Good Riddance to Manny!

Photo: There is no photo to express my joy at this event!

Manny can be Manny for Joe Torre. Let's see how long that dog and pony show lasts.

I love the Red Sox. I've been a fan since I was 9 years old. One thing I have noticed is that when a player starts whining, it's time to get rid of him.

Recent examples: Mo Vaughn. Nomar Garciaparra. Pedro Martinez. And now, Manny.

You will notice from the above examples that these players are never heard of again. Mo isn't even playing as far as I know. Nomar may be playing but he's not a household name any more except at home with Mia Hamm. Pedro has been on the injured list more than he's been pitching for the Mets. And now Manny. I will predict he will follow the example of Pedro Martinez and spend more time "injured" than well.

I can't wait for the rest of the season.

Bye Manny. Don't let the door hit you in the back side on the way out through the door in the score board in the Green Monster!

REI Outfitting Shake-down Ride #2

Photos
Taken on Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts
Left: Birch tree. This looks like an insect from outer space with the long legs and huge antennae.
Some people might tell you I have an over active imagination, but do not believe them!
Right: A clump of five birch trees.

Some dried, some didn't
Yesterday I told you I washed out the shirt, socks and shorts I wore for my morning ride and hung them to dry in the laundry room. I wanted to see how dry everything was in 10 hours.

In 10 hours the socks were barely dry. The shirt was still damp at the bottom and the shorts were more than damp at the waistline (hanging up-side-down) and the padded seat was not dry either.

This morning the socks absolutely dry as was the shirt. The shorts still have a ways to go.

Considering it has been very humid since yesterday, perhaps this was not a good test. It’s hard to tell what would have happened over night in a room with the A/C going.

Thirty-six hours later and everything is dry, or as dry as they are going to feel when our humidity has a 70° dew point with an 80° temperature. Everything in the house is damp.

I will be packing a 20-foot length of thin cording and some clothespins. I’ll find a way to create a clothesline in every room we stay in. And, if all else fails, that’s what the mesh laundry bag will be for. Into the bag and bungeed onto the back of my bike. The air and (hoped for) sunshine should finish the job.

I don’t know what Kathy’s plans are. ☺☺

REI Outfitting Shake-down Ride

Photos
Left: Norton's Pond on the Air Line Trail
Right: The Salmon River, just up from the covered bridge in East Hampton.


Checking out the equipment
Early this morning I donned one of my new shirts, a pair of new socks, my new Keen bike riding shoes (no, I did not forget my riding shorts!) and headed off for a cool morning’s ride.

I could not be happier with the choices I made yesterday at REI. The shoes make pedaling so much easier. I felt like my stroke was more firm and stronger. I didn’t fatigue mid-way through the ride and my feet stayed cool. Thanks to the new socks, my feet stayed dry which had to help in keeping them cool. When I came home I didn’t have to peel them off my feet. The shirt was very cool riding. When I would stop it did cling to my sweaty skin, but once I set off again it dried almost instantly and stayed that way.

After my shower I washed out shirt, socks and shorts and hung them to dry in the laundry room. I want to see how dry everything is in 10 hours. That will be important on the trip because I don’t think packing damp clothes will be a good thing. I’m thinking of getting a mesh laundry bag to bungee to the rear pack so any clothes needing more drying can do so.

I can see myself as the “bag lady” of the Erie Canal again!

Because of the success of the socks and shirts, I can now downsize the amount of clothing I bring. Anything to lighten the load is good! ☺☺

A crying crow
I started my ride from a parking lot off Buckland Road and while I was taking my bike off the rack, I could hear what sounded like a bird in distress. I looked around and saw a lone crow in the tree making the most pitiful sounds. In no time there were five other crows swooping in. A couple of them seemed to be attending to the first one…nudging it with their beaks. They were all making quite a ruckus. Soon they all flew away.

So what happened? Did everybody go away and leave the baby home alone? The baby cried and everybody came back? Whatever happened, these birds were communicating with each other and I wish I understood what they were saying.

REI Outfitting

Photos
On the Air Line Trail at the Hebron end.
Left: Beaver Lodge.
Right: If you look right above the first 0 in 2007 you will see a cormorant sitting on a box. (Click on photos to enlarge).

Feeding my habit
The first thing I did when I walked through the doors of REI was to become a member of the co-op. I knew I was going to drop several dimes before I was through.

Then I proceeded to buy: Keen commuter biking sandals (will keep my feet cool), 4 pair Smartwool® moisture wicking sport socks (will keep my feet dry), 2 shirts, 1 foul weather jacket, 1 front rack (had to order), 2 panniers, 1 light weight bike lock (my other one weighs a ton), spare tube, tube patching kit, and White Lightening® chain lube (wax based, self-cleaning).

Yet to come will be new mud guards, LED lights, fore and aft, to make me more visible, and I want them to perform an annual maintenance on my bike to be sure it is trail worthy.

I’ve been saving for 2 years for this trip and I’m going to make sure I do it right.

I also got some interesting information that no one else has ever told me. They can put on new gear cassettes to give me easier riding when it comes to hills. I will have to pursue that when I contemplate whether or not to ride the East Coast Greenway. That would take up 4 years (one section a year for 4 years) and there are so many other rides I want to do. So many trails…so little money!

AND I’m not getting any younger! If I take 4 years to ride the ECG I’ll be 76 when I finish. Will I still want to do bike and barge in the Netherlands? Will I still care about riding in Canada and the Maritimes? Those are rides I want to do, too! Well, I’ll do the best I can with the finances and time I have. Stay with me. There are more adventures coming up. Probably some I don’t even know about. ☺☺

More about Peaberry’s

Photo
"Deer in the Forest." Someone sent me an email with a lot of pictures attached. This is one of them. Notice the "haze" in the center of the photo.

Artspeak
A good crowd was on hand last night for Artspeak. What a pleasure to hear some new young voices and musicians. A couple of the new voices were reciting from memory. Good Grief, Charlie Brown, I’m a CRC person…can’t remember crap! There is a lot of talent out there and this is one of the places to go to experience it.

In a previous posting I said they would be “Artspeaking” in August. That is not going to happen. We were told last night that the entertainment at Peaberry’s (including Artspeak) is taking a vacation during the month of August.

Put it on your calendar! September 27th, Artspeak at Peaberry’s. See you there.

New England Summer

Photos
All from Fort Hill on Cape Cod.
Top - looking north. Click on photos to enlarge. On this one the white building in the distance (to the right of the man standing at the kiosk) is on Coast Guard Beach in Eastham.
Bottom left - looking south
Bottom right - looking east

Relief from the heat
The heat wave finally broke and we shut the A/C off last night. It’s cool—in the low 70s—but the dew point is 69° giving a relative humidity close to 100%. I am not complaining. It is so good to not need the A/C. What we have now is like living (or vacationing) right on the ocean. Everything is damp with no hope of drying out any time soon. And so goes a summer in coastal New England. Even though I’m 50 miles inland, Connecticut is so small the whole state is pretty much considered “coastal.” Right now we are having a monsoonal downpour that looks (on weather radar) like it’s going to last a while.

Can’t ride
I’m having a real problem trying to find bike-riding time. I need cooperative weather. A chance of showers is no problem. A chance of thunder and lightening is! I was caught in a thunder storm recently and thought I was safely grounded on my two tires. Not so. We need to be in a house with wiring and plumbing or in a car (an enclosed environment) with four tires on the ground and hands off any metal parts.

When you’re bike riding, you don’t always have any of the above safe options. All you have is a prayer, so use it.

Eatin’ good
We have been enjoying fresh veggies from the local farm stands. Finding the best corn is trial and error, but I have found the best of three different stands and it’s the one closest to my house. As a matter of fact, it’s at the end of the street I grew up on. I have to go to the other side of town in order to get fresh tomatoes, cukes, summer squash and zucchini. This farm also has farm fresh eggs. I know they are fresh because I was with a friend on day and the lady of the farm went out to the chicken coop in order to get more eggs. These are free-range chickens and the eggs are so much better than what you get in the store. Same price or less depending on where and how you shop. There is a stand closer to me but they are so expensive. If their veggies were vastly superior to everyone else that would be one thing, but not when they are the same quality, or as in the case of corn, not as good.

Southern peaches are also in the grocery stores now. They are firm and juicy. I cut up half a peach in my morning hot Quinoa flakes…then I eat the other half just so I won’t have to put it in the fridge. Sorry, California, your peaches are dry. Not good.

Listening To The Inner Voice

Photo: Kathy on the left and me on the right. This was our 100 mile celebration when we rode a small section of the Erie Canal in 2004. Can't wait to do the whole thing.

Can you hear me now?
I am posting this on both my on-line journals because it points out how we should all be listening to those warnings (whispers) from the Universe when things aren’t quite right. Ignore them at your own peril, as you will see from the following.

I have been following the blog (Shut Up and Pedal!) of a family of four who are pedaling from Walla Walla, WA to Bar Harbor, ME. The dad and daughter are on one tandem, recumbent bike, and mom and son are on the other. Their post for today, Friday, July 18, 2008, It’s Funny How Things Happen is an excellent example of synchronicity and listening to the whispers.

To summarize: the daughter got her heel caught in the rear wheel causing the bike to skid and created a major blowout of the tire. There just happened to be someone who was able to supply another tire to get them the one more mile to their destination. The only bike shop within 50 miles did, after all, have the right sized tire. On the way to get the new tire, a noise on the mother’s bike caught their attention and they decided to have it checked out while they were at it. In the process of checking it out, a cracked rim was discovered. Had that not been found, the rim would surely have failed and the result could have resulted in serious injury or death. They were able to have a new rim shipped to their next destination town.

The good news: the daughter and father were not injured in their incident; the blown tire was replaced; the cracked rim was discovered in time; they were able to get a new rim.

I highly recommend reading this particular on-line journal. The pictures and story are wonderful.

By the way, for all of you who think I’m nuts, what they are doing makes my plan to ride the Erie Canal pathway pale by comparison. ☺☺

Terry's Island in Connecticut River

A message for Jo Mark Gourgas.

You left a comment on my blog regarding your Terry family ancestry. I need to hear from you since I have a friend who is researching the island also. The two of you can probably fill in a lot of blank spaces for each other.

Please contact me at bevtitus@cox.net so I can put you in touch with Bonnie.

It’s Baseball's All-Star Time

Photos:
Taken in Wethersfield on Sunday, July 13th.
Left: Sycamore. There was an article recently in the paper about sycamores being stressed.
Right: Blue Hydrangeas.

Where do we stand?
Now that we are at the All Star break, it’s time to take stock of where everyone stands—the leaders, anyway.

AL league leaders: the Boston Red Sox top the AL East ½ game ahead of Tampa Bay; the Chicago White Sox lead in the Central 1 ½ games ahead of Minnesota; and Los Angelis Angels at Anaheim (that’s much too long a name LA!) has the best percentage in the AL and leads the Western Division by 6 games over Oakland. LA has the best overall average in the American League and is running away with the Western Division

National League leaders are Philly in the East ½ game ahead of the Mets; Chicago in the Central 4 ½ games ahead of St. Louis; and Arizona 1 game ahead of the Dodgers in the West.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have the two Chicago teams duke it out in the World Series?

I won’t make any long-term predictions, but I’m certainly enjoying this year’s baseball with the Yankees, the highest paid under-achievers, struggling; Tampa Bay surprising everyone by acting like a legitimate contender; and Chicago and LA are the teams to watch.

I’m not much of a National League person, but I pay a little bit of attention to see who might win the NL Pennant.

The Red Sox are fun to watch this year. They have some of their best players on the DL but they are still scrapping. And the Yankees? No comment.

I never watch the All Star Game, so it looks like a lot of Weather Channel and Discover Channel.

From Chaos to Peace

Photos
Peaceful Valley in Tolland. These fit the "peaceful" theme of the following post.

Things seem to be going wrong
In my last post I told you how my A/C went pffffftttttt on Wednesday morning. Then, last night the water company was messing round with the water mains (probably flushing) and I had a toilet full of muddy water that wouldn’t go away. Luckily I did not run any water in the main part of the house, which kept the dirty water at the downstairs level.

On top of that, I had been unsuccessful in finding someone to look at my A/C. Everyone I called either didn’t carry Carrier anymore or wouldn’t service a residential unit. Great. In desperation I emailed Bernie’s TV & Appliance (the unit was bought there in 1984) asking them to recommend someone. They don’t carry Carrier anymore, but they did give me the phone number for Carrier Corporation.

This is what saved me
All the while, I kept going back to Jon’s blog on Conscious CT and kept reading his last post, In Chaos You Can Only Be. I had to keep reminding myself that there was nothing I could do about these situations and all I could do was “just be.”

This morning I woke up and the water was clear. I took a nice bike ride to Charlie’s restaurant for the wholistic practitioners’ breakfast, came home and cooked myself a sumptuous lunch of salmon steak, baked potato and steamed asparagus.

Then I called Carrier Corp. They gave me the name of two companies who might do the repairs. I called one of them (the other company I would call only as a last resort!). Quality Appliance said they could come out on Monday. I was good with that. Staying calm. Five minutes later they called back and said they had a cancellation and could come out this afternoon. Would that be OK? Indeed it would.

The diagnosis was a failed fan motor. Might have to replace it. Still…I stayed calm. Remember, in chaos you can only be. I was doing my best to “be” (which would not be my natural state of mind or demeanor in situations like this).

“Let’s try some oil, first,” the nice man said. Then he pushed a button on the air conditioner. It sprang to life and immediately began putting out chilled air. “Well, let’s see how long that might last,” said the nice man. “Could go another 25 years. Who knows? I’ll find out how much a new motor will cost, just in case.”

I paid the nice man and he left. I was still calm and “being” in the midst of what was chaos. I had not exhausted myself with a useless expenditure of angry, negative energy

Why am I telling you all this?
I’m convinced that if it hadn’t been for Jon’s blog, and the fact that I was using it to remind myself to stay calm, the outcome of today’s chaos would have been quite different. I am convinced that my usual reaction to such situations would have produced such negative energy that everything would have continued to go from bad to worse. Normally I would have been an abrasive, crazy person!

I think I’ll print out the post on Chaos and paste it where I can read it…often!

Thanks Jon.

My A/C Went Pffffftttttt!

Photo
Granddaughter, Jimaine, who graduated with honors from Fermi High School on June 26th.

A day of whine and roses
Thank goodness the weather turned cooler and dryer over night. I woke up this morning and my air conditioner wasn’t making any noise. This is a big A/C stuck into my living room wall. I have no idea how many BTUs, but for some reason I want to say 25,000. I pushed the “OFF” switch and waited over two hours before trying it again. All it does is hum (and I don’t even recognize the tune!). Now I have to call someone to get it fixed and hope I don’t have to replace it. I do not like spending money.

I have to tell you, I had a dream last night that someone was banging on my front door and yelling the side of my house was on fire. That’s it. I did not wake up. I wonder if my subconscious was aware there was a problem with the A/C and was trying to warn me? Thank goodness it shut itself off. It didn’t trip a circuit breaker (that’s the first thing I checked), so I wonder if it has it’s own fuse and blew that? Whatever happened, I’m grateful there was no fire.

I had an enjoyable bike ride this morning. First, after I had gone about 5 miles, I got a call from Kathy and we talked for several minutes. She’s always so busy at work and after work I don’t get a chance to talk to her that much. And a few miles down the road I saw my friend, Nancy, (a.k.a., East Windsor Bike Lady). We stopped in the shade of a tree on Olde Main Street (across from the Olde Burying Grounds) and talked for a good 20 minutes or more.

I love it when these things happen!

Electrifying News and Bike Ride

Photos
Clouds observed from Coast Guard Beach on Cape Cod. Sure a lot friendlier than what I saw today!

Poem to be published
I received some exciting news today. The Equinox, published by Ginger Cat Press in Shelburne Falls, MA informed me my poem, “Who Walks the Tower” has been accepted for publication in their Fall 2008 book of stories, poems, essays and art. Five poems were submitted and I’m thrilled one of them has been chosen. I’ll let you know when I have the book in my hands and I’ll post the poem here in my online journal.

Electrifying bike ride
I wasn’t expecting the pop up thunder showers to pop up so early in the day. I was out riding, intent on doing 20+ miles, when it started to thunder. Even when the clouds are so thick you can’t see the lightening, if you hear thunder, lightening is around too. And of course, it was raining.

I took refuge from the storm at the home of a high school classmate, Barbara. I knew she wasn’t home but I also knew her roof had an overhang over her deck that would offer some shelter. I stayed there until the thunder subsided then I was on my way.

Less than a mile down the road it started to thunder again. Oh, well! No safe haven available, so I said a quick prayer and rode like the wind…actually I had a nice tail wind. By the time I had gone 3 more miles the sun was coming out and the storm was long gone. When I checked my odometer my average speed for a 21 mile ride was a bit faster than usual. Yours would have been, too. ☺

Obviously I survived.

Boston Red Sox

Photo:
Pebbles and shells on Coast Guard Beach in Eastham, MA, Cape Cod.

Another Important Part of My Life
I haven’t said anything about the Red Sox and baseball in a long time. The Sox were on top of the AL East since the season opened. Maybe once before they slipped, but not for long. Now, however, they are 1 ½ games behind the Tampa Bay Rays! Last year being the exception, the Sox either go down the drain or surge right after the All Star Game. Are they starting their slide early?

Then you have injuries, suspensions and Manny being Meany. Did you read where he got into a pushing match with one of the traveling secretaries over not being able to get tickets for last night’s game? And what was that he and Youkilis got into in the dugout a couple weeks ago? Are we watching the unraveling of the Sox? Someone! Get better knitting needles and fix this.

The Yankees are way back there, 6 or 7 games out, but…as much as I dislike the Yankees, they are THE Yankees and one can never discount them. They may be the highest paid underachievers, but look out if they ever figure out what (or who) is not working and fix it!

New England Summer
The weather has been kooky—hot, humid, and pop-up T-storms every day. The best time for me to bike ride is early in the morning. Right now the 4th of July doesn’t look too good weather-wise with those pesky showers as a maybe. I’m trying not to run the A/C just because it costs so darned much.

On-line banking
I’ve been having a problem with on-line banking lately – actually since last Thursday. When I called the Help Line this morning they asked me if I had a Mac (which I do) and they transferred me to someone who knows what the problem is with the Mac all of a sudden. I had to leave a message and she has not called me back. Is it that big a problem? I wonder if it has anything to do with the Microsoft upgrade that happened automatically recently. If I have nothing else in the world to stress me out, I know I can always count on my computer. ☺