Poison ivy update: today marks three weeks from my careless self-exposure. Tomorrow marks three weeks from the first itchy symptoms. I am much improved — which is to say healing, not healed. Eventually I worked it out to alternating between Calamine and cortisol. I also had a few very long oatmeal bath soaks. Now, my skin is mostly dry, itchy, flaky, or some combination.
Also, I found some on a tree while puttering about the yard. I dealt with that one in a much more sensible manner.
In short, I will survive, but the ivy probably will too.
The actual poison ivy vines I plucked, meanwhile, have surely returned by now.

Enjoy a nice little solo ride this evening. My lovely bride was off doing a workout elsewhere and that let me visit some lovely little roads at my own pace.

I made some new sheep friends. They couldn’t even be bothered to look up as I soft pedaled past their evening graze.

The corn is coming along nicely. Took me three tries to get this photo, and it wasn’t quite what I wanted.

The chores never end in farm country. I wonder what else this guy could be doing right now. I wonder if he’d rather be pedaling around, like me. I think most people would rather be riding a bike than doing evening work. Then again, combines aren’t connected to bikes.

Sometime after that I dropped a water bottle — a fate worse than dehydration. So I had to turn around and fetch it. Stop, put your foot down, wiggle the bike around and coast a few feet the other direction. Then bend waaaaay over to the ground without hurting yourself. And then you stab yourself with greasy gears.

I have joked that I should just get that as a tattoo and save myself some time. I won’t, but then again it has been a while since I gave myself the ol’ grease tattoo, too.
I wore a new jersey today, a loose fitting number, which was perfect for one of those days when it didn’t matter that everything clung to me. And on the back of the tag …

Sure, now you tell me. Good thing it fit.
It’s actually too big, but I took that tag off.

One last clip from the Guster show, last Friday. Their alt-breakthrough, now 28 years old (that was a great time to be listening to 99X), somehow, fell off the live show list for a long time. I guess you get tired of playing the same things every night at some point. Also, the ping pong balls were probably becoming a problem. (People used to throw them onto the stage at the end of the song. It makes sense with the song, moreso than having to bring the things into venues, I’m sure.) Also, you have other things you want to play. Or maybe you’re just looking for ways to do old things. I think they called this version Airport Song 2000 for a while. It has an entirely different feel.
I wonder if they’ll have another re-instrumentation for the 30th in 2028.
Anyway, great show Friday night. I’ll put up a little clip of a DMB song from Saturday’s show tomorrow. Also, we’ll be talking about generators.










