taken a wrong turn and become lost (possibly back in 1987), the officers were surprised to find out that he had stolen the bike in order to make the 150-mile trip to Nagoya, Japan's fourth largest city. Police suspect he was headed to a Hello Kitty convention.
Don't look back
John Stewart of Etobicoke, Ontario, awoke to a strange sight two months ago. A car was sitting on its grill, leaning upright against a utility pole in his front yard.
With no witnesses to the incident, police were baffled as to how a car could have wound up in such a position without the help of a tornado. The driver, a woman from nearby Richmond Hill, eventually admitted that she had been backing up quickly, hit the pole and drove the rear end of her car up the guide wire that runs alongside the pole. She emerged uninjured and was later charged with "impaired driving."
In unrelated news, three days before this accident an Ontario court decriminalized the possession of up to 30 grams of marijuana.
Tips from the road
This month we examine the potential danger you can cause for your entire neighborhood by leaving your car unattended.
Take the case of James Berke. This past May, he spotted a woman stepping out of her car to throw away some trash. Berke sneaked up, jumped in the running car and drove off.
At a nearby car wash, Berke spotted a car he liked better so he tried to wrestle the keys away from the owner. When that didn't work, he returned to the first car and continued on.
Next, Berke found two men loading a van. Instead of trying to grab their keys, he told them he was having a seizure. With the men distracted, he managed to steal the van.
Unfortunately it wasn't long before Berke crashed the van into a lamp post. Abandoning the van, he broke into a nearby residence and stole the family's pickup truck.
Determined to avoid police, Berke crashed the truck through a fence and ended up losing a wheel. He managed to keep going until he hit a curb and lost another wheel, forcing him to abandon the truck.
By this point, Berke was pretty beaten up and bloody. In fact, one of his eyes was actually dangling from its socket. But determined to keep his insurance rates from skyrocketing by getting caught, he took off on foot. It didn't take police long to catch up with him, though. You know, what with the eye hanging out and all.
So the lesson this month: never leave your car running and unattended, even just for a second to throw out some trash.
Tax dollars hard at work
The small Rhode Island town of Foster got its first crosswalk recently. The only problem is that it leads from a hedge to a stone wall.
The lines were accidentally painted on Rte. 6 by state-hired striping contractors. The workers noticed two "Pedestrian Crossing" signs along the road and figured a crosswalk needed to be repainted. The signs were actually put up 20 years ago to slow traffic on the busy country road, not to mark a crossing. (The contractors also were working in the dark.)
The state has decided to leave the "crosswalk to nowhere" since it would cost $200 to remove.
Accomplishing a dream
He may not be the first guy to sleep his way across the U.S., but Tom Wilson is surely the first to do it for a good cause.
In an attempt to raise awareness of sleep disorders, the self-proclaimed "King of Sleep" made a 10-day journey across the U.S. in June, traveling only while asleep.
Wilson made the trip from Malibu, Calif., to New York City in a customized Winnebago, complete with a sleep monitor. His driver was only allowed to hit the gas when the monitor showed that Wilson was asleep. If he woke up, the Winne was parked.
The King declared the trip a success, and rumor has it he's now planning to raise awareness for alcoholism by traveling from Seattle to Miami sober.
