Visited a new dentist today. This was after making an appointment in the spring. And about four days of text messages asking, over and over and bloody over to confirm the appointment. After which the emails started. And, each of them asking you to pre-register.

The things a dentist’s office now asks new patients customers these days is positively invasive. More so than most of the tools on that rolling stainless steel cart, even.

This place is a big operation, and they’re operating in an old house, which is pretty customary around here. This one is a sprawling joint. It was difficult to find the exit when my perfunctory appointment was complete.

They took about 45 x-rays. How my brain still works, I don’t know. She said I had good teeth. Here’s the new gimmick. You go in for a checkup, but then you have to go back for cleanings. We’re not doing separate appointments for each every six months.

But otherwise, it was fine. I really, really, really don’t care for hands in my face. It’s not the dentist, or the dentistry. It’s the personal space. It’s the hands.

And also the realization that this is about selling you things as much as health care. Our previous dental expert always had something to offer you, and it was all vital and grim. But it was never the same thing twice. A few years in, you start to notice.

I had a nice late evening ride. It was just 21 miles, around the extended neighborhoods, if you will. All of it was familiar, but I tried to do things in different orders.

Here’s the sod farm, I ride by here in one direction or the other quite frequently.

And here’s some of the ubiquitous corn, and my shadow selfie.

This pasture is always empty, as far as I can tell.

Here are a few of my old friends.

And some of my newer friends.

Finally, my racing buddy. When I go down his road we often chase one another. A nice break, I guess, from his job herding the sheep.

Sometimes I win. Sometimes he wins. He must have somehow known I was coming today. He got a head start and I couldn’t pass him let him win.

I worked on a class meeting today. That means, if my notes hold up, one more day’s work is prepared — at least in brief. There’s always some refinement, some bright idea, some thing that has to tie in, or some other thing that has to carry over. These things, in my experience are never done. But if we can all leave a class with two or three things to really ponder and learn from, we’re doing something right.

Also, I have discovered my first meeting of the new term. It will happen next week, a full month before the term begins. And that’s how it begins, in dribs and drabs in the months when you are off the payroll. Funny, that.

I had a nice bike ride this evening. One of the better ones of the year, which I suppose makes up for the last several mediocre experiences and outright failures. Probably it is meant to carry over through the next several of each, as well.

Went out fast, and with a tailwind, apparently. And I worked so hard on the way back in to keep up the speed that I forgot to take a photo. So here’s a bit of asphalt, right at the end.

So that was an 18-mile outing, and I was done in an hour. You can do the math. Even I can do that math.

I recall reading somewhere years ago that, for amateurs (which needs the added superlative “very” in my case), riding 12-15 mph was slow, 15-18 was considered average, and 18-21 was fast. So this, then, was one of those brief times when I was approaching fast.

Also, when I got back in the measurements say the headwind was 13 mph. I’m terrible in the wind, so I must have gotten quite aero today.

You might recall that in April we had to do some work on the honeysuckle. It was growing over a trellis, but the trellis was rusting through. The trellis was rusting through because it was made of a cheap metal and that’s just the nature of cheap products. One time last year the wind got into the honeysuckle, which was top-heavy, and pulled the whole thing down. We carefully stacked it back up, put some pavers on the feet of the trellis to way it down and hoped for the best. And it worked. But, this spring, we realized that rusted metal doesn’t heal itself, so the old trellis had to come out, which meant we had to do some surgery on the vines, because it was woven in … about like you imagine vines would do. In extricating all of that, which was the best part of an afternoon, we found just how deep into the earth the old trellis’ post hoc anchoring went. The old owners of the house had sunk some metal rods into the soil, here where the heavy land and the green sands meet. Some of it was pretty cheap itself. But two of the pieces were honest-to-goodness rebar, and those were put in with enthusiasm.

All of that came out. The honeysuckle got cut back out of necessity and for shaping purposes, and I was a little nervous about the whole thing. For one, it’s a plant. And we’re stewards of the thing now and I’m a bit overmuch about that. For another, its honeysuckle, and it’s easy to want to cheer for something with this much character. Plus, it’s honeysuckle in a garden, over a trellis. And the triplets who lived here probably ran through that, hid behind it, and wondered why the flowers were so stingy with nectar. (This species is stingy with nectar.) And it is easy to be sentimental about that.

Sometimes we are haunted by our own ghosts, and the ghosts of others. It’s difficult to know which ones are the most welcoming, or the most distracting.

I remember saying aloud, “It’ll be fine. It is honeysuckle and you can’t kill this stuff.” I didn’t feel it, but I said it. And then I remembered something important a few days later, as we waited and hoped it would bounce back from a hard spring pruning: It is honeysuckle and you can’t kill that stuff.

And here it is today.

You can’t kill that stuff. But now we’ll find out if it can learn through that sort of stubbornness. I am trying to train it to grow over and down the other side of the trellis. We’re a little way over halfway there.

All of this makes me wonder what I might do if it wasn’t so hot out. Just the 80s today, but it’ll hit 93 tomorrow and the heat index for Friday is forecast to reach 110. I do not do as well in the heat as I once did, and I’m old enough to admit that to myself now.

But hey, the summer is the life for me. Except for the class prep. And the meetings.