This is why I suggest getting a Trikke. If you want to meet your neighbors, trikking the streets'll do it.
I've done my streets so much that I can't even get a dog to bark at my passing by; little kids don't stare agape, and virtually every car's driver gives me a smile or nod. I'm so known that I'm now invisible like the mail carrier -- never being a big blip on anyone's radar. It's very nice. I say a few words to almost everyone: hi, nice day, great weather, love your dog, etc....mostly small blurbs of no consequence, but a touching of spirits does happen. A kid went missing a few months ago, and his brother and sister knocked on my door to see if I'd seen him around in my trikking. I hadn't, but, yep, despite not knowing the kid that well -- he was only five years old -- I got on the Trikke and did the neighborhood yelling out his name every 20 feet, got a lot of passing cars to stop and alerted them, helped the cops canvas the blocks, and then, finally, the kid was found hiding under his bed and not coming out when his frantic parents were calling for him. I knew not anyone's name, but they all knew me by my frequenting of the streets, and I discovered a sort of trust had been built up thereby. A two way street too, cuz seeing a person again and again develops a relationship willy-nilly. So, take a walk around every day, and that should do your social life a solid. Everyone smiles and is friendly, and it accrues, I tells ya, it accrues. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozg...@...> wrote: > > When I lived in an apartment complex I barely knew any of my neighbors > which is often typical of living in one. When I bought a house I > thought things would be different but it was about the same. Except for > the adjacent neighbors I didn't know much of anyone else. Yesterday at > about 3 PM as I just finished some computer work there were two blue > flashes and explosions outside. It sounded like a power transformer > blowing but there are none in the immediate area. The power went out > and my UPS systems started beeping (except for the ones that need new > batteries -- I've been waiting for Fry's to restock their inventory of > them). > > What had happened was a tree down the street had fallen on the power > lines knocking the high tension wires on top off the insulators on the > other poles and causing two wires to collide outside my house. So the > fire department came, the police came and blocked the street so we all > stood around chatting and in some cases meeting neighbors we had not had > the opportunity yet to meet. > > PG&E came and spent the whole night restringing and replacing insulators > (with better ones) and of course first sawing up the tree that fell over > on the line. PG&E contracts a company to do this when lines are in > jeopardy so it's not like they show up and demand you get your tree > trimmed or topped. It just gets done. This tree off the street may > not have looked like such as threat but I think the soil from the nearby > stream was too weak causing it to topple. > > Since the power lines were shut down there really was no danger to > anyone standing in the streets though it took a while for the FD and PD > to confirm that. Many took off and had dinner. I contemplated going to > a movie at the art house a few miles away but instead stayed home and > played with a little RC helicopter I picked up the other day. Then > later that evening because I had a couple of DVDs I had rented and I > have two laptops fortunately with fully charged batteries I watched those. > > The power came back up at 8 AM this morning, just in time for the trucks > to arrive and toppled the tree across the street from me, not the one > that caused the outage but a tall old pine that the new home owners > didn't want to deal and it's liability so they arranged to have it > removed today and put little notes at our door telling us that it was > going to happen. As for PG&E, it had been trimmed for that and the > cable and phone company. >
