Before I can even talk about today's ride I need to express my confusion about my REI experience today. I was approached by a staffer (let's call him Bill, because his name was: Bill) wearing a Utilikilt and at first I thought: wow, what an engaging sales person but he kept asking about my needs and my preferences and my choices and all of a sudden he wasn't engaging me anymore, he was enveloping me and I'm thinking wow is Bill hitting on me here or what? I mean, he was pretty good looking and he was absolutely fabulous in that kilt.Eventually while I was talking about my needs in a mummy-bag liner Bill interrupted me and said, would you excuse me just a minute? and he went over to another customer of a certain age and repeated the same schtick. I saw two staffers kind of watching him and then I decided: this is just show-and-tell, he's the charismatic sales relationship guru from HQ, here to show the staff how to Engage by channelling Robert Bly. He was demonstrating points of technique so that local staff could observe. I felt so used. It was a training exercise. I wonder if he'll call me.
Today's ride was based out of the South Hills. Rode out to Starbucks and back to get some broadband; Starbucks makes such good internet.
Soon, we'll be ordering Internet the Starbucks Way™: um, yes I'd like a venti wifi-N please, please, no SSL and IPv6, quirks mode.. And then the chipper synth-android staffer will say, "coming right up! and you name is?"
Just east of I79 on the Montour Trail, came upon a truly lovely memorial which honors Dorothy M Gaughan:
It sort of fails the Categorical Imperative test, which is to say: Yes it's wonderful when one person does it, but No it's terrible if everybody did it. But until we see a dozen of these every mile, I think it's tremendous.
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