The ritual ceremony of breakfast this morning was interrupted by having to deal with the renewal of my web site’s domaine name. The domaine registration and web hosting are what keep this web page alive. Years ago when I commissioned a chap to create my web site (initially for purposes related to my candidacy for municipal election – an endevour from which I subsequently withdrew) he told me the advantage of using CanSpace Solutions for web hosting and Name.com for domaine registration. I can no longer recollect the reason for the two companies. Meanwhile after altering the site to accommodate its current blog character I have continued using the free-standing hosting and registration providers, one Canadian, the other American.

“Web hosting is the place where all the files of your website live. … When someone enters your domain name in a browser, the domain name is translated into the IP address of your web hosting company’s computer. This computer contains your website’s files, and it sends those files back to the users’ browsers.“

Last year when I renewed the web hosting I was introduced to the increased cost reflecting the expanded extent of my web site – a combination of burgeoning literary and photographic productions. Though I have access to Google blogs (blogspot.com) – where I can save and use a limited collection of words and images without cost – there is something preferable to independent ownership of one’s site as apposed to piggy-backing upon Google (or other) general site. I readily avow that the variance may amount to a distinction without a difference but for the time being I am satisfied to prolong the lifetime of my web site. There are some editorial preferences attaching to either medium.

All this is to say that what began this morning as a mere culinary prerequisite (precedent to the constitutional bicycle ride) soon translated into a lengthy focus instead upon what I would have anticipated to have been a brief interjection. After reviewing the email from the domaine registrar I attempted the renewal on-line but without success.  After no less than three thwarted attempts at renewal I found – with considerable difficulty I might add – the telephone number of the company in Denver, Colorado. When I at last succeeded to connect to an individual he concluded that I was unable to complete the renewal because the company’s web site could not handle the Safari browser I am using.  Considering Safari is the browser of choice of Apple products, this is a surprising assertion. The fellow in Denver suggested I re-try the renewal after downloading a new browser such as Chrome (which in the past I have tried using but which I soon disliked). Accordingly I resisted this line of attack.  As I continued to speak with the Denver fellow, I retried the on-line renewal.  It worked. I then undertook the saving of the record of renewal by creating a PDF document for my computer files.  It was mere seconds before noon when I completed that duty.

I have learned to be content with the performance of my regimentation if I can get onto my bicycle by no later than 12:30 pm.  Admittedly this is late in the day to start what is little more than a preliminary venture but its patterned completion always amounts to a purification. By the time I had made it along the former railway right-of-way to Martin St N and back my catharsis was near complete. It was afterwards but a moment’s reconstruction to enable me to collect my driver’s licence then direct myself along the well-traveled highways for the afternoon buoyancy.

The afternoon indulgence is for me the modern equivalent of going for a horseback ride. While I hesitate to personify an automobile I must nonetheless warrant that there is an unmistakable animation to a motor vehicle. These current contraptions have a robotic feature. Sitting at the wheel and directing the traffic is by most accounts a fingertip involvement. Yet the same mechanical dexterity of a grand piano is evident. Allowing oneself to be the idle receptor of the combined vitalities of the automobile is an enlightening discovery.

For good or bad I never fail to fuss in my own small way with the beast. I confine my ingenuity to checking the caps on the tires, cleaning the floor mats, filling the gas tank (and perhaps adding washer fluid), putting the vehicle through the automatic wash and performing a general overview of the whole. The acid test is naturally the casual drive along 4-lane highways across the open fields and later wending parallel to the Mississippi River.