I'm going nuts. Or, more precisely, I am going nut. My search for the proper right nut — for my bicycle, gutter mind — is turning into a genuine quest. Lowe's didn't have a 10mm 1.0 metric nut. Menards came close. They at least had a pullout bin marked for exactly that size nut, but it was empty. Another bin contained a 10mm nut with the thread gauge identified only as "fine," so I gave that a try. Nope.
Three options remain in town: People's Do-It Center, Tractor Supply Co. and Farm King. Blame the Brits for my trouble. The 1969 Robin Hood was made by Raleigh in Nottingham, England. Then again, maybe it is Americans' stubborn reluctance to convert to the metric system. Whatever happened to that movement? I distinctly remember having to learn about metrics in fifth grade because the world would soon be in concert regarding units of weight and measure. Huh. You see, had we pursued that conversion, every hardware store would be well-stocked with nuts of multiple millimeter measurements. Alas.
Oh, but enough of that sad tale. The game was afoot this morning. I was on another hunt. A co-worker shared a tip yesterday afternoon about a noteworthy find resting at the edge of a storm drain on a corner near The R-M. Initially I declined his offer of directions to its location, wishing to find it on my own. I made a cursory loop around nearby intersections as I biked home but spotted nothing. So I decided to alter my run route this morning and diverged from my neighborhood route at the 2-mile mark and headed downtown.
I hit every corner I thought a probable location based on the phrase "just down the street," which Nick uttered as he motioned to the south with a wave of a hand when I asked him yesterday where he saw this bizarre object. No luck. My text asking for specific location received only half of the answer: It takes two streets to form an intersection and Nick revealed only one.
 |
| Deflowering |
At last, I received explicit directions and the caveat that the object in question could be under some snow by now, with all the melt and collapse of drifts, especially right at a storm drain. Well, it wasn’t covered by snow but it had migrated further into the little snow cave over the drain and was wedged between two bars of the grate. Here it is at right. I couldn’t quite figure out the origins of a hollow penis head with a notch out of one side, but a friend more worldly than I explained it was one of those table-top hoppers, minus the hopping feet mechanism. Wow.
So, that one might not technically count in the street scavenger catalog, but it certainly is something you don’t find every day. Thanks again, Nick, for the tip.
Today's Stats
Temp: 34 degrees F
Distance: 5.14 miles
Weekly Total: 9.14 miles
Treasure: 1 Comfort Inn electronic room key; 1 small green bungee cord (attached to remnant of newspaper rain bags); 1 frozen Kit Kat bar (snack size);1 locking gas cap (apparently somebody forgot to lock it); 1 small nut (no, it doesn't fit my bike); 1 5/8” bolt 1¾ inches long; 1 bulb syringe (in the Cottage Medical Plaza lot); 1 Let It Snow yard flag; 1 plastic and cloth flower; 25 cans.
iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Mr. Blue - Garth Brooks
Blue Eyes - Cary Brothers
Pressure - Billy Joel
Perfect Blue Buildings - Counting Crows
Lightning Crashes - Live
The Show Must Go On - Pink Floyd
Love Song for No One (live) - John Mayer
Yellow Submarine - The Beatles
It's Only Love - The Beatles
Get the Party Started - Pink
Sweet Thing - The Waterboys
Act Naturally - The Beatles
Let the Day Begin (live) - The Call
Goodnight Saigon - Billy Joel
In The River - The Call
No comments:
Post a Comment