I am writing this on Saturday, 5/10. There are no pics this week.

Last week was booking along. I was putting the finishing touches on a computer upgrade for the last computer at Habitat. This computer was used for their register, so I was taking it easy, launching a set of downloads in the evening, rebooting to install the updates the following morning. Saturday, they called me mid-afternoon. The computer had stopped working. Is there any way I could have it working by Monday? Unfortunately, the disk drive was totally corrupted. I took it home, installed Windows from scratch, installed all updates, added Office, and delivered it to them Sunday afternoon. It turns out that Jimmie, their their in-house techie, is the store manager of the Columbia store, which is open on Sundays. The store is about 2 miles from my house. Jimmie installed their Point of Sale software and had the computer running Monday morning. I was glad we were successful, but it put a kind of a crip in the weekend.

This week I’ve been packing and riding, getting ready for the Finger Lakes trip. I’m leaving Wednesday. Woo-Hoo! I have a killer biking list. It’s in Excel. It has everything anybody could possibly want to take on a bike trip. There are columns for “Not this time”, “Need to Buy”, “Staged”, and “Packed”. I go down the list, one item at a time. Excel tracks for me the status of each item as it moves it’s way from the closet (or the store shelves) to the trunk of my car.  I’ve done my super-duper-training-ride 3 times in the last 2 weeks. I’m not in as good a shape as I was last year, but I won’t be riding as hard as I did last year. Driving up opens a large number of options. Riding the  bike from my driveway, the one-way commute is a good week. Driving drops that time to 5 hours. With a trunk, an empty back seat, an empty passenger seat, and the bike on a rack behind the car, I can carry an incredible amount of stuff. I’m bringing a full set of all-weather hiking gear, as well as biking stuff. The Finger Lakes area has dozens of fantastic water falls. There are a half-dozen state parks in the area with amazing hiking trails between 1 and 8 miles long.

I rented a cabin which comes with a bunk, a refrigerator, and an electric light bulb (complete with a switch). Unfortunately, we got rid of all the camping stuff when we moved, so there’s no Coleman camp stove or camp pots. That’s OK. The meals I made when I took the kids camping are far too much food for one old camper. I bought an electric grill and a cheap camp pot. I’m also bringing a one-cup coffee maker. I can put the pot on the grill to heat some stew, or I can grill some hamburgers, or fry an egg, or grill some carrots and onions. There’s also a good chance there will be firewood available, since it’s early in the season. So maybe I’ll be doing some hotdogs over the fire. I’m just 15 miles from Ithica, which has supermarkets and a terrific bagel shop. Staying at the cabin without a car would be a bummer. There’s no stores and just one restaurant nearby. It takes 3 hours to bike round trip to the nearest grocery store. But with a car, it will be a breeze.

In one week, I have plans to do 5 days of bike riding, and 4 days of hiking, and visit the Corning Glass factory while I’m at it. And of course it’s pretty easy to sit in the cabin and read if the weather is just absolutely nasty and I’ve run out of stores and museums to visit.

The Finger Lakes trip is pretty exciting, but there are a few other things going on. We had Circle last Sunday. There was a neighborhood party yesterday. We’re going to Spotlighters Theater to see a play this evening. I mentioned earlier that I got approval to repair my deck. the contract is signed, work is scheduled to start at the end of the month. Last week, with the weather getting better, several neighbors went out their back door and discovered their decks are in as bad a shape as mine, or even worse. It’s amazing how many people have very nice porches under their deck but don’t go out their back door. I think they went outside to look because the word got out that I’m doing something to my deck. They were shocked at how bad their decks are. They want the condo association to “do something”. They think a deck should last 50 years without any maintenance. They want all the owners to take pictures so they can collect them as evidence. What if everybody started repairing their decks in different ways? They are having a meeting Thursday evening. I’ll be in NY. And I wasn’t invited in any event. I asked my neighbor to let me know how it goes. I think the whole thing is highly amusing.

We’ve been thinking about being away from home for 2 weeks when we go to London in June. And we’ve been thinking of taking longer trips of some as-yet undefined nature in the coming years. We live in a nice neighborhood, but there have been several thefts. We don’t want to install an alarm, but we would like a little more peace of mind that our house is undisturbed. The neighbors are nice, but they have their own lives and take their own trips — sometimes without checking with us first. (Can you believe it?) Somebody mentioned that Samsung makes a good security camera, so I looked it up. I liked what I saw and bought one. It arrived, but I didn’t have several hours to install it, so I put it off. A couple of days later, I had an hour before dinner and decided to start doing whatever has to be done. 45 minutes later, the camera was fully installed and working. I was amazed how easy it was. I can see the camera picture on my computer or on my phone, from anywhere in the world. The camera has a wide-angle lens so it sees the entire main living area with just one camera. The picture has amazing detail. It has an infrared LED which lets the camera pick up a pretty good picture at night. I have it set up to detect motion. If it detects motion, it sends an Email to whoever I wish, complete with a picture of the house so we can see who is in it. It also posts the picture on Picassa. Samsung says they will soon have the ability to post a short video on Google Documents. This is certainly no alarm. It can’t call “911”. (Neither can I, if I am out of town — I have to call the non-emergency police number.) It is a pain to activate or disable the motion detection. None of this works if the power is off, or the internet service is down. But it does a lot, all with no monthly fees.

That was a lot of news for one fortnight. You might have noticed the list of amenities for my cabin in the Finger Lakes included some items that some people would take for granted. What I noticed is that “WiFi” is not on the list of amenities. I’ll do several posts from the Finger Lakes, but the area is quite rural. Several sections of road go 50 miles without a single Starbucks. So posting is likely to be quite irregular. But it will all get up, sooner or later. I’m not on a formal bike tour, so I’m not eligible to post on “Crazy Guy on a Bike”. Instead, I’ll be posting on this blog.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 4/27. There are a couple of pics, including one that is slightly blurry.

Black and White Party

I spent much of the week updating computers for Habitat for Humanity.There were plenty of surprises and unexpected happenings. But everything turned out reasonably well. If counting computers, I am well over half way done. But that includes two computers that took much more effort than the others, because they were older and running older software. I don’t wish to jinx myself, but I should be done with the project this week.

There are plenty of other things going on, of course. Our neighborhood had a “Black and White” party Saturday, with live entertainment and light food. The idea was to come dressed for a black tie event, but not everybody agreed. Dress of the attendees went everywhere from black tie to one man who wore a T-shirt printed to look like a tux and a formal shirt. Our president came dressed in all black with his white hanky hanging out of his back pocket. His theory was “Once you get the ladies looking at your butt, you’re half way home.” The picture is a little blurred. All I can say is that I didn’t take it.

Sherwood Gardens

Today was a super busy day. We started out with a BOGO breakfast at Mimi’s after Church. In riding around the area this week, I noticed the tulips seem to be out earlier than normal. So we visited Sherwood Gardens in Baltimore before going to a BSO concert. The weather was fabulous. As you might expect, we weren’t the only ones who decided to spend a Sunday afternoon at the park. There were more people there than we have ever seen before. However, we quickly found a good parking spot, and there was no trouble walking the grounds. The Azaleas weren’t out yet, but the tulips and flowering trees were fabulous.

Sherwood Gardens

Then it was off to the concert. The second half of the 1880s saw the introduction of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, Saint-Saëns’ “Organ” Symphony, Dvorák’s Eighth, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, and Mahler’s First (also called the “Titan Symphony”). Mahler was the highlighter for this concert, and I can’t help but feel we didn’t get the best of the litter. Still, it was a very enjoyable concert. The other piece, Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, is a delightful piece and was very well done. As to the Mahler, well, the BSO sounds good almost no matter what they are playing.

We ended the day with dinner at Petit Louis Bistro. This is a well-established French restaurant in Baltimore that recently opened a location in downtown Columbia. We had a very nice dinner without breaking the bank. We won’t be visiting frequently, but we’ll be back once in a while. It was a perfect capper for the day.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Monday, 4/21. There are several pics.

Taeo & Ryn

The big news this week was Easter. Ryn and Taeo came east. They visited with Jul for a day, then drove up to our place, arriving about dinner time Saturday. Mark joined us for dinner. Sunday, we went up to Ed & Lynne’s for the family dinner and Easter egg hunt. Monday Ryn and Taeo cooked breakfast. We went out to see the Grand Budapest Hotel (nice movie, but kind of quirky). They headed back after lunch. There was lots of very good and very special food. Everybody had a good time. The pictures are all from the Easter Egg hunt.

Pete & Rebecca

We had lots of other news this week. We got approval for the deck project Thursday. The contractor says he will probably start May 14th.

Danita, Lynne, & Toni’s Mom

I also reserved a cabin at Taughannock Falls State Park on Cayuga Lake for a week (May 14-21). This is in the Finger Lake area of New York, about 15 miles north of Ithaca. I’m going up alone. I’ll drive up with my bike and ride around the area. I plan to see plenty of water falls and ride around all the lakes. Cayuga Lake is the largest. It’s about 100 miles to ride around it. That’s more than I want to do in one day. One morning, I’ll drive the car half way around and ride back to my cabin. The next day, I’ll ride from my cabin back to the car. I’m still working out the details of the trip, but I have routes plotted around each lake, and I have an overnight parking spot approved by the local authorities.

Ed & Addi

All this bike riding means I have to be in shape. Towards that end, I did my first 100 KM (62 mile) ride last weekend. I was a little tired, but the ride went well. I would like to do a lot more riding in the next weeks, but I’m going to have to restrain myself somewhat because Habitat for Humanity approved the networking project. My task of the moment is to update all the ReStore computers to run Windows “Pro”. There are 14 computers, and most of them need some kind of update. The first store is done. I’ll be doing the biggest store this week.

Taeo, Ryn, Rebecca, Mark, Toni, Bud, Pete

Toni, Toni’s Dad, Ryn, Rebecca

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

I am writing this on Sunday, 4/12. There are a few pics.

Tranquility Point

1971 was sandwiched between the Kent State shooting and Watergate. (Raise your hand if you remember Al “I’m in charge” Haig.) It was the year the Pentagon Papers were publicly published; and the year that documents from the FBI office in Media, PA were stolen and made public. I just finished reading the book “The Burglary” by Betty Medsger. Her focus is on the team that stole the FBI documents. The FBI never caught the team. Medsger found all of the team members except one. She did detailed research and in-depth interviews. The result is a compelling story of how the illegal actives carried out by J Edgar Hoover’s FBI were made public. As Medsger points out near the end of the book, the secret government culture that developed around Vietnam and was finally outed in the early 70s was never effectively eliminated. And, of course, it came back in force after 9/11. I thought I knew the 60s because I was there. I was surprised by how much I had forgotten, and how much I had wrong. The book has some weak points. Parts of the book are tedious and preachy. She seems to think that the FBI’s efforts to find the team was a Keystone Cops episode. But my reading of the facts she presents indicates the FBI did a reasonable job, and used some breakthrough techniques to gather evidence. In spite of the book’s imperfections, reading the story of the burglary team was very interesting. It’s a compelling book, and one you should find interesting.

What if I could ride by here twice a week? Wait! I already do that!

It’s spring and the weather is great. I heard my first peepers and saw my first heron. I’m slowly building up my biking endurance. I’m pleased with my progress, which is pretty much keeping up with the additional daylight and improved weather.

We had a busy week. Wednesday was the meeting to review our application to fix the deck. We got approval from our condo and from SOCA. The next and last step is neighborhood approval (Long Reach). We should hear by Thursday. This was my first visit to the Long Reach office. They call the office “Stone House”. I thought, how quaint, they restored an old stone farmhouse to use for their offices. Wrong. There is no house; there is no stone. “Stone House” is in a brick office building behind a shopping center. This is Columbia, after all. But they do have a wood plaque on the wall with a couple of lines from an obscure poet that includes the words “Stone House”.

Lake Elkhorn Turtles

Friday was a SOCA party. Saturday was a walk around Elkhorn Lake and Seder dinner with circle. Danita is so organized. She cooked an excellent dinner for 9, with plenty of time for the afternoon hike. While we were walking, Danita stepped off the path, twisted her ankle, and half-fell a half dozen steps, almost into some brambles. Today she’s hobbling around with a sore right ankle and a sore left knee.

Today was breakfast at Rudy’s Grill. Rudy’s is a strange place. They have the best Gyros I’ve ever had, but they’re only available before 3. They are reputed to have a good breakfast, but they don’t open until 8. We’re usually seated, ordered, an drinking coffee by 8. But Palm Sunday is the longest mass of the year, so we took that opportunity to visit Rudy’s. We still waited 7 minutes in the parking lot. The breakfast was quite good and reasonably priced, but I don’t think we will visit often — at least until Danita retires and we can have Gyros before 3.

We’re looking forward to Easter festivities next week — including Ryn’s arrival Saturday. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I’m writing this on Sunday, 4/6. There are no pics.

It’s nice to start the week off with good news. Jul & Pat have a contract to buy a new home. The inspection is next week. They will move in June.

I’ve turned my attention to our trip to England. Ballet tickets go on sale Tuesday. While waiting, we’re polishing the details for our time in London and I bought two of the three train tickets we need. We are traveling from Stratford-Upon-Avon to Windermere (two big vacation spots) on a weekend day in the summer time. I expected this trip would be a little more expensive than the others. But so far, the best price I can get is over 7 times higher than a non-weekend summer fare. Looking in more detail, this trip entails rides on three different rail lines. One of the three trips is 5 times higher than the other two. I’m holding off while we consider some options. According to the web site, the bus driver is handsome and friendly. (I saw his picture!) Even so Danita and I decided not to take the bus.

Since I was a teenager, I have heard about how great the rail service is in Europe, and what a shame it is that we can’t have a similar quality of rail service in the US. I guess the UK isn’t part of Europe. Or maybe “they” were exaggerating a little bit. My experience buying the rail tickets was a bit of an eye opener.  I learned that there are over a dozen different rail lines offering passenger service in their own separate service corridors. There are a few aggregators that make it easy to buy tickets when routes use multiple rail lines, or when one doesn’t know which rail line to search. One simply enters the start and destination stations, the date and time, and Presto! Options appear. There is even a link to find the “cheapest fare”. I searched both ways for the three trips we need. One time the standard search found the cheaper fare. One time the “cheapest fare” link found the cheapest fare, and one time they both found the same fare. Well, nothing’s perfect.

Moving on, I click “buy tickets”. I was amazed to find myself whisked off the aggregator site and on to the rail line’s site. Unlike US travel sites such as Travelocity, the aggregator doesn’t sell the tickets. Only the rail lines do that. So far, I have three UK web accounts for rail travel — one for the aggregator and one for each of two different rail lines.

I saw an option to pick the type of seats we want. Every train I’ve ever been on had two seats together. But just in case, I thought it might be nice to tick off “window seat” to make sure we had a window to share. The next thing I knew, we both had window seats; and obviously not next to each other. It took quite a bit of time to un-do that.

Seat numbers being acceptable, I purchased the first ticket, choosing to print the ticket on my printer. It required the last 4 digits of our passports, which I thought was a nice security measure. When I booked the next ticket, I was informed that international customers cannot print the ticket on their printers. I’m puzzled as to why the web site gave me the option. They already had my address, which clearly stated we live in the US. I’m not sure what we’ll need to get our tickets out of whatever machine they use, because there is no information about that on the web site. I guess we’ll have to go to the station on the appointed day and hope for the best.

Having purchased the tickets, I was examining the details of the route. That’s when I found that at one stop, we have to disembark from the train, walk a few blocks to a different train station, and board a train for a different rail line, which for some reason couldn’t share a terminal with the first rail line.

Well, at least there are options for getting around by train in the UK. And the fares are really quite reasonable. Provided, of course, one doesn’t travel between two vacation cities on the weekend.

We had a nice quiet weekend. Our big activity was that we got to the Spotlighters to see the performance we didn’t get to on our anniversary. AND we found free parking just a few blocks away from the theatre. We wanted to go to Taco Bell to try their waffle breakfast. They are widely advertised to open at 7 or earlier. Unfortunately, they have a strange definition of “open”. When we got there at 7:45, the dining room was locked. The drive-thru was open but we’re just not into eating breakfast in the car.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Late Snow

It was a lot of rain. Not surprising that the Patapsco flooded near Elkridge. But Snow at the end of March? Shortly after this pic, I did the only possible reasonable thing. I closed the blinds, turned on the lights, switched on some music, started the fireplace, and sulked until it was time for the chilli cook-off. The chilli was good. We even got a bonus movie afterwards — “Rush”. The snow quit. But it’s still raining.

I am writing this on Sunday, 3/23. There are no pics.

Danita had two days off at the beginning of the week for the university’s spring break. Instead of going back to work Wednesday, she had a colonoscopy. Everything was fine. We had a neighborhood party Friday. The temperature Saturday went up to almost 70. I got several nice rides in. We were planning to go to the Spotlighters theater today for our anniversary, but we didn’t buy tickets soon enough. So we’ll content ourselves with a dinner at Portalli’s. Danita went there for one of the interviews. She liked it a lot. The gnucci is homemade and shows great promise.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Tuesday, 3/18. There are no pics.

Here’s a hard-learned lesson from our years of parenting. When going on an adventure, one does not discuss what the adventure is until safely inside the door. Our last day at Jul’s was Sunday. As forecasted, it was rainy. We planned to see the Lego movie. I broke my parenting rule in spades. I told the kids what we were going to do. I give the kids glow-in-the-dark Lego T-shirts to wear on our adventure. We did well on the drive to the movies. But when we got there, they were sold out. There’s nothing like two kids standing in the rain crying to make one feel like a grand parent. We didn’t have a backup plan (another good idea for the good parent.) Working on the fly, we took the kids for ice cream. Jul and Pat were house hunting. Danita called Jul and got the location of a Red Box. We stopped at the Red Box and got “Monster University”. Then we watched the movie at home. Monster University is a good movie. The kids were totally absorbed. But of course, nothing could match the promise broken.

We had a non-refundable hotel reservation a couple of hours up the road. The forecast was for the precip to continue, changing to ice and snow in the evening. So we had dinner a little on the early side and blew out to the hotel. It was a tense ride, with one eye on the car’s thermometer and one on the time left to reach our destination. As it turned out, the precip had just started to turn when we arrived.

When we woke up in the morning, the world was covered with ice. The hotel was OK; the free breakfast was edible; the internet service was abysmal. By mid-morning, crews had cleared the ice and accidents from the major roads. The forecast called for more wintery stuff on-and-off until 2. After 15 minutes of chipping ice of the car windows,we took off to see how much closer to home we could get. The first part of the ride was miserable driving. The roads were OK, but the windshield wipers and washers were frozen. Stuff was kicked up off the road. We stopped for lunch near Staunton. I found clean snow to wash the windshield. Cabin and engine heat was able to melt a lot of the ice on the car while we ate lunch. When we came out, a few minutes with a window scraper had everything freed up. The rest of the drive was without incident. We got home about 5:30. Our area had a good 6″ of snow. Fortunately, streets and sidewalks in our neighborhood were completely cleared by the time we got home.

So much for my “rule” that it doesn’t snow after the Ides of March.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Saturday, 3/15. There are lots of pics.

Waiting for the parade to get to us

Mom and Dad were gone. What can we do on St. Patrick’s Day? Go a parade, of course. The weather was great. The trip was great. We left the house and drove to the light rail station. The train was so crowded we couldn’t get a seat. Within a couple of stops, it was packed. Many people at stops closer to downtown didn’t take that train to the parade. We got a good spot with a great view of the parade. After half an hour, the kids were ready to move on, so we went to the funnel cake vendor. Then it was a few chicken fingers, and time to go home. When we left, the parade was still going on.  Bring on the pics!

Dancing Girls

More Dancing Girls

Elizabeth’s Ring

Pretending to water ski behind a boat (boat was on a trailer)

x

Unicyclist with puppet dog

Strange Character

Eating Funnel Cake

End of the line – everybody off

Whoever said “Beware the ides of March???”

I am writing this on Friday, 3/15. There are 2 pics. 

The trip down to Jul’s was one of the easiest we have had. It was sunny and cool, but not cold. The drive was without incident. One of our stops was Statesville, about an hour north of Jul’s. After buying gas, we walked downtown. They have an attractive city and some interesting architecture. They have one of the nicest looking community college I’ve seen. Here are a couple of buildings we saw. The house was divided up into rental apartments. I think it would have made a great B & B. I would have paid extra to sleep in the turret.