#Veterans'Day

Every car sitting abandoned in a parking lot has a story to tell. Yours truly often wonders what circumstances led to the abandonment of a pickup outside a notorious strip club not far from Casa Steph. A tree has now emerged from the broken asphalt directly in front of the truck’s prow.

In the (only) Canadian city of Toronto, a well-kept Kia sedan sat observed but unmolested outside a hospital for over four years, prompting a security guard to embark on a search for its owner. It’s a story worth reading, given the time of year. As it turns out, the guard wasn’t the only one searching.

It’s Friday, but it’s also Veterans Day. North of the border, it’s Remembrance Day — something I was reminded of when a pair of CF-18s buzzed this writer’s home at 11:11 this morning.

Because of the solemn date, our weekly look at odd automotive news will take on a camo green tinge. Sure, we’d love to regale you with stories of Allied forces turning their jeeps and 6×6 trucks into mobile gun platforms in the mud of western Europe, but that’s in the past.

Today, we look at a Syrian mystery vehicle, militants with wood, and a city terrorized by a bland color.

At just 10:30 AM the sun was already near its full zenith and it beat down upon the city of Osaka with an intense, angry glare. Waves of heat shimmered up from the pavement and superheated the air which blew around in tepid, weak breezes that offered little respite. Perhaps later, the column of heat created by the great city’s many square miles of pavement would spark a sudden thunderstorm as it rose high into the stratosphere and the resultant rain would bring relief as it cascaded down and turned the streets into raging torrents. For now, however, there was only the glare of the sun, the stifling heat and, for me, the thought that riding an 1100 cc air cooled sport bike in a full set of leathers was a choice I should have avoided making.