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And, now, three photos of a dog that exhibits none of the personality traits of his owners:
We went to the next town over for a bit of adventuring this weekend. On the way back we stopped for a quick snack. I saw this flier. Some people should just try harder:
Also, the gentleman in front of me had this shirt on:
It seems the least they could do, but be glad for it, I suppose.
Today we did a test ride from the house to the campus. You have to know how to get places and all of that. So it was the height of the day and I did it in shorts, so it was in no way representative of riding your bike to work, but we found two routes. It’s about four-and-a-half miles one way.
Isn’t that an upgrade?
Also I found a new grocery store gimmick, the wall o’ values:
I should go through there regularly and see if the selection changes. There’s probably a good web gimmick in there somewhere.
Oh, look at this:
Nice countertops, huh?
I gave myself that blister while changing a bike tire. This probably means I’m doing it wrong. That it took 10 minutes definitely means I’m doing it wrong.
One of the guys in our cycling club invited us down to his town over the weekend for a ride. About 50 miles, he said, which got a bit longer somehow. Beautiful scenery:
There’s a lot of farming in this area, as you might imagine:
But that means quiet country roads, just a few cars, one moped and a few of these:
That’s Kyle in the foreground, and way off down the road is The Yankee. She’s fast:
I love the old barns and the greenery taking back the space, like nature’s revenge against some old farmer:
Smiley faces really bring in the casual yard sale traffic. Note the angle, this is going up a painful hill:
There’s a lot of farming to be done out there, though:
This one is going to be a banner on the site one day:
By this point, I was torched. We’d been doing high cadence pace lines and The Yankee was holding us up in the mid-20s for long stretches. That hurts after a while. Sometimes you ride so much that you want to ride more …
And sometimes you want food and a nap and to forget you own bikes. Today was a bit of the later.
The sun is big and warm and that’s just about right. Daylight comes a bit later here, since we moved, but it is still bright over dinner, and we eat late. If only it stayed like this all year around.
It seems I can’t even mow the wildflowers in the side yard, reaching up and out as they are. I am presently cutting around them.
But it is nice and warm, but not overly so. The trees are nice and green and the grass is bright. You can hear the stream babbling nearby, if there’s no noise and you get close enough you can sometimes hear it before you see it. And, for the first time in as long as I can remember, you can’t really hear any road traffic.
There are roads, of course, and there are hills. We are going up and down them. Slowly, really. We’ve been out to discover a few new restaurants, mostly when we didn’t want to cook, and met a few nice people, most of them from our new bike group.
They meet twice a week in the evenings in a church parking lot near us. And we’ve been following them around, sometimes wishing they’d go faster and sometimes wishing they’d go slower. This is the first time I’ve ever ridden in a group and it is an adjustment. But we’re learning some roads.
Otherwise, we’ve just been unpacking and resting up from the move and learning the new house and recovering from the old house. There was much to paint and move and then the professional movers, five guys out of central casting, came and packed the rest and loaded it and hauled it all away. A few days later the physical evidence of our lives caught up to us. Even the parts we thought we were staying on top of caught up with us eventually. And I’m not talking about the painting, which we’d also hired out to the professionals.
Eventually, I’m sure, everything will start to feel normal again, whatever that is. Probably after all of the boxes and wrapping paper are gone and I can find things in the kitchen again and know what light switch controls what in the new place. Everything will be normal again after that. I wonder when it started being unusual before all of that. Longer than I’d imagine, I bet.
So this is an usual quarterly report, but a proper one. We wrapped up one life and are getting ready to start a new one. So the solstice is a good time for this. Do you know where the word comes from? It’s Latin. Sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). Nothing stands still. It is just a question of which direction you want to go.
It started in a classroom. It had to start somewhere, and of course it started there. Lauren and I were in this grad school class and we hated it. The only person less interested was the professor. Near the end of the term she showed back up and, she says, I made some snarky comment. And, she says, she checked me out.
It started in the parking lot of that classroom building, which has since been razed. We complained about the class and talked about this and that. We talked a long time. She was smart and funny and quick witted. The next week we did the same thing. And she was smart and funny and quick witted again. Also, she was pretty and had this smile.
It started over scratch made lemon icebox pie. The first meal we shared. Later she and I went on a date and our classmates, the Chess Club, (we have king pieces and everything) began to think of us as inseparable.
It started among people that care the most for us. I met her parents, who are delightful. She met my family, which is lovely. We took family trips. After some long time, she wondered when I would propose. I drew that out as long as possible.
It started in Forsyth Park, under our tree, where we always sat and read and talked and listened as the world went by. I, finally, proposed. I was trying to work up nerve to ask this question to which I already knew the answer. Just looking for a sign. Give me a signal. Any signal will do. Was that falling leaf my signal? Why am I so bad at subtlety? I’d excused myself to go to the restroom, a feint to leave so that I could come back, which was my plan. In between I met a man and we quoted scriptures to one another about family and marriage and that was, I took it, as my signal. Who has mastered subtlety? This guy. So I excused myself from one of the better-timed Biblical conversations I’ve ever had to return to one of the longest running, most important conversations I have.
It started without a speech. “Would you like to have more adventures with me?” That was it. Somehow it didn’t occur to me beforehand to think up anything to say. But it was perfect and simple. It was a callback to an early conversation about adventures and history. She said yes.
Then we got married. It started seven years ago under a heavy canopy on the hottest day of the year with a small group of important people. The things I recall most often are that smile, the picture-taking, learning what the clinking of silverware on glasses meant and the thought I had, immediately after, that I wished I’d done this cool thing and that gracious thing during the ceremony. My uncle married us, and was terrific. Our guests always, always, talk about the heat. One of our best friends likes to remind us I turned scarily white. There is no such thing as summer wool.
It started with her. It had to start with her. We’ve had many adventures. We’ve gone places and created memories I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Most of them were of her doing. All of them — the trips and the more important, bigger, moment where we were just sitting on the sofa and reading together — fall neatly into the idea that your experiences make you who you are. When people say that you can hear the happiness, satisfaction, contentment; you can pick up on the recognition of self-awareness in the voice. It is difficult, then, to imagine any better thing to be.
I took this picture of her in Savannah, the night before we married. The night before it started.
It started in Savannah. It started in a classroom in Birmingham and it started in the parking lot outside. It started at a friend’s apartment and in my house. It started among friends. It started among family. It started in our homes.
That’s the fun thing about adventures. If you are up for it, you’re always starting one.
