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adventures / photo / Scotland / weekend — Comments Off
20
May 17

To the airport! And traffic! And the airport! Eventually!

We were going on vacation. Or so we thought. We were due to fly out of JFK, one of the New York airports. I flew in to the other one, Laguardia, last night. That place is a two hour traffic disaster and no amount of renovation is going to help. But they’re trying. Tonight, though, we had a plane to catch at JFK. Or so we thought.

We had dinner with my in-laws, who took us to the airport, all in good time and according to the carefully laid out travel schedule we had established based on gravitational variation reports, precise distance surveys, meteorological data and a consultation with experts at both Caltech and NASCAR.

And then we hit the traffic. It seems everyone had somewhere to go. And they were all in our way. And we were somehow suddenly cutting it close. Delta, you see, suggests you arrive up to three hours early for an international flight. And by the time you’ve read that sentence we were already flirting with that “Get there an hour early” time. And then there was another bridge and more traffic and we discovered that the check-in counter closes an hour before international flights.

So we pulled into the crowded space at JFK and we were exactly 62 minutes before our flight. At this point we still had to navigate the big sweeping curve into the terminal, and then the double-parked people who don’t understand that our trip is perhaps more important than theirs.

“Ready to run?” The Yankee asked. She had a little smile that was borne of panic, but it looked mischievous. I was ready to run, but first we had to hit the desk and check our bags. The skycaps were there, and they were super. We had to rearrange a few bags for weight purposes. KLF, a Delta-partner, apparently, has limits on how heavy your carryon bag can be. Like this giant jet is going to care whether my jeans are in small roller in the cabin or in the storage component below.

With that sorted there was security. Security.

The Yankee said to a TSA agent, “We have 60 minutes to get to our plane. Is there anything you can do to help us?”

The TSA agent heard this: “”We have 16 minutes to get to our plane. Is there anything you can do to help us?”

She did help us, which was our second great break. We cut through two entire lines. We somehow got involved in a power play with an angry woman emboldened by the power of her blue shirt and aluminum badge who had the hefty responsibility of carding passengers. This seemed to take too long. We got through the metal detectors. My bags got checked. That seemed to take too long.

And then, finally deemed safe in the eyes of American security theater, we dashed down the terminal … where our plane was just about to board. We were flying out of the country and we arrived just in time to tell everyone we actually caught the plane and got settled in to take this picture:

We are going on vacation. We’re flying all night, which means I’ll be watching movies all night and we’ll be jetlagged and vacationing tomorrow. It will be a great trip, and we’ll laugh at this airport business somewhere along the way.

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
May 17

Petal to the metal

Let’s just get it over with. To the puns ‘n’ roses!

Listen, bud, though some might say we haven’t rose to the occasion, we’re going to have to stem the jokes, bouquet?

Those are on the a bush on the side of our house. The ones I put here yesterday are in a bed on the front of the house. Good soil, I suppose. But I was working around the back of the house this evening. I had to install three sets of blinds.

The instructions suggested this would take 30 minutes per set. This would be possible, perhaps, if all of the parts were there. Or if the instructions were any good. But hey, in one box there were two sets of instructions. But, hey, I got to use my circular saw on something. Measure twice, keep your fingers out of the way, cut once and all of that.

I was done in two hours. Even still, the project isn’t truly finished, but there are blinds in windows instead of in boxes.

When you hang blinds, I think, you see the value of curtains.

errands / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
16
May 17

Thorn to be wild

Well I’m having a lovely week so far. How about you?

I’d like to sleep a bit more, but that’s a problem for another day, it seems. Otherwise, the days are pretty rosy. Take this bush out front, for example:

Rose bush, rosy, get it? (I have another one of these jokes for tomorrow.)

Anyway. There’s the day’s work, of course. And all day long I have felt fairly fatigued. I think it is a lack of good sleep and my ride yesterday. So I took today off from the bike and got some evening shopping in. I picked up a few lights for a photo project and got some groceries and went home for dinner, a bit of house cleaning and to watch the day’s bike race.

That’s the pace of things this week — an easy, one thing at a time, few things a day, one day at a time pace. That’s my pace of things.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
15
May 17

Mondays never have clever post titles

The best restive kind of weekend. Slept in and and then did only what I wanted to do on Saturday. This included turning on lights seldom used and in random combinations throughout the evening. Also, I cleaned out the leftovers from the refrigerator. To most people this means dragging the garbage can over and doing the transfer of goods routine. Or the Transfer of Foodstuffs That Were Once Good and No Longer Are routine.

Me, I just ate them. Two dishes from last week that made their way into the fridge were lunch and dinner on Saturday. Then I cleaned my office.

Sunday, I made the mother’s day calls, went to the grocery store, watched a bike race and road my bicycle.

I made several passes on that deer, so I got plenty of fuzzy photos:

Also, nearby, was a rabbit:

Maybe they’ll both come over and help with the next set of leftovers.

Today, back to the office, where things are taking place and some work is getting down and meetings are being held. Then home and, while walking to the car, I saw another rabbit:

I’m guessing it was a different rabbit. It could be the same one. The two sightings were only about a mile or so apart. I don’t know why that first rabbit would need to hop this direction, but it is possible. (Not pictured, another rabbit, which was hiding in the shrubbery.)

And then another bike ride. I did an hour in a low gear, mashing and lifting the pedals as quickly as I can, on the flattest course I could find, where I still managed to gain 503 feet over 16 miles. But I held my highest pace of the year so far. That deserves a handlebar shot:

And another ride tomorrow.

cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
11
May 17

Oh no, we have slowed because H20 has flowed

On tonight’s group ride we went slowly. One of the fastest guys in town was there, but he was in a chatty mood. And various other people were only interested in seeing standing moisture on the road and stopping for it almost entirely, as if the gathering of three molecules in a specific formulation in the smallest of volumes could harm their bicycles.

We stopped a lot. Four times in a 24-mile ride. That’s barely enough to get and keep the heart rate where you might like it. These were flowers I found at the first stop, after just six miles of riding:

Those four stops took place because this is a no-drop group, which means there are plenty of chances to regroup. Or stop and wait, depending on where you are in the scheme of things. The four stops we counted do not include a fifth stop.

Topping the biggest climb of the day, a long and slow 330 feet or so that has hurt me each of the few times I’ve done it, one of the riders in the group had an accident a bit ahead of me. When I got to the top of the hill there were already two cars stopped and someone said a rider had been hit, which sends a chill. But it seems a dog ran out in front of the rider and she took a tumble. Fortunately, she was OK. And fortunately one of the riders was a physician, and one of the people that stopped was a paramedic. After a few minutes, some Neosporin and a few small bandages, she pronounced herself OK, got up and we all rode off down the hill.

The larger group made one last stop, but we skipped it. We were close to darkness, because all of these stops had made a 24-mile ride into nearly two hours. It was damp and chilly and a tiny bit frustrating. I think I am coming to form my opinion on group rides.

On the way back to the house we have to pass over a creek, which was almost ready to to threaten the high banks after more than a week of rain:

All of the water here is swiftly moving, which is more than we can say about our ride this evening.