Humming Birds and Cigarette Lighters [1] ...

... or has the fat bus bloke finally flipped?

When the ingesting of smoke from a small tubular bonfire was "de rigueur", a youthful fbb was fascinated by his old man's ancient ciggy lighter. It consisted of a thumb grazing knurled wheel, a small tank of explosive hydrocarbon fuel and a stick of spark inducing flint. It looked a bit like this but without the flame guard.

It was less than 30% effective and 10% explosive! It also had the propensity to perform acts of arson on the operator's pinkies. It was later replaced with one like this ...

... but lacking the sensuous adornment! Had dad been wealthy, he might have graduated to a posh lighter ...

... by Colibri. And, nowadays cooking on gas, such luxuries are still on the market.

The 1928 logo gives a clue as to the origins of the name.

Violtears are medium to large species found in Mexico, and Central and northern South America. The Green Violetear occasionally wanders as far north as the United States and even Canada. They have ample rounded tails and short or medium black bills. Three of the four species have a mainly green plumage. The males have a violet blue patch running back and down from the eye, which is erected when they are excited, and a glittering throat patch. The female plumage is generally like the male’s, but the ear and throat patches are smaller. Violetears build substantial cup nests into which two white eggs are laid. They have loud persistent songs, often repetitions of double notes.

The violetears are hummingbirds of the genus Colibri.

Which bring us to this!

A few weeks ago, fbb's trucker chum, David, was stuck in France for the weekend having reached the limit of his weekly permitted driver's hours. Initially he parked near the Monday upload site and prepared for a weekend's bus, tram, metro and trolleybus riding in Lyon, south east France.

Came the text: "I am at Neyron, which bus into Lyon?"

David eschews internet access whilst in Europe because of high "roaming" charges; so it's quicker and cheaper to use the fbb text service at Seaton in Devon (England)!

Followed by: "I've just seen a minibus - route 4."

 

The Lyon transport web site tells fbb that T4 is a tram, C4 is a "service renforcé" (i.e. frequent) and "bus" 4 doesn't go anywhere near Neyron! No minibus noted and more research needed.

David's pick-up was from the Zac** de Sermenaz at Neyron so the next move, courtesy of Google Maps, was to find exactly where the suburb of Neyron was located in the city.

And there it is, top right; with Lyon centre bottom left. So far, so good. Next we go to Lyon's excellent bus route map. We can now see David's omnibological problem.

Neyron (the grey area) is NOT in Lyon (the pink area), so finding a bus on the Lyon city web site is unlikely to succeed. But look!

There is a "Zi4" zooming off down the autoroute (motorway) that follows the boundary between Neyron and Lyon.

We might have cracked it.

Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of this exciting episode!

**Zac - Zone d'aménagement concerté : Elle avait pour principal objet de faciliter la concertation entre les collectivités publiques et les promoteurs privés; il s'agissait aussi de procéder à une déconcentration des contrôles étatiques sur les opérations d'aménagement urbain et à une uniformisation de ceux-ci. So now you know! Something like an "urban development zone" encouraging public-private partnership.

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Too Close for Comfort

High tide, high wind at about 1900 yesterday. Waves crash over the sea defences and pour down Trevelyan Road (by lighted building, upper left), depositing large quantities of wet stuff outside fbb towers!

There are three steps up from the pavement and the water reached the top of step one.

Oo-er! Too close for comfort, indeed.

All gone by 2200; waiting excitedly for high tide (0745 today).

P.S. 0730, no wind, no wet. Phew!

 Prochain blogue autobus : Sunday 16th February