Ending the month

Ignoring the state of the world for a while, I took a bike ride.  The standard distance, the standard time.  10 rides this month -- that feels like a good enough number. 

Yes, it was jacket weather again.  The pink buff matches nothing.  The Grands visited for contact free Papa John's garage pizza this evening, and we walked the neighborhood and sat on the deck for a while after we ate.  Tomorrow I will open up a fresh page in my bike log and begin again.

A couple of pictures to share.

LH and I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday evening, just before sunset.  The association deck gets lots of visitors and it isn't possible to stay 6 feet away from people there, so we watched the sunset from this deck, where space was available.

It was too cloudy for anything spectacular, but who doesn't like a warm summer night?  Then this morning, about 8:40 or so, I got a text from LH wondering if I wanted to take another bike ride.  Her activity schedule in the summer usually involves pickleball two mornings a week and going to the gym with her significant other a few times.  So she has some exercise requirements to fill and she's been doing more biking.  She's been out a couple of times that I know of with her S.O. too.  The forecast for afternoon high was 90, which did happen, so bike riding had to happen early or not at all.  We were both curious about the state park, having read in local news media about limited parking due to sand drifted over the parking lot that hasn't been cleared this spring since no one's working at this point.  That turned out to be fake news, as the parking lot had been completely cleared.

The boardwalk and sidewalks have mostly been cleared, though the snow/sand fences are still up and the restrooms are closed.  There was a line of port-a-potties next to the restrooms, however.  Someone is going to have to explain that logic to me.  Anyway, it was a nice ride, the water is super high along the piers and into people's yards who live along Lake Mac.  I took a drive up to the cemetery this afternoon, my car thermometer read 89 when I stopped on my way back home to buy some flowers to plant in our flowerbeds here, perhaps tomorrow.  Mostly impatiens -- they do well in the shade.

Memorial Day Weekend, Carona Time

The first bike ride of the year with LH was yesterday, and it was a nice one.  Sunny, light winds and shady paths.  A bonus was that there were not as many people outside on the bike paths as we'd expected.  The boat noise today off the lake shouldn't have been a surprise, but it seemed excessive after the boat ban that kept all motorized craft off the water until just recently.  OSLO, the boy and the girl came by this afternoon to check on the elderly and since none of us had been down to the water recently, we opted for a walk on the beach from the middle access point near the park back south to the stairs nearest our place.

The fog had rolled in while we were socializing in the garage, but oddly enough it was much warmer on the sand than it was in the garage.  Microclimates, JB called it.

Mother and daughter checking out the seawall, the jetties and the sandbars, just north of our place.  Notice that OSLO has chosen to wade, Nikki has removed her jacket and is barefoot.  Can you tell where this is going?

TJ standing behind the seawall, in front of our place.  The weather station on the deck is just barely visible behind his head.  Lake levels are up 2 inches in the past week since the flooding that caused two dams to break in mid state.  The rivers flow to the lake.

She calls it her tri-kini.  50 degree water, I hear.  But it's a tradition to swim on Memorial Day.  They both dove in -- the boy 4 times by their count.   The girl declared the last dive to be refreshing.  I didn't get a review of the others.  They seemed quite pleased with themselves, and their mother and I were duly impressed.  Youth.

Supper was Hog Wild food eaten outside -- we spread out our lawn chairs on the lake side of the house -- and used the deck for extra space.  All in all it was a successful day, and we managed to maintain careful distancing and hygiene.  It was, as always, very good to see them.  They never fail to cheer me up.  The big race that usually takes place didn't, and I missed having that connection with other Indy fans in the family.  Still, some important stuff has survived Carona Time, at least so far.  Good enough.

Bowerman's

8 days without a bike ride in May is unusual, but a cold May isn't.  This isn't going to be much of a biking year, pretty much no matter what, so I've been walking a bit and am still distracting myself with constructing face masks for friends and family.  The Grands took a couple of them to their other grandmother this past weekend, for example.  Today it was both warm and dry -- so I filled my water bottle and took a bike ride.  Still riding for around an hour but today I ventured a little further inland and made my first stop at Bowerman's.  To be fair, today was the first day the store was open for business -- though donuts have been available through pre-order and drive up before this.  However that requires way more planning ahead than I am capable of at this point.

There are no benches outside and the playground area is taped off.  Face masks are required inside.  They were out of fresh donuts, so I bought a muffin --  the woman who came in as I was leaving bought a half dozen frozen blueberry donuts, and opened the package on her way to her car.  She handed one to the child in the back seat, then stuck one in her mouth before getting in her car.  They were still eating donuts when I left the parking lot.  I don't think I've ever eaten a frozen donut.

Kouw Park

I don't have much to say, but thought you might find these pictures interesting.  LH and I drove north to Kouw Park, a township park on Lakeshore at Van Buren, roughly 5.5 miles from here.  The beach and dune erosion is particularly bad along that area of the lake shore.

Woefully inadequate rip rap, in my opinion.  The seawall looks good, though.

No men were working that day.  (Yesterday, for accuracy.)

Days on end

Yesterday was the day I decided to retackle the taxes.  I had them nearly done in early April, but was okay with putting them aside when their due dates got moved to mid July.  The federal and state returns are now done, though I want to spend some time looking them over before I send anything off.  I planned to spend today pulling together our estimated tax liabilities, and made some headway -- still a lot of thought needed on those.  LH knocked on my kitchen window mid morning, saving me from myself.  It's stupid cold here again, so I donned my puffy coat and we took a long walk -- about 2.25 miles.  We saw Bambi and his mother, Tunnel Park and the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill, returning through the tennis court in Sunset Bluff.  After lunch I checked the weather station and it was 50 degrees on the deck, and decided on a bike ride.  That's a bit more exercise in a single day than I'm used to, but the outdoors beckoned and I succumbed.

Some trees and bushes have begun to flower -- it wasn't a great day for photography, but it was still a pretty nice ride.  Especially for a day when I hadn't planned to ride.  I had barely written my numbers down in my bike log when my phone rang, a call from the Prairie Princess!  It was wonderful to hear her voice, being as she's one of my favorite people on earth and all.  She was checking in (or checking up?) and passed along the news that her Mom had just had rotator cuff surgery on Friday, but was doing well.  We talked about the usual stuff and laughed a little -- priceless, really.  Taxes can wait.  At least for a while.

Solitary Ride

It's fortunate that I prefer to ride alone -- most of the riding I have done over the last 25 years has been by myself, and I'm quite comfortable with that.  I ride at my own pace, choose my own route, extend or shorten my route, all at my own whim.  It works for me.  Today is the first nice day we've had here in a while, and the bike paths were heavily used by people on foot -- making it easier to stay a distance away from walkers and runners by riding on the road.  Car traffic has picked up some since this all started, but it's still fairly light.  I planned to stop for a snack at Ransom Park and packed a half peanut butter sandwich and a dark chocolate Reese's Thin.

I chose the only picnic table in the sun, it's still not very warm here.  My weather station on the deck reads 51 degrees, and it's only 5 or 6 degrees warmer inland.  Which may explain why we still have no flowers on the flowering shrubs. 

I had the park all to myself -- the fact that it's closed may have had something to do with that.  And yes GZ, that is a new gate at the entrance to the parking lot.  Probably never figured they'd need a gate there.  It's mostly for show, since there's no fence between the bike path and the parking lot, and judging from the bicycle tire tracks around the gate, bikers have not been deterred from using the park.  I am pretty sure that it's the playground that they're trying to rope off, in any case.  In the end it was my longest ride of the year, by about 1 mile.

Bonus photo -- LH and I took a walk on the beach a few days ago.  In this photo she is approaching the property line of our property, heading south.