Glasses for Rachel and The Catch

Have you seen the Eagle-cam? Tammy has been watching this a lot over the last few days while she's at work in her office. The eggs were laid in late February and hatched in the last week or so. It's especially fascinating watching them feed. There are a lot of people tuning in.

Just one day at Foci this week for us. I can't recall offhand what or how many of my attempts made it into the annealer but I do know it was a better week for me than last week. We're both feeling more comfortable each day we rent time there and are hoping that our increasing comfort soon allows us to step up our results.

We're still doing glasses, for the most part, just trying to get those right as no two seem to be the same yet. We've been hesitant to try other things but Steve and Jackson have both given us demos on bowls so we finally gave those a shot on Thursday. We each managed to get one in the annealer.

We were laughing about how Rachel will have quite a collection of glasses for her dorm next year at school. Glasses for Rachel—that's what we're calling this phase of our glassblowing.

I kept my bike stabled this weekend until I got a ton of work done outside. Our Christmas lights were still up and needed to come down. This weekend was the first chance I had to get up on the roof because of all of the snow we'd had. This was easily the longest into the new year it's taken me to get them down.

Speaking of snow—it's nearly all gone. All that's left in our yard is one small patch in front that will probably be no more by morning. Before and after. I don't know that I've ever complained about a winter more than this one. Good riddance!

But with that thought in mind, one might think that I would be spending time indoors only when necessary during the coming warm months. Not so fast. I was telling Tammy last night that I may be doing less riding this year because I want for us to keep our focus on glassblowing and not allow it to get lost to our other activities like it did last summer. She was fine with that. We've got a fair amount of time and money invested to get us to where we are and I don't want to have to begin anew again. Plus, I'm seriously thinking of getting back into my drawing. I went out the other night and got a bunch of supplies to begin doing some more sketching. We've got a photo of Rachel hanging in our family room that I'd like to draw. The lure of my bikes is awful strong though.

Speaking of riding, I did eventually make it out this afternoon for the Hampton Loop. A 41 mile/66 km ride into a southeast wind in mid-50s temps. I felt so good that even two flats couldn't discourage me. Yes...two of them. I fixed the first one then surprisingly got another just a few miles later. That left no doubt in my mind that my best effort to find the offending debris in the tire on the initial flat came up short. I pulled over and after looking more closely found a white piece of something that looked like glass lodged in the tire. I felt the inside of the tire to see if I could feel it there but I couldn't. I pried it out and was certain it was the culprit. Back on the road, I began to wonder if I had my patch kit with me or was it in the saddlebag of my blue Serotta? I was out of spare tubes and I hoped I didn't have to find out. I wouldn't have to.

I picked up the tailwind at county road 46 and made some nice tracks for home managing anywhere from 24-30 mph. It wasn't long before I noticed another rider well ahead of me and the chase was on. It's a game we roadies play. You're either the hunter or the hunted out there. Get used to it. I'm still able to say that I'm much more often the hunter but I expect that will gradually change over the next few years.

I look back in my minds-eye and think of the rides I've done over the years. Wouldn't it be cool to have video from those days to look at now, I think to myself? Yeah, it would be. So, with that thought in mind, I'm going to be occasionally taking some video of my rides and uploading them to the net to archive them there.

Today's ride.