I've got to stop planning tours that pass through Larwill.
I've entirely changed my opinion of the wonderful bike lane on US 30.
The good news: I'm not entirely out of quarter-century rides, because Spring Creek closes the whole week for Labor Day and we still need Ohio swiss and dried fruit.
I'm still trying to think of a good reason to go to Sidney.
Rumble strips that have narrow grooves and wide ridges pose no hazard to bikes, and the rumble strip eastbound from Larwill to Spring Creek is less unpleasant than moderately-worn chip seal. I checked the rumble strip westbound from Larwill whenever there wasn't any traffic behind me: I found it rough, but not hazardous. Later I saw rumble strip that had wider grooves than the terrifying rumble strip between Aldi and 250E; I did *not* check its riding qualities!
I've been saying US 30 is noisy, but there's a whole full-width lane that motor vehicles are forbidden to drive on and which I'm explicitly authorized to use.
On the other hand, cars *don't* use the breakdown lane, so every speck of trash that lands on it stays there. Once westbound, I spent a lot of time wondering where all that gravel had come from when there was no gravelled anything anywhere near.
Not too long after passing Larwill, I noticed that my back wheel was finding the gravel a great deal rougher than the front wheel did, so I got off and looked at the back tire. Looked normal, thumbed it — soft, and it had been harder than the front wheel when I left. So I called Dave, with difficulty because there was no shade to read the display of the phone in, and very little no-semi time for me to speak in. When I'd finished speaking to Dave, the tire was entirely flat.
We stopped at the Trail House on the way back and left the bike. I don't like changing tubes, and I *really* don't like taking back wheels off. The mechanic wasn't in, so I won't get it back until tomorrow. I should have told the clerk that they have to fetch a 27" x 1 1/4" tube from the downtown shop; there aren't a lot of bikes this old still in service.
And now's a fine time to think that I could have left orders to use the spare from my emergency kit and sell me a fresh one.
I don't think I had mechanical breakdowns this often before getting the phone.
12.3 miles to Larwill; 13.2 to Spring Creek, so I probably rode about fifteen miles.
We had a fellowship committee meeting Tuesday, to get ready for the homeless dinner on Wednesday. I took my favorite knife and spent most of my time using it: chopping onions for the hot dogs, cleaning green peppers for the relish plate, and slicing tomatoes. I brought a grocery bag half-full of garbage home.
I was pleased that the committee meeting was in the afternoon, because there was a bike-club meeting in the evening. But when it was time to go, I didn't wanna. I find the thought of going to a dinner meeting intimidating enough when I'm not tired.
This may be the last meeting that I could have attended without driving after dark.
I like the symbolism of turning my cell phone off just before the service starts — but it's even more symbolic when I don't turn it off because I've forgotten I have it.
There was a picnic in the pavilion after the service.
Potato salad goes over like a lead balloon when you arrive after everyone has filled his plate. But some was taken anyway. I don't think anyone but me had any of the lemongrass tea. I ate three desserts even though the bulletin said we have cake, don't bring dessert.
Lovely morning, but I'm overdue for my nap.
My linen jersey was dirtier than I thought. When I turned the pockets out to brush out the lint, I discovered that the hem of my right rear pocket was quite black. [It came out of the washer dingy, but only to close inspection.]
The Beaver Dam folks are all finished, except that they forgot a couple of "tree work" signs leaning against the shop. They'll be back in the spring to prune up the oak trees.
The lawn looks strange; the majority of the trees in front were ash. A passerby said "Hey, there's a house in those woods!"
We now have a mulberry, a crab apple, a maple, a tree that looks like hickory, three oaks, and an attempted redbud in the front yard.
Dave used Brent's bucket loader to move the dirt Brent piled up cleaning the beach into the stump holes. The holes could dispose of more dirt, but Brent is in Hawaii.
We could use a long slow rain to settle the dirt and freshen up the trampled lawn, but NWS says no dice. There's a 30% chance a thunderstorm will hit us on Wednesday; otherwise hot and dry.
Tomorrow is due to be very hot. Perhaps I should have waited to wash white clothes until then.
The twelfth anniversary of the day we decided to give terrorists success beyond their wildest dreams.
I meant to go for a walk after sunset yesterday, but by the time it cooled a bit, I'd forgotten about it. I intend to take another crack at riding to Spring Creek tomorrow, though.
Started yesterday by deciding to scan a pattern and post it on my website to illustrate a post I'd just sent to the How to Make Sewing Patterns mailing list.
I didn't want to use the scanner on the ironing board for fear of knocking it off — I don't think it would bounce the way my cell phone did when I absent-mindedly left it in my pants pocket and hung the pants on a hook a few days ago. (It may have landed on some clothing that had fallen to the floor of the closet; at any rate, all the fall did was pop the battery out — and the phone re-set the time by itself almost too quickly for me to see that it said "12:00".)
So I looked around and saw that the pile of labels on the upper paper-catching tray of the printer stand didn't need to take up so much room.
(When my last printer wore out, we left my double printer stand where it was, and it has filled up with all kinds of junk — ever since Dave bought a monochrome printer a few weeks ago, that has included a (gasp!) printer: the old inkjet, which we now use only for color printing and needn't keep as handy as we did when it was the only printer.)
When the tray was cleared off, I saw that it slants too much to put a scanner on. Sorted the labels, threw out a lot, put the ones that say "Mr. David Beeson" into Dave's room, found a lot of stuff that belonged elsewhere (mostly in the recycling bin), and got all the remainder into the box of pinfeed labels.
I use the pinfeed labels nearly every time I want to hand-write a label, so they are slowly declining even though we no longer have a pinfeed printer. Perhaps they will decline more slowly now that I can see what *other* labels I have.
Speaking of labels, Dave bought a box of string tags a while back, the wee little ones that used to be used for prices. Those have been the *handiest* things! He hangs all the cables on an antique towel rack, and puts all the power supplies on the shelf above it, and it doesn't take any time at all to read the tag and pull out the correct cable. We have also tagged keys and other small things.
Meanwhile, back at putting the scanner: the other paper catcher is level, and quite empty, but aside from being too narrow to put a scanner in, it was empty because it's impossible to get at.
So I moved a couple of boxes of #10 envelopes to the upper paper catcher and put the labels back (and there's room left over). This made it possible to move a box of 9 x 6 envelopes from the box-of-paper storage area under the stand to the lower paper catcher by wiggling it between the supports on the lower printer stand.
The paper-storage space is mostly occupied by boxes of paper. If you have a pinfeed printer, call me. I've got an un-used five-ream box of four-part paper, among other goodies.
This left the lower printer holder empty, but I can't reach in there to operated the scanner. But one *can* reach in there to pull a freshly-printed sheet out of the DeskJat.
And the cables all come out of the near side of the printer: Pick it up, set it down, pick up scanner plywood and all, set it on the upper printer stand, ready to scan!
But by then I'd lost interest in the pattern, so I spent the rest of the morning cropping and cleaning up previously-made scans and using them to improve http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/~roughsewing/HandSew.htm also at http://www.debeeson.net/joy/PAGESEW/HandSew.htm
It's a good ride, but there aren't any places to re-stock along the way, so I'm going to have to pack food and water for the entire trip. There's a Marathon station only a block or so out of the way, and I don't think it would be any farther to pass through Pierceton on the way back, so I do have *some* alternative.
I'm freezing bottles of water, since I intend to buy cheese. All but two of the bottles in my newspaper cooler will be only half ice, and one will be merely chilled. I had enough of frantic thawing on the Pisgah Marsh trip.
I made a granola-bar and cream-cheese sandwich, then cut up an apple to improve the odds that I'll actually eat my apple. Also put some lime juice in my tea, which is in one of my bicycle bottles in the fridge. It's half full, and I plan to fill up the bottle with ice cubes. The main dish of my lunch is protein bars and fruit-and-grain bars.
Today's thunderstorm stood us up. There's a slight chance we'll get one during the night. Also a slight chance that I'll get rained on during my ride. Maybe I should resume carrying my rain jacket — but though it's cooler, the high is to be 78F; that isn't high enough to make me glad to get rained on, but it should mean that getting wet wouldn't be lethal.
Chickened out and packed the rain jacket. Steadily we approach the season when I can't shop by bike because my panniers are full of clothing.
Seven tenths of an inch during the night — and the earth slurped every drop of it down. If I'd been sure it would rain, I'd have tipped the dirty water out of the rain barrels.
I was thinking "We've had our rain, I can take the jacket out of the pannier", so I checked the Weather Service. The prediction is "decreasing clouds", but the radar says storms all the way to Nebraska. Which to believe? The Warsaw airport weather says 22% chance of precipitation: the jacket stays in the pannier.
I forgot to check the predicted temperature.
These long rides aren't going to help me lose weight if I keep talking Dave into taking me out to dinner after each one.
It was quite a pleasant ride even though there was no way to come back except the way I went out, and I plan to go again as soon as we've eaten the Ohio swiss. Which might take a while, as I bought deli-sliced swiss at Aldi and baby swiss at Eagle Creek last week.
Didn't get rained on, but came home wet anyway. Four hundredths of an inch fell while we were in Yamoto's Steak house. (We each ordered bento boxes; I had steak, Dave had chicken.)
I have a route for next week: I looked through the Kosciusko Moments before disposing of it, and noticed a place I didn't know about under "outdoor activities". Though they were quite ecstatic about what one could do at Denniston Resource Area, they didn't give the slightest clue as to how to get there, save that it's near Larwill. (It's closer to Pierceton, and Pierceton is in Kosciusko County and Larwill isn't. ???) After superhuman searching— our official tourist attractors have created an astounding number of Web sites that are 100%-presentation, and lousy presentation at that— I found a map showing that it surrounds one end of Robinson Lake, and that enabled me to find out where it is, but I didn't fancy circumnavigating fifty-nine acres plus half a lake hunting for the entrance. Dave, with the help of having been there before, found that it's on Old Thirty northwest of Elder Road. And, judging by Google Streetview's picture of the sign, I'll have to look very close to not ride right on by.
But, yawn, the best way to get there is along Pierceton Road.
Google Maps says yesterday's ride was 29.? miles. While I was fiddling with the waypoints trying to persuade the route to go past Aunt Millie's, the directions disappeared, so the only way to find out what the tenths are is to start over.
I dig the map saying that if I go to the gas station in Larwill I have to backtrack on 30 to 650W instead of just turning left onto Center Street, because the gas station isn't a public road — but many, many question marks and interrobangs are elicited when moving a waypoint on 250E the teensiest bit past Wooster Road obliges me to go clear to the end of Corridor Drive.
I fiddled with the waypoint again to show the weirdness to Dave, and the directions came back: 29.4 miles. Plus the distance from the marked route to Aunt Millie's Outlet and to the Marathon station.
On this ride I figured out how to secure a loaf of bread to the luggage rack so that it doesn't flop off and dangle down the side: just poke the hook of a bungee cord through the plastic of the grocery bag that I've tied to the rack, then clip the hook to the wire of a pannier. Repeat on the other side. Doesn't wobble and doesn't get squished.
Tour d' Warsaw today. I bought peppers, tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. Stopped by the library and checked out _Cyclecraft_. To the emergency room, dropped off two magazines and a book. Thence to Owen's for pills and a few groceries — two charitable organizations out front: Fellowship Missions and the Boy Scouts. The boy scouts were selling <strike>cookies</strike> pretzels and popcorn. Fellowship missions were collecting groceries for the homeless. (I also dropped off two plastic grocery bags with holes in them: one of them with round holes punched by bungee hooks)
I detoured to circle the trailhead. When they scraped the grass off the chunk of median to the south of the chunk they built the trailhead on and left bare light-brown dirt, I thought they meant to install a parking lot, but they have seeded it to grass. There's a stretch of very wide sidewalk on the east side of the trailhead that might be intended to be parking for three or four cars, or it could be a bus stop.
The lawns are still straw and netting, but otherwise the trailhead looks ready to open for business; the water fountain works, the concrete walking path is complete, and the picnic shelter has a full complement of tables. The restrooms are locked.
I was faithful about rubbing my sunscreen stick on the brown rectangle on the back of each hand, but when I got back from Spring Creek I found rows of spots stenciled through the mesh of my gloves. So on Saturday, I was careful to cover all the backs of my hands.
My gloves must fit pretty well, that the holes were always in the same place even though I folded them out of the way each time I applied sunscreen, and took them off entirely at least once.
Took the folder marked "Shuttle Solitaire Illos" out of the file, intending to scan them in, and discovered that it was practically empty: two medallions, neither of much use. But on checking Shuttle Solitaire, I found that I had a couple of sort-of useful illos already scanned in and cropped and scaled, so I linked to them. Found some bad code in the process.
I should run Shuttle Solitaire through the validator. But that's loads of files and there are probably more errors than I can deal with.
Spent most of the time between loads of wash validating one file, and got it perfect! I have, of course, fiddled with it since then.
I made a mess hunting for some trefoils I thought I had stashed away; didn't find trefoils, but did find silverfish, so stuff is in the trash, in the wash, and scattered around.
Also scanned a Christmas-tree medallion I designed a long time ago, thinking that I could turn it on its side and use it instead of » to mark the link to the next page, but that was a miserable failure.
I wonder whether there is some way to sub-script an image?
I must write down how I made tonight's spanish rice while I still remember — it was really good
I put a cup of long-grain brown rice and four cups of water into the rice cooker before my nap, so that it could soak a little; the cooker booklet says that that will make softer rice. So I could just plug it in when I got up, I added a a few shavings off an achiote bar, a "tub" of Knorr beef flavor "concentrated soup stock", three sprigs of thyme, cut as long as I could, and one sprig of oregano.
When I got up from my nap, which was early because I couldn't sleep —perhaps because I slept well last night— I plugged in the rice cooker, chopped a stalk of celery fine, and stirred that in. I'm not sure what time it was; it takes an hour or two for brown rice to cook, and it had flipped to "keep warm" by five o'clock. (Rice in this cooker has to finish cooking on "keep warm" at least half an hour after the "cook" switch flips, and supper time is five-thirty.)
I *didn't* put onion in it, and I think that this was what made it good. At five, I cut up a small onion and half a big one: I sliced the middles and cut the slices into quarters, and chopped the ends. Then I fried the onion slowly in corn oil until translucent and stirred it (together with what little oil was left in the skillet) into the cooked rice. While stirring in the onion, I removed the stems of the herbs.
Even cold and without gravy, the rice is good. I overdid being subtle with the achiote: neither the color nor the flavor shows through the beef stock. I meant to add a half cake of boullion, but didn't have any, so I used a whole tub of stock instead.
I fried two hamburger patties in the onion skillet, breaking them up with the spatula as much as I could, then drained off the extra fat and added almost enough canned salsa to stick it together. I served the meat and the rice in separate dishes.
And we had an ear of corn each. That was overdoing the carbs, but sweet corn won't be around much longer.
There was an innovation at lunch, too: I heated a skillet, squirted in a swirl of oil and spread it evenly with a spatula, then added two slices of pizza, turned the heat down as far as it will go, and put a lid on. Fifteen minutes later, pizza as good as fresh from the oven.
Dave meant to throw away his broken antenna, but when he started taking it apart, he found that it is repairable. He may go back on the air.
I can't go back on the air because I was never there in the first place. When I took the emergency-communications courses, I fancied myself as the guy in the corner wearing running shoes.
Both my new pairs of socks were in yesterday's wash. The last time I was in the Trailhouse, I noticed some merino "cycle-specific" socks. Merino is exactly the opposite of what you want in stocking wool, but it seems to be the only kind of wool still being produced commercially, owing to the confusion between the fiber term "fine" and the common-speech term "fine".
But they are black, the knitted-in logo isn't *too* obtrusive, and at two pairs for $30, they were cheaper than Smartwool socks will be when Blue Moon has black socks in stock. Feels like a higher percentage of wool, too, but the label didn't say.
They are too high, and don't turn down neatly on account of the knitted-in logo. Will be fine when I start pulling them up over tights.
Seems as though all socks come just high enough to wrinkle. I think this is called "trouser length". I knitted socks that length, but I tapered the legs so that they were bigger where my legs are bigger, and they didn't fall down.
Pity I can no longer watch television — I could use the socks. I can't even watch a video on the Web — no data in the first thirty seconds and it's close the tab on that noise.
I just scored ten playing Hexavirus. I'll never do that again!
Rode past the trailhead on my way to buy milk, canned cream, and hot-dog sauce. They have put up three signs. One is an empty frame and the other two are empty display boxes. No sign of the sign the paper said they were going to make out of left-over interurban track.
A wet sidewalk called my attention to a working sillcock I hadn't noticed before. Didn't try the restroom doors.
I do hope they had the wit to design the restrooms to stay functional in the winter. It would add very little to the expense, and add enormously to the usefulness. There's no way to winterproof a drinking fountain, but one could get water from the sillcock. (I must remember to turn it on and off to see whether it's the frostproof variety. *Surely* they wouldn't install any other kind!)
I put the rest of the brown rice into the cooker with only salt and achiote, to have an alternative to bread for snacks. I think I overdid not being quite so subtle: the boiling rice is a disgustingly-dark red.
Read part of my preparations for a previous ride, then got up and made a cream cheese on granola bar sandwich. Also poured my tea into a bike bottle and filled the tea bottle with water to chill for the ride. Not as much ice for the cooler as the previous trip, since it needn't stay cold past lunch time. And nothing I'm taking gets too upset upon getting warm; the cream-cheese sandwich is the most sensitive, and my main dish is canned chicken salad.
The rice doesn't look bad now that the dark-red broth has all been absorbed, but the taste is a little strong.
Another quarter century, another dinner out. We tried the Mexican place on Center Street — parked at the library intending to take a little walk, crossed High Street, discovered that we were already there. I ordered just one burrito, no side dishes.
Of course, it was a burrito gigante. All the side dishes were inside. I brought almost half of it home. Should had brought home one inch more, but I'm not *too* stuffed.
There was an outhouse at Denniston — not a *proper* outhouse; a permanent porta-potty. When discussing whether there would be facilities, I said that I wasn't worried because there are lots of corn fields. On the way out I actually *looked* at the cornfields instead of just recognizing them: there are a lot more cornstalks per acre than there used to be. I'm not at all sure there's room for an adult between the rows.
Google Maps says it was 27.9 miles. This is much easier than using a map and a knotted string — but Google measures only miles on public roads, and not all of those.
I once rode past a "Lake City Roller Dolls" van parked in Warsaw, and was curious about it. So when I found a link to their home page in a Stacy Page article this morning, I clicked on it. But I'd hardly read the first line when loud irrelevant noise came blaring out of the computer and I was obliged to close the tab. Heaven only knows what the page would have done if I'd had *speakers*!
(I usually have to sit up close to hear sounds from the tiny internal speaker.)
It's wet and gloomy out. Rain is too late for the corn and some of the soybeans are already turning.
For lunch today I fried a very small onion, then stirred in the left-over spanish rice and its meat sauce, and enough achiote rice to piece out a serving, then covered the skillet, turned off the heat, and waited five minutes. I think I've just invented fried rice.
I took a can of chicken salad to flavor my bagel yesterday, and forgot to take the bagel. Fortunately, I always carry more food than I think I'll want — I brought home half my apple and at least two meal bars.
From 900 E to SR 5, Old 30 is excellent for cycling. Traffic is light. The pavement is good in Kosciusko County and brand-spanking new in Whitley County. And, in sharp contrast to US 30, the road is perfectly *clean*.
CR 325 N, on the other hand, was a thin layer of loose gravel on hard-packed dirt. The dirt was flat, but in places the gravel had been displaced into ridges suggesting that washboard would soon develop. The road was passable, but I had to brake on the downhills and that soon led to an uphill where I had to walk, so I stopped and changed my shoes — the coarse gravel would have made short work of my plastic cleats. Changed again at 150 S after crossing Robinson Lake Road, and had good roads from there on. I changed back to walking shoes at Wooster and 250 E because I meant to go into Aunt Millie's Outlet and Aldi, then come home through Sprawlmart. At that time my feet said that they were very glad to get out of my stiff cycling shoes. (They have wooden insoles.)
There was still a little ice in the cooler when I bought a package of liverwurst, but by then I was near enough home that it didn't matter. Had two half-bottles of water left; I think Aldi was the first place where I could have refilled.
The tasteful sign at Denniston Resource Area wasn't much more readable in person than it was on Google Street View.
Parking is forbidden at the boat launch: Multiple signs order you to take your vehicle to the lower parking lot after launching. But there is one handicap space at the launch, I was pleased to note, and even more pleased to see signs of frequent use.
I met one vehicle leaving on my way in, and saw a boat and trailer on its way out while I was eating lunch in the upper parking lot; otherwise it was just me and the fellow under the truck. He was making a filing noise most of the time, with occasional breaks to sit with his feet out the door of the car next to the truck.
I've broken down in worse places, in worse weather. Didn't like it much.
On my way back from the boat launch, I noticed a path leading into the woods from the lower parking lot, so I parked, took a bottle and, in case I came across a log or stump to sit on, my cream-cheese-on-granola-bar sandwich, and set out to explore.
After deciding that the path was going to follow the lake shore farther than I wanted to, I turned back to a branch that looked as though it would curl back to the road. Since this path led away from the lake, I was pretty soon breathing through my mouth, and I think I ate a mosquito during the climb. At the top there was a dirt road that was obviously in use and obviously not the one I'd come in on; that one was not horizontal and it was gravel except for a paved stretch in the steepest part.
I turned left to see where it went, and about the time I decided to turn back at the top of the next rise, saw something beside the road that I took at first for a barricade to keep people off a deprecated trail. When I got close, I saw that there was no chance anyone would be tempted to leave the road here; it was a very solid bench, supported on two firmly-driven posts. So I sat down and ate my cookie.
On the way out, I looked for signs that vehicles had used this road this year, and realized that it was mowed. (In dense shade, mowing isn't as obvious as in places where small plants can flourish.) As expected, the sign where the dirt road branched off from the road to the boat launch said that it was the trail to some of the camping areas, haul out everything you haul in.
And come to think of it, I don't think I saw any trash in the Resource Area. Any place I pull off a county road, I'm bound to hear the crunch of a plastic bottle under the grass. This was quite alarming the first time it happened; since I couldn't see the bottle, I thought something was wrong with the bike.
The map in the map-house at the entrance said that there's a parking area off Robinson Lake Road, and a foot trail leading from there to the lake. No marked connection to the trails accessible from the Old 30 entrance.
Oops, I forgot to move the wad of ones from my pants pocket to my wallet when getting ready for the Tour d'Warsaw. This was taken care of after I broke a ten and a twenty. On my third stop, I paid with a debit card.
There I was all ready to roll except still wearing sandals — and I saw raindrops on the window. So I sat down to write a letter and didn't notice when the sun came out. But I managed to get to both markets before they packed up and left; bought only tomatoes and peppers.
Forgot to take magazines for the emergency room, so I came back by way of the Democrat "garage sale", Lowery's (bought needles and a compact with a sewing kit instead of powder), Marsh (milk), and Sherman & Lin's (nothing).
While reading Facebook, I came to Maria Long's account of being struck by a car — she claims to be un-injured, but her normally-perfect English is barely coherent. I'm in no position to say whether the Greek version shows signs of stress.
I went for a short walk yesterday, and my left foot sounded funny and felt slanted. Found a bench with a dry spot: The sole of my sandal had cracked through at the outside of the heel and bits of the innards were missing. I guess I no longer need to worry about the Velcro on the strap of my right sandal working loose! I threw them in the trash when I got back, and un-boxed the replacement pair I bought the last time I was in Payless.
Dave came back from a walk and said, "If anybody wants buckeyes, boy, now is the time to pick 'em up." He also said the burrs are huge, and all contain multiple nuts. I hope that doesn't mean anything.
I put a load of bleachables in to soak overnight, *then* checked the prediction for tomorrow's weather. It's to be sunny, by good luck. But I might want to wear gloves while pinning the stuff up.
I was halfway home before I remembered that I'd used my bulletin to mark my place in the pew bible, and never put it back into my pocket. I think I'd read all the announcements anyway.
I may have killed the scanner by leaving it plugged in overnight. I haven't had the nerve to try it yet. It had already gone flaky; the last time I used it I got two scans, then the third came out blank repeatedly. That wasn't the first time it gave me a short session, which is one of the reasons I didn't want to use it on the ironing board; I thought the soft surface might be blocking cooling vents.
Read on a Facebook page that Krebs Trailhead now has a bicycle-repair stand like the one at the Boys City trailhead. Tried to reply to another comment on that page, and fell afoul of Facebook's ever-variable interface, so I gave up.
Shame all of the local bicycle organizations are on Facebook instead of having forums that allow conversations; I'd really, really like to start a conversation on the topic of quarter-century rides that start in Winona Lake.
Tomorrow's my day for a long ride and I still have no place to go. I think I'll circumnavigate Winona Lake yet again. Go to Penguin Point for lunch, by way of Parks-Schram and the Chinworth Bridge, come back by way of the emergency room and Owens.
Yawn. At least we need milk. Perhaps I could bip over from the hospital to Martin's and get Prairie Farms milk, and come back from there by way of 250 E.
When I got to the emergency room, I met a police car leaving, and two Syracuse police cars were parked by the walk-in entrance. Saw yet another police car turning around in a distant parking lot. Dave texted "where are you" while I was parking the bike, so I called in and said (confused by noise; I was standing right next to a police car with its engine running) "I'm at the emergency room and there are cops all over the place", which caused him a moment of consternation even though he knew I was going there to drop off magazines. He said there had been traffic on the scanner all day, and they'd said they'd arrested a couple of subjects and were going to the emergency room.
When I got to Owen's parking lot, I saw a black-and-white car with a sheriff's star on the door, and thought it was more of the same incident — but wait a minute, since when do police officers drive vintage cars? A Galaxie 500, to be exact. The star said "Sheriff" at the top and "Mayberry" at the bottom, and there were cushions with portraits of Andy Griffith on them in the back window. When I mentioned it to Dave, I wondered how he got away with having a red flasher on the roof; Dave speculated that the driver was a real cop. I said "With a teddy bear in the back seat?" — then realized that real cops *do* carry teddy bears. But I think it more likely that the light doesn't work.
Or, perhaps, the law doesn't say you can't have the light, but only that you can't turn it on.
The loop was otherwise uneventful. Well, after committing myself to using 200S, I discovered that it was closed for re-paving. I should have taken this loop next week! But one lane was open for the people who live on the road, and I only hit the ditch to let a load of asphalt by once.
Somewhere along Parks-Schram, while gazing at the Tippy, I realized that I can use Pixel Ruler to measure the scale markings on Google Maps.
I forgot to put lemon juice into my iced tea. Yesterday I made very strong tea and filled two of Dave's ice-cube trays, saying "That's real ice tea" — though "tea ice" would be more idiomatic.
Turned out to be a bad idea — you know that when ice crystals form, they push impurities aside and try to form from pure H20. It seems that very concentrated tea is excellent glue; I had a terrible time getting the tea cubes out of the tray. But filling my bicycle bottle with them worked nicely, and I have a bag of leftovers. Still need to wash the ice-cube trays — unless Dave wants to make weak-tea ice.
There was no ice left in the remaining bottle when I put my fried chicken in the fridge, but my newspaper cooler was still cold inside. I think there had been ice in it when I re-arranged things to make room for the milk at Owen's.
Yesterday I started to pot my lemon grass so I can take it in for the winter, but the root ball turned out to be bigger than my biggest pot, and Dave's spare tomato pot is *too* big. So I parked it in a bucket, and on the way home from Penguin Point, I stopped at the nursery on Lake Street and bought a plastic pot with a detachable saucer. The pot is supposed to snap onto three pegs in the saucer, but I plan to rotate it a bit so that it stands on the pegs, so that there is a little room for water in the saucer, and so that it will be easy to lift the pot out of the saucer and dump the water.
But I was too tired to pot the plant when I got home. I had repotted the rosemary in fresh dirt in its old pot before digging up the lemon grass.
Kosciusko County is messing up my navigation by putting "Bikeway" signs on roads that really are suitable for bicycles. Someone on the committee must have a clue.
Oh, I checked out Krebs Trailhead. I saw the repair stand — looked just like the one at the Boys' City trailhead, but I didn't look closely.
The display-case signs have been filled, one with "safety" literature and one with the Michiana Map I went to the Visitor Center for. There were more Michiana maps in a take-one box, a doggy-do bag dispenser has been added, and four benches now grace the concrete north of the restrooms. The empty frame is still empty, the restrooms are still locked —at least the ladies' room is— and there is no evidence of the sign that was to be made out of left-over interuban rails.
Speaking of the interurban, the new owners of 1000 Park are going to call it "Light Rail Cafe"
This morning's Web-version Times-Union confirms the change in name. (Since Dave heard the rumor from the new owner, I wasn't in doubt.) The story said that the cafe would open the same day the transfer becomes official, and that they've already signed on all the old staff.
Nothing in the paper or Stacy Page about yesterday's excitement at the emergency room.
I think I'll have to make a new label for the coin-bag box. The "I" slanted one way and the "N" slanted the other, and I'm getting tired of seeing a box labeled "COW BAGS".
I potted the lemon grass this morning. I intend to leave it and the rosemary outside until the weather turns cold.
The lemon grass will need pruning at intervals, but there isn't any demand for cold tea during the winter, and I haven't found any other recipe to use it. I don't like it in meat dishes.
I got back from the Farmers' Markets late: It appears to be garage sale day in Warsaw. Not much besides clothing, but I bought an Agatha Christie paperback —for the cover price of $0.50— and a hardback of _Eats Shoots and Leaves_ for the same princely sum.
There was no excitement at the emergency room, but at Owen's a crowd was gathered around a man who had fallen and sprained or broken something. A bystander said that "she" had gone inside to "get somebody", and he didn't appear to require stale first-responder skills, so I went on without learning how it came out.
The Yoders didn't show. I bought three peppers at another booth. There were some partly-green tomatoes, but we still have two slicing tomatoes from last week and Dave's Black Krim is starting to produce, so I didn't buy any.
At the downtown market, I bought a scotch egg for lunch. I wasn't impressed. and I could have used a slice of toast with it. A short while later I remembered that I had a mint-honey filled chocolate that I'd put into my cell-phone pocket last Thursday, and had forgotten by the time I paid for my brown rice and packed it on the bike. Wasn't much impressed with that, either.
I went the full length of Arthur Street, just for a change of pace, and that brought me into sight of the bait shop/bus station on Park Avenue, so I stepped in to see whether there were any maps. One map, of a lake and its creek. On letter-size paper. Might have been folded ledger-size paper; I didn't examine it.
Had an epiphany on the way home. When I carry extra water in my pannier, I've been carrying it in the bottles that you buy water in — but if I buy four extra bicycle bottles, I can fill them with ice cubes at the last minute instead of freezing them ahead of time and, more important, I can dump the ice out of one bottle into another. One bottle full of ice would be much easier to chill a pound of swiss with than four bottles each with a small piece of ice and lots of air.
I hope I remember this when the weather turns hot again!
I wore my winter gloves today — not because it was cool, but because I sweat so much last Thursday that I threw my gloves into a bucket of rain water. And then never gave them another thought until I wanted to put them on this morning.
I'm tired of all my cotton gowns, and I was in a bit of a hurry this morning, so when the first dress I saw was silk faille with a cotton-jersey underdress, I thought "eh, a high of 72F isn't too warm for this" and put it on. I hadn't gone far toward the church before I realized that that was "high of 72 and very, very, very, humid".
On the way home, I was glad to be dressed warmly, but after the sweaty walk up the hill, the under-dress has to be washed.
Just e-mailed Nancy that Alice and I will head her way on the seventeenth of October.
I've got a ride for this week: Claypool. There is nothing in Claypool, but I've never seen for myself that there is nothing in Claypool.
Dave said today "You keep saying that you are out of quarter centuries and you keep coming up with new ones." Well, so far, but they have been increasingly desperate.
A long ride every week has done so much for my blood pressure that I really shouldn't stop.
I can do the Spring Creek ride again when we've eaten the Ohio swiss, and I can go to Leesburg again when the weather is cold enough to bring back frozen meat.
Two small loads of wash. My yellow jersey was very grungy, but came out of the washer practically glowing.
On Saturday, I detoured past the trailhead. Nothing new except that people were sitting in the picnic shelter. I tried the sillcock; seemed to be instant-on, instant off. Either there is a new kind of frostproof faucet or somebody made a horrible mistake.
Discovered yesterday that I don't have Pixel Ruler on the computer that can read Google Maps.
Added "shredded cheese" to my shopping list while we were eating spaghetti for supper. Since I've been to Owen's several times, what's left on the list is mostly stuff I prefer to buy at Aldi, so I tried to figure out a way to make a quarter century out of a trip to Aldi. Going by way of Meijer only brings it to thirteen miles, but I don't think I'd want to do much after a tour of Meijer.
Still can't think of a reason to go to Sidney.
When I bought brown rice, I also bought a small bag of "ruby-red jasmine rice" and prepared some for lunch today. I forgot to salt it, and didn't miss the salt. It's very good with just butter. I had left-over chicken ala king on the third mini-bowl, which overwhelmed it.
The rice is brown, not red, and has a very meaty look when cooked. It would make lovely fried rice.
If you have any of Dave's debeeson sites bookmarked, delete them. He's terminating his contract with TIS as of Friday morning.