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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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They Do!

Aaron and Brittany got married! We don’t know them well at all, but Aaron’s parents are good friends, and they invited us to their lovely backyard wedding and asked Bryan to take a few photographs.

Bryan did a good job, as always.  I brought my little camera and snuck around in the bushes taking macros and sort of candid stuff.  Just as Bryan had everyone lined up for a nice family portrait, somebody saw me behind a fern.  “Look, it’s the paparazzi!”  That got everybody laughing and looking in the same direction, and I think it turned out to be the best photograph of the whole family. Continue reading “They Do!”

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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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Paddling School

This year, since we just bought boats, we decided to enroll in the ACC’s ‘School of Recreational Paddling.’ In order to feel useful (I like to feel useful) I wrote this article about it for Arkansas Outside. Rather than writing a separate blog post about Rec School, I’m just going to plagiarize my own work and cut and paste it here.The Arkansas Canoe Club is about forty years old, and they’ve organized training weekends for thirty-seven of those years – Canoe School evolved into Whitewater School, and then about ten years ago they began offering a Recreational School as well.  That experience shows in the really good programs the club puts together.  Those good at organizing organize.  Other paddlers work to be certified instructors, and they teach the classes.  Experienced boaters who are trained and comfortable with safety hang toward the back of the groups, and are available to help students with fitting issues and one-on one instruction.  These are people who love what they do, and further, they’re GOOD at it.

Continue reading “Paddling School”

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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”

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National Bike Week – Rocktown Trackdown

Since last summer, Bryan and I had been thinking that a bike/walk scavenger hunt in Little Rock would be fun.  Vinny’s alleycats are great fun for a handful of people, but what if somebody did a race that was a little less competitive and a little easier to navigate?  If participants were given a map, it’d be easier to plan a route.  If people just had to answer questions, we wouldn’t need many volunteers. Continue reading “National Bike Week – Rocktown Trackdown”