Musings from a Rich Poorman

I don't have any kids, but if I had had a son, I think I'd have (with my wife's approval) named him "Richard".  After all the grief I got with MY last name, this might have provided a little balance on the grade school playground when kids were making fun of each other.  The thought came to me as we were biking across the southern edge of North Dakota.  Although it probably wouldn't have mattered had we been on the north edge of South Dakota, although in North Dakota there aren't any white presidential statues in the Black Hills.  It's kind of hard to explain how this thought came to me, but over the past couple of days, we've seen some very unusual things.
The first was a scrawny mottled Great Blue Heron that flew up out of a roadside pond yesterday.   I wasn't fast enough to capture it on "film".  Next we rolled past a brown Black Bear, emerging from a rusty evergreen forest and strolling out onto the bedraggled weeds of a long-gone tallgrass prairie remnant.  I got the tree, but the bear was too wily.

 

As we rode down the rumble-bump lined shoulder of Highway 14, a Dodge Ram pickup courteously pulled out long before he got close to us and gave us a lane of clearance as he passed.

 

Next we came across a corn field with a factory growing out of the middle of it...

 

 Shortly thereafter, a windmill appeared, but instead of furiously spinning in the afternoon's winds, it was curiously dead still.

As we neared our destination yesterday, we pulled into an inconvenient convenience store to fill up.  We know that it was inconvenient, since it was out of business.  Storm clouds built to the west, but since we heard no lightening and saw no thunder, we figured it was OK to proceed, so off we went.

 

 And finally the last straw was this evening as we pulled into Morehead, MN.  Crossing the brown waters of the Red River, we spotted several pedestrians walking across the old railroad bridge.

So what have all these bizarre happenings taught me?  I guess all I can figure is that I may not have a lot of money, but I am a Poorman who's rich in friends, family, adventures, experiences, accomplishments, and life.