Friday was promised to be dry and sunny all day, and Friday is the day Duck, Down, and Above serves free samples, but my ardor for a trip to Leesburg cooled considerably when the Wednesday e-mail failed to mention confit among the available specials.
So I decided to take a roundabout route to Walmart: To the hospital to drop off old magazines, across the boardwalk to the library to return books, then by Chinworth Trail or Crystal Lake Road to 350 E, or maybe take Foxfarm to 400 N, or maybe the shorter but hillier route through Silveus Crossing. I've been avoiding Silveus Crossing for a couple of years now, and there's some new stuff to look at.
So I came out of the library, unlocked my bike, thumb-tested the tires — and my back tire was completely flat.
Dave picked me up and took me to the Trailhouse, and they said they'd call when it was ready.
Yesterday morning I suited up for a ride and walked to the Trailhouse, where the young man apologized and started work on changing my tire. (This is standard for the Trailhouse; they know bikes, but there isn't one business person on the team.)
After the farmer's markets, I went to Penguin Point on Lake street for lunch, intending to go to Walmart or to come back by Crystal Lake Road and take in an advertised garage sale. But as I was preparing to turn left onto Old 30, my skewer worked loose again and jammed my tire against the chainstay, bringing me to a sudden stop. (Maybe this employee *didn't* know bicycles; with hands capable of removing and remounting a tire without tools, that skewer should have *tight*.)
The thought of that happening halfway across an intersection *really* cooled my ardor. Even though I'd given the quick-release a three-sixty turn after straightening my wheel, I turned right instead of left and went straight to Owen's.
On the more-cheerful side, for the first time the "bike lane" stripes on Fort Wayne Street didn't distract me into missing my turn.
And Weather Underground says that Tuesday will be a good day to go to Walmart. I freshened my shopping list this afternoon.
Dave is making his third trip to Gatke this morning. We think that this is the eighteenth squirrel he has transported.
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That is so cool! According to Breaking Cat News, the Prime Minister's cat got loose and hid under Trump's car and the Secret Service couldn't persuade it to come out.
I had a good trip with no flats today, at least eighteen miles. I got home with my panniers full and a roll of carpet samples bungeed on top.
I'll report on my two lunches tomorrow.
More cool: I looked at News Now before logging off for the night, and Cardinal Services has taken another step toward purchasing the Marsh store. It will be good to see that building occupied.
Just before naptime, I scored 9 at Hexavirus. I'm not sure it's possible to score higher than that.
I've been having so much trouble finding flat sandwich buns that I decided to try making my own.
I should have divided the dough into at least sixteen parts — I made twelve buns, and most of them were too big. I also forgot the salt.
Still pretty good, and we ate two of them with left-over chili for supper. I put seven into a one-gallon bag and froze them, and saved one out. I had half of that one for a bedtime snack.
Washday, since I had a follow-up exam yesterday.
And it's "tomorrow": the tale of two lunches:
On the way to Walmart, I stopped at Freedom Express for lunch, and found a very clever idea. They offer a number of hot-dog-shaped things on one of those roller machines that keep hot dogs hot. I had an egg roll. They also had short tacitos called "tornados", bratwurst, and another kind of sausage. I think there were three hot dogs.
I may have mentioned in May that after buying lunch at Walmart, I noticed that the pretzel booth was selling pizzas. So after shopping this time, I packed my stuff on the bike, went back in, and ordered a sausage and mushroom pizza.
Hot dogs are sausages, but chunks of hot dog weren't what I had in mind when I ordered a sausage and mushroom pizza! But the hot dogs were good —baking is a good way to warm them up, and they appeared to be high grade to begin with— the mushrooms were fresh, and the crust was excellent.
I took the fourth slice home. Dave ate it cold and agreed that the crust was excellent. I think I had picked all the hot dog off it, so he couldn't comment on that.
I never missed the salt in my buns until I made the quarter bun left from the french toast I had for breakfast into bread and milk for my bedtime snack.
Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and sunny, and it's Friday, but I didn't see anything inspiring in Duck Down and Above's Wednesday e-mail, so I'm going to Meijer, and plan to go to 500 W for the return trip. I don't think I've been that way before.
Don't know what I'll do for the next sunny day, but Weather Underground says that I won't see one any time soon.
I made progress on my new shirt today. It's got to the place where I can put it on a hangar between sessions.
Wish I knew how to find a dressmaker. I've ideas for all sorts of things I'll never get around to — I'd like spun-silk jeans with a matching shirt and skirt, for example.
There's a sign on Bell Drive that says "bump", but it ought to say "bumpity". The pipe that it warns you about has had so much dirt dumped on it that it's no problem at all, even on a bicycle. It's the partly-repaired pavement on the other side that needs a warning.
Finally found some Shoe Goo at Meijer. Now I need to remember what I wanted it for!
Google maps says that I rode 24.1 miles, and the start point is more than half a mile from our house, so I rode an honest quarter century today.
And I'm not terribly tired, but I desperately needed a shower. It didn't seem particularly warm, but my clothes were wet. I ran them through a rinse cycle and hung them up to dry, because I want to wear the same outfit tomorrow.
Dave was out of washrags, so I ran a load of hot-with-bleach this morning.
When the towels were half dry, a KABS driver said "It's pouring down rain where I am", so I brought the wash in and put it in the dryer. It was mostly terrycloth, which is fluffier tumble-dried anyway.
While I was taking the wash down, the sun came out (though it was still gray in the west) and I thought maybe I was a bit hasty, but there was a long peal of thunder while I was stepping through the door, and ten or fifteen minutes later I went out to dump cat vomit and it was sprinkling rain.
It wasn't raining after my nap, when I went to the garden for bulbils to put into my baked vegetables, but everything was wet.
Supper was really good with little effort. I put two stuffed chicken breasts into the oven with a small skillet of mixed vegetables, including two very small pre-heated potatoes. I should have zapped the carrot too. Bake forty minutes, stirring the vegetables every ten. I used olive oil, but the "pure" grade that has very little flavor.
There's only one more head of bulbils on the winter onions in the garden. I'm leaving the scraggly onions on the south side of the house alone because I want them to spread.
Next Friday and the Friday after that are each promised to be the driest day in the week, and I've lost count of the number of weeks in which the driest day has been Friday. I think the weatherman wants me to go back to Duck Down and Above.
Ah hates cooking something for one minute. It's too long to stand there staring at it, and too short to walk away and do something.
But my scrambled-egg omelet was delicious.
It's raining again/still raining. I don't think I'll be able to push the cultivator until the weeds are too high to cultivate.
I pulled a few weeds out of the raised herb bed.
While planning tomorrow's ride, I discovered that I'd passed within a mile of an animal shelter with an intriguing name (Isaiah 11) on my previous ride. Perhaps that will give me the energy to do that ride again someday.
For tomorrow's motivation, I plan to see how the new Animal Welfare League building is coming along. But that's only ten miles.
I've committed myself to selling my share of the Colfax place to Phil Ramsey. Nothing legally binding yet. We haven't even had the place appraised.
Sewed a seam in my new jersey. Washed two loads of clothes. Pulled weeds in a couple of yards of row in the garden. Still too wet to run the Culta-Eze. Planted a few marrowfat beans; the seeds are smaller than the marrowfat beans I once bought in the supermarket. Those were bigger than Great Northerns; these are smaller than navy beans.
Walmart has been good to me with respect to emergency footwear.
A few years ago I left my sandals on top of my rack and rode from Meijer to Walmart. I returned, checking the roadside all the way, then retraced my exact path without finding them. I left my socks and cycling shoes in a pannier — in a bag tied to the wires! — and went into Walmart barefoot, thinking I'd get a pair of ninety-nine cent flip-flops so that I could go into stores. Found them, but went around the corner as a matter of principle and found the lace-up sandals I'd been drooling over in other stores — in my size!
And they were on clearance. I suspect that shoes in my size don't sell well; I *am* a bad data point. So I put them on and walked to the check-out.
Yesterday I set out on a twenty-one mile ride (two wrong turns brought it to twenty-three) wearing sandals that can't be tightened enough to wear with thin socks, planning to change into cycling shoes that can't be worn with thick socks, and forgot to bring thin socks. Ah, well, I'd planned to change at Walmart anyway — I like to wear walking shoes on zig-zaggy roads like those between Goodwill and Walmart — I can just go in and buy something — perhaps something that I can wear again.
Ended up spending two hours in there, and buying, among other things, Red Gold salsa. No Embassa Salsa Mexicana, though.
They had one style of wool-content socks left. Despite the "all season" label, they were being cleared out at five dollars for two pair. Only twenty-one percent wool, but that's the best I've found lately. In fact, I'd bought a package of those same exact socks at full price on my previous visit. They turned out to be goldilocks socks; they did fit into my Duegis (which lace to the toe) and when I changed back into sandals at Aldi without bothering to change socks, my sandals didn't rattle around.
Much encouraged by finding socks, I went hunting for opaque hose — and found some! It looked exactly like the rayon hose elderly women wore in the forties. Alas, they came only in pantihose and thigh-highs — a whole rack of opaque hose, but not one pair of knee socks.
There are an awful lot of thigh-highs on the market. I wonder how they are held up? They don't reach quite high enough to meet garters, and usually have edges that wouldn't stand up to being clamped.
I've been a wee tad busy. If you want to see a rough draft of July, go to http://wlweather.net/LETTERS/2019BANN/JULBAN19.HTM