May is lurking around the corner like a thug with a fistful of pipe. I rode in shorts and short sleeves today, watered the trees fore and aft, even mowed what passes for a lawn in Dog Country. It was 75 degrees and sunnier than the smile on the face of someone who hasn’t been paying attention.
Naturally, tomorrow the temps will drop like an elevator full of fat bastards and there’s rain, snow, and rain mixed with snow in the forecast.
Whatever. I don’t care. Our Canadian red cherry is showing some blossoms, and I had a wonderful ride today, just goofing around in Palmer Park, trying to stay out of the wind. I was on the Voodoo Nakisi drop-bar 29er and rode like I knew what I was doing for a change, kinda sorta, even cleaning a couple rocky bits that have been setting me afoot. Plus I stumbled across an entire gym class of young folks riding mountain bikes at the behest of their teacher, which as an industry observer I call good news.
One, on a loaner bike, was having trouble with parts of the Grandview Overlook trail and just a tiny bit lost. “It gets easier,” I promised, lying shamelessly through an encouraging smile, and showed her the way to the paved road that leads to the overlook parking lot.
I took a shortcut and advised teach’ that one of his students once was lost, but now was found, and then got the hell out of there while things were still going good. I’m not greedy, and I’d already had more than my share of good news.
• Late update: I capped the day off with a simple new recipe, ale-braised sausages with bell peppers, from Williams-Sonoma. I dicked around with it a bit, having neither apple cider (I used organic cranberry-pomegranate juice instead) nor fresh thyme (due to a persistent case of brain damage I have three or four jars of the dried stuff cluttering up the kitchen). And surprise, surprise, it turned out just fine. I used Deschutes Brewery’s Red Chair NW Pale Ale and Niman Ranch bratwurst, for anyone tracking my movements. The mashed spuds were your basic organic russets with chives, parsley, butter, heavy whipping cream, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
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A good ride and a good deed all in one day. A big attaboy earned!
Good on ya Parick! I sure wish my diet allowed for the items in your recipe as it sounds delicious. However since I am slowly becoming an Old Guy Who is No Longer Fat in Spring, I will pass for the time being.
Sounds like a good day on the bike and in the kitchen. In contrast, those of us flying out of Denver Airport yesterday on a little CRJ (Canada Regional Jet) were trying not to blow chow.
Spent the week in Oak Ridge, TN, for those wondering why the silence instead of constant prattle. We had a couple near misses from tornados on Wednesday, having to evacuate our meeting to the basement on one occasion after a doppler radar based alert (several funnels were apparently seen in Anderson CO that morning). Late Wed. night we had another alert. I wanted to see this one if it got close, so stepped out front of the hotel. Constant ( I mean constant) cloud to cloud lightning for a good hour or more so seeing the sky texture was quite easy. At one point, the wind really picked up and we had horizontal rain squalls from left to right for a few while. It got quiet for a minute or so, then we had horizontal squalls from right to left. Interesting. But no sudden trip to Oz for me that night. Given what I saw of The Donald on TV, perhaps being sucked out of this country would be an improvement.
But TN got off easy. Only about 33 or so confirmed dead so far.
K, those Canuck puddle-jumpers give me The Fear, especially when flying out of DIA to Bibleburg. We always called that 16-minute trip “The Vomit Comet,” for reasons I won’t discuss before breakfast.
Oak Ridge, eh? Herself’s mom lives there; she works for Oak Ridge Associated Universities. And her late dad used to be a nuke puke like you — joined the AEC in 1961, worked with the Technical Information Group in DeeCee and the Office of Scientific and Technical Information in Oak Ridge. He “retired” in ’82 and worked as a consulting nuclear licensing engineer for some time.
Glad to hear you didn’t get swept off to Oz. Who knows what management is like there now? Maybe the Wicked Witches Party has made a comeback there as it has here and is running the Emerald City into the ground.
Oak Ridge and Knoxville look like lovely places to live. All this green living matter everywhere in sight and strange liquid droplets coming down from the sky. Plus, up in the Appalachians, you get all that without living in a dead flat location such as Buffalo, where I was hatched.
“…a few minutes” was supposed to be changed to “a while”. Damn trying to edit in these little text boxes with 57 year old eyes.
Small world gentlemen! I have an uncle that calls Oak Ridge home for the warmer half of the year, and FL home for the colder half.
Glad you made it home safe Khal.