While on my recent camping trip to the ol' hometown, I went to a semi-nice restaurant for takeout, and the chatty order-taking lady, maybe mid-30s, asked me what I was doing in town, and if I "rode down on my motorcycle." I've never owned one, rarely even ridden on one, and until I grew my late-life beard always looked like the mild-mannered egghead that I truly am. But if I now look enough like a biker to fool her, and after all these years, I'll take it.
Another little thing from that camping trip. I had realized I had no idea how to tie any knot other than tying a shoelace, and read that ideally one would use additional tie-ropes on the tent, for security and weather purposes. So I taught myself to tie a bowline knot and a double-half-hitch. Plus figured out how to use a tensioner on the rope. Used them during my campout, and made sure to set it all up before my old camping buddy showed up, lest he be tempted to advise or help out. I wanted to, and did, do it all myself. All these years and I always felt a bit helpless in the outdoors, letting someone else tie things up if necessary. Now I sit here and practice those knots and learn new ones. Pretty good for a Cub Scout dropout. Tying a solid knot makes me inexplicably happy. Filled in another lacunae.
I will forever be excited to see a firetruck. Or an engine or squad or ambulance. They are beautiful feats of organization. I mean really, there is an absurd amount of stuff they can fit in there. The number of doors and compartments along the sides always brings me joy. Plus, each one has a unique insignia on the side and the design is always different. And the engines in DC (where I live) have little light-up pinwheels on the front that are SO FUN.
Any roof, as long as there is a porch under it. I have wonderful memories of laying on the bed on the second story sleeping porch and listen to the Arkansas rain coming down.
My son is a fire fighter. When he was about three, we stopped at a local fire station that was hosting an open house for kids. While he solemnly ate his cookie, the fire fighters showed him the truck, the hoses, their bunkers, and he took it all in without uttering a word. Not quite three decades later, he was a fire fighter working in that very station. Cool, hmm?
The simple decision to have a cup of coffee. It’s only a fleeting thing and is far more pleasurable than the making/drinking of said coffee, but I’ve always wondered why it fills me with such excitement.
No, I'm envious. Except for the girl part. As a boy born in the wilds of northwestern Nebraska and with a childhood midst the cornfields of central Nebraska, and a wonderful adult year back again out near the Wyoming border, I can hardly cast stones. Plus, I'll never understand why I thought I could find "it" in the big city -- it is in the openness and wildness of the countryside.
Honestly, I get it. I don't even care for coffee all that much, but the act of getting coffee is so fun and adult.
Can I ask where in NW Nebraska? We went camping a time or two in Soldier Creek Wilderness and had friends in Crawford and Hay Springs.
Junkyards, especially those that have been around for decades and have a lot of hulks from the 60s and 70s.
That was one of my childhood favorite things. Wandering the old junkyards for all kinds of interesting crap.
Born in Crawford, but only lived there until age 3. After college worked for awhile in Bridgeport and Gering; have been back several times, and miss it terribly, to the point of boring my Wisconsin friends. I'd move back in a heartbeat if I could but the needs of my autistic adult son require living in a relative metropolis.
We planted some new flowers out back, and today I saw what I'm pretty sure was a female ruby-throated hummingbird flitting around.
This may be a Brit thing, but I reckon you Swedes will get it too (perhaps more so), but I love coming out of an air-conditioned supermarket wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and being surprised at the warmth of the evening! It feels like... well it feels like being somewhere else, perhaps somewhere else on holiday...
Guns. Oh sorry, thought this was the 'First thing that comes to your mind' thread. Guns don't really make me happy. Srry for off topic.
One of the most cherished recollections from my childhood, when I spent summers with my grandparents in Maine. Their house had a large porch overlooking the bay, and I loved sitting on the old porch swing on stormy days.
The fuzzy caterpillar I watched crawl across the path and up a huge rock and down the other side. Why? I suppose to get to the other side. Oh, why did it make me happy? Because it was so unexpected and beautiful in a nature documentary sort of way. And I felt privileged to be there.
