Silhouettes -- Theme Day

I happen to have a few of these -- apparently I was just waiting for this theme to pop up.

Here's a link to the list of participants in theme day photo blogging.

Doomed

Sunrise was 7:37 this morning, sunset at 7:32 pm, less than 12 hours apart.  The sun is gone more than it is here, every day for the next 6 months or so.  According to my younger brother GZ's recent blog post, we are thus doomed.  Doomed, like turkeys to a Thanksgiving platter? 

Or doomed to ride among sassafras trees turning red and gold and yellow?

On country roads where the only company is the unexpected appearance of horses grazing.

And finding time for some limited social interactions with other bikers met along the way. Everyone seems to be in a pretty good mood this time of year.

All of which beats being doomed to power walking (it's good for the bones, don't you know) three times a week. ****Sigh**** I love being a biker this time of year.

A New Season

Yesterday was windy. 30+ mph wind gusts, too windy to ride. It wasn't too windy for our power walk at 7:30 am, though. The winds eased overnight, and I took Ruby out for a while this afternoon -- though I want to say that this power walking stuff is having a negative effect on my biking. It is clearly a different set of muscles, but it eats up available energy, or something. And adds a new dimension to that "accumulating fatigue" thing.

Today's ride took me north, then east, then finally south along Lake Macatawa.  It was as nice as day as we get this time of year.  Fall rides -- I love riding through the woods at this time of year.

I noticed some activity at Tunnel Park on Saturday's ride, but didn't have my camera with me. The hill has been shut down, and it looks like more than just the regular maintenance program is going on. The sand on the hill has been replenished -- it was sorely in need of it -- and there is some new playground equipment going in at the bottom.

I'm glad our visitors were here before they started this project. Good timing.

New Tables

I took my camera with me on my bike ride today, and this was all I got. New tables at the PSPS. (The old ones were green.)

Long sleeves, tights, full fingered gloves. Breezy, but a nice ride.

Exodus

It always takes a day or two to get back into my normal routines after the entire village leaves here. Yesterday was a pretty nice day, but with warnings that it would be the last day of summer like weather for quite a while. I took full advantage of it -- and turned it into both a walk day and a ride day.

The rain arrived around sunset yesterday, and has lingered through all of today. We've had a few breaks when it looked like it was going to clear up, including one this morning that produced this full rainbow out over the lake. The dry slots haven't lasted long enough for the pavement to dry off enough to ride, though I did squeeze in a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon. Suddenly it's jeans and jacket weather.

Winding Down

We had a full house last night, with OSLO and the COTU as overnight guests. It was good to have them here one more time before "the family" departs.

Today was a little more laid back than some this week -- except for supper at El Rancho, none of our visitors from the west left the mountain, at least not by the road. 

It was a quiet day, but a good one. Winding down.

Run

OSLO running down the dune video.

MVI 0069 from Santini60 on Vimeo.

3,000 Miles Year to Date

It took longer to get there than I expected it to -- lots of reasons, mostly boring ones. It could have happened yesterday when I was biking with Adam, but I didn't have quite enough time to get in a ride of the correct length before I needed to be home to greet my Grandaughter, who was visiting us after school.

Today looked iffy, at best.  The old clothes dryer gave up the ghost, and the part required to fix it cost about 2/3 of what a new machine would cost.  So we opted for the new machine, which arrived today.  Requiring that someone sit around the house until the delivery people arrived.  Miraculously, that was at the front end of the 4 hour time frame that we were required to hold open for them.  So while Unky Herb and TT smacked some tennis balls, and PW read on the deck, I rode out and finished off the required miles.  My year to date total miles now stand at 3,002 and change.  For the last two years I've finished December with less than 3,000 miles, the only two years that has happened since I started keeping good records in 2002.  I'm not quite ready to give back that many miles to old man time, just yet.  This doesn't mean I'm done riding for the year (of course), but it does make me feel good to check off that particular number.  I took the photo of Ruby at the approximate location where the 3,000th mile occured.

After supper tonight (turkey burgers, brown rice, salad, green beans with mushrooms and oriental eggplant) the four of us tracked down the source of the smell of brine currently hovering over Holland -- the Heinz pickle factory.  It's not a very photogenic building, though the big green pickle on the wall on the back side facing Lake Mac is at least interesting.  I preferred the photo of Unky Herb photographing a flower bed at Kollen Park with the restaurant Boatwerks in the background.  It was -- perhaps -- the last day of summer like weather here for the season, and it was a really nice one.

New Arrivals

The weekend featured more arrivals from the west. There were some travel stories, but those are theirs to tell. OSLO and the COTU were here to greet them, and another walk to Tunnel Park broke out early on. (Supper featured fish and squash.)

I had promised PW a view from a bridge, so after supper tonight (PW's famous chicken and dumplings) we trucked on over to the state park where we walked the pier and explored the new boardwalk along the entrance to Lake Mac.  After some agreeable discussion, it was decided that the boardwalk qualified as a pedestrian bridge.  I will have to step up my game tomorrow, though -- and find a bigger bridge.

In case anyone thinks that the chicken and dumplings will become a new tradition, it should be noted that in PW's family it is strictly used for medicinal purposes.  JB is still recovering from a rather severe case of bronchitis, so he was our designated sick person.  (Unky Herb made a tasty salad, and TT fixed his equally tasty zucchini dish.) 

Visitor from the West

He came bearing gifts. Chocolate and cream and custard filled pastries, for openers.  All fresh and yummy.

We had the traditional spaghetti supper tonight, with what is certainly one of the best salads I've ever eaten.  

We all took a walk on the beach before sunset, to Tunnel Park, as you might expect. I got as far as the top of the dune, the other four did the traditional run down the dune, with just one person opting to run back up it.

Labor Day

For all of my teaching career, I had to work on Labor Day. It is an odd quirk of Hope College that classes are always held that day. Now that I'm retired, and Lynne isn't teaching this semester, we decided to do something memorable to mark the day.

The morning news inspired us to do a bridge ride. Michigan has celebrated Labor Day for the last 55 years with a bridge walk. The official walk is across the Mackinac Bridge, a 5 mile span that links the upper and lower peninsulas at the point where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron.

We're a long way from that bridge, but for the last 5 years the small town of Zeeland, just down the road from here, has had a bridge walk following their annual Labor Day Truck Parade. It's a 29 yard bridge, and they've set up a water stop mid bridge, a stretching station at the end, and coffee and pastry tables for fueling and refueling.  Both events made the local news this morning.  And sparked an idea which may (or may not) become a Labor Day tradition. We headed out about 8:30 this morning, looking for bridges to "tag."

We defined a bridge as any structure with rails, over water, suitable for travel by foot, bike or car. We rode a dozen miles and tagged 5 bridges -- though some of them did not actually have water flowing under them at this point.  It's been a dry summer.  We got home in plenty of time for more traditional festivities with our families -- including grilled pork loin for supper and sufficient extra plates at the table to make it feel like a holiday.  School starts up again tomorrow for the younger generation, but we've gotten a lot of mileage out of summer this year.