Tag: biking

Bridge over (Not So) Troubled Water

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy biking when the weather is amenable. We’re very fortunate in Miami County to have a great set of bike paths for people to walk and ride upon. However, till this (late) summer, there was no contiguous path from Troy to Piqua (our two biggest cities). There was a planned bridge to go over the Miami River, but it hadn’t been built… yet.

Well, this summer, they finally got started on the project. The goal was to be done before August, but, well, they did get done before October, so that was something. 🙂 Mom and I have ridden across the bridge twice so far, with future trips across a certainty. And the last time we went across, there were quite a few people out enjoying the bridge (walker and bikers), so that was great to see.

Some day I’d like to start at the northern-most part of the path in Piqua and then go south for the whole length of the county and beyond. (I think you could actually go all the way to Cincinnati using the paths, but I’ve never gone farther south than Taylorsville Dam.) Perhaps next summer? 🙂

Anyhoo, here are some before and after photos which I took throughout the summer (and early autumn). It’s a really lovely bridge, I must say.

prebridge1
Prebridge 1:This is a shot from the Troy side of the river. They had gotten the bridge across already and had a preliminary (albeit dirt) ramp up to it. It’s now paved both ways.

prebridge2
Prebridge 2: This is a shot from the Piqua side just below the start of the ramp up to the bridge. When I took this photo, it was the first time I’d been on that part of the bike path.

prebridge3
Prebridge 3: Here’s another Piqua-side shot, but pointing away from the bridge and toward the Farrington Reserve parking lot (where my car & bike were currently parked).

postbridge1
Postbridge 1: Hooray, the bridge is done! This is a shot from the Troy side going toward the Piqua side. I’m standing in one of the two overlooks on the bridge.

postbridge2
Postbridge 2: Now I’m on the Piqua side of the river and looking back along the path toward the Farrington Reserve parking lot. You can see the paved path.

postbridge3
Postbridge 3: And now a shot from the other overlook, but pointing toward the Troy side.

postbridge4
Postbridge 4: Here’s my beautiful bike parked at one of the two overlooks on the bridge. (I’m standing beside mom at the other overlook, IIRC.)

postbridge5
Postbridge 5: One final shot, Piqua side to Troy side (I think) showing the brickwork (or rather, faux brickwork) on the bridge.

The weather’s turned a little chilly of late, but I’m hoping to get a few more bike rides in before winter turns its ugly head towards us!

Happy Autumn!

Happy First Day of Autumn!

Although I’ve not been posting anything, life has been good for me lately. The fall festivals are popping up (yesterday was Taste of Troy, which was very yummy) and the weather has been gorgeous. Mom and I took a lovely bike ride today. The leaves are still mostly green, but there are some trees that are starting to turn and leaves are starting to drop.

The weight loss is slow but still trending down. Doing Taste of Troy *and* attending a steak party with friends last night haven’t done anything to help it, but when I ask myself the all-important question “Was it worth the points?” the answer was a definite “yes!” Plus I managed to avoid eating so much that I felt ill in the evening. I did manage to use up most of my extra weekly points yesterday and today, but I should be able to cope for the rest of the week just fine.

Next weekend is the Tipp City Mum Festival, I believe, and Oktoberfest is just around the corner as well. I’m already behind in grading at work (no surprise there) but was impressed with myself when, after the first two weeks of school, I was NOT already 2 weeks behind. Go me!

Pix or it didn’t happen!

As promised, here are some photos that I took in Chicago and in Galena when , , and I got together the past week.

Cell Phone Wars
Elsa and Judi and I engage in a simple game of "Cell Phone Wars" – I think I won cuz I got 'em both in one shot! 😉

Elsa on the boat
Elsa awaits the boat ride to see the Navy Pier fireworks.

Judi on the boat
Judi also awaits the fireworks on the boat. I probably had the same expression that she did that night.

Night Pier Shot
Navy Pier at night.

American Gothic
Seeing this painting at the Art Institute of Chicago was even neater after seeing the 3D version at Troy's Sculptures on the Square exhibit.

Chicago at Dusk
From our second night time boat ride, the city of Chicago at dusk.

Chicago Haze
A shot from my morning bike ride. I'm probably 6 miles or so from Judi's place when I took this photo.

Me and the Mississippi
You can see my shadow (and that of the sign beside me) as I look over the Mississippi near Galena, IL. That's Iowa on the other side of the river.

Chestnut Mountain Resort
The front of the resort we stayed in near Galena, IL.

High Foot Bridge
We had to climb up to the top of the levy to get to this foot bridge to cross the Galena river and get to the town proper.

Lots of Stairs
I never did get a good enough shot to really get a feel for how high up the stairs go in Galena. I think Judi got a nice one though.

Galena from the Bridge
A shot of Galena from atop the foot bridge.

Grant Our Citizen(s)
From the size of this photo, you can't hardly see the caption on the statue, but it says "Grant Our Citizen." I had to get Judi to pose in front of it, of course.

July Update

My summer has continued to be a good ‘un. Looks like after 20 years of working, I’ve finally figured summer vacation out. 🙂

We had Independence Day recently in the US and I got to see fireworks two nights in a row. On the 4th, I went around to mom & dad’s community for their community party. I brought brownies & mixed fruit (not a melon in sight!) I managed to not go too overboard during the carry-in and the next day weighed in the lowest yet at WeightWatchers. Whee!

Anyhoo, that night, one of the families in the community brought around some sky lanterns and we launched about 8 of ’em or so after it got dark. It was sprinkling a little that night, but we didn’t care. Mom brought out some glow-in-the-dark bubbles which I blew around to the delight of the 3-year old in the community. When the fireworks showed up around 10pm, our original placement (on the back patio of one family’s house) wasn’t ideal since the fireworks weren’t as high as they’ve been in the past. So we all meandered over to a better spot to watch them. Troy has improved their show – it actually lasted 25 minutes.

The next night, one of the folks just outside of town put on a fireworks show for anyone wanting to watch, so I wandered over to the other side of town to watch and was quite impressed. For store-bought fireworks, they were pretty decent. And the people who shoot them off take many safety precautions when doing it.

Continuing Summer Stats:

# of Bike Rides: Now up to 7 since the start of summer vacation. This includes a 19 mile ride that I did. Whew!
# of Books Read: 15 (and will finish another one tonight, I suspect).
# of Movies Watched: 14 (I think – I really should write these down as I see ’em rather than try to remember them later!)

The books continued (all of these were library books, either paper or eBooks):
Goblin Secrets by William Alexander
The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo (another knock-out from Nesbo!)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (excellent handling of the story about HeLa.)
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (probably my favorite of her three books, though I’m not entirely sure why.)
Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella (this is quite a contrast to The Redeemer, Dark Places, and Henrietta Lacks, I can tell you!)
The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd (I wasn’t sure I’d like this book at first, but it grew on me. Ending sucks, though.)
The Black Country by Alex Grecian (I really enjoyed The Yard so I was pleased his second book of the series is out now. Although his main characters are male, he writes very strong females in his Victoriana mysteries and I really appreciate that.)

The movies continued (all DVDs from the library):
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians (quite a fun flick – decided to check out the books, too)
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Frankenweenie (I preferred ParaNorman)
Anna Karenina (not even Jude Law could make me enjoy this flick – a shame)
ParaNorman (a great stop-motion puppet flick)
Life of Pi (beautifully filmed, true to the book)

Still doing pretty well on my book and movie choices (apart from Anna Karenina, that is). Hopefully will get some more theatrical releases into the mix soon!

Accessorize Me!

You knew you hadn’t heard the last from me on my new smartphone. Nope, today I want to share with you all of the nifty accessories that I’ve picked up (ie purchased) for my phone.

One of the first things I bought was a stylus, since my old phone had one. But I’ve discovered since then that I do pretty well without it. I do use it if I have to type a lot. And it’s nifty cuz it’s purple!

Along with that was a car charger for the phone. It was cheap ($8) and simple – basically a USB charging knob with the appropriate USB cable (microUSB).

In addition to a couple more spare USB cables (since all of my other devices use the miniUSB), I ordered a 32GB microSD card to hold much of my music collection. It’s not quite large enough for the entire collection, but I’ve been reading about people having success with 64GB cards and will likely upgrade to that when the price is right. My music currently takes up 40GB (not including Xmas or any of my audio stories).

I also ordered a charging dock for by my PC. Turns out I probably wouldn’t have needed it, cuz I then discovered a nifty Android friendly speaker dock: the Philips AS351 Fideolio Android Speaker. It uses Bluetooth to accept the signal from the phone. It’s like magic.

So now, my phone is my alarm clock for bed. I plug it in at night. Run the Lightning Bug app for my ambient sounds (I bought the Forest package). And in the morning, it will wake me by playing a random song from my collection. And it’s charged!

Since I’ve taken to using MapMyRide (and MapMyWalk) for tracking my bike rides (and walks), I needed a phone dock for my new bike. My bike shop had one available and we tested to see that the phone fit. It did, so I bought it (and later discovered I could have gotten it for a LOT less. Ah well, I’m glad to support a local business.) Mom and I used it today when we rode 7.61 miles (we found out how to get onto the bike path from her place).

Then today while I was driving home (listening to MP3 CDs skipping), I thought “Surely someone’s come up with an FM receiver thingy that works with Bluetooth!” A bit of searching online and sure enough, those are made. So I’ve ordered this nifty little device for my car.

What’s best about this device is that, if it works, I won’t have to wait around for a 128GB iPod Touch to be developed. I mostly wanted the Touch so that I’d have a Harddrive-less device to play in car. But now that I can use my phone to play music in my car, I can get the 160GB iPod Classic for using in my house. (46GB of music incl. Christmas stuff, and 50GB of audio stories – eeep! That’s a lot of Sylv, though it’s not ALL Sylv (just mostly!))

BTW, back to the bike riding. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to ride Amy’s bike when I was visiting her recently. Because it REALLY helps me to appreciate my new bike. Man, I love riding it. Mom is loving her new bike too. We’re going riding again tomorrow. I just wish the helmet that I ordered for mom was in already!

Biking to Sea Salt

Yesterday was the nicest weather day of my trip. We started the morning with a quick drive to pick up donuts from A Baker’s Wife and then had breakfast on the girls’ back porch (Amy also made scrambled eggs).

Our main goal for the day was to ride bikes to Sea Salt, a restaurant near Minnehaha Falls. My butt was still sore from yesterday, but I took Advil an hour or so before we departed and I think that it helped.

The girls had contacted another friend of theirs to see if she’d meet us at Sea Salt and she was game. So when Rachel had returned from checking in on Winter (the needy kitty), we biked on towards the restaurant. Their friend was saving us a place in the LONG line and we joined her.

I bought a Crispin’s hard cider (with maple syrup flavoring too) which turned out to be a huge bottle (so I shared some of it). I ordered fried calamari as an appetizer and a crab cake sandwich for lunch. Then Rachel got me a salted cashew ice cream (recommended by their friend) to eat while we waited for the food. Everything that I had there was excellent – probably the best calamari I’d ever had.

We wandered a little bit around the falls whereupon my sister bumped into the fellow she just hired (and his family) – fun coincidence. We had decided to ride over to the Riverview theater to see Snow White and the Huntsman and their friend joined us.

Although I wouldn’t say it was the best movie ever, I enjoyed seeing Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, and Toby Jones playing dwarves. And for $2, I felt I had gotten my money’s worth.

We parted company with their friend and then headed home on the bikes. And since we’d been too full to partake of Riverview’s real buttered popcorn, the girls decided to pop & butter some at home. So we sat on the porch eating popcorn and peanuts in the shell. I had a cider. Then for the second round, we had sesame sticks (which Amy bought specifically for my visit) and chocolate chips (and I had a second cider).

We finished the evening watching Olympics in their basement (after Amy showed me a short film she had worked on and is going to put online soon). Another fun day with the girls!

Trina & her sore bum

Yesterday, we started off the morning with leftover pizza. Turns out there were 3 slices of the Pizza Athena left, one without olives (mine!) so it worked out perfectly.

Eventually, we made our way to the Midtown Farmer’s Market. Now I often go to the two farmer’s markets in Troy and they’re awfully small affairs. Midtown was much bigger & livelier. We wandered around looking for produce and lunch. We got some nifty striated eggplants to grill and some brats (including wild rice brats) as well.

Lunch was at the Hola Arepa truck and I tried my first arepa. I had the slow roasted pork arepa with guacamole. Very tasty. I drank their strawberry ginger lemonade along with it.

Next, we went out to the house where Amy & Rachel’s coop co-op is housed. It was Rachel’s day to clean the coop and check on the chickens. They have 11 chickens at the moment and they all seemed eager to see Rachel. Amy and I sat & read while Rachel worked.

We returned home for a short break (and to drop off the food we’d gotten at the market) and then we headed off to check on Winter, the cat that Rachel is cat-sitting. Winter was pleased for the company. She is a very loving kitty.

Next was the trip to Microcenter to get a new battery for Rachel’s laptop. The last time I was at Microcenter, I exclaimed to Amy that I was in Nerdvana. 🙂 Across the street was The Four Firkins, a beer store that was small but loaded with beers, ciders, meads, etc. I picked out 4 hard ciders to try and the girls got several beers to check out.

After we came home, we headed off on a bike ride around Lake Nokomis. We got most of the way around the lake before my bum told me it was just too sore. So we paused a bit, then headed on to the Grand Ole Creamery for some ice cream. I had pistachio ice cream and vanilla malt custard. The frozen custard was particularly fine. I survived the ride back and then we got the place ready for guests.

A couple of friends of Amy (the folks who own the house where the chicken coop resides) were joining us for grilled brats. While Amy got the veggies & other things ready, Rachel and I cleaned the kitchen and then made a blueberry galette. Rachel made the pie crust and I did the innards.

Amy had grilled some corn on the cob, zucchini, summer squash, striated eggplant, onion, and brats. She also made salt potatoes. It was all very yummy, and I really liked the wild rice brats. We sat out on their back porch and ate, then retired inside for dessert. The galette was very tasty. And once again, I met friends of the girls who are very nice people.

Today will be another biking adventure. The weather is perfect (mid 70s F predicted for the high) and my bum is still sore, but I shall see if some Advil will help out today.

Riding Free!

Today I gave my new bike (and consequently myself) a decent workout. Some of my (now retired) co-workers have been getting together during the biking months to ride the bike trails in Miami County, and I was able to join them today – woo!

I tried to find a (cheap) bike mounting system for my car and Wal-mart (of course) had one that was guaranteed to work with any car! I discovered that “any car” doesn’t actually include my car. So I wound up borrowing dad’s truck today to get my bike (and me) to Tipp City where folks were meeting.

There were 9 of us in the party, and I wasn’t the only newbie. The other newbie was another retired friend who borrowed a bike from one of the regular riders (who subsequently borrowed a spare bike from her uncle-in-law, also on the road trip with us). We rode the bike trail from Tipp to Troy and then back again with a few short stops and one, alas, accident. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured (though the other newbie was one of the victims – she was able to complete the ride with us with no issues, and her borrowed bike was just fine) and we completed the 16 mile round trip in good health & spirits.

I loved the ride. Sure, my butt’s not quite used to the seat yet, but every time I hopped back onto my bike, I realized how much I loved riding it. So yay Cannondale Adventure 4!

As a reward for the trip, we ate at Sam & Ethel’s Restaurant (not Sam & Ella’s, thankfully) where I had second breakfast.

PS: GIP – new “riding” icon! (Also, thinking of another one, too.)

Puny Poultry Days

After the lovely flowers of the Lost Creek show and the enormity of the Yellow Springs Street Fair, the Versailles Poultry Days was a bit of a wash. 🙂

It was hotter’n hell today (and summer’s not even here yet!) so that might have reflected a little on our attitude. We were mostly there for the food (like you do).

They really have the food lines down pat. We purchased a ticket for the chicken meal at one booth, then stood in line for the chicken meal. It was a very short wait. You get 1/2 a chicken barbecued with the Miss Chick marinade, a small bag of Mike-sells Potato Chips, a single serve apple sauce, and orange drink (so-named for the color, not the fruit, I suspect. Contained 0% fruit juice. It said so on the label!)

After the yummy lunch, I bought a lemonade shake-up that was inexpensive, large, but not sweet enough. It was refreshing, however, and did contain actual lemon! We cruised the craft tents, but nothing really appealed (except the booth selling kettle corn – mom and I each bought a large bag). I think we were probably there just over an hour. Quite a contrast from the other festivals of the weekend. Dad figures we need to get to at least 2 more festivals to make up for the non-event that this one was. Still, the chicken was very tasty.

Before the fun and excitement of the Poultry Days, I took my bike for a ride this morning to buy donuts for the folks and I. It was only about 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back and I didn’t squish the donuts – woo!

I was riding my new Cannondale Adventure 4. My original plan was to buy one of Trek’s women specific design comfort bikes, but while at the Family Bike Shop of Troy, I tried out a nifty green bike by Cannondale. I did some research and read good stuff about Cannondale and the Adventure 4 (a 2010 model), returned to the shop for another test ride, and wound up buying the bike. They had it built for me the next day (Friday) and I’ve been riding it ever since. Did I mention it was GREEN? 🙂

This bike will remain at my folks’ place since they are near the bike trails that go all over the place. I’ll keep my old bike at my place for P. Hill rides. My first big ride will be on Wednesday with friends – woo!

Jersey Boys are Boss!

As we had, indeed, planned, we wound up going to Ma & I for supper. We all ordered sushi as an appetizer (me getting California roll – yum!). judiang and I both ordered tofu pad thai and elsaf ordered shrimp lad nar. Very yummy. Then we cabbed it to Bank of America Theater to watch Jersey Boys.

I’ve heard music by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons but didn’t always know it was them. But I recognized more than half of the songs in the musical and enjoyed it all. A very fun musical with lots of good music. I did miss some of the dialog in the show (but heard more than Judi, who figures she understood 3% of the dialog). While watching it, I kept wanting to get on Wikipedia to read more about Frankie Valli et al. (Joe Pesci? Really! Wow!) I am SUCH a geek. But I feel a little vindicated cuz Judi admitted the same. 🙂

After the show, we took a cab back to where we’re picked one up before the show. Cuz we had some ice cream to be eating! Good ol’ Marble Slab is open late, so we got ice cream for the walk back to Judi’s apartment. I had chocolate swiss and pistachio. Yum!

Now I’m watching Olympics and we’re all geeking. I have a couple of photos from our bike trip today, which I shall post under the LJ cut.

Elsa & Judi biking
Elsa & Judi biking

We paused along Lake Michigan to turn around and head back. We’re on rental bikes.
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan

A shot of the Lake from our bike trip. Perfect day for biking.