I am writing this on Sunday, August 18. There are no pics this week.

This week I read an article about the moose in New Hampshire. It seems the winters aren’t cold enough to kill off the ticks. This leaves a lot of hungry ticks in the summer time. Ticks like to feed off the moose, leaving the moose emaciated. According to the article, moose in Maine aren’t affected because the winters are still cold enough. This very same week, we had several days of delightfully cool and dry weather. Lows were near 50 at night. Riding early in the morning required a jacket. In the middle of August. Amazing. Very nice, but amazing.

Speaking of riding, I had the entire day to myself Friday, so I took an all-day bike ride. I haven’t ridden very much since I got back from the BRP trip. This was partly due to some rainy weather and partly due to other commitments. I decided that if I didn’t do my old training ride soon, I would lose the ability to do it, and have to work back up to it again. I completed the ride. It was hard, I was tired, it felt great. The best part of the ride was the worst part of the road. The entire route is excellent biking except for the last mile or so in Howard county. That stretch has very bumpy pavement, a steep down-hill section, and heavy morning commuter traffic early in the day. The bottom of the hill has very rough railroad tracks, followed by a narrow bridge and an additional short section of road until I go one way and most of the traffic goes another. The pavement is so bad I am forced to ride slowly down the hill. It isn’t as bad as I make it sound, because the road is so bad that many drivers go slower than me down that hill. Friday, a road construction project had sprouted up on that section of road. The pavement on my side was beautifully smooth. The other side was finishing up. And the rail road tracks were very nicely smoothed out. Thank you, Howard County. You have moved the worst part of the ride to Carroll County!

I spent three days at Nick’s place. When I worked for CASA, I developed a shortcut for upgrading Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro. It worked great and saved a lot of time. Unfortunately, my little shortcut did now work when converting Windows 7, 32-bit to Windows 8 Pro, 64-bit. As a result, I didn’t bring everything I needed when I came on Monday. It took half a day to fix that. Oh, well, that’s why I build flexible schedules. I should finish most of the work at Nick’s Place this week. I’m also working on a project to connect the ReStores to the central office for Habitat.The project is approved, but the company that does computer support for Habitat added a new requirement that adds $1000 to the cost of the project. This is a lot of money to Habitat. We’ll see what they decide.

Wednesday we had the “August Party” at Ed’s place. Ed said it was easier if he didn’t have to put everybody in a car to come to our place. That is eminently understandable. We had plenty of people there. Bud came up from Potomac, driven by Danita’s brother Rick, who was visiting from Texas. Joe was also there. There were hamburgers, potato salad, chips, and sweets a plenty.

Our other big party this week was Bill Bauman’s 70th birthday celebration. It was a typical Bauman party. Lots of people. Lots of conversation. Lots of “BJ’s” food. We had a good time.

We have launched a James Bond marathon. It’s fun watching movies from an earlier era. We’re watching them in sequence so we can see how the movies developed. The free 007 movies I found on Amazon are available only through the end of August. The timing is perfect. It ends when we leave on vacation, and corresponds to TV’s summer doldrums. But it leaves us with a mad dash to watch 20 movies in less than a month — plus attend all the parties, classes, dinners out, etc. Life is hard, sometimes.

Danita’s doing a cooking countdown to our Alaska / Denali vacation.  Between now and when we leave on September 1, she will be at the university retreat two days, we have a SOCA party, and we have an evening at the Aquarium. That means there are a maximum of 10 dinners at home before vacation.

I don’t often write about politics, but it’s hard to ignore how our president, the NSA, and other agencies have worked at hiding the scope of their data collection from the public. (And that’s being very generous to our government.) Those who are “in the business” were not surprised by recent revelations, but this knowledge gained relevance when it was finally proved. I personally think there are more activities that have not yet been revealed. Certainly, other countries are doing as much as they think they can get away with along these lines. And none of this begins to touch on the “cyber-war” activities that the US and other governments are conducting. I read a blog that suggested that Eisenhower’s farewell address is particularly applicable to us today. It’s short. You can read it and decide for yourself by visiting http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html. I found a couple of places where one can watch the original TV broadcast. Unfortunately, every site I could find ruined the speech by breaking it up with commentary.

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

Note: there are no pictures this week. I am writing this on Sunday, August 11.

There isn’t much that could compare to all the excitement of the last few weeks. It’s good to have things calm down a little bit.

Our neighbors watch their 2-year old grandson. For some reason, they are very concerned that I will hear noises from their house. (They aren’t concerned that Danita will hear noises. She goes to work!) I keep on assuring them that I don’t hear a thing, and that if I did it wouldn’t bother me at all, so long as I don’t have to change the diaper. I saw them outside Monday. They had traded the 2-year old for a 4- and 6-year old last week. They immediately asked if I heard noises. I told them yes, I heard a lot of noise last week, but from my grand kids, not theirs.

We’ve had a lot of rain this week. In keeping with my new philosophy of making sure I’m inside when it rains, I haven’t done much bike riding. I read a very interesting book. If you like spy fiction but find it unbelievable, you will find the truth much more unbelievable. Never the less, everything in “Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal” by Ben Macintyre is absolutely true. It’s about a British rogue who ended up working as a double-spy for MI-5 during WW II. I had read some of the story of Britain’s war-time spy network, but I had never come across this story before. Perhaps the most unbelievable part — the spy was run by MI-5 (internal intelligence), when by rights he should have been by MI-6 (foreign intelligence). It was a fascinating read but I still don’t understand those British intelligence departments. What ever happened to MI-1 through MI-4, anyway?

I did some work for Habitat this week. They were still having intermittent trouble with their VPN phones at one of their ReStores. (VPN phones use the internet instead of phone lines). I kept on swapping things around, trying to isolate the problem. Finally I did a swap that made everything stop working. That pretty much proved the problem was with the internet connection. I patched things up to work somewhat and they called the provider. With a “hard failure”, the provider quickly found and fixed the problem. Now we’re just waiting to make sure the issue doesn’t occur again.

My other gig is with Nick’s Place. They purchased everything they need to upgrade their computers. I’ll be going down Monday to set up the first 3 computers, then again Tuesday to do a little training. There will be several more visits after that.

Thursday was Danita’s birthday. We went out to one of our favorite restaurants, Baldwin Station. I had a perfect steak: better than Chris – Ruth’s at half their price. Unfortunately, Danita didn’t have as good a time. Fortunately, we had a neighborhood crab feast Saturday evening. That went quite well. They kept on bringing crabs to our table, and we kept on eating them. I only had one crab, but there was plenty of other great food available. We were sitting on the deck. The weather was perfect. We stayed and chatted until the mosquitoes were out in force.

On the medical front, I had a 24-hour EEG. I went in at 2 PM Friday. They glued wires to my head, hooked them up to a small box, and gave me strict instructions to act like a slug until late Saturday. I was just about all hooked up when a mother stopped at the checkout window across the hallway with her 5-year old daughter. The poor girl saw me and was all freaked out. I tried to make her feel a little more comfortable. Unfortunately, her mother was making things worse by hissing “don’t stare” under her breath. As if that would make a 5-year old stop staring. I took the hint and went straight home, calling Danita to ask her to pick up some milk. I spent most of the day Saturday watching old James Bond movies, streamed from Amazon for free, while Danita was down at her Dad’s. And I spent *all* of the day in our house behind closed and locked doors. Getting the wires off my head was almost like a spy operation. I had to go to the locked medical building at 4 and call the EEG tech on his cell phone, so he would know to come down and let me in. Fortunately everything worked out in a timely manner, and I had plenty of time to shower before the crab feast. It turned out to be more like a 48-hour test. I’m still finding buggers in my hair. I can’t imagine what people with long hair do.

Today we had a special breakfast. We had a loyalty reward for a free coffee at Panera — and Danita got a bonus of a free pastry for her birthday. So we went to Panera after church and had the cheapest breakfast ever.

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

Elizabeth

I’m writing this on Sunday,

We had fun visiting at Reed Manor. Here’s a pic of Elizabeth clowning around in the living room Thursday.

Bryon

And here’s Bryon clowning around in the men’s room at the library Friday. (He liked the color of the stall walls.) They had an “Arthur” exhibit. We played around there for a while, then the library had a science hour. They had songs and stories. Then they sifted through ocean dirt to find small shells, bits of coral and fossilized poop. The best time was lunch. We went to Chick Fil A, which was OK. The good part was the play room afterwards. It got really good when a day care mom brought several kids and everybody started running around as screaming.

Carolina Raptor Center

Saturday we included Jul and went to a nature center that houses the Carolina Raptor Center. The kids weren’t very interested in the birds. But they managed to have a good time running around and looking at everything except the birds.

The drive home was easier than normal, because it was Sunday. When taking I-81, the routing programs always suggest taking I-66 East to the DC beltway and around to I-95. Normally, this is a very bad idea and we take some back roads up to Frederick. It can take hours to move a few miles in the DC area. But since it was Sunday, we took the suggested route and got home a few minutes early.

We’re going to stay home the rest of the month. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

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.

I am writing this on Sunday.

Joe and Scottie — Married 1 month

The Sochurek wedding reception we went to last Sunday was nice. They had hors d’oeuvres, with a focus on Czech food. But parking was quite a drag. The reception was at Towson University. The closest parking garage and lot were both closed due to construction. I found a spot on the street right away, but Mike and Rose pulled up behind us and were at wit’s end. They had been looking for a spot for the last half hour. So I gave them my spot and took one across the street. It was a heck of a hill from the street to the building. Mike isn’t very mobile these days. After the reception, I pulled the car down to the building to give them a ride up the hill.

Tony & Donna – Married 40 years

There are times when it costs more to turn the AC (air conditioning) off than it costs to run it. This was quite a warm week — cool evenings, high 80s in the afternoons, then T-storms late in the day to cool things off again. Overnight lows were in the low 70s, making sleeping fine. The house was fine in the morning. Danita went to work and I went on a bike ride. But when we got home in the afternoon, we started thinking about how a restaurant has its air conditioning on. It wouldn’t be so warm and sticky. We could eat without turning the oven on, and it would feel so good. We finally ate at home Wednesday. The temperature got up in the 90s and I turned the AC on. But we went out Thursday because we had a great BOGO coupon that would expire soon. The highs went back down to the mid-80’s Saturday, so the AC went back off. It wasn’t as humid and the house was actually comfortable with all the fans on. But we went out to dinner anyway — this time a picnic concert in Catonsville. It was our only activity this weekend. The weather was wonderful, but the band was only so-so. The AC is back on today. It isn’t all that hot out, but it is very muggy. We just finished having quite a shower.

The one-year old stole the show

I visited Top Banana Wednesday. I saw a lot to like. It’s a small organization. Jean, the executive director, is one of two full-time employees. They have two more part-time office employees. A ReServe person does their marketing. They have a few truck drivers that work two days a week, and a raft of part time or volunteer folks who pack food in preparation for delivery, stock shelves, etc. All of this was more or less what I expected. But I was quite surprised with their computer setup. It is absolutely first-rate. It turns out that advantages can be had when the executive director’s two sons are in IT. Their problems are with a database program, but the program is so well secured that I couldn’t get inside it. Jean’s objective was to meet me. Having passed her interview with flying colors, she wants me to come back and meet her son, plus the part-timer who is the informal office IT expert. Jean wanted more of a commitment from me from the first visit, but one thing I know is that the database is not working. I don’t feel comfortable committing until I can look inside and see how much of a mess things are.

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

Note: There are no pictures this week.

I am writing this post on Sunday, June 23, 2013. My web service is so slow at sending the Emails that I schedule for “immediate” delivery that I felt I should include the year, just to make sure there’s no confusion. This has to be the only Email service that is slower than a newspaper. ;-(

This was a pretty busy week. Lots of bike riding. Lots of cleaning. Lots of parties. Lots of employment news.

I must admit, the bike riding is becoming a little tedious. The bottom line is, I think I’m ready to ride the Blue Ridge now. Of course, another couple of weeks of training won’t hurt, unless I hurt myself training. I didn’t want to be out over the July 4 holiday because there would be more people out over the 4th — more traffic, more competition for rooms, etc. I originally targeted to be done by the 4th. But Don said he wanted to come along, and he had other plans that delayed us until after the 4th. Now that the trip is delayed, he’s talking about how he’s not in shape for this and he might not have time to get into shape. What a mess. Whatever happens is going to happen. I’ll just have to wait a couple of weeks more.

We had so many party opportunities this week that we couldn’t do them all. Jan, one of the people Danita works with, had a party for the office staff at his house yesterday. Jan’s party conflicted with a neighborhood party. But this was the 4th or 5th time Jan had tried to hold this party. He started last summer. Every time he set a date, almost nobody was available to attend. Even yesterday, two of the office staff couldn’t attend. The party was so small we felt obligated. But it was a very nice time. Danita works with some nice people. Today we will be attending a wedding reception for the Sochurek’s children. The wedding already took place. We will be attending the Baltimore reception.

I talked about the floor cleaning last week. Most of everything came out grand, but the bathroom floors near the toilets came out less than perfect. So far, the tile and grout have been steam cleaned twice. They have been cleaned with super-duper cleaning solution. They have been cleaned with vinegar and baking soda. They have been cleaned with bleach. They are certainly cleaner now than they were when I started. And they are still short of perfection. At this point, if you have any tips for cleaning tile grout, please keep your tips to yourself. I decided my two choices were to pull the toilets up and re-grout, or declare the job done and get the grout sealed. I’m declaring the job done.

CASA called me back to take care of a problem. In an Email exchange, they agreed I had already solved this problem once, but they asked me to fix in one more time. I did that Wednesday morning. Since the job expires at the end of June, that pretty much closes the chapter on CASA and leaves me unemployed. Then GOC got interested in getting some help. I thought I might become un-unemployed. After the meeting last Friday and a follow-up Email Monday, there has been no response from them, leaving me un-un-unemployed. But Friday, I got a call from an organization called “Top Bananna”. This organization is in the DC area and delivers groceries to elderly that can’t get out. They have problems with their database. I’m driving down Friday to see if I think I can help. I’ll probably leave their office un-un-un-unemployed. It’s an hour drive,  but I will be able to do most of the work from home. Their executive director told me they receive $3,000 in groceries a week. I figure this limits them to no more than 100 clients. She also said she would probably see me & let me in when I walked up to their front door, so I figure they don’t exactly have an office full of staff. The $15 / hour stipend they pay to ReServe is probably a strain on their budget. This should be an interesting experience, if nothing else.

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

Note: There are no pictures this week.

Whew! The craziness started Wednesday. We had carpet cleaners coming in. We’ve never had wall-to-wall carpet before. It turns out that no matter how much you vacuum, and even if you don’t have munchkins running around, after a while the carpet just gets dirty.  While we had them in, we also had them clean the bathroom tile floors professionally. Two young men showed up at the appointed time and did a wonderful job cleaning the carpet. Unfortunately, the tile floor didn’t turn out quite as well as the carpet, which is why a supervisor is visiting tomorrow morning (Monday). They have been very friendly about the tile floors so far. I think things will end up turning out fine. When the cleaners were done, it the weather outside was beautiful. So I got a nice little ride in and as well as getting the carpet cleaned.

The forecast Thursday morning said the morning would  be dry, followed by rain in the afternoon. I took a bike ride in the morning. We had a shower. Then we had a heavy shower. When that turned into a small T-storm, I headed for shelter. An abandoned factory had a large porch with a roof. This was a huge, rambling factory. The original main building was built with lots of cement and steel, so the structure was sound. But the roof had holes, there was broken glass on the floor, and graffiti on the walls everywhere. I felt like I was in a scene of a grade-B mystery story — you know, lightening, thunder, lots of rain, and surroundings that were in general just plain old spooky.

Friday was supposed to be clear in the morning and rainy in the afternoon, with a severe storm in the evening. The only problem with the forecast was, if you actually looked outside, it was already raining. It didn’t make any difference, because I had a meeting with GOC (my old employer). My old boss quit. They had nobody in the IT department. But they have to do some IT work. They called me up and asked if I was interested in contract work. After I said yes, I found out that they had connected a lot of dots. They were offering me a $10/hour position through ReServe. I object to that. I got the opportunity because of my previous job there and my knowledge of what they need. I turned down the ReServe offer, but attended the meeting anyway. We’ll see if they are willing to hire me. But the State of Maryland is not a charity organization, and trying to get me to do the work through ReServe was sneaky, and I’m not doing that. I suspect nothing will come of this. Anyway, when I got home, the weather was beautiful and I had quite a nice little ride in the afternoon. Plus I got to watch a short but intense T-storm in the evening.

Friday evening was a neighborhood “Chill & Grill”. Danita made an excellent desert, which completely disappeared. (A lot of residents don’t eat desert, so it’s unusual for a desert to disappear.)

Saturday we had perfect weather and I took my 65-mile training ride around Liberty Reservoir. I did it in 7:05 — not bad for an old man considering all the hills on this route. It was nice  because I used to have to detour around some road construction. But the construction is just about done and I was able to take the regular route and stop for a snowball on the way home. When got home, Danita offered to make a picnic dinner and we went up to Catonsville for an outdoor concert.

Today (Sunday) was the very last BSO concert. This was a free bonus concert. They had a special edition of the movie “West Side Story” which had the music removed from the sound track. The symphony played the music while we watched the movie. It was kind of like symphony karaoke. I was amazed at how well the symphony stayed in perfect synch with the movie. Or maybe they were bow-synching (like singers sometimes lip-synch when performing on an outdoor TV show).

Just in case you haven’t heard, my brother Rick moved. He is released from the nursing home and got an apartment. He is now living independently.

He doesn’t have Internet service yet, but hopes to get it soon.

That’s a lot of news for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Suzanne and Margo

Margo works for Danita at UMBC. Margo and Suzanne have been together for over 15 years. This year, MD liberalized their marriage laws. Margo and Suzanne got married today (Saturday). it was a very nice wedding. The ceremony was outdoors in brilliant sunshine. It was followed by a very nice reception at a building on the grounds. One advantage of getting married after being together for so long is that the principals can be themselves and have fun. Because I am married to Danita, I got to sit at the “power table” with Ray Hoff (who used to be the director of the research group), and Jan (who is currently the director of the smaller of the two groups Danita runs).

Painted Shoes – Birds that Mate for Life

If it had rained, the ceremony would have been in the barn. Then I would have been able to use my line about how gentlemen used to wear a tie when going to church and overalls when going to the barn. But it was sunny, the ceremony was outdoors, and I can’t use that line. The wedding had a lot of personal and hand made touches. The ladies painted their shoes. Suzanne’s theme was birds that mate for life. Margo’s theme was flowers, combined with the tree of life.

Our week was bookend-ed with rain. In between, we had great weather (as we did today), and I rode my bike. To do something a little different, I drove down to Northern Virginia. Most of Northern Virginia is what I call “Suburban Desert”. There’s not much reason to go there. But when I did the MS Cure ride two years ago, I discovered there is a section west of Dulles Airport that is beautiful country — farms, fields, and gently rolling hills; with the Blue Ridge Mountains occasionally defining the horizon. The ride was a victim of it’s own success. There were too many  bikers on two few roads. They don’t do that ride any more. I don’t have the routes I rode two years ago. But I found a promising route on the Internet. Wednesday, I decided to go down and try out the ride. Google said it takes an hour to drive there. Allowing 90 minutes with traffic and 7 hours for the ride, I should beat Danita home.

The ride was less than totally successful. The “best” route driving down took the Dulles Airport toll road. I drove through the toll booth and noticed they were charging my E-Z Pass $1.75. I judged that was a fair fare. Virginia got the drop on me, though. A few miles before I was to exit, I went through a second tool booth — $5.10. By the time I saw the sign, there was no option but to pay the toll. That was an outrages rip-off. Going home, I drove around the other side of Dulles Airport and paid no tolls. The second half of the bike ride was all Suburban Desert. It was simply miles I had to do to get back to the car. Not knowing the roads in the area, I decided to follow the plan and not try to find a shortcut. Finally, the drive back was a much slower than the drive down. It took 3 hours to do my 1-hour drive. I should have known.

But the first part of the ride was perfect. Perfect weather. Perfect country. Perfect roads. I started out going past a new wealthy area. These houses were so large, the 4-bay garages didn’t look at all out of place. I never got close to one of the houses, but it certainly looked like they were built with real stone. It also looked like the lots were about 10 acres. These people are not pretenders to wealth. Then I went through an upper class neighborhood. The “better” houses still had 4-bay garages, but the stone was fake, and houses were separated by 50 or 100 feet. It seemed to be an open-minded neighborhood. They allowed people in even if they could only afford a 3-bay garage. Sidewalks were everywhere and flowers were plentiful. After that, it was 35 miles of gorgeous country.

Antioch Baptist Church

I rode by Antioch Baptist Church. I didn’t take notes from the historical placard, and I couldn’t find the history on the Internet. But from memory, the church was founded “way back” in a log cabin (which is still standing). Then they built a stone building, but it was so poorly built it fell down from its own weight. (Maybe the placard didn’t use these exact words.) The building you see here is their third. The church was closed due to lack of members, but it opened up again in the early 1990s, and is active today. I don’t understand what it is that makes the past this important to some people.

Another placard noted the importance of the general area. Some Yankee soldiers, who had been soundly whooped by Johnny Reb, snuck out through this area to avoid capture. Also several Confederate generals bravely marched through the area, including J. E. B. Stuart, who started his “controversial” ride to Gettysburg here. I think this last point is funny, because most people would say that Stuart’s ride to Gettysburg was “disastrous”. The cavalry’s main job was to scout for the enemy. But J. E. B. got sidetracked and went up an adjacent valley while Lee was marching up the Shenandoah Valley. Lee knew he couldn’t win the war in a military sense. His objective was to win a major battle in the North’s territory and convince a dispirited enemy to give up. If J. E. B. had done his job, Lee might have been able to control the ground of that engagement. He might have had the high ground, instead of giving that advantage to the Union, and the US might be a very different country today. Only a Virginia historian could call that “controversial”.

Where do you think all these stones came from? I’ll bet they weren’t imported from Italy.

There were miles and miles of stone fences. It seemed to me that in places they built stone fences not because they needed the fence as much as they needed some place to put the stones. The fences were in excellent condition. I couldn’t even conceive of how much work it was to clear these stones, move them to where a fence was needed, and build the fence. There were incredible examples of extraordinary stone work. Unfortunately, I was having so much fun riding, looking, and thinking that I didn’t take pictures until near the end of the first half of the ride. The next picture shows an example of building a stone fence right into a tree. It is far from the best example of fancy stone work. Besides trees, I also saw incredible stone work around ditches, gulleys, and such.

Is a tree in the way of that stone fence? Just build the fence into the tree.

Long stretches of the ride had undisturbed woods on both sides of the road. The Cicadas were at their peak. (This brood doesn’t live in our area. We’ll be getting our Cicadas in 2021. Or so they say.) I didn’t see very many of the insects. (They hadn’t started dying off yet — they were staying in the woods and doing whatever it is they do during their short season.) But I certainly heard them. At times they were so loud that I couldn’t hear whether a car was coming up from behind. After the ride, when I was driving around behind Dulles Airport, it was a different sensation. I was going faster and the wooded areas near where I was driving weren’t as large. I would hear no insect sounds, then the Cicadas would quickly get loud, then quickly get soft, fading out to nothing.

One of the few things we just don’t have in Columbia is good Greek food. Considering how many Greeks live in Baltimore and how easy it is to get great Greek food up there, I’m at a loss to explain how one can go to a “good” Greek restaurant in Columbia and find that all Gyros are made with beef (there being no lamb anywhere on the menu). Thursday, Danita and I decided to go up to Baltimore and eat at Ikaros. We didn’t know this was the first evening of the annual Greek festival. Fortunately for us, the end-of-the-week rain had started, turnout for the first night of the festival was light, and we were able to find a parking spot. We had a very nice meal with good Greek food.

We have only one more party this week. Our neighborhood is having its strawberry social tomorrow. Last year, they forgot the ice cream. That certainly put a bit of a damper on the evening for Danita and me. We have it on good authority that the ice cream was missed by many. The forecast for tomorrow includes a 90% probability of ice cream.

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