What a hoot! For unknown reasons, I got all revved up and launched on a Hike That Would Not Stop this afternoon.
Seriously: I’ve been walking for a good three hours. Pillar to post and back again… And highly entertained by that which is the same and that which has changed around the ‘Hood.
As a practical matter, a surprising amount of the landscape has evolved: newer, different, maybe even a little more upscale. Yet a lot remains in full plus ça change plus ça reste le même mode. It was just plain fun to walk through shopping strips and parking lots and clusters of stores that I’ve visited for years and yet hardly even noticed…so much are they part of the landscape.
Got some good exercise, and really enjoyed the long hike.
During all this, considering: DO I want to pack up and move back out to Sun City, there to join SDXB and his girlfriend? Would I feel safer a whole long way from the traffic and the homeless vagrants and the burglars and the whatnot?
Ultimately, as my feet took me back up the driveway to the front door, the thought that came to mind was Well, no! No, I do NOT want to move to Sun City. No, I wanna stay here.
I love our neighborhood. I love our neighbors. I love the kids playing in the yards and streets. And I even love the cars and busses and trains rumbling up and down the surrounding main drags.
This is a fun, cool, down-home middle-class urban neighborhood: the sort of place where I feel right at home. And…I ain’t leavin’!
WOOT!