Spending a couple of hours counting pedestrians and bicyclists who pass a certain point – say, for example, 1st and Gunnison in Grand Junction, Colorado – gives a guy a chance to reflect as long as he keeps an eye out for pedestrians and bicyclists.
The cars, SUVs and big-ass pickup trucks that go by might bring to mind old road music and other songs and memorable moments, and those can lead to remembering who knows what else that he will never forget.
- The color of the vehicle occupied by long-haired friends of Jesus and how many of those friends of Jesus were in said vehicle.
- The importance of keeping your eyes on the road, son.
- The one Mustang he drove a few times way back in the day and the VW Beetle he borrowed in Florida and the Corvair that burst into flames one dark night in the Azores. Unsafe at any speed was right.
- Then he might think back to Navy boot camp when sailors learned in graphic, memorable detail the proper way to buckle a duty belt.
- And back to early university days learning “Zoom, Zorch, Boing…” as a warmup in, what was it, maybe rhetoric class?
- And one hen,
two ducks,
three squawking geese…
Wait, where were we? Counting, right.
The final count from my duty station in the Urban Trails Committee’s active transportation data collection project:
- 10 pedestrians
- 18 bicyclists
- ~45 oversized SUVs (unofficial, unreported estimate)
- ~250 big-ass pickup trucks, ~95% with empty beds (or maybe it just seemed like that many; unofficial, unreported estimate)
Pedal on, my friends.
B.J.
The Smith Compound 