North of 17th, west of railroad, south of 21st, east of Main

Total for today 21,440 steps and 3:27 time.

One new license plate today… Vermont — cumulative 43.

Finished a book by a local author…  The Dog Stars by Peter Heller.  Son-in-law David lent it to me after he read it.  It’s a post-apocalyptic story about a man and his dog that have a base set up at the Erie airport (for any non-local readers, Erie is a town about 7 miles south of Longmont.   All the action takes place in Colorado.

The first 50 pages I kind of struggled through, because he wrote it in a choppy, kind of stream-of-consciousness style, which I don’t usually care for.  As the book progressed, I got used to it, and the storyline became more interesting to me… so I would say I ended up enjoying the book, giving it a guarded thumbs-up.  (warning to potential readers… it is slightly R-rated in a few areas, but nothing too shocking).

Back to the day’s walk….

I’ve heard of the Ghent car dealership for many years.  I don’t know if it’s named for the owner, or after the city in Belgium, or what.  The city in Belgium is famous for being where the peace  treaty for the War of 1812 was signed… which comes up often as a trivia question.  It also reminds me of the Ghent altarpiece, which I vaguely remember from an Art History class I took many years ago.

Ghent altarpiece wiki

Jennifer and I have seen this cool pickup several times driving around Longmont; now I know where it calls it’s home.  This picture doesn’t do it justice…  the color of it changes from blue to purple to kind of  green as  you see it from different angles.   I guess it’s some high-tech new-fangled expensive paint job.   Makes me wonder what color it’s listed as on it’s vehicle registration!!?!

 

This nice-looking house looked fairly well-maintained from the outside, but all the doors and windows were boarded up.  Must be a sad story there somewhere.  Hope it gets all fixed up and occupied again soon.

My google map that I used for my walk today printed off with the correct Atwood St. south of 17th, but an incorrect Maplewood Dr. north of 17th.  Is this another instance of a ‘purposeful error’ by Google for copyright protection?

This squirrel and I had a stare-down for a minute or so, as it sat atop a narrow pole that was about 8 feet high.  In the squirrels’ honor, I’m going to put in a  reference to both the early 20th century fad of flag-pole sitting, and the Christian ascetic St.SimeonStylites…  who sat atop a pillar in Syria for 37 years!!

Flagpole sitting fad wiki

St. Simeon Stylites wiki

This is not a good picture, washed out because of the sun, but these two bushes were cut into a cube shape, which I thought was kind of cool…