hellobeautifulcreatures

At the Torresdale home of Paul and Heather Owens, the renovation is well underway: a two-story addition with a bathroom that meets disability access standards . It even has an elevator. All that work is necessary because a year ago, another elevator — this one in Center City — lifted off at high speed, rose 15 stories , and exploded into the concrete ceiling of its shaft at the top of Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center . MARGO REED / Staff Photographer Paul Owens of the Sheriff’s Office and his wife, Heather, stand behind their home, which is being renovated to accommodate his disability.  Owens, then a sergeant in the Sheriff’s Office, was alone in Car 2B as it sped at more than twice its rated speed of 350 feet a minute. “I grabbed the railing, and I just remember holding on,” Owens, 49, said last week at his home, his first interview since the accident. “After that, I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital.” ...

I expected to live my entire life without price-shopping for truck-stop showers. Then I spent the night in Breezewood. The adventure began last August when my main squeeze James and I drove to Colorado. We passed through Breezewood, Pennsylvania, as do many drivers heading to the Rust Belt and beyond. "What do you think about vacationing here for a week," James asked. I laughed loudly and dismissed the idea. If you've been there, you understand why. Breezewood has been a travel hub for centuries. It was a stagecoach stop in the late 1700s and then became a stop on the Lincoln Highway, America's first cross-country road. The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, and thousands of World War II veterans exited at Breezewood, stopping at what now is the Gateway Travel Plaza to trade their unit patches for meals. Today, Motorists driving between I-70 and the turnpike are forced off the highway and onto a congested half-mile stretch of expensive gas s...