I tend to think and live local, but am I provincial?

In the 1960s, my grade school was trying to teach us Spanish. My language aptitude was bad so I was even struggling with English. I did better in the section of the class about Latin American geography. My aptitude is better at special reasoning so I developed a fascination in South America. It could be my own world as I wasn't that interested in the world of my other classmates. I wanted to be different. Thinking local was mundane.

Photo my sister Judith took, in the 1980s, of our shared grade school, Edison School in Pullman, WA. The Palouse fields and Kamiak Butte in the background. Edison School has since been torn down.

More recently, my interests have flipped to local. It's now Washington State and Bellingham, where I live. It's still my own world as I see Bellingham from the perspective of a bicyclist while almost everyone else drives.

Sometimes I jokingly say that my friends, who know their way around Europe, still don't know how to get across Bellingham without going on I-5. I know the surface streets, alleys and trails as I have a perspective so many others don't share, bicycling.

In grade school I studied maps and read about that favorite "other" continent of South America.

Now days, my own world is local, but it's my perspective of bicycling and interests that many people don't share. I have big interests in the economic underpinnings that make this world work while others tend to follow the arts and the movies. I'm interested in technical things that other folks just pass by, like the heating systems, power systems, radio towers and so forth.

During grade school, the local state of my classmates, Washington seemed mundane compared to another state which I thought had a much greater diversity of climates; California. It could also be mine versus Washington, the home of my classmates.

I remember hearing, during my grade school days, that Washington was, "nature's wastebasket." When naure got done making other places, she tossed the leftovers into Washington. Yes, this little state, in land area compared to other western states, does have great diversity in geography. It's just not quite as much as California.

Besides looking at maps and encyclopedia articles about California, I remember a book called, "California and the West." That book fascinated me as it described such a diverse state ranging from mountain glaciers to baking deserts. The state had giant redwoods as well as giant cities.

California and the West was mostly about California, but it had small sections about other western states, including Washington, on the back pages.

Recently I did an AI search and found that it was an officially adopted California State Series elementary school textbook. That's, I guess, why it focused on California. Published in 1963 by author John W. Reith.

Since then, my interests have shifted to more local focusing, instead, on my unique perspectives of the world around me. I feel pretty grounded in my own state of Washington and the city I live in, Bellingham.

Besides just my unusual "car free" lifestyle, Washington does provide another world that's other from the world of most friends. I grew up in Pullman on the Idaho border in Eastern Washington. Since college, I've lived in Bellingham on the west side of the state. Because most Washingonians live on the west side, I can be different as I still know about the east side.

Sometimes I get the feeling that most Washingtonians only experience the east side as "fly over country."

I have friends who have traveled to Europe on their frequent flyer miles. While they travel around, I may seem more limited and provincial since I've never been on a jet plane in my life. The farthest I've been, byair, was way back in the 1980s. It was across Washington State from Seattle to Pullman. The plane had propellers. That trip took around one hour, but my favorite way of crossing the state is by bicycle. That trip takes about a week, but it's a longer lasting experience.

The farthest I've ever been, from Washington State, is Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts. I got there by bicycle during my 1991 bike trip across USA.

I'm not totally against jet travel, though it does have a high carbon footprint. I just haven't really had an occasion to get places that quickly. My lifestyle is different than most people in USA.