the earth laughs beneath my heavy feet

Mappin’ again.

I had started doing this back in.. August, maybe, when I was on a weird schedule and taking very-early-morning bike rides around town. Decided to pick this back up because it’s good exercise and gives me a feelin’ o’ satisfaction to have the place down on paper. You can certainly buy or get maps of town; but doing it myself is very gratifying.

One thing: this place was never planned. Or edited.

I will routinely be walking down a sidestreet and then come to a tall fence of some variety. On the other side of the fence is a major road. The sidestreet I am on is generally not wide enough for a car but can accomodate foot and bicycle traffic no problem. The fence seems to have existed from once-upon-a-time when the major road did not exist, and then was never removed. So annoying when you’re trying to get from once place to another and are blocked by stuff like this.

The endless rice fields cause this problem too; but now that it’s colder, the bugs have gone and you can traverse them on footpaths without much trouble.

Reliability for anything smaller than a corporate headquarters is tough. Little shops close and/or move with little to no warning and with alarming frequency. I’ve never seen a “going out of business” or “we’re moving!” sale. One day there are simply boards clapped up over the windows and a realtor’s sign with a phone number. Sometimes you’ll get a little hand-drawn map for where the new place is, if it was just a move. The best you can do is say, “This stretch of street has restaurants and bars.” WHICH establishments are there must be continually updated and revised.

Still… I like my little town.