PERRY: Wheel life turns by itself in a Waymo and turns up too often in the national news 

Life is so rich, if not overwhelming and exhausting, these days.

I took my first Waymo ride last week. I survived it. 

If you have a real life and don’t pay attention, Waymo are the odd-looking driverless cars in Denver that actually went driverless while being rider-full last week.

When I first heard about driverless cars, I instinctively shook my head.

I’m that guy gripping the inside of the car door handle or dashboard every time my kid gets behind the wheel and slams on either one or all of the pedals.

“Slow down” is my white-knuckle mantra, between shouts of “Do you see that car is stopping?”

Sorry, I am way too caffeinated and have way too many trust issues to get in a car with no one behind the wheel to drive the car. Until they can make e-mail work the way it’s supposed to, computers motoring a car just seems beyond the pale.

But my kid ordered one to take us to a music fest, and before I knew it, I was in the front passenger seat watching Mrs. Muir’s pal, the ghost, steer the car along some of the most narrow and harrowing streets in the metro area.

“Weeeeeee,” my brain said as we tooled along at 28 mph past a school, closed for Saturday.

It was scary and impressive at the same time.

The car slowed down at road dips, navigated around potholes, slowed and stopped for people to cross the street at an unlighted intersection, and drove up on an e-biker in the middle of the road, patiently following the guy instead of running him over.

At the neighborhood music festival, there were closed streets, people and dogs everywhere, even in the middle of the road. The Waymo car just slowed, and wound through and along a cavalcade of human obstacles.

If I hadn’t been gripping the door and dash so hard it made my hands hurt, I would have loved to press my face on the passenger window with a mask of terror, just to share what was in my gut, riding in a car in a neighborhood that makes me nervous even when I’m driving. 

When it brought us home, it patiently waited for all four of us to get out of the car. Our street is narrow and always choked with wall-to-wall cars.

An oncoming car stopped, unable to get around the unloading Waymo.

It was a standoff. 

After a couple of seconds, the Waymo actually backed up some, pulling closer to the parked cars so the human-driven car could pull ahead.

It was amazing. Not only did the Waymo expertly navigate the maneuver in reverse, but it was also polite the whole time.

I was wondering if this is what my grandparents felt the first time they rode an elevator without an elevator liftman. Nah. There were no elevators anywhere in Manzanola.

I saw on Channel 9 that the next day, a Waymo navigating a similar summer music fest in Wheat Ridge turned into a street that was closed for the music festival, drawing gasps from spectators as the wayward Waymo quietly and confidently navigated the faux pas, letting the passengers out, unscathed, and sheepishly finding its way out of the closed street without bragging, crying or freaking out.

It was safely thrilling at 28 miles per hour in the ‘hood. At 65 mph on the speedway of weaving-racer death traps on I-25 or I-225?

Not yet. Baby steps.

The next day, I spit coffee all over my computer keyboard, soaking up this rich life on Planet Earth.

Back when this and other newspapers were populated with many people doing the work that just a handful of us do now, I would have to work “the national wire” or “the national desk.”

It meant you had to roll through endless Associated Press stories from across the planet, pick what you think your readers would find most important and then get them read for the paper.

“The paper” these days is pretty much “the website,” and what used to take a long time just doesn’t anymore.

But it still requires careful reading and tweaking or rewriting headlines and making edits to one of hundreds of national stories still written and filed every day.

Yesterday and today gave up “muffin chokers.” Those are stories with headlines so stunningly outrageous that they would make the average reader aspirate his or her breakfast muffin as they came across the hed in the dead-trees newspaper on their breakfast table.

My first coffee-spewer sported this nugget: “Trump calls on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian diesel fuel, saying attacks causing a shortage.”

See?

We all know that nothing about President Donald Trump is surprising or shocking anymore.

Except that.

The guy who has pretty much single-handedly nuked the world oil supplies and prices to chase a war everyone but his gut, and his gutless wonders, warned him was an insane quagmire NOW is asking a guy who’s desperately trying to save his entire nation from the dark forces of the Russian Empire to save the oil chaos for America?

You can’t make this crap up, and you can’t get it out of your keyboard after you blow a triple-shot Americano all over it.

But, as always, wait, there’s more.

Just when I thought it was safe to drink my fifth cup of Café Du Monde and cull national stories for the Sentinel AM E-dition on Tuesday, this pops to the top of the wire: “FBI chief Kash Patel defends hiring standards changes on prostitution, bestiality at fiery hearing.”

Gaaaaaaarghffffppppssss, cough, cough, cough, drip, dripple, gasp.

So much for Trump and Co. taking the high ground over the lowest stunt on earth with “they’re eating the dogs…” The Trump administration is looking for folks who should be marrying them.

The bigger question is, are there that many people convicted of bestiality or prostitution who want to work for the FBI? Or, since Trump and Patel moved in, are there so few people willing to work for the FBI that soon heroin addicts will have to be filling the ranks?

Oh, wait. That’s at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Never mind.

 Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com