So there I was traveling over the Matthews bridge and it was the first time I found that my cell phone camera did actually have a purpose.

What you can not tell from the photo is that the front edge of that mattress was bouncing and I was sure it was going to break the binds that bound it to the top of that van.

I was actually thinking about taking this blog to the subject of the quality of the camera in cell phones but I figure I can do that anther day. Having been a truck owner most of my life I know I have lots of friends who would never do this, they call the guy with a truck. So I started wondering, does this guy have no friends with a truck? Why is it when we see ridiculous things like this it is almost always a guy doing it. I cannot remember ever seeing a woman try such a stupid thing, she may be sitting in the passenger seat and I have even seen them holding down that side of the cargo but never driving. Not sure what that means but I felt it needed said. I have seen many things being toted around in an unsafe manner but my lifetime favorite was a guy on Beach Bvld in Jacksonville, for those who do not know that is a 4 lane road with a center turn lane and a speed limit of 45 miles an hour. So there I was coming back from lunch one day, I believe it was an Arby’s market fresh turkey with Swiss chess and a jamocha shake. Anyway we see this guy on a bicycle caring a twin mattress over his shoulder. Had I not see it with my own eyes I would not have believed it, not even coming from my best friend. It is hard to even picture it aint it? He was wheeling down the turn lane on Beach Bvld by University carrying a mattress while cars whizzed by at 45 – 50 miles an hour. One little burst of wind could have carried the mattress off his shoulder into a passing vehicle or had he been able to keep his grip that same breeze could have taken him and his mattress into traffic. It was crazy and I understand if you do not believe me but I saw it with my own eyes I swear.

Getting back to the van I wondered why is it that by and large men are much quicker to underestimate their capabilities than women. This picture is an obvious confirmation that this guy has neglected to consider the potential for problems here, or underestimated his and his vans capabilities. In the instant I saw this I thought, what a sail, with a breeze it could force him into my lane, what if it comes off and hits another car, what kind of multicar pile up would that create? What if it comes off and flies over the side and lands in the river, aside from the environmental issues what if it were to land on someone in a boat. What if it came off and flew over the side and landed on Tallyrand ave and killed a wino or someone just driving through. What if it started to come loose and he started paying more attention to hold on to it than he needed to be putting on the road and ran into the Honda right in front of him. What if he had to stop quickly and it came shooting off the front onto whatever he was trying to avoid by stopping quickly in the first place.

I am not sure why men are so quick to underestimate their capabilities. I used to think it was a red neck thing until I saw an almost brand new Cadillac with a well-dressed man in his forties with a 12 foot wide roll of linoleum stuffed sideways through the windows and each end was nearly dragging on the ground. I have found that when it comes to our vehicles it gets even worse but that inability to properly understand ours and our equipments capabilities is a pretty steady constant with men. Almost as constant as women saying men lose weight easier than women do, even though there is no real documented proof of that fact, women from all walks of life just saying it does not make it true. OK so I used my own Neanderthal life to try to determine why this is. It is hard to say for sure but like everything else we do I figure it has to have something to do with the girlies. It does appear to be the constant in nature, us boys will do ANYTHING we can to impress the girlies.

Here are just a few examples, When performing courtship or mating rituals, male penguins will pump their chests, position their head and flippers in an upright, erect posture. Giraffe’s, in elaborate courtship rituals that rival those of any mammalian species perform the most striking and complicated, prancing, dance-like step that some observers have compared to the fox-trot. The Bald Eagle mating rituals seem a little extreme, they engage in courtship by locking talons in midair and descending several hundred feet in a series of somersaults. Before hitting the ground, each will go off in its own direction at the last second in what is called a "starburst." The mating ritual of lions involves a lot of physical rubbing and presenting leading up to the copulation event, the copulation event how romantic sounding. When love birds start engaging in pre-mating rituals their noise level increases substantially. They are notorious for attempting to build nests, especially during mating season. Showing off for the girlies and building things for them. Hummmmm. My research was not coming out the way I had hoped, although it was bearing fruit. Maybe, just maybe this guy was showing off to the girlie that was with him. Building a nest for her in an attempt to show he was capable and worthy stock for fathering her children. Could it be coded into our DNA, burned into our very being by none other than mother nature herself. Man when you think about it like that for just a moment you realize, that could explain a LOT of things in my life. Well as indignant as I started out I have found myself softened, this poor guy was doing everything his socio-economic evolutionary path allowed him to do. I then got to wondering if by chance he had ever heard of Charles Darwin or read his ground breaking “On the origin of species” that he penned about the critters he saw on the Galapagos archipelago chain.