There are some pics this week, including Danita on her new bicycle.

Snow on Apr 9

It has been a busy week, but let’s start with a discussion of the weather. Which included snow. In April. I don’t recall that we have ever had snow this late in the year. If you click this picture, you can easily see the large snowflakes against the background of the black street. The snow didn’t stick to the pavement, or even to the grass. But we did have a thin coating on the deck. Highs should get up into the 80s next week.

Snow also accumulated on our old car (2007 Honda Accord). Snow was able to accumulate on the car because the car was outside the garage. The car was outside the garage because there isn’t enough room for 2 cars and 2 bikes inside the garage. So of course the car had to go outside. I bought this car 7 years ago when I was making smart cards. Two companies merged and they closed the plant in Owings Mills. I was driving to the  other plant 3 days a week, which was north of Philadelphia. It was an insanely luxurious car by our standards at the time, yet with it’s 4-banger engine and manual transmission it got great gas mileage. It did a fabulous job over the years. With only 113,000 miles, it still runs perfectly. But now the door seal around the driver’s door leaks. And sometimes the heater gets stuck on full heat (usually in the summer time). We seldom drive it. Sometimes it sits so long the battery goes dead. It was certainly not going to be driven while we we will be in Pipe Spring for 3 months later on this year. Eventually, seals and gaskets would start going bad. It was time to get rid of the car. So I took it to Car Max. We didn’t get a great price, but we got a fair price. From the time I pulled out of the driveway, the entire sale took less than 4 hours. That includes returning the tags and cancelling the insurance. It was a good car, and almost certainly my last “stick shift”.

Biker Grandma

I’ve been trying to add several features to our community website. They include a directory of residents, automatic Emails for new bits and for important announcements, better access to residents’ information for our board, etc. I expected to get everything up and running by early this year. But the board has continually delayed over political issues. With the snow birds back from FL, and with a shiny new privacy policy in place, I thought we were finally set to go. But at a meeting Monday, the board decided to wait while they address an issue over Email addresses. My guess is that they’ll delay so long that we’ll be into our travels, and the features will be added by early next year.

Cruising Along

Besides all that, we finished planning for all the trips we’ll be taking this year. We decided we won’t have problems getting around St. Petersburg because everything we want to see is an easy walk from out hotel. However, we are going to need help in Moscow. It’s a sprawling city. I found a website “toursbylocals”. Through them we found a local guide that will get us around town for the three days we are there. The cost very reasonable, especially compared to traditional companies that offer tourist services. I have a feeling we’ll be using toursbylocals again over the coming years. After we’re back from Russia, we’ll be hosting the grand kids for a week. We have both indoor and outdoor activities planned for each day. Shortly after that, we’ll be leaving for Pipe Spring. We are giving ourselves 3 weeks to drive out, taking our time to see the sights and hike the trails as we go. We have every sight, trail, and hotel mapped out.

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