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| Ok so I don't have many pictures sans beer - don't get alarmed! Water is not a fun feature in picutures! I love this hammock! |
We got home to the heat and worked on our separate chores, Jax hung out on the porch. I put the AC in the bedroom, Dave questioned if I knew how to do this. In this heat (anything above 70 is hot to me and add in the humidity and my fuse is non-existent) it took all I had to not say anything. Who bought the darned AC in the first place, huh??? The copper roof on the porch was so cool, I nearly laid down to take a nap and cool off!!!
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| Jax Melted it was so hot in VT |
Funny aside, a few weeks back I was sitting out on the porch in the Adirondack chair, Jax had gone inside for dinner. I was kind of slumped in it, simply being sloppy in the way I was sitting. All of a sudden the car driving by stopped and rapidly backed up the driver shouting through the passenger window "ARE YOU OK??" he thought I was passed out on the porch!! That really gave me hope for humanity. I love sitting on the porch in the evening, there is a cool breeze and it is shady.
Tuesday (0) Back to work for a day, the week with two Mondays and two Fridays, not feeling like doing anything in the heat, so I didn't. I really am struggling to get my hydration under control.
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| It is a light beer (light in color) and I love it! And no this was NOT my hydration plan. |
Since I don't have much to say about this day I'll tell you the story about the second bald eagle Dave and I have seen on our travels this spring. We were heading south on I-91 in MA and saw the bald eagle flying towards the median. And then he flew in front of us, like 50 feet! We were terrified this was going to end with us killing him and going to jail. That bald eagle swooped down, just as calm as could be and picked up road kill and then flew beside the truck with the carnage in his claws, flapping those huge wings and looking over with those piercing brown eyes with this "Gotcha" sort of look. It was so freaking amazing. I'd love to have a picture of it to share, however, I'm more glad the image is burned in my brain. So amazing. And I'm glad he knew what he was doing and we didn't go to jail for killing a bald eagle.
Wednesday (0) I got the gravel tire on the front of the Dolce adjusted the breaks so they hit the rim correctly and pumped up the tire, TOO BIG!!! No way!! I have to go down to a smaller gravel tire, I was hoping for a 32mm to cushion some of the blow. Dave thought the back looked bigger so I ripped off the tire from the front, pulled out the tube and put the whole thing on the back tire. Nope... the same problem. I can get 26 or 28 gravel tires I may get one of each and take or send back what doesn't work. If the local bike shop has the Panaracer Gravel King in the right size or not...
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| Something more expected |
Meanwhile, I wrapped new bar tape on the handlebars of the Ruby and decided to hold off on anything further on the Dolce.
That activity caused quite the sweat fest I took a break and read for a few hours. Trying to not slump sloppily in the chair on the porch for fear of freaking out another person!
Thursday (1) Dave left for NC at 3:30 a.m. and Jax realized he was gone and sulked. He is fine when I leave for work M - F, that is normal, that is part of the schedule. However, these deviations really throw him for a loop. I'm sure he is bored home alone, I didn't plan well for working from home and had a meeting I had to be in person for.
We took a stroll downtown so I could take a book back to the library and he could catch up on all the local dog gossip. Clearly, a lot has been going on in town, he had a lot of smelling and replying to do and once home passed out in exhaustion. I was really pleased he seems to be much more accepting of an in-town walk and running errands than he was a few months ago. There was only one struggle getting him to stop paying attention to a man with a beard and a baseball cap, otherwise, people with strollers and people, in general, didn't seem to phase him. Although he was a bit wiggy with a couple behind us and he pulled over to smell something and waited until they passed till he resumed our walk. He's a weird dog.
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| Greenie saves the day! |
I had to go in to be part of a clinical experiment for a dermatology fellow trying to determine what people interpret as a "thin layer". Very cool. Oh and Mikey needed to stop by to check on me because I haven't posted on Strava in a few days. It loads, I don't bother to make most stuff public, it's nothing interesting so why bother?
Friday (2) Clearly a bit too long of a walk for Jax, he kind of melted but managed to revive himself splashing water all over the floor of the pantry and hanging out in the cool spot between the ceiling fans where the AC bounces off the ceiling and down on him. We were supposed to have torrential rain most of the day and getting him out after wasn't going to be a great option, although pig pen would love to get muddy and sloppy.
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| OMG I'm tired! |
The weather didn't pan out as predicted, oh well, it did get dry and cool and by the evening the window AC was off the windows open and we were camped out on our spot on the porch for the evening.
Saturday (30 + 2) The plan was 60 miles of hills, Grace delivered 3K of climbing in 30 miles and I was, stick a fork in me, done! I could have curled up for a nap by the side of the road after the last big one! Ro and Grace did another 20 miles, for 4K in gain. I maybe probably could have managed that, but I'm trying to learn when enough is enough. My goal was to get in the hill climbs, the tough 10 and 15% ones as my last nasty hill work out before the Mount Washington Century. There will be 6K of gain over 109 miles, the hills are long and enjoyable to climb, not short, steep, and pure torture like the ones we climbed. I had not been on the bike in a week and really didn't do much physical activity during the week, I was spent, frustrated, overheated, and in need of a real break, which I got. No point in overdoing it the first day back!
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| Jax doing his Arte Johnson impersonation "Very interesting" |
Jax and I went for a walk in the late afternoon, we had to make a deposit in the First National Poop and Trust because someone thinks he can poop on the front lawn... I told him that made him geriatric, I don't think he understood me or found that funny, ha ha ha... On the way home, he decided he'd try and I'm not sure what, catch? meet? sniff? attack? Yoko the Crazy Orange neighborhood cat. That didn't go so well and Yoko spit on him, puffed up and stood there spitting and hissing. Jax lost his shit and I pulled him away. All I could picture was Jax as some stupid punk doing the "you want a piece of me" routine to an uninterested bystander. He really should be embarrassed for himself. He wasn't. Yoko wandered by later in the evening flicking his fluffy orange tail at Jax.
Sunday (27 + 1.5) Mikey texted about riding on Saturday, I couldn't, other plans, but I could on Sunday so we met up with Tommy for the flat beach loop. Some of the 'hills' felt like mountains to my quads, but it was a super mellow nice ride. I'm glad they invited me along! Nice to jibber jabber and ride. They took me on some new to me roads and I have some more to add into when I venture out solo!
The overwhelming urge to nap won and I had a 3-hour epic* nap making me feel like a new person. What is it with those naps where you cannot move, or think you cannot move and are so completely out you wake up not knowing what time it is or even where you are?
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| Jax is on the lookout for that Crazy Orange cat |
*I know epic is overused it has lost its meaning... but seriously this was epic, at least in my book of not using that word except when it is really called for!
Jax and I took a stroll after dinner and he was so well behaved. I am SO not used to that!!! Good Boy!
Knitting:
A little progress on the socks, mostly Rory and I jibber jabber. At least my shoulder is feeling better, maybe I can avoid rotator cuff PT?
I think I remembered why I got tired of socks! Or maybe I'm not stationary enough to enjoy knitting... guess we shall see when the snow flies again.
Books:
"Fahrenheit 451"
by Ray Bradbury
Status: Finished
Wow, for something written more than 50 years ago about the future, Bradbury comes close to nailing it. While we don't have surround TV in our parlors, we do have devices attached to our hands that our faces are constantly staring at....
The clear message: books are only dangerous when read, they are ok to be collected and displayed, not read.
"Beneath a Scarlet Sky"
by Mark Sullivan
I started this a while back, December I believe. I forgot about it until I was looking for something to read on my Kindle. Picking this back up I have no idea why it lingered, other than my brain was only in the mood for solitaire in the evenings. I thought the writing was great, I had a little movie going on in my head as I read! So much has been written about WWII, this was a perspective I had not run across. The story from the Italian (non-fascist) perspective, a spy into the Nazi machine. When I think of the Italians in WWII I think of Mussolini and the contributions the Italian forces made to the Holocaust, siding with Hitler and the Axis powers. This is very different, one man risked everything, and lost most everything, to spy against Hitler and those under his command.
"Providence"
Crimetown by Gimlet media
Not a book, a podcast. Thought I'd give them a go again. First up is Providence, all about a city once run by mobsters, the Patriarca crime family out of Federal Hill. I'm midway through but it doesn't seem like the Prince of Providence, Buddy Cianci, was ever really going to clean up a crime city. He, may he rest in peace, was a politician thinking government could be run like a business minus strict and enforceable anti-corruption policies. So far this continues to enforce my skeptical belief that someone, anyone, is truly out to make the greater good for the majority. People working on such a grand scale are out to make the greater good for their own bank account and ego.
Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this, however clearly, Buddy's motive wasn't cleaning up the city, it was being the big boss. Kiss my ring, pay tribute, and all that Bullshit.
Mileage:
Feet: 8
Saddle: 58
Summary:
All in all, I think I can sum up the first 6 months of 2018 as a challenge, a challenge I believe I met head-on, of course, I had my meltdowns and my frustrations and a few frothing fits. But all in all, I'm OK. I'm nowhere near the mileage I was last year - I haven't actually checked, I stopped my spreadsheet, but I'm pretty sure I'm not and I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave that spreadsheet to die a slow death. The past 12 months have been a challenge.
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Sincerely,
Beth, remembering "comparison is the theif of joy".
