Author: Aly

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Rockport

Mandy learned to roll her new XP9 before school let out. Then she left for six weeks in Tulsa. She was only back for a week or so before leaving on her New York trip. So really, she didn’t get to spend much time at all in a kayak until the first week of August.


Then, when she came back, she flung her whole 100 pounds into kayaking.  We expected her to take a few tries to roll again, maybe even needing another lesson or two.  Nope – she nailed the first roll she tried in the UALR pool.  She’s spent every available piece of August on the water, working hard on kayak skills.  Mid-month, we bought our friend Renee Hanshaw’s Dagger playboat for her. Continue reading “Rockport”

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Bon Ton Roulet

A couple of months ago, we gave Mandy a present:  A plain white envelope.  Inside was the receipt for her ‘ticket’ to participate in the Bon Ton Roulet, a seven-day supported bike tour around the Finger Lakes in upstate New York.  It’s her first trip in that direction, and more importantly, it’s her first trip out of state without parents.

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We dropped her off at the train station for a late-evening departure on Thursday.  She was to travel with our friend Kathy, as well as with a couple of other women cyclists from the Little Rock area.  We sat with them for a bit but left before the midnight train arrived.  Mandy had really been looking forward to even this part of the trip – she was by far the youngest in the group, but as the only one who had traveled on Amtrak, she was ready to provide a tour of the facilities!  They sent texts from the train:  they’d arrived in St. Louis a bit late, they’d left the train in Chicago, they’d used my notes to find stuff to do during their layover, they’d boarded their new train for Syracuse. Continue reading “Bon Ton Roulet”

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Training Rides, New Bike

Mandy and Kathy have spent the last couple of weeks getting ready for their trip to New York.  Neither has been riding a lot, so now that Mandy’s back from her trip to Tulsa, they’ve been getting together nearly every day to spend some time on the bikes.

It was a good idea, except that on Thursday, on the way home from their practice ride, Kathy’s little grey Mini got rear ended on the interstate.  The liftgate is crumpled, the bike rack is ruined, and – the worst news – both bikes are twisted up.  Both front wheels look like flattish Pringles.  Mandy’s frame is only bent a little, but because of it the bike won’t shift properly. Kathy’s carbon fiber is dinged enough that two or three bike shop people have said it would be unsafe to ride. Continue reading “Training Rides, New Bike”

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History

Bryan’s grandparents know he likes old camera gear, so as they’ve been cleaning out their attics and closets these past few years, they’ve passed their Brownies and other old cameras along to us.  One from his Grandma Schambach came to us with a roll of film still inside; we sent it off to be processed and got these gifts from his family’s past.  Is this Metairie forty years ago?

Where is this?  Is this a photograph of a family member’s house?  Is it the view from a great-uncle’s window, or from the top of a factory where his grandfather worked? Continue reading “History”

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Waterversary

One year ago today, we took our puppy swimming for the very first time.  At the time we really didn’t know if he’d like the water.  He did – so much that we thought it would be appropriate to celebrate his first Waterversary.


So we went back to the same spot – a nice swimming hole on the Little Missouri river, a couple of miles’ hike in from the car.  We invited Kathy and Jarion and Ivy, who were with us last year.  We also asked Adam and Bonnie to come along, because we like Adam and Bonnie.  (Note:  Redheads do not always remember to wear sunscreen, even as adults.  REMIND THEM.)

What a pretty day.  We swam and played in the water.  Mandy tried out Kathy’s new GoPro.  Kathy took a hammock nap and I stayed near her while the others ranged upstream to play in the water with the dogs.  Hayduke, ever the mama’s boy, ran back and forth between his playmates and me, while I sat on a warm rock reading a book.

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Crystal Bridges

On our last weekend of Mandy’s visit to Tulsa, Bryan and I decided to take an extra day off work and use the long weekend for a trip to northwest Arkansas. We took Hayduke with us. He behaved really well in the hotel (except for the one very serious bark he directed at a housekeeper in the hallway) and we enjoyed walking with him around the U of A campus, Dickson Street, and the square in Fayetteville. Continue reading “Crystal Bridges”

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Transit of Venus

We have no telescope. But Bryan didn’t want to miss the transit of Venus across the sun, so he did a little research on the interwebs and came up with a way for us to watch safely.

He put a tripod in the driveway and mounted the binoculars on it.  Then he fixed up a light stand with a piece of corrugated plastic clipped to it, and situated it so that the too-bright sun image from the binos would hit it. Hooray!  The transit of Venus projected safely onto white plastic.  Pretty clever, if you ask me. As an added bonus, we were able to see sunspots too!

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On Lake Ouachita, and Naps

By the middle of May, I was pretty much worn out.  For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been kind of ragged.  It was a tough end to the semester, and we’ve been shorthanded at work, and I’ve overcommitted myself on bike projects, and I just needed a break.  Bryan and I decided that, after Mandy left for Tulsa on Friday evening, we’d just disappear for a couple of days.  We chose Lake Ouachita for our getaway, since we thought it would be the quietest of the nearby lakes on a busy holiday weekend, and we put in at Buckville since it’s a faraway boat launch.

We didn’t get the quiet lake we’d hoped for, but we did manage to find our own private island on the edge of it. Continue reading “On Lake Ouachita, and Naps”