{"id":573897575,"date":"2024-10-29T15:25:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T19:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573897575"},"modified":"2024-11-03T01:46:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T06:46:15","slug":"its-a-grading-day-so-heres-a-brief-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2024\/10\/29\/its-a-grading-day-so-heres-a-brief-story\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s a grading day, so here’s a brief story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, before the week’s grading began in earnest, I surprisingly went for a bike ride. I spent a few minutes noodling around town, waiting to meet the owner of the local bike shop. On my way, I passed this cornfield, which looked like something that van Gogh might have noticed.<\/p>\n

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The bike shop guy, Mike, rode with me over to a road planning meeting. He took me on a few roads I’ve not been on before, waving and nodding at everyone between here and there. He might be one of those guys who knows everyone. He also taught me a thing or two about riding bikes along the way. <\/p>\n

The meeting was for a county-wide project. They had four posters and a few slides. The idea is that this group is going out looking for grants. They’ve identified, over a five-year period, a series of priorities for intersections and roads around the county.<\/p>\n

A few of the county commissioners were there, and they want to know more, and would have preferred to be a part of this planning earlier. They’ll apparently hear about it next month. The plan seems sensible, at least to a lay person like me, but it was concerned more with motorists than cyclists. But that makes sense, too, considering the data in their basic five-year study. This was the last poster. <\/p>\n

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I hope I didn’t volunteer myself for work on this, but I might have volunteered myself for this. If you talk about awareness and perspectives and all of those things to planners and commissioners, they might think you’re interested. <\/p>\n

Using the late hour as an excuse, we ducked out of there, Mike the bike shop owner and I, and pedaled away, talking about what we’d heard, and what we’re doing and how we have to work to make moments like this one more widely available. <\/p>\n

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This moment in particular. I took this shot right after he said that, because it was beautiful, and he was right. And this was where I realized something else. <\/p>\n

You should find someone who knows more about a thing you love, a person who has done it for longer than you have, and do that thing with them. No matter how much you enjoy it, or for how long you’ve been passionate about it. You’ll be energized by an enthusiasm that equals or bests your own. <\/p>\n

And then, when you part ways in the semi-darkness, you’ll have something to think about as you make your way home.<\/p>\n

There might be something more than a metaphor to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, before the week’s grading began in earnest, I surprisingly went for a bike ride. I spent a few minutes noodling around town, waiting to meet the owner of the local bike shop. On my way, I passed this cornfield, which looked like something that van Gogh might have noticed. The bike shop guy, Mike, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573897575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-photo","category-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573897575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573897575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573897575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573897576,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573897575\/revisions\/573897576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573897575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573897575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573897575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}