99 bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall. The song is popular in Canada and in English Pubs, especially Scotland. I haven't thought about that song since college. But, this morning, while there was still a comfort level in the weather department, my camera bag almost jumped into my lap to go, so I turned off the computer and grabbed a few things to stuff in the bag and away I went with bag over my shoulder. After making the corner, my plan was to walk the neighborhood behind me and look for unusual stuff again. Within less than 2 or 300 hundred yards, my eye caught something in its focus and low and behold, that song popped into my head. It's been there all day. Yes, all day.
So, with that find, my legs just kept walking forward. The neighborhood is a bit tricky and I didn't want to walk a fair distance only to find that the street was a dead end. The way it is laid out, there are through streets and there are dead ends. Some are marked, some are not; for what reason, is still unknown to me. But, there were several things that ended up in my camera as I came out onto the street that is about a mile or so north of mine. The problem was, I'm sitting on a parapet wall that ran along the sidewalk at the bus stop waiting for the bus and I look up at the bus stop sign only to have my eye catch one little phrase that would change my whole day. It simply read: there is no service to rail stations on weekends. So, that put me in a catch-22 situation. My first snarl to the bus system. The first stop also had a change notice to service change that could become permanent. It read like a city zone law change, and no date was included. I had no choice but to make the turn onto a parallel street to the street where I had seen the notice. All said and done, I had walked a bit over 3 miles already.
Finally, I got back to my street a mile to the east waiting for my regular bus. At least on Sundays, it runs every hour to a train station and with a short brisk walk meets the train that I want. In short, I ended up back at Mockingbird station across from SMU. I'm still having laps of memory with that name change from just Mockingbird Station to SMU/Mockingbird Station. Any how, the wait for the northbound train or Red Line was short. On the Blue Line, that I had just departed, there are cars that are even with the platform and you have steps to climb aboard. There are also raised platforms that allow for wheel chairs and bicycles to come on board. I was sitting at one stop waiting for the doors to open and take on the passengers there. When, all of a sudden, there are two bicycles, then a wheel chair that came on the middle section of the car. No big deal but the car was suddenly more crammed with passengers in tight quarters, when at the next stop, the door opened and in came a guy ridding a four wheel ATV. Wait, it gets better. Then, when the car arrived at SMU/Mockingbird, there were people in the upper levels that wanted to exit. Of course, they could not do that. And, neither could I and the guy that got on with me at my stop. We both had to go up to the upper level and exit on our end of the car. The door to the car where we were sitting was two seats away from the door, but blocked by the ATV and the bikes.
Two of the bicycle riders were talking to the ATM driver about being born in Brooklyn but growing up in the Bronx. I'm thinking to myself...well Dallas, our trains are getting that New Yorker life to them. After all, it is public transportation. It makes the point that street wise know can help to manage those kinds of situations and those that don't have street wisdom can't understand that point of view. Really, it's a live and let live attitude that most people in the south don't really understand in the text of what is really being said by such actions.
I've made junket trips up and down the east coast meeting my customer base of steel buyers. You soon learn you don't get judgemental. Not at all. I did recall hearing the one guy talk about driving a cab in the "city" [New York] and how the one way streets made him a lot of extra money. The old game of having a few cause delays and make you take a one way street that's going in the same direction that you had just come from; with the meter running, of course. They would all get a cut of the extra pay. When you talk about being street wise, that's one of those things knowing can save you a lot of headache. After the second train line and the same bus twice, I was finally home again The thermometer on my porch read 90 degrees. Hey!! Fall. check you heat levels but I guess that is why we are getting three cold fronts over the next week, beginning with tonight. No rain, Just lower humidity a dew points and temps back in the low 80s.
After a cold glass of lemon-flavored iced tea, I ordered groceries from Aldi. They came in time for dinner! Aldi's has Moose Track Ice Cream. After butter pecan for a while. It was time for a change for the old taste buds! Yum Yum Yummie! I averaged my calorie count for he first 10 days of October. The numbers were impressive. 1891 calories average per day. Good protein counts and just the right amout of carbs.
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