new village story

Two weeks back we began the process of moving all of the atoms arranged as stuff, that we claim to be ours to a new apartment in Palo Alto. This new apartment is on the campus of Stanford University. After many preliminary runs it was time for a day with the great moving truck. We went to see Dinesh who runs the local Budget, being that I drive to Santa Barbara a few times a month, he and I really are on a first name basis. As we were driving over to pick up the truck there was a bicyclist passing through an intersection and lo and behold he was struck (rather gently) by an auto. This caused the bicyclist to topple over. Of course, you are thinking not such a far fall, but wait, he was riding one of the those old style bicylcles that has an extremely large wheel and one smaller wheel. I will insert here that this person on bike and the other driving the Prius promptly confronted each other and hugged. While this may not be the "expected reaction" (there are those that think they should have yelled at each other and had a fist fight, I thought this was rather agreeable). At the time I did not think much of the fact that the person on the bicycle was riding an old-style "High Wheel Bicycle". I simply thought it was rather pleasing. Fortunately, there was also a helmet surrounding the cranium of the High Wheel operator.

Settling into the new student housing situation here at Stanford, I was reminded of how Christine and I used to call our similar residence in Santa Barbara, "the village." "Here we are, back in the village," I remarked.

The next day I was in the new apartment removing the large quantity of things from boxes so that I could organize them into neat little piles and ponder how wonderful it is to have so many things to move around, when there came a knock at the door. Upon answering it I was greeted by a rather peculiar looking gentleman, holding a clipboard. He asked me what I knew about my next door neighbor. I informed him that I was new to this village and that I did not know my neighbor. He responded by saying, "We want information. I work for the US census, and we want information." He held up his laminated US Census ID to make sure that I knew that he was official.

Indeed, back in the village.

Be seeing you.