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GREENSBORO — This week I began biking to work.

I dusted off my 12-speed, my college transportation from two decades ago, and took to the street toward downtown. Our city looks much different from the curb than from the wheel.

You'll see makeshift memorials, snarky bumper stickers, weird yard art and a musical reminder of a ship and a villain sailing along South Elm.

Yeah, hiking on a bike will make you think …

About big cars. I wonder if those gas guzzlers, so popular a few years ago, will go the way of the Desoto. Sales for SUVs and pickups are going down, gas is going up, and a favorite bumper sticker I've seen for years on a neighborhood street off Friendly seems so prescient today.

Your Giant SUV Is Awesome!

About tiny cars. Near the corner of Mayflower and Walker, you can't miss the kiddie pink car with the purple seats. It's perched on the pitch of a roof.

OK, how did it get there?

About bumper stickers. You get to read those personal punch lines from the handlebars of a slow-moving bike. Like this one spotted in Greensboro's Lindley Park neighborhood: My Zombie Ate Your Honor Student.

About Al Green. Eighteen years ago, I bought Al Green's "Greatest Hits'' — on vinyl, no less — at the old School Kids Records and Tapes at Aycock and Spring Garden.

That day, I met John Stephenson, the owner. Over the years, we talked music. I'd be at the counter, hear him pontificate on the merits of Robert Earl Keen or Hezekiah Walker before hearing him say, "I think you need to hear this.''

Always a good discovery.

Stephenson died nine years ago of a brain tumor; his old record store is gone. In its place is the city's newest symbol of wide-aisle commerce: Walgreens.

I miss School Kids; I miss John.

About the leafy canopy along Spring Garden. It reminds me of Hurley Vernon's rolling acres of apple trees in Cana, Va., ­— a tiny town "below the mountain,'' he liked to say.

Since 1948, he's sold apples on most Saturdays in Greensboro. I met him a few months ago at the Farmers Curb Market at War Memorial Stadium, where he sold this rare type of apple he called Blue Ridge Kings.

My kids loved them.

Hurley Vernon died Saturday at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. He was 78. He sold apples until his health gave out. I remember what he told me, from his golf cart, as he drove around his orchard on a winter afternoon.

"You hate to give it up, you know? It's just something about you. You wanna win, I guess, in that game of life.''

About music underneath a marquee. Every morning, along South Elm, you can catch a recording of Molly McGinn's lilting voice as she sings about buried treasure and the need to beware the black flag.

The tunes come from Greensboro singer-songwriter Laurelyn Dossett.

She read pirate books, listened to Smithsonian sea shanties and spent four days on Ocracoke to get her head in the right place as she wrote the music for "Bloody Blackbeard,'' Triad Stage's newest play.

It worked. See for yourself at Triad Stage through July 6. Or see for yourself online, at news-record.com with the Bloody Blackbeard band.

Some cool stuff.

Video: See the Bloody Blackbeard Band perform

About McGee. That street, with its new stores, new construction and new statue, looks sweet in the golden light of a fading summer afternoon.

About a big blue ribbon. I saw it underneath the Eugene Street overpass.

So, I stopped and found everything else: the four poems, the Bible verse, the plastic daisies, and the rubber guitar and rubber piano glued to a bridge support as stout as an old oak.

Then, I remembered.

He was 22. On Oct. 11, 2004, a few hours before sunrise, he was driving from one restaurant job to another when his family figures he fell asleep and hit the bridge support.

Justin Suits. Four years later, he's not forgotten.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com