Category: Silently Thinking Out Loud

I like to think out loud and see if anything sticks or salutes before I go ahead with it. It’s like the Grateful Dead cooking songs for years on the road before they committed them to commercial recordings. It’s way-social.

New Maker Mark Discovered Among Esther’s Magnets

You may be familiar with our store category which we now call Rubber Fridge Magnets which evolved from a category we had in an eBay store called Esther’s Sister’s Magnets, a group of several hundred rubber magnets Our Intrepid Leader bought for eleven dollars.

We have gone on to set ourselves up as experts, offering an ebook Esther’s Sister’s Magnets Illustrated Checklist Collecting Guide, soon to undergo it’s second revision with a number of new entries.

That’s because we’ve acquired ESTHER’S collection, but that’s not what this is about.

Our Intrepid Leader was just examining a group of those when he came upon an entirely unlisted mark, not found anywhere in the book. This seems like an oddity because it means Esther must have bought some magnets on the sly when her sister wasn’t looking, or maybe because they’re religiously themed, Esther and her sister didn’t see eye to eye when it came to purchasing religious fridge magnets.

Anyway, we are excited to announce that we have discovered the existence of Cross Publishing, Kenilworth, New Jersey, who made at least six religious magnets with very faint impressions on the back but which also significantly stated “Made In USA”, which our previous discoverees did not think to include.

We also have one example from this company (with the USA designation) which is marked Somerville NJ. There is a present-day commercial printer in Somerville by the name of Cross Publishing Co.

This goofs up the title of our book, which up until now has been:

Esther’s Sister’s Molded Rubber Magnets Checklist

An Extremely Serious Examination Of

The Molded Rubber Magnets of Ellisville and Cape Girardeau, Missouri

And Nearby Locales

Do we add “And New Jersey”? Or what? Include a section for Not From Missouri at all?

Stand by, this may take a while. It’s dramatic.

Saturday In The Park, Sioux City 2012 with Tom, Jason, Patrick, Josh & Travis (R)

I guess I went to this year’s SITP as Jesus because at least two people called me that: a little black kid handing out fliers for another festival and a drunk lady waiting for the buses out of the place at the end of the night. That was my first experience with that, and I don’t think it was the shirt, as Tom suggested: I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t wear Eastern Indian dashikis with Iowa Hawkeye logo hiking shorts.

I chose the combination because of the heat, the dashiki being the coolest shirt I own (temperature-wise) and the shorts being the ONLY pair I own.

I think it was “the hair” which I wore down because of a little incident last year. Last year I thought I’d do that but instead of applying Head And Shoulders shampoo just before we left I used Head And Shoulders Conditioner, wondering all the while why it didn’t suds up or wash out. When it dried it was like a cement cap the rest of the day and night and this year I repeated the procedure just to get it right and used the shampoo, not the conditioner. Everyone knows you can’t do a thing with your hair after a shampoo and that was the effect I was going for. I think the explanation’s got to be in there, even though Jesus couldn’t have used Head And Shoulders. And didn’t have grey hair typical of a sixty-year old.

But that’s only part of the point I might make. I went to this year’s SITP without any investment in any of the musicians. I know I’m supposed to like Wilco but I’m still devoutly following the musicians I originally liked in the 70’s. I bothered to spend a number of hours last week familiarizing myself with all of the artists’ material I could find on the Internet, so I wasn’t in the dark, but that’s all I had: no history of following any of them, no even remotely-related t-shirts from prior concerts.

I needed a day I could look at idly from a distance. It’s been a while. And I can watch something like SITP from the perspective of one of the older guys. Maybe they meant to call me Moses. And I’ve been to some events before, know how it goes, and over time have become acquainted with some industry people and kind of know how it goes.

First of all, those guys who organize this event get my full admiration. The thing started when they said it would, ended when they said it would (even though Wilco threatened to screw with that) and there were no strange delays, technical glitches or unneeded jabber by the MCs. They added a camera on a boom this year that could be used to show the event from almost any perspective and displayed that on a big screen to the right of the stage, which was a nice feature. I hope they add a second screen to the left side next year.

Second, it’s an amazingly well-behaved event. If there’s lawless behavior, it’s almost all concentrated in the little “dance area” below the front of the stage. I didn’t spend enough time there to attest to any of that, but from my view up the hill aways under the TV camera, something notable never happened. In my time, keeping in mind I went to Grateful Dead concerts almost exclusively, when the lights went down and the band went ker-rang…… a cloud of green smoke instantly appeared over the crowd and never went away. That doesn’t happen in Sioux City and I’m at a slight loss to explain it. Maybe the pot they smoke these days is so strong it doesn’t take enough of it to PRODUCE the green smoke, or maybe the penalties that are supposed to deter the behavior are so high and unrealistic that they actually work, I’m not sure.

I got kind of concerned about it because I was afraid it made my tobacco smoking more obvious and perhaps I’d be trapped in a place without that for eleven hours. That makes me do crazy things. But it wasn’t an issue and the crowd never became tightly packed so it wasn’t even much of a consideration. That was handy because if you’re out of your own house, there’s no place in the world left where tobacco smoking is acceptable.

No, the only OD’s I saw, and have seen in recent years, were alcohol induced. Even at that, maybe all the law enforcement guys I didn’t see anywhere else stood around the fenced-off drinking area and scared people into behaving. I’m not sure-I’ve never been on the other side of that fence and I’ve never paid any attention to that party. I don’t drink, but my companions did, which resulted in me watching “our stuff” for a couple of longish stints that were just long ENOUGH to burn the living hell out of my right thigh and a little spot on my right ankle because the blazing sun noticed right away that my lily-white self had been perched indoors at a computer keyboard for at least a year. Note to self: next year, go outside a little bit in May or June or something and get a little color.

So there I am, burning to death but blissfully smoking, thinking about my life when they interrupt it with loud music. Of course, we expect that at these things, but I like loud music by guys who have been working on their technique for forty years and have really nice equipment and lots of techs to assist them and stuff. That’s not exactly the case with the opening acts-after all, everything has its pecking order and everybody starts someplace. It’s nice of SITP to offer a few local spots to new guys, but it’s not really necessary for me to be there for it.

Lissie fixed that for me. The Dirty Guv’nahs right before her delivered a couple of interesting tunes and a nice Rolling Stones cover but Lissie had a kind of disconcerting worldly view of things you had to pay attention to. A lot of her lyrics make you go “did she really say that or did she actually say….” and she’s a pretty believable rock star, especially since she’s a guitar player. Her light complexion gives away how hard she’s actually working on a very hot day. She’s got some gritty themes. During her performance I really kind of thought she and her band were going to steal the whole show. They were um, very good.

I still thought that through the Chris Robinson Brotherhood. They were obviously competent musicians but I didn’t need to turn it up any more.

But then Gary Clark Jr. took the stage. With authority.

Bright Lights A/V

Nobody around me said it but I thought maybe Robin Trower had shown up. I’m supposed to compare Clark to Jimi Hendrix, I know that, but hoo boy………I have a lot of trouble trying to imagine Clark’s rendition of say, All Along The Watchtower or Foxy Lady. I’m pretty sure I’m completely happy studying why he says “I don’t owe you a dime”. That band played with ferocious power and offered a really refreshingly raw presentation that was devoid of the usual star bullshit. I’d travel to see these guys again, especially on a bill by themselves.

Nothing wrong with Wilco, I think the devout were pleased. I noticed they were able to sing along to every word, which I couldn’t do from just one week of listening, and it looked like the fans were getting what they expected. They certainly got a generous encore; it was kind of like a two-set performance, but Wilco is a really “distorted” band. They’re obviously masters at it, and it IS interesting to listen to guys who have been at it for 20 years with some of the best electronic gizmos money can stack, but there’s a not-so-gentle distinction between distortion, however well-managed, and feedback, and I’m more of a feedback guy. That said, they produced “moments” all over the place, and I’m certainly a new fan of numbers like Handshake Drugs and Jesus Etc. (maybe that’s where all that came from), and Impossible Germany, but I still like straight guitar-driven rock and roll like they delivered in the last two numbers. I didn’t get quite enough of that. Wish I’d kept a set list; I can’t remember what they were.

We got out of there in record time and on the bus in a reasonable amount of time and soon found ourselves back at the Holiday Inn. It being midnight, there was a consensus among our group to drink for a couple of hours and then go to the nearby restaurant, open 24 hours. That’s where I made a fatal mistake. I know there is going to be a stretch before I can smoke again, and for some reason, we hurry into the hotel (I’m not telling you the reason on purpose-you don’t want to know it) and I think wistfully as we whiz by the little group of smokers outside the front door, I should peel off and join these guys, but I don’t.

I’m completely stupid.

I KNOW the drinking part is not fun for us non-drinkers, I KNOW I can strike up a camaraderie with the smokers. You’d be surprised in a world where we’ve become the lepers how quickly we can conjure up topics for conversations where we’re huddled, always outside of wherever it is that we are, missing the event.

I’m going to leave out the fairly mundane details about our next few hours, but after a small semblance of sleep we were up in the morning, myself unhindered by physical discomforts other than two little sunburned spots, my caffeine jones and my nicotine jones. I immediately head outside to the smokers’ huddling area, joined somewhat quickly by Patrick, the other smoker in our group.

While we’re standing there considering our options, a somewhat familiar-looking hippie dude walks by carrying two gallon jugs of water. “Hey, good show yesterday” Patrick tells him and the guy says “oh thanks” and goes inside. I am inquisitive: good show yesterday? “Yeah” says Patrick, that’s the guitar player for Lissie. They must be staying here. I thought that was them last night when we came in but I didn’t want to bother them”.

Oh dammit. Now that he mentioned it, one of the smokers from the night before had been a relatively small blonde, which was one of the reasons I DIDN’T decide to hang with them: I don’t need no trouble hanging around small blondes half my age.

But oh dammit. This is the second time in two years that Tom and I have somehow narrowly averted hanging out with the celebrities, this time literally walking right past them hurrying into a hotel due to general gastronomic misbehavior, which is almost never one of my problems.

I gotta learn to pay more attention. One year Phil Lesh was standing right in front of me eating ice cream while I scanned the crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of him, and I’ve also done stupid stuff like turn down Merl Saunders when he invited us to continue on to Chicago with him from Minneapolis because I HAD to work……….I’ve bumped into Les Claypool when he was signing autographs and thought he was a clerk and tried to buy a used record from him.

We failed to consider the possibility last year that Ray Manzarek and Roy Rogers might just go next door to Minerva’s for a couple of hours when they played at Okoboji and I STILL have two great questions for Manzarek if we ever do manage to predict his next move. We even knew somebody in common that we could have gossiped about.

In 1975, I HAD to visit Coit Tower one day when The Grateful Dead were playing for free in Golden Gate Park.

Duh.

Anyway, attendance at Sioux City was light this year in my estimation. Whatever your reason was for missing the event (probably the heat or you just didn’t know who any of the performers were), you blew it, and you can’t ask for a refund because it was free. Watch for the IPTV broadcast; I heard the camera guy tell somebody “we always show it right before The Fair”, which I presume must be the State Fair.

It was a real hot show. Catch Gary Clark, Jr. someplace when you can.

On Thirteen: The Unlucky Number

Today marked my 13th anniversary as an online indie wildcat seller, having cut my teeth at eBay and stayed there through several incarnations.

It seems so long ago, that day, when I sat at the Spencer Public Library, barely familiar with operating personal computers, registering the eBay ID I’ve since changed and can’t seem to get back: saintsteven.

I couldn’t have picked a better name-it sounds nice, doesn’t it? Like a guy you can do business with and trust? Thirteen years ago it was easier to grab a name. Saintsteven was based on a Grateful Dead song, “St. Stephen” which contains a line “one man gathers what another man spills”.

Boy, has that ever turned out to be true. A series of hilarious events including divorce, tax problems, death, disease, virtual bankruptcy followed. That of course is nobody’s fault. The chips fell. But let’s say that after three years of practice from my store front, things didn’t go all that smoothly or quite as planned after I left that little location for the Internet. I’d told the newspaper and the local radio station I thought it looked like a no-brainer.

My main eBay account has racked up a little over 16,000 transactions, I have a second which is poised for Top Rated Seller status in June that has another 300 transactions, and then there are the other venues.

You can figure I’ve sold 500 Things a year that aren’t mine (custom listings), so if I’ve been doing that all 13 years (I haven’t), subtract some 6500 Things from those numbers. We’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 Things I’ve mailed to other people which have been largely spun from straw.

Yes, there was a little stretch there where I attended local estate auctions and bought some stuff, and yes, I’m capable of snatching up fifty-cent Cross Pens at the Good Will Store if I know I can flip them for twenty dollars, but for the most part, those 10,000 Things have come from stuff I’m lugging around, through a move from the store to Royal in 2002, and another move from Royal to Lakeside in 2005.

But since November 2005, I’ve not ventured away from my little room to acquire any more stuff, and I’ve still got Things in racks and boxes and stacks and I have to constantly remind myself while I’m oogling some little object that I don’t need any more Things.

Unless of course the price is right.

It took a really long time to attain that luxurious position. It’s powerful as long as I don’t ask it be portable.

Not long ago Auctionbytes, an online publication about this business held a contest, good for a hundred dollars: share your best online selling tip. That’s my kind of contest and I set about putting some notes on paper, fully intending to come up with a tip (that I’m willing to share) but I missed the deadline due to an insane local week of dealing with dinky banking issues and an automobile part.

They gave the hundred bucks to somebody who said “sell internationally”. I can’t disagree with that, but mine would have been better now that I’ve thought of it.

Here’s my advice: build your own base. Do that first. In 1999, that was impossible for me. I had no computer, no knowledge of site building, fees for hosting were radically different, the Internet was still evolving at a crazy rate.

That’s no longer true. This site costs about a hundred dollars a year to host (or much less if you’re really alert) and that’s it. It’s all either personally designed by myself (I know I’m not an award winning designer but it works) or utilizes free software such as WordPress (blog) and Zen Cart (shopping cart), Cloudflare (security). DON’T GIVE THE WORD “FREE” MUCH EMPHASIS IN THAT STATEMENT. Open source software bring with it an impressive learning curve and demands lots and lots of ongoing education. And mods. But if you want “community”, mods are where it’s at.

So call that hundred dollars a year nine dollars a month. For that nine bucks I get “unlimited” storage (there’s a limit, but it’s bigger than me), which has translated into never paying eBay for an “additonal photo” (they’re finally doing away with that soon, but it’s been true for 13 years), and into accumulating a really nice visual resume if I ever want to show somebody the stuff I’ve handled.

It gets me a place to “be from” that’s not defined by guys I will never meet who are satisfying stockholders. Boy, are they ever satisfying the stockholders. And when I can be “from” someplace, I can switch listings from venue to venue. I’m presently using eight venues, if I can count 2 eBay accounts.

But most of all, I can administrate my own catalog. That’s not my busiest channel now, but I do know what I’m missing in the formula. Serious eBay sellers are supposed to cringe when they see that $9/month expense because they know that monthly eBay invoices are hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

All those venues get paid to get found and to consolidate sellers. If you don’t use them, you’re going to have to pay to get that accomplish that on your own. Probably. I’ve tested at Google for two winter seasons now. Selling what I sell (which does shift), I need to pay Google something over twenty dollars a month to attract customers. I don’t know what the number is because I haven’t gone there, but I know I can see SOME conversions at that twenty dollar level. If I’ve been handing a venue even two hundred dollars a month, there’s a lot of play in there.

That’s a luxurious position too.

Yes, there’s this guy and this lady on TV who ride titanium bicycles and drink really good wines who make $18,000 a month selling things they don’t even ever touch. I really can’t explain those people.

I can explain me though. Now I’ll got to bed and tomorrow I’ll get up when I think it’ll be a good time, and I’ll check the Empire. Two email accounts, a couple of social sites, a quick glimpse at the venues, and by noon my day will be all cut out for me. I know what I THINK I’ll be doing, and I know it’ll morph by mid-afternoon and I also know there isn’t a scenario under the sun that can come up that I won’t know how to handle (whether I like it or not) and THAT’S a luxurious position.

Lucky, I’m not sure.







About Esther’s Sister’s Molded Rubber Refrigerator Magnets

Ever since I was a young fellow in business college, I’ve wanted to write a book like War And Peace but it looks like I’ve instead cobbled together a guide for collecting rubber refrigerator magnets.

For the longest time there were interfering factors like the world wasn’t demanding another War And Peace, and just writing the book in general got in the way of conducting business and other hobbies.

In August of 2004, I came onto a couple of boxes of rubber refrigerator magnets containing maybe 600 of them at an estate sale and accidentally cataloged them in the process of flipping them at eBay. I’ve come to realize that they portray a little snapshot of my favorite era in popular history and collecting, the early 1970s, which we might call When They Changed Everything. They turned out to be Esther’s sister’s magnets; Esther (who was at the sale) told me so. Eventually, I asked Esther what was the story? Six hundred magnets need a pretty big refrigerator. The two sisters traveled, and that’s what they did while they were traveling-they collected rubber magnets. And no, they DON’T all fit on the fridge, the entire display had been displayed on the fridge, the washer and drier, and probably on any other appliances to which they stuck.

If you pay close attention, production of the rubber magnets didn’t last too long. Several makers’ names stand out: Magnetic Novelties of Ellisville, Mo, Magnetic Collectables, Cape Girardeau, Mo, Magic Magnets, St. Louis, Ad Specialties, Union City, Mo, and finally Swib, oddly misplaced at Lisle, Illinois.

Today’s two-dimensional magnets land on peoples’ refrigerators because they’re free and have advertising on them. Yesterday’s THREE dimensional magnets were sold, at about 29 cents each, through outlets other than convenience stores because convenience stores hadn’t been invented yet. They were merchandised from counter displays without packaging, graphics, bar codes or blister packs. Somebody stood there, at somebody else’s sales counter, chatting with a merchant, and picked out something they wished they’d said. Something that would look “appropriate” in their kitchen. It might have had utility: magnets hold up small notes, but for the most part they were a personalization of somebody’s domain, and that was the kitchen (which is not to say that these never made it to other metal places like lunchboxes or tackle boxes or anything made out of steel, but the themes are remarkably innocent if that’s where they were going).

We’re going to include a number of different types here but we’re going to gloss over two of the largest categories, perhaps to appear in later editions of their own. Those are Travel Souvenirs and Sports Logos. Those two seem to be what it’s all about now that rubber magnets are (still) made in overseas factories.

Our categories are: Advice & Humor, Religious, Custom Brand Names, CB Slang, Cartoon Characters, Travel Souvenirs, Autos And Transportation, Sports, and Just Images.

We’re missing some images. We have more records of sales than images, so we have a list of those. That happens when somebody rebuilds a web site and forgets them or when he entrusted a free hosting service with them and they blew up or something. We’re looking for those; they’ll eventually be in future editions.

So we’ve taken what we have, a couple of lists, a few hundred images, and the names of two manufacturers, Magnetic Novelties of Ellisville, Missouri, and Magnet Collectables of Cape Giradeau, Missouri. We’ve also got a few sightings from Swib, of Lisle, Illinois and a couple of other companies and no information about them.

The first time around, we kept no data on who made what, none of their dimensions, and without sifting through thousands of them we don’t know much about their probable color varieties.

We used Google Docs and Picasa Albums to create our content, and because it was easier to work with groups we defined our own categories, although there could certainly be others. For example, we’ve yet to see anything we think is particularly risque, and after all, these could work on a guy’s toolbox as well as on anybody’s refrigerator.

Many of the missing images are travel souvenirs, and we still wonder if those aren’t a category of their own and actually beyond the scope here, but we’re including what we kept. Ordinarily we didn’t seek to trade in those but one day acquired a large batch of them at a local Goodwill Store and hosted those listings’ photos at some third-party hosting service where they subsequently got lost.

Conventions we’ve used are to capitalize everything within the sayings themselves, and to alphabetically use the word “The” rather than to discard it when building lists. A few (CB slang) are numbers (10-4), and for the purposes of alphabetizing those we’ve spelled them out.

Values. What kind of reference would this be without values? Let’s save those for that later edition too. We’ve GOT them, but haven’t added them to the database. This is the free edition. Maybe we can include those in the Premium edition.

In the kitchen, the world’s important topics are different from those in the television or in the computer or in any of the media. Ultimately a few of them are timeless and a few of them are just snapshots: it’s hard to imagine how “Down With Hotpants” could be relevant in the Twenty-First Century, for example.







A Little Dry Lately: Where The Water Doesn’t Go Out Of The Lake

All the sand in these photos is usually water, flowing out of the lake







Hey, Lookit! Rainy Day On The Web: Dead Music Store


This Link

We think it was really nice of this blogger to include us in their list and also for the commenter who added Storm Lake to our presence.

It was perhaps a little unsettling in the moment to try on the mantle of “Dead Indie Record Store And Head Shop” but I tried it out right away via our social media and it actually wasn’t weird, possibly because I can obscure the issue a little by being a Grateful Dead fan.

Anyway, maybe Dead Indie Record Store is something I’d like to actually exploit; it’s true, it’s a continuum leading to today, and I can sustain it.

I’m testing some Google advertising. I can get it to display but I’m having difficulty getting anyone to click on the link, meaning (to me) the ad just isn’t very compelling.

I’m going to try:

Dead Indie Music Store
Rock Music Promo Flats 1995-2001
Discounts for 3,6,12 posters
saintstevensthingery clickie link

instead of:

Music Promotional Flats
Rock Music Promo Flats
1995-2001 85 Varieties
saintstevensthingery clickie link

maybe they both suck, I’m not sure. Maybe they have to be hysterical or offer the moon, but this is just our first baby step beyond last Fall’s testing.

@60

See here how everything
lead up to this day
and it’s just like
any other day
that’s ever been
Sun goin up
and then the
sun it goin down
Shine through my window and
my friends they come around
come around
come around

That’s a favorite lyric of mine, written by Robert Hunter for the Grateful Dead. I think about it all the time.

The rest of the song is about a guy who is dying, so I like to take it out of context, but I’m sure that’s ok. I know song writers expect that.

Ordinarily, I try not to burden The Internet with stuff about my age, but I’m going to pick sixty as my Milestone and get it over with. Twenty was confusing for me because they were busy changing all the rules for different behaviors from eighteen to twenty-one. I was real busy when I was thirty, although I had a friend who fell apart emotionally that year so I knew it happened. Same excuse for forty; I was REALLY busy by that time.

Fifty was pretty milestone-esque. It was just BEFORE 9/11 and everything was like it was before that, and my son and daughter-in-law provided an appropriate surprise with black balloons and the works but I was distracted, let’s say, and I failed to see any crises of the mid-life kind. I saw a few right AFTER that, but I attributed them mostly to lawyers.

I really didn’t care for large portions of the last part of that year but it all lead directly to right now.

I do care for large portions of “now”. Yes, I find some of the tiny buttons I have to push to survive in The Future annoying and not intuitive, yes, I’m a little surprised by the fact that I can’t speed-walk to the Caseys Store in heat that’s measured the same as a hundred and four degrees, yes, I even catch myself having to think really hard at certain little details that used to impersonate big details.

For the most part though, I’m delighted to be participating in The Future. Just like they “have to” ask you at the Post Office if you’re mailing anything that’s going to blow up, they “have to” ask you at the grocery store if you’re old enough to buy cigarettes. I probably AM old enough to know better, but that’s not the question.

From “in here”, I feel about the same as I always have. I may know a few more rote answers, and I recognize more situations than I did when I was younger, and I’ve even become a better grocery shopper, just like the guy who was ahead of me in line the other day. “I’m eighty-three” he explained “and I never expected to be learning about doing laundry”.

I know exactly what he meant. He’s talking about somebody who isn’t doing the laundry anymore, and judging by how eager the guy was to make conversation, that somebody is also not among us anymore.

I never expected it either but by the same token I never expected to learn whatever it was I learned when I was eight and still be using it today which was an inconceivable time. Anything past Christmas of that year was inconceivable.

There went one of those pauses. I had to think about what I DID learn when I was eight. That was the year my third grade teacher made two of us just promise to sit there nicely and read the encyclopedia, which we did. That was a nice jump-start on years nine through sixty.

As far as I can tell, the only practical difference between then and now was the way nap time was enforced. I get really cranky now if you mess that up.







Cracks Perhaps You’d Like To Fall Through

This is a quick pictorial version of my walk to roughly King’s Pointe from by the outlet in Lakeside (approximately the first half of the trip through Lakeside is omitted):

Park With Disc Golf Course

Looking North From Same Spot, Toward Our Destination

Back Over Our Shoulder At The Disc Golf Course Again

This is at a spot where the bike trail goes around in a little circle
Trail In This Part Is Nice And Smooth, Don't You Think?
Sunrise Campground On A Weeknight
Pop Machines, In Case Of Severe Dehydration
The Real Users Of The Trail
Imagine Flying Over This Little Baby On Your Two Thousand Dollar Bike
Then there's this cracked part
This is almost an inch drop-off
If you fly off your bike right, you can hit this pole
Don't Pull Over If You're Meeting Somebody
Other Side Of The Trip, King's Pointe

Walking Around Thinking About The Heat

About a week ago, I decided I better not drive my van anymore until I can get the brakes fixed.

That’s a little inconvenient, since I can’t mail Things from the house until I get a printer going with the new computer I haven’t gotten yet.

So far, I’ve gotten by with just one ten dollar taxi ride although I know that’s going to get worse, and while I was under no obligation to mail Things today I was out of cigarettes.

After spending the requisite hour thinking about why I should quit smoking cigarettes, I decided maybe I should just walk up the road to the local Inconvenience Store to get them and that would probably teach me. That store, according to Google, is 1.6 miles away.

Today was one of the hottest days we’ve had lately. I think I heard a local announcer say it was the equivalent of 104 degrees with the heat index (whatever that accursed calculation is). I took along a bottle with 20 ounces of water.

After all, I used to walk back and forth across Iowa City, and I can remember that those treks could actually be pleasant, so off I go.

Right away, I noticed I live on a cement street with not much adjoining grass on the side facing traffic, but I walked on the cement, said hello to two guys who mentioned it was pretty hot, had an interesting little nine block walk up to the Cobblestone.

From there, the trail system through the parks is available, and there are lots of big trees with some shade. I decided to smoke my last cigarette. No go, forgot to fill the lighter. How ironic.

Well, I head off down the trail, which winds, carefully noting where the spot-a-pots were located along the way and also carefully noting that it takes me about 20 minutes to walk to Sunrise Campground where there are machines with Coke Pepsi and stuff.

This life on foot isn’t so bad, I think, carefully choosing to ignore the large blister forming on my right heel. I’m a little hungry though, this exercise is bad that way, I’ll get more than cigarettes when I get to the oasis.

Past the Canada Geese which consider this territory to be their own, past the two hot city workers trimming brush by the lake, past not one other trail user because this is the stupidest day of the year to be out walking on it.

I got to our new resort. I found a way to walk through it, availing myself of their nice men’s room, but I’m pretty sure they’d start to recognize me as a regular non-regular if I do that too often.

I’ll bet homeless guys make a science of this stuff, I thought.

The resort is across the street from the cigarettes, and after I waited my place in line behind two vans full of Japanese college students, I had my stuff: smokes, a lighter, two Hostess apple pies, a loaf of way-overpriced bread.

Whew. I only had to get back. Trouble was, I was getting a little weak, so I had a picnic of one of the Hostess pies sitting on a stone bench on the way back. Ah, this is the stuff of us Street Guys I thought as I finally LIT one of the cigarettes with the new yellow Bic.

The park’s nice-it’s grass anywhere but the actual winding path, and I made quick order out of ignoring the path and walking on the grass, until I once again reached the Cobblestone, the beginning of cement town.

The other side of the street is a little better; there’s some grass, a few trees, and it became an object of the march to spot the next little patch of shade up ahead.

As I got dizzier from my impending dehydration, the next little patch of shade up ahead became real important. Apparently 20 ounces of water was not quite enough.

But I made it, a little alarmed by what the march had taken out of me, but feeling smug nontheless that these were regular-priced cigarettes, not ten dollar plus cigarettes. Nevermind the part where it took a few hours to feel like smoking them.

Or getting out of bed.

I saved the ten bucks though.