Last night’s dinner was great. I had crawfish and collard greens (both for the first time). Both were excellent. Danita had very good crab-salmon patties.

This morning, while Danita went to her seminars, I took a historical bike tour of the Frubourg-Marigny district (just downriver from the French Quarter). We rode crazy-cool bikes with “handlebar mustache” handlebars. There was one forward gear and coaster brakes (peddle backwards to stop). They had very wide saddles with soft springs. The tires were an inch and a half wide. These were perfect for touring the city. The tour was excellent. The guide was a nice guy, knew is history, and presented it coherently and in  an interesting manner. It didn’t hurt that we had perfect weather. I was surprised to learn how old the buildings are in this district. Most of the houses were built with barge lumber. Before steam ships, it took great effort to go up the Mississippi. As a consequence, people who wanted to move goods downriver built barges out of wood. When they got to NOLA, they broke the barges up and sold the wood. The people in NOLA used this barge wood to build their houses. Our guide owns a creole cottage in Frubourg-Marigny. he stripped off several layers of various coverings and ended up with interior walls that were either barge wood or exposed brick. It was a perfect morning and early afternoon. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics. My phone was in my backpack, which I left with the bike shop while on tour.

That was the end of the good times for today. Danita and I met up at the room at the end of the day. For dinner, we went to a small “Cajun-Italian” restaurant that was supposed to be the most romantic restaurant in the city and have excellent food at a reasonable price. This place is upstairs from a Jazz bar on Frenchmen Street, which is were the city’s best music is supposed to be. The price was reasonable. But the place was not at all romantic and the food was pretty bad. We started with a salad (romaine lettuce with a rather poor Italian dressing). The entrees had plenty of meat, but that was all they had. The sauces were over seasoned and very salty. The place was noisy. It took an incredibly long time to get the food. When we finally got out, we walked up and down “music ally”. The bands we heard weren’t very good. Of course, it being Monday night, several places were closed and I’m sure the best bands weren’t playing. I was thinking of grabbing a drink when we got back to the hotel, but instead of a quiet bar with tinkley music, they had a projection screen with the World Series on. All-in-all, the evening was a bust.

Oh, well. It was a perfect day, and we’ll have another evening tomorrow.

How does one write “New Orleans”?. It’s lots of letters and more than one word. Certainly an abbreviation in order. “NO” is not a good abbreviation for obvious reasons. In reading a guide book, I saw the term “NOLA” — New Orleans, LA. One can even say it as a word. And that’s what I’ll be using.

Haloween Parade

We arrived about 6 PM Saturday. Transportation to downtown is not so good, so we grabbed a taxi to our hotel. The ride took longer than I thought. Traffic on Saturday evening was a mess. Our first night was at the Comfort Inn. (There were no rooms at the Sheraton.) When we got there, we found ourselves in the business district, bereft of tourists and tourist eateries. I found a possible place on the internet, but when we got there, one look through the window convinced us that we didn’t want to eat there. So we just started walking down the street. We saw a nice-looking eatery before long. About the time we found it, we heard police sirens and saw people lining up. So we went over to watch the NOLA Halloween parade. It was a blast. They had quads, bands, equestrians, floats, music, and dancers. Most of them were throwing stuff to the kids — candy, plastic cups, frisbees, even beads. We were standing in a shower of “stuff” with kids scrambling around our legs picking it up. Taking a pic of moving people at night with a cell phone camera doesn’t work very well, but here’s a pic that might help give an idea.

After the parade, we went back to the eatery and had a NOLA sampler: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, fried green tomatoes, remoulade, and the best biscuits I have ever had. One order was plenty for both of us.

This morning, we got up “early” (for NOLA). We wheeled our suitcace to the Sheraton then walked over to Cafe du Monde for those wonderful beignets (NOLA donuts covered in powdered sugar). The cafe has a large outdoor dining area under roof. When we got there about 8, the outdoor tables were closed. There was a small indoor area and we sat down right away. By the time we left, there was a long line waiting to get in. After Church, the outdoor tables were open and completely filled, and there was still a line. Next up was a historical walking tour of the French Quarter, followed by lunch (genuine NOLA Po Boy sandwiches). Then a tour of the Cabilido (the antebellum seat of power in Louisiana). Finally, we sat down and listened to a brass band doing a street performance. All of this was right around Jackson Square, the focus of the French Quarter. I didn’t take any pictures. There are a zillion pictures of the French Quarter. I couldn’t possibly come close to what everybody has already seen. As much fun as it is being here, I must say that there is one advantage of looking at pictures over being here — you can’t smell anything in the pictures. NOLA is filthy.

View from Room

It was time to check into the Sheraton. The hotel is amazing. We have a room on the 31st floor with a beautiful view of the river. Just as we got into the room, they had another parade. This was a small parade with two high school bands. This time, we were content to watch the parade from our room.

Well, it’s getting to be dinner time. We’re going to try Olivier’s Creole Restaurant — “Elegant but casual bistro serving classic Creole dishes made from old family recipes.” It sounds like good food and good fun.

I am writing this on Sunday, 10/20. There are no pics this week.

Danita only went to her Dad’s house one day this week. That was Monday. I stayed home doing chores. I used my bike to do most of my chores, but when it came to taking several boxes of books that had come from Bud’s house to Goodwill, I decided that there can be a pretty convincing advantage to using a car. With a trunk.

Tuesday I had my once-every-other-year appointment with Dr. Ludmer, my rheumatologist. When we moved to Columbia, I changed all my other doctors. But I like Dr. Ludmer a lot, and I only see her every other year, so I drive up to Towson every once in a while to pay her a visit. I was out of the doctor’s office by 9:30 and Tuesday was a beautiful day. I decided that as long as I was going to be in Towson, I might as well take full advantage of it. I brought my bike and took a ride that starts at Oregon Ridge in Hunt Valley. I had an old 60-mile route that I saved from many years ago. I didn’t have time to ride that long, so I made some changes to take 10 miles off the route. The changes worked out splendidly. I spent a good amount of time riding through Baltimore County farms and horse country. Most of the rest of the time was in the wooded areas surrounding Pretty Boy Reservoir. I spent a small amount of time in residential areas, and passed exactly one eatery, which just happened about lunch time. The roads were all great. The weather was amazing. The countryside was beautiful. The lunch was fine. I got back home in time to make our yoga class.

I intended to take another long ride Thursday. I found a new group of cyclists, “Cycle2Health”. They are retired folks who are also accomplished cyclists. They have a group ride every Thursday. There’s generally a short, easy ride for beginners and a longer, more difficult ride for experienced riders. Unfortunately I made a mistake and went to where the prior week’s ride started. I was 15 minutes early for the ride, but much more than 15 minutes away from this week’s ride. So instead of a long bike ride, I ended up riding to the grocery store to pick up some lunch food. I hope to be more successful next Thursday, if the weather forecast holds.

Friday was the annual Howard County Senior Expo. This is held at one of the local high schools on a teacher professional development day. I like to go for several reasons. They often have an interesting keynote speaker. They have a free performance by the “Capitol Steps”. They give out free flu shots. And I get to ride up to the front door while everybody else parks at the mall and takes a shuttle bus. (This because I ride my bicycle instead of driving the car.)

This year the speaker was a neurologist who talked about preventing memory loss and dementia. His recommendations: Many factors influence memory loss. One’s risk of Alzheimer’s is 2%. The risk doubles if a close relative has Alzheimer’s. However, the risk goes up by a factor of 16 based on lifestyle choices. Exercise. Eat well. Sleep well. Avoid stress. Use your memory. Meditate.

The Capital Steps is a renowned singing/comedy group that “… has been putting the ‘moc’ in democracy for 30 years.” They do a wonderful parody of current events. The auditorium was packed, and everybody was in stitches. An sample joke: Russia’s leader Putin was planning to attend a conference with Obama, but he couldn’t go because he got “snowed in” (Snowden).

Instead of going to Bud’s house yesterday, we had Bud to our house, along with Ed and Lynne. We had our annual sour beef dinner. We could have invited a lot of other folks, but with so much going on in Danita’s family, we wanted to keep the dinner small. It was really great food. Danita made candied nuts and cheese straws for snacking. The sour beef was as good as it ever gets. She had cooked carrots and onions (one of my favorite veggies), sesame asparagus (very good), as well as the traditional coleslaw. Ed and Lynne made the dumplings. (Bud prefers their more traditional recipe.) For desert, Danita made lemon bars which were served with either ice cream or sherbet and raspberries.

I used my “go to” wine store to come up with the wine. It’s not so hard to find a red wide that goes well with sour beef. The challenge was finding a white. (Lynne only drinks white wine. Some people would say this is not right, but who am I to judge? I drink red wine with fish, for crying out loud.) I ended up with both wines being from Germany, which along with the Oktoberfest beer option made it a theme dinner.

While Bud was here, we took advantage of our internet connection to work on his “change of address” list.

I don’t usually write about upcoming events, but I’m making an exception this week. Danita is attending a conference in New Orleans, and I’m tagging along. We’re leaving Saturday, 10/26 and returning Wednesday, 10/30. We’ll have all day Sunday together in the Big Easy. Then Danita will be attending the seminar during the day while I look for ways to goof off.  I don’t think I’ll have to work very hard. We’ll hook back up for dinner. The good news is that we’ll be together in the evening when New Orleans wakes up. The bad news is that we’re not night owls. Life is just filled with challenges. Here’s our itinerary:

Saturday: Southwest 661 BWI – MSY, 1:20 PM to 4:50 PM

Hotel: Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, 500 Canal St

Wednesday: Southwest 2352 MSY – BWI, 2:05 PM to 7:40 PM

My Email service is still not working. To be honest, I’ve mostly been waiting for it to fix itself, and I expect to be busy most of this week. I’ll post to the blog site most days that we’re in New Orleans, along with pics, but you probably won’t get the email. If you want to see the posts, please check in at www.quarkleaf.com. It’s too hard to separate the pictures from the text manually so I can send an email. (Or maybe I’m just too lazy.)

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 10/13. There are no pics.

We had a lot of rain this week. The remnants of the tropical storm came through as predicted on Monday. The weather cleared up the next day. But it was back with a vengeance Thursday. It gave the sump pump quite a workout. It’s been raining ever since. There was a weather forecast that the rain would clear up and that next week would be nice, but the forecast keeps on changing … and always in the direction of a little more rain.

I tried going on a group ride on Columbia trails Sunday. I decided that trail riding just is not for me. Margret started this ride group, and she is the only driving force. I give her credit for having the moxy to start the group, and she is a kind person. But she has absolutely no street smarts. She stops without clearly calling out what she’s doing. Generally the stop is either just before going up a hill (that leaves no chance to use momentum to help yourself up the hill) or at a choke point on the trail (if folks behind don’t see what’s going on, they have nowhere to go to avoid hitting somebody ahead who has stopped). But mostly I just don’t enjoy riding the trails.  I find the trails to be narrow. I’m concerned about rolling off the edge of the pavement. Pedestrians and leaves make the ride more challenging. I guess I’ll just stick to playing in the street. I had another group ride scheduled for yesterday. It is a fund raiser for the local bicycle advocacy group. It looked like a nice ride, but it was postponed due to the rain. They re-scheduled it for next Sunday. The ride starts early in the morning. Being retired, I have a lot of flexibility — up to 6 1/2 days a week for riding. But Sunday mornings are committed. Maybe next year …

Bike riding was sparse this week. We had nice weather Tuesday, but I wanted to do some chores in the morning and only got a short ride in the afternoon. I went up to Baltimore County to do a long ride Wednesday. It was fun to easily ride up hills that used to be extremely challenging. But for some reason I felt tired, it was cloudy and cool all day, and I found Palmisano’s picnic pavilion to be distressingly dirty. I managed to get a short ride in Saturday between the morning and evening showers.

We ate out a lot this week. Danita is spending 2 days a week at Bud’s house, trying to help him downsize for his upcoming move. Ed and Lynne are also going down to Bud’s. They did a wonderful job cleaning out and painting the garage. Bud is living in a large house, overflowing with everything needed to support a family of 6. He is moving to a spacious apartment in a senior community. He realizes his apartment will be smaller than his house. He understands he has to downsize. But when it comes to deciding which of the pots he won’t need, it’s hard to make a decision. Extend that out to everything from bed sheets to wine glasses –it’s a lot. In addition, the family is looking at options for selling the house. A neighbor might be interested. A real estate person came to offer advice (and ask for the listing). All this becomes quite overwhelming for Bud and somewhat stressful for Danita. Danita was at Bud’s Monday and again on Saturday. She’ll go back again tomorrow. We generally go out to eat when she comes home from a day at her Dad’s. In addition, we had an evening of shopping and ended up eating out Thursday. Then we had a neighborhood party Friday.

The shopping trip was to get a watch for Danita. After 10 years, Danita’s old watch stopped working. This is not a hard problem to solve, but it turned out not to be trivial.

Q: We have lots of gadgets we have that tell time, does Danita need a watch?

A: She is frequently in meetings where having a watch is very useful. Plus, she likes wearing the watch.

Q: Danita takes good care of her stuff and the old watch looks great. Should we fix the old watch or buy a new one?

A: A repair is $50, and it isn’t guaranteed to fix the watch. How many more years will the repaired watch last? The jeweler needs time to get the watch fixed, during which Danita won’t have the watch. We can buy a new watch in a single evening.

Q: Where should we go to buy a watch?

A: Danita wanted to see and touch the watch before buying it. That means we need a brick & mortar retail outlet. We almost never go to the mall. It’s too big and too noisy. But in Columbia, that’s the only place to go to buy (or fix) watches. (I checked.) I went to the mall during the day to pre-shop (figure out our options and select the best store to visit). I found the mall entrance that is closest to the store I selected. We went to the mall right after work. But there is rush-hour traffic to contend with. It takes time to look at different watches and make a decision. The band has to be adjusted. The sales people were great, but it took over an hour to buy a watch. After all that, maybe we could just grab a pizza for dinner.

We decided to see the movie “Gravity” today. We went to the matinee. There are plenty of critics on the web. I agree with most of them. But at the end of the day, this is a tremendous movie. It’s well worth going to watch. The only thing is, I didn’t realize it would be in 3-D. I really prefer the “old fashioned” movies where the picture stays on the screen. This movie added lots of spinning and turning to the usual 3-D affects. Danita was a little woozy when we came out.

I just received some really good news. For those of you who aren’t in the loop … Glen got home yesterday. He is having some difficulties. There will be ongoing at-home OT and PT. There will be lots of doctor’s appointments. But both Mom and Glen are delighted that he is home.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pictures this week. I am writing this on Sunday, 10/6.

It’s October and we are well into Fall. The days are shorter. The leaves are turning. The high temperature is 90 degrees. We might get the remnants of a tropical storm tomorrow. One thing stays true. If you don’t like the weather in Baltimore, wait a bit. It will be different.

I tried staying home Friday. We wanted to have the dryer vent cleaned. (You clean yours every 2 or 3 years, don’t you?) I decided that after the tech left would be a great time to clean the deck. I like our deck because it has a great view, and because it doesn’t get a lot of sun. Unfortunately, that latter point means that green stuff grows on it and I have to clean it twice a year. I don’t know how anything grows on the chemically-infused lumber they use for decks. It must be tenacious stuff, because it even grows on the plastic-covered railings. After the deck was cleaned, I had the power washer out, so I went ahead and cleaned the garage. After all that, I decided it’s too way much work to stay home. I need to spend more time riding my bike.

Danita was also home Friday. She saw the doctor Wednesday and was sick by Friday. Is that how that’s supposed to work, or did I get something wrong? I also started feeling something coming on, but I was no where as sick as she. We started taking Cold-Eze and now we’re both better.

There were no parties this week, but we’re getting pretty good at finding really great excuses to eat out. For example, “The car’s in the driveway. We’ll have to start it to park it in the garage, so we might as well eat out.” And, of course, if you have a bit of a sore throat, ice cream is a great throat-soother.

As everybody knows, the government is shut down. Danita’s research team is largely government funded. So far, there is little effect to her team. The scientists that work at Godard don’t have access to base. Mostly that means they take their lap tops home and do whatever it is scientists do all day. Fortunately, her team is under a grant that was already funded through Nov, 2014. Some of the scientists will eventually run out of work  because they can’t consult with the civil servants, or because they need data from government servers, or whatever. But for now, everybody is working.

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

James Russell Lowell asked, “What is so rare as a day in June?” Here’s one answer — two 4-day weekends in a row. As you know, this was a weekend to visit the grand kids. The weather was just about perfect. Highs were in the 70s with lots of sunshine. We wanted to do this trip a little differently. We usually drive over to Frederick and then down I-81 in the Appalachian Mountains. We decided that since we’re there, and since the weather is so great, we should take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors a little bit. We started out by walking up to REI and buying a walking sticks. Manufacturers have done a lot with walking sticks. These days, they are sold in pairs. That works fine for us.  I use the left pole, Danita the right. (The difference is obvious, thanks to the bold red “L” and “R” on the wrist straps.)

Woodstock Fire Tower

Friday, we left early, drove a couple of hours, and ate breakfast at IHOP. We got quite a deal. We ordered one omelet and a spare plate. They split the omelet for us, giving us almost two whole omelets. They upgraded our pancakes to double blueberry. And we had a coupon for 20% off.

We drove for a couple of hours and took a hike to the Woodstock Fire Tower. Getting to the trail head was at least half the fun. It was a very narrow, gravel, mountain road with extreme switchbacks. The fire tower is a little wobbly, but the view from the top is amazing. I understand that on nice weekends, the tower is mobbed, with a line of people waiting to get to the top.

Falling Water Cascades

We drove a couple of hours and stopped for lunch and another hike. The lunch was at an old-time grill on Main St in Buchanan, one of the little mountain towns in the area. Danita made the better selection and had a very good Ruben sandwich. The hike was to Falling Water Cascades at Peaks of Otter on the BRP. This trail goes downhill first, which means that once reaching the bottom, there’s not many choices about how one gets back up to the parking lot. The hike and the water fall were both great.

We drove a couple of more hours and stopped for the night at an independent motel. The was cheap, well maintained, and very clean; but there were no extras. Not even a box of tissues. The room would have been fine, but the internet access was the slowest I have experienced in many years. We won’t be going back there.

Daniel Stowe Gardens

Saturday morning, it was only a couple of hours drive to get to Jul’s house for breakfast. The second thing Elizabeth said is “I want to go on an adventure.” Throughout the weekend, she kept on asking for assurance that she would get an adventure each day. Saturday we visited a small museum near one of the nuclear power plants. The museum wasn’t much, but the lake and the green space was quite nice. We enjoyed a picnic lunch. The most fun we had was scaring the geese. Fortunately, the geese were scared in three separate groups. That let grandpa demonstrate how it’s done, then Bryon scare some more, then Elizabeth scare the rest. Geese are beautiful when a group take off in flight. Sunday Jul joined us as we visited Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens. They did a wonderful job of creating a series of beautiful outdoor rooms, and the orchard house was fantastic. The kids had a great time running around and getting soaked in the walk-through water fountain. We finished the adventure with a stop at Cold Stone Ice Cream. Poor Elizabeth was so tuckered out she couldn’t eat her last spoon full of ice cream.

The view from Sharp Top

Coming home we left after dinner Sunday. We planned to drive two hours, but after an hour and a half I was ready to pull over. We splurged at a Holiday Inn Express with a pretty decent free breakfast. Monday we drove back to Peaks of Otter. The fall colors were just beginning to come in. We were amazed at how much change there was in just a few days. We took a hike that was quite ambitious for us.The trail to Sharp Top is 3 miles, with an altitude gain of over 1300 feet. Of course the view was spectacular. Sharp Top is so popular that they run a bus on weekends and during the fall for folks that can’t walk all the way up. By the time we got back, it was almost 1:00 so we had lunch at Peaks of Otter Lodge, which was a little on the expensive side.

Sharp Top as seen from Peaks of Otter Lodge

The rest of the ride home was uneventful. We normally have dinner at 6. Come 6:00, we were driving right by Bare Bones, our favorite ribs place, and the only place in the area that serves onion loaf. That made our dinner selection pretty darned obvious.

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

I am writing this on Thursday, 9/26. There are no pics.

This is a short post. We are leaving tomorrow morning to visit The Reeds in NC. We will return sometime Monday afternoon. My next post will be sometime next week, and it just *might* have a few pics.

Last week I wrote about the steepest hill I know how to ride — when the road is dry, and how I don’t know how to ride it when the road is wet. That created a cloud in my mind. Today, I rode the hill (on dry roads). End of cloud.

Bud set his moving day. He will move on November 7. He his the furniture layout for his apartment. He knows what he’s taking and what he’s not. The planning people were incredibly helpful, but emotionally, it was a tough day for Bud. Having made these decisions makes the whole thing much more real.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 9/22. There are no pics this week.

We’re in the second half of a rare 4-day weekend. We started the extravaganza with an adventure that was a mixed experience. We decided to see a play called “Bell” at the National Geographic theater in DC. Tickets included free parking (always a big selling point for me). Danita was working at Godard Thursday, which is near Greenbelt. Danita and I arranged to meet at the New Deal Restaurant in Roosevelt Plaza (the Greenbelt central plaza) after work. Danita had a hard time finding the place and ended up visiting the less desirable areas of Greenbelt. It turns out that Roosevelt Plaza isn’t the best area. In spite of great reviews, New Deal turned out to be a dump. The food was OK, but the dinner was a definite dud. After dinner, I drove us through downtown DC. I found the traffic to be about what I expected. One could call it invigorating. Danita called it something less complimentary. Fortunately, the play itself was excellent. It was a one-man show which illuminated many facets of Alexander Graham’s life that aren’t generally known. The ride home was every bit as eventful as the ride in, but we managed to avoid any physical modifications to the car.

Friday we went back to DC to visit Hillwood, one of Marjorie Merriweather Post’s houses. She moved into this house in her early 70s, and knew she wanted to make it a museum after her death. The house is amazingly open. When walking into the house, one encounters two Louis XVI desks, each worth millions of dollars. They just sit out in the open, not even behind a rope. Being worth about $5 billion allowed her to make a pretty nice museum. When she renovated the house before moving in, she raised the roof and added a 3rd story. This level was dedicated to storing her clothes. Once a week, her personal maid would review her calendar and bring a selection of appropriate clothes downstairs for her to select from when she dressed. She owned the world’s largest yacht, the Sea Cloud, a tall ship. According to our docent, she was very approachable, had her own eye for art, and had a wonderful sense of humor. After we got home I looked her up and learned she was also hell on husbands, having married and divorced 4. We brought a picnic lunch to avoid the ridiculously expensive cafe. However, I couldn’t avoid having a cup of Postum while I was there. They serve it as a latte. This makes it very palatable. It tastes like warm milk, which makes me wonder why one would bother adding the Postum powder.

Saturday I went on a Columbia Bike-About. Every year, they mark out two routes through the extensive Columbia trail system — one about 10 miles and one much shorter. They put up information about interesting historical sights and generally encourage bikers to have a good time. For those who are more into walking, they also have a heart-walk nearby. This year the Bike-About started at Elkhorn Lake, just 5 miles from our house. So I rode to the Bike-About, rode the 10-mile course, and then rode home. I also picked up a T-shirt, a map of the Columbia trails, and a Columbia trail mapping app, all of which were way cool. The beginning of the ride was a disaster. Huge crowds clustered around the historic information. When the route encountered the first hill, people went off the trail and into the woods in all sorts of directions as riders in front came to a grinding halt and basically fell down while riders behind them tried to avoid accidents. But before long the short and long routes separated. Most of the people who selected the long route were able to ride their bikes, even when going up hill. I met a man who was hauling his 5-year old son in a bike trailer. His ability to climb hills was awesome, considering the extra weight he was towing. I also met a man riding a unicycle. Unicycles don’t have brakes and can’t coast downhill. Mounting and dismounting requires a good amount of space and planning. He was having an exceptionally tough time in the beginning of the ride with all the amateur riders around. But the course was well marked. The historical stops were interesting. The weather was good. It was a good time.

Saturday evening we went to the SOCA volunteer dinner. This dinner is free, and it has fewer attendees than many of the other neighborhood activities. Danita and I were taken by how conforming the crowd was. The majority of our neighborhood is White, but we have a large number of Indians, Orientals, and Blacks. Everybody at the volunteer dinner was White except for one Black couple.

Today we are looking foward to a BSO concert followed by dinner at Pierpont Restaurant in Baltimore. (Did you notice how Danita cleverly arranged the activities to avoid cooking?)

Monday will be the last day of our weekend. Bud signed a contract on a condo. Danita will spend the day at Bud’s house. A woman from the condo will stop by in the afternoon to measure furniture and suggest a layout. A lot of stuff has to happen between now and when Bud moves. His goal is to move by early October. One of the very nice things the condo (and other Erickson communities) have done is to arrange things so folks can move before they sell their house. They recommend that new residents live in their new condos for a couple of weeks before listing their house. It makes it very easy to make adjustments in what furniture and other things stay or go, and reduces the stress of the move quite a bit.

That’s a lot of news for one week. For those who are not in the loop, Mom reports that Glenn is making a tremendous recovery in rehab. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 9/15. There are no pics this week.

This was a busy week for our neighborhood IT-wise.  Our social director was having problems with her Email password. Her assistant resigned and a temporary starts Monday. These sound like they should be simple issues, but the Email is through our web site which is managed by another guy. Decisions have to be approved by a nebulous group of people. Between traveling and other commitments, it can take some time to get everybody to investigate their part, make suggestions, get approval, and things done. Then there are the emergencies. I made an appointment to work on one of the computers at 9:30 Thursday morning. When I arrived, I found that one of the residents lost her internet connection and needed the computer to work on the neighborhood newsletter. In the mean time, her husband was trying to connect to the internet using the clubhouse Wi-Fi, to prove the problem wasn’t with their computer. Unfortunately, our Wi-Fi wasn’t working, but I couldn’t fix that because it would have disrupted the wife. Never the less, it looks like everything will be squared away as soon as I can get in the club house tomorrow morning to wrap up some loose ends.

It was good to get back into bike riding this week. I decided to take my hill-training 60-some mile ride around Liberty Reservoir Friday. We had a good rain Thursday night. The forecast was for great weather Friday — clearing in the morning with the sun coming out in the afternoon and temperatures rising to the low 70s. Shortly after I started the ride, there was some light showers before the sky finally cleared. My favorite hill is at mile 13. It’s not long, but it’s steep. It’s so steep that I have to focus on keeping my front wheel on the ground. Unfortunately, I failed to fully consider the effects of a damp road. I was pushing up the steepest part of the hill when all of a sudden, my wheels broke loose, and down I went. That’s how it happened that at mile 13 on Friday the 13th, I got a boo-boo. I’ve heard of people falling down while riding too fast downhill, but I never heard of anybody falling down riding uphill before. Fortunately, the only damage was a few abrasions. My first aid kit was up to the job, and I was able to finish the ride. While I was taking care of my business, a car came buy. I noticed the driver had problems with his wheels slipping as he drove up the hill, so I didn’t feel quite so bad.

We took Mark out to breakfast this morning. We tried a new restaurant. It had very good food, but small portions. That’s fine for Danita and me, but Mark went home to eat something afterwards. We’ll finish up our weekend with a neighborhood party this evening.

Danita and I are pleased to hear the Glenn got out of the hospital in less than a week. He’s now in rehab. I talked to him very briefly today. He seems to be focused on how much is left to do in his recovery, but I think that getting out of the hospital is a major step forward and worthy of celebration.

The rehab center has an excellent reputation and is only 10 miles from their home. These people practice tough love. As Mom says, “No more sitting around in a hospital gown and being served meals in bed. Everyone there dresses in regular clothes and has to go to the dining room or the cafeteria for their meals.”

I hope Glenn continues his excellent progress and that this finds everybody else doing well.

I am writing this on Tuesday, 9/10.

We spent a day and a half of our vacation in Anchorage. Some of the things we would like to have seen were closed. Saturday, we saw the Anchorage Museum. It’s a combination art museum, Native American culture museum, and science center. The Native American exhibit was done in conjunction with the Smithsonian. The quality, quantity, and general tenor of the exhibit were all excellent. The science center section had some really fun toys. There weren’t a lot of people there. We weren’t the only adults playing with the exhibits.

We stayed at a most unusual B & B Saturday evening. The owners had added on to their house to create several suites. We had a complete private suite with bedroom, bath, living room, kitchen, and eating area. The furnishings were high quality. The breakfast was good. We took advantage of the DVDs offered by the host couple to watch a movie in our room Saturday evening. It was nice having a relaxing evening.

View from Kincaid Park

Sunday we visited the air museum. A couple of the bush pilot exhibits showed promise, but overall the museum was underwhelming. The museum had write-ups on several of the more famous bush pilots. It seems that being a bush pilot was kind of like being a red-shirt in Star Trek. They all died young in airplane accidents. The rain stopped, so we finished our vacation with a hike in Kincaid Park.

The overnight flight home was broken into three segments of 3 to 4 hours. Danita was able to sleep quite a bit. I took several cat naps. Our vacation was blessed with untroubled travel. No flights were delayed. No baggage was lost. Danita lost one very inexpensive earring. I lost a pair of flip-flops. We had one issue with the rental car which could have been serious but wasn’t. The oil warning light turned on on our drive back from Denali State Park. I haven’t seen an oil light turn on in many years. There wasn’t room to get off the road, but I pulled over, turned the engine off, then turned it on again. The light stayed off. Fortunately, we weren’t far from a gas station. (That’s not always true in Alaska). The oil was a quart low. I was quite surprised because our car had only 10,000 miles on it. It made me wonder how much maintenance these rental cars received.

We got home about Noon Monday. Danita was tired and I was exhausted. I kept on falling asleep. We got everything squared away Monday afternoon and enjoyed a good night’s sleep last night. Everything is back to normal. This was an excellent vacation which we won’t soon forget.