Natural Bridge

We spent our first day at Natural Bridge. Besides the bridge, they have an Indian village, a butterfly garden, a wax museum, and caverns. We saw everything with time to spare. It’s actually quite a pretty area. I didn’t realize it, but Route 11 runs on top of Natural Bridge. Drivers can’t tell when they’re driving over the bridge. In fact, I rode my bike over Natural Bridge on my recent bike hike and never realized it. This is quite intentional, because there is no safe place to pull over and gawk.

Lace Falls

On the other side of the bridge and at the end of the trail, there’s a small waterfall. It’s 113 steps back up to the top of the hill. The Indian village is between the bridge and the waterfall. I was impressed by how much the actors knew about life in an Indian village in the early 1700s.

Butterfly

I was even able to get a few decent pics of some butterflies. I was amazed I did as well as I did, considering I was using a phone camera.

Foam Henge

Danita went to the caverns by herself. They say it’s the deepest cavern in the eastern US. After all that we took some quiet time in our room. Then we went out to the Pink Cadillac Diner for dinner. On the way over, we stopped at … Foam Henge! If you visit at sunrise on the summer solstice, you will be able to see that foam henge is a little mis-aligned. They say the error will automatically correct itself in about 4,000 years.

Merlin Making Stone Henge

How was the original Stone Henge constructed? One alternative theory is that Merlin did it using magic, kind of like Mickey Mouse mopping the room with all those brooms hauling water. This statue of Merlin was modeled after a friend of the artist, with the help of a death mask. How wonderfully macabre. While this theory of the construction of stone henge is controversial, there’s no doubt about how foam henge was constructed — one strange artist and 4 or 5 Mexicans.

We came back at 9:00 to watch the light show at Natural Bridge. Unfortunately, the rain we had successfully dodged all day finally caught up with us. The show is a half hour long. We watched the first 20 minutes from good seats. When the rain got heavier, we moved to watch the rest of the show from directly under the bridge, where it was dry. It was a very nice light show, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the second day of my bike hike, riding up that mountain in heavy rain, thinking “This is a good challenge. I can do this. But maybe in the future I can arrange my life to spend less time in the rain.” It seems to be a goal I haven’t yet met.

Tomorrow we’ll enjoy a leisurely breakfast and head down to Reed Manor.

Note: There are no pictures this week. I am writing this on Monday, July 29.

Everybody asks me about how I feel after riding the BRP. But nobody asks how my fingers feel after all that blogging. My poor little fingertips are nearly numb! If you think I worked hard, my bike worked harder. I wore the brake pads down to a nub, for one thing. It’s in the shop and will be ready for me to pick up next Monday.

I don’t have a whole lot to say. I got home in time for a neighborhood pot luck dinner Sunday. Unfortunately, I missed the Steel Band and catered dinner party last week. (But Danita didn’t.) Since we are only home a few days and since there was “no food in the house”, I convinced Danita to take a cooking holiday. We’re having fun eating all our meals out.

I got a new gig through ReServe at Nick’s Place. This is a half-way house for young men suffering from addiction. They got a grant to upgrade their computers and want to know how best to spend it. We hashed out a plan. They plan to buy the stuff. It will only take me a couple of days to do the work once the stuff is in.

Wednesday, we’re leaving for Reed Manor (as Jul calls it) via Natural Bridge. We’ll spend Wednesday evening in Natural Bridge. We will arrive at Jul’s Thursday afternoon. Danita has offered to cook for everybody. Friday, we will watch Bryon and Elizabeth while the day care mom takes a vacation day. We’ll stay Saturday, and head home Sunday. This will let Danita attend a meeting Monday and let me keep a doctor’s appointment.

That’s it for now. There might be pics of B & E next time. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Saturday. There are no pictures this week.

The week got off to a shaky start when our FIOS service went down late Sunday. No Internet access. No TV. No telephone (other than cell phone service). On the first phone call to Verizon, Robo-voice suggested several times that I use the Internet to get help with my FIOS problems. The entire call was handled by Robo. At the end,  Robo tested our line and decided our unit was down (duh) and scheduled a service call for sometime Tuesday. So far, so good. I called back Monday afternoon to find out when the service folks would come. I got plenty of advice about using the internet to get help with my FIOS problems. When I finally got to a human, they told me I had to call back Tuesday morning. I called back Tuesday morning. More advice about using the Intenet. After I got to an agent and after she looked at my account, she *again* said I should use the Internet. That was a little too much for me. The Verizon truck arrived about 6:00 PM, along with two union techs. They replaced the unit, and the FIOS was back up. They were nice guys, but  Verizon’s costs have to be out of sight.

UMBC was closed Thursday and Friday for the Independence holiday. It gave both of us a feeling of having 3 Saturdays this week. I’m convinced, it’s something we should do at least 4 times a year. We had a very nice 4th. It was the first day in about two weeks with no rain. We went to downtown Columbia and watched a very cool fireworks show. We were planning to go to an outdoor concert on Friday. But the humidity was high and the rain was threatening. We decided to use a BOGO at Outback instead. Being air conditioned, that was much more comfortable.

Saturday Danita and Bud visited a condo for Bud. Bud was favorably impressed. I picked up Mark and the three of us enjoyed a home cooked dinner. Then Danita and I watched Gene Hackman and Will Smith in the old movie “Enemy of the State”. This was my 3rd time watching the movie. I think it’s highly entertaining. But what’s interesting these days is that Snowden’s recent revelations show that the government actually has almost everything shown in the movie. (The only thing I found surprising about Snowden’s revelations and related hoopla is that the NSA claims not to have the contents of everybody’s phone calls.)

Saturday the three of us went to Bob Evans for breakfast (another BOGO), followed by an early showing of “The Lone Ranger”. I actually assigned Mark the homework of watching an old Lone Ranger TV show, so he would understand why this movie is so incredibly funny. I would place this movie right up against “Cowboys and Aliens”, except that it turned out to be a lot less funny than I thought it would be. I wouldn’t recommend seeing it.

After the movie, we dropped Mark of at Hopkins and went to a retirement party for Bruce Rickter. He and Peggy dropped out of our Marriage Encounter Circle, but invited us all to the retirement party.

Tomorrow we have an ice cream social followed by an outdoor movie. Next week will be final preparations for my second bike tour. You should expect to receive an Email with a URL for my blog on Wednesday or Thursday.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.