The End of Autumn

Yesterday there was, wait for it, a ride to the lake.  Actually, it was the last road riding of the year.  I'm feeling somewhat desolate.  The new bikes were one of the best things we've bought.  We can't ride the road bikes anymore because the dropped handle bars kill our hands and shoulders.  The mountain bikes have a comfortable riding position, but between their significant weight and the very knobby tires, it took forever to get anywhere.  The hybrid bikes are not light weights by any stretch of the imagination, but they're faster than the mountain bikes, very stable and they corner surprisingly well.  They're also comfortable.  So that was a bunch of words to say that biking was fun again, and now I miss it.

Some work has been done at the recreation area. They put a row of these red flags in the ground.

The geese are still hanging out.  They continue to have animosity at each other.  There's a fair amount of charging and making that weird goose sound that they do.  Attempts to get a video so you could see and hear all failed.

There has been a little fall color.  It was better last year.  Last year was hotter than this past summer, so I'm not sure what the deal is with the foliage.  The birds are cormorants sitting in the sun.

Yesterday was a 12:45 pm start with 62F.  There was some smoke obscuring the sun.  We wore tee shirts under the jersey, black light weight arm warmers, and vests.  All clothing stayed on for the entire ride.  It was surprisingly chilly with the cold air mass we had.

There was excitement in the neighborhood yesterday, the neighbors took out two giant trees.  They were supposed to be dwarf trees, but they were not.  Due to their size, they kept the drive way in the shade the better part of the day, so the ice and snow did not melt.  There were falls due to the ice, so the trees had to go.  The first tree is being taken to the chipper shredder, the second tree is about to be felled.

Starting tomorrow, it's raining everyday until November 3.  There is a large storm bearing down on us from the Gulf of Alaska.  The ridge of high pressure is breaking down, so it will become cold, windy and wet.  Sigh......

I made stoup today. Instead of the usual cumin, curry, and pumpkin pie spice mixture, I used these.  There was also a can of drained diced tomatoes, and house made stock made from mushroom stems, celery leaves, and some beet leaves.  I kept the liquid to 14 ounces, but it's still too much.  The stoup is good.  It's different enough that it doesn't taste like something we've eaten a million times before.

If I don't write it down, I don't remember.

There is a lot of depressing stuff in the world right now, but I think I will just leave it there.

 

Clothing, Carpentry and Plants

Well, long time, no write.  I'm forgetting things that I'm supposed to be recording here.  First off are the ride temperatures and what we wore.  

October 9:  11:50 am start, 61F.  We wore the bandanas under our jersey, and the light weight black arm warmers. Starting out was chilly on the down hill section in the shade.  The bandanas stayed on the entire ride, arm warmers came off at the lake.

October 13:  12:47 pm start, 64F.  It felt colder, so we had on undershirts, the vests, and the light weight black arm warmers.  The vests were really good on the downhill in the shade.  Vests and arm warmers came off at the lake.

October 15:  12:40 pm start, 69F.  Undershirts and the light weight black arm warmers.  We had on way too many clothes.  The undershirts and arm warmers came off at the lake.

Wednesday, October 12 - flu shots for all.  I did not feel nearly so bad as I did after the Covid booster.  Science is predicting a terrible flu season; you know what to do. 

Other than riding and flu shots, there has been a bit of carpentry.  The people who put up the sheet rock in the garage did not frame out the windows.  They looked pretty awful, it's been bothering Jim since we got here.

We used PVC boards and deck screws.  The manufactured wood like MDF will swell in a damp climate, like winter here, so we went with PVC.  It's easy to work with and since it's white, did not require painting.

It's amazing to me how much better they look.  No one would ever mistake us for finish carpenters, but they do look better.

We bought white vinyl blinds and will be putting them up tomorrow. 

Halloween is popular here.  Many people have those inflatable decorations set up in the front yard.  These people are winning, so far.  See the vulture in the back, with the pink head?  It moves side to side.  I don't really understand the popularity of Halloween, it feels like a Hallmark holiday to me.

There have been sunsets.

The milfoil is really turning green.  Interestingly enough, none of the water fowl will eat it.  They prefer the grass.  Note that the work still has yet to start.

Scenic beauty in the PNW.

This article appeared in my news feed on my phone.  It's about Japanese Knotweed, it's a lot of words, but it's an interesting story about how the plant originated on the slopes of a Japanese volcano, was collected by an English man, and is now running amok in the UK.  Apparently its presence in the garden will decrease the value of your home by 5 to 15 percent.  This was the most impressive factoid.

Removing the weed completely is extremely difficult, and essentially involves extracting the land itself – digging at least 5m (16.4ft) deep and disposing of the whole lot almost as if it were radioactive. If anything is left behind, it can return again and again – regenerating from the tiniest of fragments, and ambushing gardeners up to 20 years after it has seemingly vanished. One study found that Japanese knotweed could regrow from a root fragment that's just 0.3g (0.01oz) – around the weight of a pinch of salt.

This puts kudzu to shame.  At the end of the article, they briefly touch on the horrors of Giant Hogweed.  It's an interesting read about how planting things where they don't belong can be very bad.

The organization Mothers Against Abbott has a killer commercial out.  Abbott would be the governor of Texas, one of the many states who have banned abortion.  It's really worth watching.  CLICK HERE to play the video.  Make sure you stay until the end.

So, I will leave you with this photo of a hummingbird eating a bug on the wing.

That's it, that's all I've got.

Update to post:  Jim Rae mowed 10/13 and that was the last time for the year.  They quit after the second week in October.  Please make a note of this.

Rocks and Birds

Greetings People of Earth.  It was another glorious day.  One hopes this weather pattern will continue, since we do not get our sprinkler system blown out until next Friday.  I'm actually not that concerned with the possibility of freezing temperatures between now and then.  We moved it out from the original date because it's still warm enough and dry enough that there needs to be some watering done.

We walked up the big hill today, and then bush whacked down the steep side of the hill to see how many trees have been marked for the fire reduction plan.  It did not seem like all that many.  

Here is the big rock at the top of the hill.

Here is debris that will burn nicely in the event of a fire.

This house is built on a very big rock.  It's amazing how large the rock protrusions are in this neighborhood.

We had quail visiting today.  I took these through the sliding glass door, and through the fence on the deck, so I'm surprised the camera focused on anything.  This is the male, who is sitting on the big rock in the back yard.  His job is to scan for danger, alert the troops, and herd them all to safety.  He is very attentive.

This is his mate, and I think two of their off spring.  They're teenagers now.  Look behind her and you can see the two young birds behind her.  She spent some time digging out a little wallow so she'd be comfortable while resting.



This is my spin bike, those are my feet.  This is the most annoying noise I have ever heard.  It actually gets worse the longer the spin class goes on.  We called Nautilus, who owns Schwin, today and they told us to put treadmill silicone on the flywheel.  I've ordered the silicone, here's hoping it works, otherwise it will be a long indoor riding season.  The video is only 9 seconds.

Are these not beautiful birds?  The photo is off twitter and I can't remember what they're called.

Someone else made this.

So other than my festering anxiety about the mid-terms, I have nothing else to tell you today.

Autumn and Bombing Bridges

Happy Saturday Earthlings!  Although, if you are like me, all days are the same.  Some days are not the day I thought it was.  Sometimes, I'm off by a week, but have the day right.  It's all good, the cell phone is always useful for orienting a person in their space time continuum.

It's a glorious fall season here.  This time last year, days were in the mid-50s and riding was cold.  We're still in the 70's and the 30 day forecast shows this trend persisting.  I'll take it, it's really wonderful.  Here are different pictures of the ride to the lake. This is from Deep Creek.  The water was still, and it was a beautiful day.

The always dangerous Canadian Geese.  We don't walk on the grass anymore, there are too many geese bombs.

Look at the left side of the milfoil.  It's turning greenish, I think the blooming season is coming to an end.  I was looking at photos of this part of the water last year, and it didn't bloom, that's kind of odd.  The vegetation was there, just no yellow.

Is this not one of the cutest vehicles you've ever seen?  It's a Honda Street.  They've quit making them due to more stringent safety rules in Japan, but there are a few in the US.  The guy who owns it just loves it, the motor is about the size of a motorcycle engine, and it gets about 40 mpg. The rear seat folds down flat, and it will hold two dogs comfortably.

Remember in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea and annexed it to Russia, and then built a bridge so people could get back and forth easily, since they were now all Russians?  Well that bridge is toast.  The upper part is a rail bridge.  The lower part is for vehicle traffic.  This puts a large dent in Russia's supply lines to Ukraine.  If the general public has learned nothing else from this war, it's the importance of supply lines and logistics.

Unfortunately, part of the vehicle bridge survives, for now.

Here is the bridge now. That's a train burning on the rail line, as well as the concrete.

If you would like to view video from just before the bridge blew up, CLICK HERE.  It's pretty impressive.

Other than this, I have nothing important to report.

Another Booster and Random Photos

 I have so little to write about.  Politics are making me crazy, so we won't go there.  

Monday (the 3rd) we got our bivalent Covid boosters.   Tuesday was just awful.  My arm was red and hot at the injection site, and it hurt.  I hurt up into the back of my neck and my lymph nodes in my neck and groin, there was a lot of hurt everywhere.  The injections themselves were totally painless, we actually wondered if we'd gotten a real vaccine.  Tuesday proved that we had.  Wednesday I was fine, and we rode to the lake.

The white blobs are geese.  They're not Canadian, they are the geese with orange legs and feet, and unpleasant dispositions.  Having said that, Monday we were watching a Canadian goose lower its head and rush one of their fellow geese to make it move away.  That was not characteristic Canadian behavior.

Needless to say, exactly zero work has been done in the area. 

Since I am now the most boring person on earth, I will post some pictures off twitter.

People in Ukraine love their animals, they have an empathic connection with them, it seems.  The photos of dogs lying beside their dead owners is just more than a body can bear.  But here is a very live cat in a military vehicle.  Notice how calm the cat is.  Every cat I've ever owned would have been trying to get out of the vehicle.

This is a meteor.  There was no indication of where it was taken, but it's a cool shot.

Molly Jong-Fast is frequently on twitter, she writes for The Atlantic, and has a podcast.  She also has three dogs, one of which is a rescue Mexican Hairless Chinese Crested named Leonides.  This is a perfect NYC apartment dog.  In the winter, he has quite the assortment of warm clothes he wears.

It appears that Covid is about to get worse.  There are new variants that are not treated by the current crop of monoclonal antibodies, they're very contagious, and it's likely the current vaccines will not be particularly effective.  India and the UK are seeing case counts rise.  There's a good, plain English, article on the subject in Salon.

So, that's all I've got.  I mainly wanted to memorialize how bad the last booster was, so I remember that for next time.

Delayed Again

It's becoming evident that the wheels have come off this country.  I will have more to say about this, but first there are a couple of pictures.  

The 9 Mile recreation area put this sign up to make it clear that they mean business about the work they'll be doing.

They mean it!  They really really mean it.  Oh wait, they still haven't started.

Last Sunday when we rode, there was some sort of emergency response.  There was a technical rescue truck from the fire department, another truck that dropped off an ATV, and then on the way back we saw a full sized fire truck coming toward us.  We did not see anything that would be used to transport an injured person, but maybe they went out of the area on a different route than us.  Here they are coming from the bike path out to where we were parked.

What is so amazing to me is that the fire truck went over the Deep Creek Bridge.  If you go to this old post and scroll down you can sort of see the bridge.  It does not appear to me to be that strong of a structure.

It rained today, ALL DAY.  It's cold, it never got out of the 50s.  Today was supposed to be a ride day, but we bailed.  We used to ride in the rain, but we don't do that anymore.  There were turkeys this morning.

In the last few days, Kevin McCarthy announced the republican plan to save America.  You know the one; do away with Social Security and Medicare, raise prescription drug prices, and out right ban abortion in all 50 states.  While he was speaking, this woman stood up and read from a prepared speech.  CLICK HERE to play the video.

She's having a cow over Social Emotional Learning.  Anti-bullying is bad, inclusion is bad, they're all forms of Marxism that are indoctrinating our children.  This is the one of the most depressing things I have seen lately, just for the stupidity that informs her thinking, and the fact that she's against teaching kids to be kind and not be bullies.  I suppose she'd like to bring back stoning of the gay kids.

Judge Cannon today undid all of the Special Master's deadlines for the orange manbaby's action items.  She moved them all to the right giving the team more time to figure out how to lie in court without getting disbarred.  Manbaby still has to explain how he declassified documents just by thinking about it.  Also required will be identification of which documents he thinks were planted by the FBI.  Apparently there are about 200,000 pieces of paper to be reviewed by the special master.  The plan had been for manbaby to hire a document scanning firm to copy them, but no business would do it because they knew they would not get paid.  DOJ has said they will pay, and bill manbaby for it, but so far no business has signed up.

Justice Kagan had thoughts about the Supreme Court.  It's interesting that there is open disagreement among the justices, they did not used to do this.

Meanwhile, someone has sabotaged the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.  Tucker Carlson, noted Fox News contributor, and intellectual giant, has actually suggested that the US did it.  These people are crazy.

Speaking of crazy, Marjorie Taylor Greene's husband of 27 years has filed for divorce.  We don't know why, but the trolling on Twitter has been intense.  She is asking for people to respect her privacy, like she did when she followed David Hogg down the street yelling at him for being a wimp because the death of his friends in a school shooting had upset him and made him want better gun control.  She has also said that Democrats should be dealt with like the feral hogs she's been shooting out of a helicopter.

So, yes, divorce is hard on the kids and we do feel bad for them, but it's hard not to enjoy this just a little.

So that's it!