Random Thoughts

The original settlers of San Francisco were a hardy bunch that lacked any kind of talent for building proper shelter. Do you like neighbor noise? I hope so. These charming old flats transmit noise from outside and from neighbors as if there were no walls or ceilings. It’s really fun when you have neighbors with weird unseen rituals that seem to invlove rubbing the floor with a broom handle and re-arranging all the furniture in the wee hours.

My other favorite feature of charming old SF housing is the total lack of temperature regulation. I can crank the heater to 80 and it will never get above 68 in the living room. After years of paying through the nose on my gas bill and still being cold, I have decided to try the trusty Vornado. This little bad boy has an amazing combination of thermostat settings and vortex wind action. I can now luxuriate at a comfortable 71 degrees in my living room. I wonder what my electrical bill will be like…

While visiting my brother in New York, we went to dinner at a new restaurant in his neighborhood. An expensive new restaurant. After we sat down the waiter said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Regis Philbin is dining here tonight”. Well, the waiter didn’t say it exactly like that. He had a thick latin accent and was kind of hard to understand. But that was the gist of it. I looked over and saw the back of Regis’ head.

On my flight back home from NYC, I noticed a passenger holding these ski poles that weren’t ski poles. They had little rubber feet on them instead of spikey ski pole things. He looked like a young wanna-be mountain man. Or maybe he was just really pragmatic. His clothing was very practical. Nothing flashy. And he a had a beard. Which is very practical if you’re a guy, because none of us like to shave. And so I wondered, what were these special poles that the pragmatic bearded young guy decided to lug across country in a plane?

I was sure I’d somehow seen poles like that used for walking. So I did a Google search on walking poles. This led me to the Exerstrider site, which boasts about carrying the “world’s #1 fitness walking poles”. There is obviously heated competition amongst fitness walking pole companies. The site is littered with customer quotes you will enjoy reading, such as:

“Once I started using fitness walking poles, I could walk a lot longer”.

or

“I love my Exerstrider walking poles. I mean…….I LOVE THEM!”

Something tells me these walking pole people don’t have a whole lot to get excited about.

One of the other links in the Google search results was for “Walking Gear and Walking Clothing”. What have I been doing all these years, walking around in clothing not specially designed for walking!? It makes me want to produce a line of clothing specially designed for sitting. I’ll follow that up with a clothing line optimized for standing.