“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

My mother once suggested we were akin to Mr. Stevenson. My mother was a Thompson. They both had “son” in common. I was very young then and probably had little knowledge of Robert Lewis Stevenson. Now I wonder if he was of Norwegian stock. I don’t know who said Vino a deti mluri pravdu. This translates to “wine and children speak the truth.” That makes sense to me.

Today I had an opportunity to chat with John Priebe. He stopped by the Coffee House on Main and was carrying a book about Einstein’s math. It had a good photo of Albert on the cover but glancing through it was like visiting a foreign land. John was able to identify one of the formula’s I ran across in the book.

John has also read “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson. I purchased the book in June of 2007 but got bogged down when Albert explains how a gravitational field acts on matter, telling it how to move, and in turn, how matter generates gravitational fields in space-time telling it how to curve. It was something we overlooked in Marie Magner’s chemistry class in high school along with the periodic table that created discomfort in my life.

Maybe it’s time for me to take a little sabbatical, like Dan Urlick does with his Sunday column. I did ride my bike down to Rydjor Bike to purchase one of those little lights that is mysteriously missing from mine. I didn’t feel a need to purchase a set, one for the front and back, so I ordered a front light only, in black. It’s expected to arrive in a week.

While at Rydjor Bike, I talked to my librarian friend, Brandon, who had his former bike destroyed when he was hit by a car pulling out of a gas station. The police didn’t charge the car driver, according to Brandon, because he was riding on the sidewalk and not peddling on the pavement on the other side of the road, where he was supposed to be. Life used to be kinder and simpler.

Now I wonder about the pending jail’s next phase with the “precast” walls being shipped in from Des Moines. The project superintendent expects roughly eight truckloads of the precast walls to be shipped every day from now through October.

It seems to me that the cost of shipping these precast walls could have been completed locally, by local contractors, for less cost than shipping these precast walls from Iowa every weekday from now through October. How much of the $29 million project will go for this? Just the fuel cost of the eight truckloads will consume a sizeable cost or are the Iowan’s absorbing that cost.

And who is this Boldt Construction crew? That doesn’t have a local ring to it either. I’m assuming that Reding and Oscarson know what they are doing. Still I wonder.

But aside from this $29 million dollar construction cost, it has been one of the best summers we’ve had in some time. The oak leaves came out on schedule. Of course the recent accident by the squad car running into the control box north of the A & W root beer stand created trouble.

I watched someone working on it a couple days later, but that was the end of it. Now, a month later, everyone has to stop and decide who has the right-of-way. It’s tough on us non-deciders but probably easy for the deciders.

George W., I hear, is out doing some mingling after his second four-year term. And with his new home in Texas, I suspect he’s comfortable. His spell-check, like mine, is probably kept busy as he writes his memoirs. I imagine his memoir will be something to read and question. I wonder if he will include Cheney’s secret stuff.

Then, there is the soon-to-be former governor of Alaska out-n’-about. Perhaps she might consider being a regular on Saturday Night Live.

On Saturday July 25, from 4 to 8 p.m. DFL Senate District 27 will host a political event at Farmer John’s Pumpkin Patch. Nine gubernatorial candidates will be in attendance with speakers beginning at 4:30 p.m. The event will offer horse drawn wagon rides and Piggy Blues Bar-B-Que. Costs will be $10 for adults and $5 for students with tickets available in advance at The Coffee House on Main.