Good Fortune, Bad Fortune

It's funny. After years of driving a car, walking, and riding the bus; I brought a  men's Huffy 26 inch Mountain Bike at a garage sale that was actually in damned good shape for $25. Turns out it was worth about $300 but the lady wanted to get rid of it last month and I happened to be in the right place at the right time walking down the street on the way to the library. Now, I'm averaging about 15 miles a day on it and loving it.

 I've been past her place a thousand times, but I happened to pass by after she and her ex-boyfriend had the final falling out and he got himself incarcerated, so his misfortune happens to be my good fortune. Not something that I'm complaining about, but I'm wondering how often one person's good fortune is another person's  misfortune.  Yeah, I like this bicycle and I'm loving riding it despite the fact that a lot of people love to pretend that they can't see a 6', 220 pound guy wearing a reflective construction vest with reflective stripes on his backpack as well. But I wonder how many times the original enjoyed the same pleasures since there were spider webs on it.

 

Either way, I've got a bike I've been having fun riding in my spare time  and someone else no longer has one. Their misfortune is now my good fortune, so does that make me any less for deriving pleasure from it?

Oblivious and not knowing it

It's funny how many things we take for granted on a daily basis that we actually shouldn't.  Every morining, for example, most people wake up and get out of bed each morning and wash their faces. This sounds mundane, but think  of what it took to get the water there to be readily accesible when you tunred the faucet and the water came out clean. For that matter, think about what it takes to get the water to your house each day from wherever the nearest water tower is situated. How does the water get from the tower to the faucet? Is it pumped or does gravity do the job?

 

You never think about those things in the developed world, although in the rest of the world it isn't a given that you can get fresh and clean water at the turn of a faucet. Wiill global warming impact the supply of freshwater from melted snowpack and glaciers or will it not make a difference? You don't think about it, but it could affect the rest of our natural lives.

 

What I wonder is whether or not we'll end up seeing wars over fresh water. But I sit here after rinsing a glass out with  hot tapwater and drinking from the bottled water I purchased at a store pondering thoughts like this.