Steering Wheel

THE COUNT People murdered since Jan. 1: 157 THE VICTIMS Paul Cornish, 28, address unknown, died at Johns Hopkins Hospital at 10:30 p.m. Saturday after he was shot at 9 p.m. in the 1000 block of Granby St. in East Baltimore. An unidentified man was fatally shot at 2:30 a.m. yesterday as he stood with a group of people in the 800 block of N. Patterson Park Ave. in East Baltimore. The body of an unidentified man was found slouched over the steering wheel of an idling car at 7:20 a.m. yesterday in the 4800 block of Herring Run Drive in Northeast Baltimore.

John Hudson pulls to a stop at a busy intersection on a recent afternoon in Bel Air. There are no hands on the steering wheel of his gold 2006 Dodge Caravan, and the sleeves of his shirt hang empty. But when the light turns green, Hudson steers through a smooth right turn, using a joystick he grasps with his toes. Hudson, 29, was born with no arms and one leg. He passed the driving test on his first attempt and received a Maryland driver's license last summer. "Driving is instant freedom," the Edgewood resident said.

Anne Arundel County police are investigating the death of a 77-year-old woman whose automobile sped out of control Saturday as she left a carwash on Hog Neck Road, sideswiped another car, careened over a concrete island and slammed into the side of a third car.Elizabeth Marie Heisch of the 100 block of Park Road died of chest injuries, an autopsy found.Police are investigating whether her car, a 1999 Chrysler Concorde LXi, malfunctioned or whether a medical condition affected Heisch.Police said Heisch entered her car to leave the Pasadena Car Wash on Hog Neck Road just before 10: 30 a.m.The employee who brought the car around for her left the engine running, but Heisch turned the ignition again, grinding the starter, police said.

A MAN LIKES to have a good relationship with his garbage collector, but mine, sadly, is on the rocks.Oh, we used to be tight. There was something between us, something meaningful, something you really couldn't put into words, but it was there.Now, we're like two people who -- God, it hurts to write this -- barely have time for each other.I guess things began unraveling last Christmas, when I forgot to put out the six-pack of Coors Light.The six-pack was my neighbor Mike's idea. A couple of years earlier, I began noticing that after every pick-up, my empty garbage cans were left strewn in the street like downed bowling pins.

Like an elephant in a daisy patch, the lumpy-gray ship plods on a lumbering course through all the pretty sailboats flitting about the Chesapeake.At the helm of this 108-foot Navy ship, three stories above the water, is a teen-ager whose only boating experience was fishing and snorkeling off an aluminum johnboat back home among the mangroves on Florida's gulf coast.But at the Naval Academy, which considers the Chesapeake Bay a campus annex, midshipmen such as Ron Chino, 18, are expected to master the basic tenets of wind and water long before they set foot on a battleship's steel deck.

Swedish Match continues to hold the lead in the Whitbread Round the World Race, and race headquarters has predicted a Monday arrival in Fremantle, Australia."

TOWSON -- More than 3,400 trucks have been placed out of service this year as a result of a safety inspection campaign by the Maryland Transportation Authority.Inspections have taken place at authority weighing facilities at the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge on U.S. 40; the Bay Bridge; the Fort McHenry and Baltimore Harbor tunnels; and the truck weigh station in Perryville on Interstate 95, according to state officials.So far, 1,600 drivers have been placed out of service and $1.4 million in fines has been issued by MdTA officials after safety violations were detected.

Just before the temperatures really got hot two weeks ago, I noticed a squirrel lying prostrate on my front lawn.Thinking it was dead, I strolled up to the little animal.As I got within about 10 feet of it, the squirrel looked up, gave a quick shake of its tail and sprinted for the nearest tree.Since that morning, I have noticed several other squirrels doing the same thing.Last week, I really began to sympathize with those little critters. The extraordinary heat was driving me crazy, too. I began entertaining strange thoughts -- like wishing it were winter.

POLICE LOG* Long Reach: 8800 block of Flowerstock Row: Someone tried to steal a 1987 Toyota Corolla by sawing through a steering wheel to avoid a lock Tuesday, police said.

There are street corners in Tokyo that don't have traffic signals, but along the most winding, desolate road, there is likely to be at least one vending machine.The machines were introduced in the mid-1960s by Kansas City, Mo.-based Vendo Co., and for a few years the company had 100 percent of an explosive market. But by 1980, it had been driven out of Japan by domestic competitors that annually introduced smaller, cheaper and better machines."First we were aggressive, but then not aggressive," said former Vendo executive Tokuhisa Hashimoto.

When Sandy Summers picks up her children - ages 6 and 10 - at elementary school, they're greeted with squirts of hand sanitizer. "When they get in the car, I put a glob on their hands," said the nurse, who lives in Homeland. "If they're going to eat a snack in the car, I make them use some. ... If I go to the grocery store, when I get in the car, the first thing I do is use the sanitizer. If I forget to use it before I touch the steering wheel, I put a whole bunch on my hands and just wipe it all over the steering wheel.

Good thing I had both hands on the steering wheel when I was listening to 105.7 FM yesterday. Anita Marks was praising some of the Orioles' moves since Andy MacPhail's arrival and ranked the Miguel Tejada trade among the majors' all-time best. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/mediumwell)

Josephine Montesion has been driving her 1995 Chevy Lumina for years. But it was just this week that the 83-year-old Ellicott City resident learned where the horn is and how to adjust the steering wheel. "I've never had to blow the horn," she said. Montesion and several other older drivers gained automobile insight by taking their vehicles to Centennial Park in Ellicott City for "Car Fit," a program sponsored by the county police Wednesday. Several police officers joined a group of occupational therapists and spent the day helping seniors learn tips on operating their vehicles - including things they might have forgotten or never known.

John Hudson pulls to a stop at a busy intersection on a recent afternoon in Bel Air. There are no hands on the steering wheel of his gold 2006 Dodge Caravan, and the sleeves of his shirt hang empty. But when the light turns green, Hudson steers through a smooth right turn, using a joystick he grasps with his toes. Hudson, 29, was born with no arms and one leg. He passed the driving test on his first attempt and received a Maryland driver's license last summer. "Driving is instant freedom," the Edgewood resident said.

THE COUNT People murdered since Jan. 1: 157 THE VICTIMS Paul Cornish, 28, address unknown, died at Johns Hopkins Hospital at 10:30 p.m. Saturday after he was shot at 9 p.m. in the 1000 block of Granby St. in East Baltimore. An unidentified man was fatally shot at 2:30 a.m. yesterday as he stood with a group of people in the 800 block of N. Patterson Park Ave. in East Baltimore. The body of an unidentified man was found slouched over the steering wheel of an idling car at 7:20 a.m. yesterday in the 4800 block of Herring Run Drive in Northeast Baltimore.

The first man was shot in East Baltimore and died shortly after his friends brought him to the hospital. A second man was shot several times while standing with a group of people. And a third was found dead, slumped over the steering wheel of a car in Northeast Baltimore. Within a 24-hour period, three men were slain, elevating the city's homicide total to 157 since Jan. 1. Police, who are still investigating the shootings, do not believe the homicides are related. Police responded to the first shooting at 9 p.m. Saturday.

This is an emotional time for my wife and me, as our youngest kid just got his learner's permit and it's dawning on us that this is the last time we'll experience the stomach-churning stress that comes with having a rookie driver in the family. As I did with the two older kids, I have tried to impart to the boy my philosophy on driving, which is that everyone on the road is insane and you can never let your guard down, because they're all trying to kill you. My wife thinks this tends to make the kids jittery behind the wheel.

For most of us, the twin-span William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge is just a 4.3-mile shortcut over the Chesapeake Bay. And while contemporary travelers may take the trip between Sandy Point and Kent Island for granted, the structures - most people refer to them singly as "the Bay Bridge" - are a magnificent example of how a utilitarian amalgam of steel and concrete can produce art on a grand scale. Need proof? Just look at the black-and-white photographs of the first span taken in the early 1950s by A. Aubrey Bodine and Marion E. Warren.

CLEAR LAKE, WIS. -- Marsha Scheuermann met her husband Dave in an Internet chat room where they shared their passion for the 1960s TV sitcom The Andy Griffith Show. Eventually, they fell in love and married. Today, they live in a replica of Sheriff Taylor's home, and they run a bed-and-breakfast there called the Taylor Home Inn. ROAD TRIP USA Avalon Travel / $29.95 Bible-sized at 890 slick-finished pages and subtitled Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways, this fourth edition catalogs 35,000 miles of American blacktop on six north-south routes and five east-west routes that travel the nation.

Rarely does an Adam Sandler movie spark deep critical thinking. But in the new movie Click, Sandler plays a man whose remote control can ride herd over not just his TV, but also over time itself. He can fast-forward, pause, rewind. The remote control seems so ordinary that its extraordinariness is easy to miss. In the half-century since it was first hooked to TVs in American homes, the remote control has become faster, easier, sleeker, more efficient, more sophisticated and applicable to a spiraling number of gadgets: DVD players, ceiling fans, automobiles, draperies, security systems.