Name change

One of the things I love most about bicycling is that time on the bicycle is very exclusively my time. I ride along completely free to think about anything, anything at all. Sometimes I think about things that others might find important, lots of times I am just riding along spending as much time as I want thinking about not much of anything at all, something trivial.

I was riding along today thinking about the bicycle I was riding. I have shorthand referred to it as OldLOOK. I wasn't quite comfortable with that as OldLOOK seems to imply a downgrade in status. This is clearly a very nice bicycle, it doesn't deserve to be downgraded in any way. For example, today I was stopped at a red light. Yes, that's what I do at red lights, unlike far too many of my fellow riders, I stop, I am a vehicle, not a toy. A motorcyclist stopped next to me, took a long look and pronounced, "Nice ride". He was right, it is every bit of that.

So I was thinking about that and decided that OldLOOK just won't do. I was considering alternatives as they popped randomly in and out of my head. I had almost settled on OriginalLOOK which could be abbreviated as OLook when that eureka moment occurred.

FirstLOOK.

We have been buying corn from a person in a rusty pick up truck at the hardware store on Lexington and Roselawn for as long as we have lived in Roseville. There has been a changing cast of young people selling the corn. The last couple of years the young person doing the selling was the chattiest of any of them. Those who know us will know that whenever I go anywhere I am often accompanied by a person who is incorrigibly gregarious. The combination of these two individuals produced a lot more conversation than any year previously and eventually unearthed a back story. The young person said the corn was from her grampa's farm and that she would be there selling corn in the summer as long as grampa wanted to keep up the work of growing the produce.

We willingly bought into the story, the corn was always fresh and delicious and it seemed even a little bit better if we thought of it as grampa's corn. However, a few things have happened recently which have shaken our faith in the back story. First, the young person at the pick up truck is new this year. Last year's salesperson was dark haired and dark complected. This year's edition is blond and fair skinned. Then earlier this week I was there when a resupply truck was also present. The appearance of the person driving the resupply truck clearly indicated that his genetic material is of Asian origin. I was starting to wonder about all the various branches of this family tree. Today my ride took me north and west, towards New Brighton and looping back past Mounds View High School. I have to ride to Mounds View High School at least a few times each year because, as you may note, the location of the weather station for my sidebar WeatherBug widget is Mounds View High School. Anyway I passed this pick up truck at the Arden Hills intersection of Fairview, County Road D and New Brighton Road.The sign, the tent, it all looks startlingly familiar. It just looks to me an awful lot like the set up at our regular hardware store location, maybe not a coincidence. The grampa story was fun to believe but in the end what matters is the quality of the product. And we will both confirm that the corn has been with only a very few exceptions always fresh and delicious. I just hope they are not Moonies.

I complained recently about street work in Shoreview using the tar and toilet paper technique. I found this today on Garden Avenue in Falcon Heights.This is unpleasant as I ride there a lot, using that street for both the main north and the main south routes. There is, as always, a work around but I will be happy when all of that is over.

Here's probably the last look at that big maple tree the stump of which was being pushed over yesterday.Today it is being cut up, loaded, and hauled away.

I ride around thinking about not much of anything at all. Today I decided that I made a mistake in my blogging about the most recent ride of GRider. I said that the answer to GRider's question about the blue tires was that OldLOOK palps orange. Upon reflection I believe this is a mistaken use of language. What I should have said is this (including updated nomenclature):

On FirstLOOK I palp tires in an orange colorway.