Building Up Speed in Everyday Ramblings

On Thursday I was wandering around downtown burning a little time before an appointment for a haircut and I saw this tree against this building. The three pictures I took don’t do justice to what I saw with my eyes but still you can get an idea.

Mrs. Sherlock came home that same day and she texted to see if I wanted to go up to Washington Square Park with her on Saturday and I countered that maybe we could go to the arboretum up there as I wanted to look at their maple collection.

The reason for this is that I am trying to identify this tree in my neighborhood and I had taken a bunch of pictures. It is a big tree, over 40 feet and also broad. One of my students trained to be a landscape architect and worked for the park department for a number of years and I had asked if he could help me figure it out.

In class last week we looked at my pictures and we basically agreed it was most likely some sort of maple. He mentioned a common name at the end of class but I couldn’t find pictures of it online. But he also suggested that I go to the arboretum and see if I could match it.

Our arboretum is very popular, and quite lovely. Parking costs a fortune and so we were trying to get one of the few free spots along the narrow curved road out front. Our trip up had already been quite convoluted because one of our big streets is partially closed for three days to set a crowd sourced (which I contributed to) pedestrian bridge.

It will make park use up in that area much safer as traffic continues to increase.

I was unusually tired yesterday morning. Draggy, I would like to curl up and go to sleep tired even after a good night’s sleep tired so instead of our usual hiking extravaganza we ran Frida in an open meadow and then wandered around talking trees and her trip and my last two weeks for a few hours.

Then we did this crazy loop de loop across town thing to get to a bakery that makes Mr. Sherlock’s favorite bread. It was packed, the parking lot was full and I had to sit in the car with Frida in a 5 minute zone for another business and hope we didn’t get ticketed.

I read an article about the wild and remarkable sub 2-hour marathon in Vienna yesterday on my phone. They had a pacer car that shot a laser beam on the ground in front of the lead runner and then they had a V of elite runners in front like a flock of geese to cut down on wind drag and keep him in a protected bubble. This is like breaking the 4-minute mile. They were running close to that pace the whole time but they changed out the pacers at intervals. It was only Eliud Kipchoge that ran the whole thing at that pace.

Not only is it amazing that they could do that but that I could sit in a hybrid car in a parking lot thousands of miles away and read about it on my phone a few hours later.

There is a bus that goes to the arboretum. There is a free shuttle that goes around the park and there is light rail that also goes up there so I think this will become a new playground for me.

Maybe even with a sketchbook. Whoa baby, how cool will that be?

The two old men that own the place I live have hired a professional management company to run the complex now. It will be a big change. We have always had a manager on the premises before, a rotating cast of wives of dental students here from Utah, usually with a toddler or baby in tow.

The management company is doing an inspection of all the units on Wednesday so I have been cleaning and tidying up to prepare.

After I ate lunch yesterday when I got home in the early afternoon the draggy exhaustion lifted and I was able to get a few things done thank goodness.

Wish me luck this coming week. It is going to be one heck of a ride as I hit escape velocity.

Last updated October 14, 2019