All In A Day's Work

What a beautiful morning! I'm sitting out on the deck with the sun partially shining through our pergola. The air is full of birds singing and Coldplay, Parachutes, is on low so as not to drown them out.  Tammy and I have been in overdrive for the past several days checking off things on our to-do list both inside and outside. Our gardens and assorted flower beds are mostly planted so I'm giving myself permission to put my feet up and soak it in. I need to do this more often. Tammy is inside with the Sunday paper, a cup of coffee and a pen working on the sudoku puzzle. And it's Mother's Day. Rachel will be coming by in a couple of hours. We have plans to go out for sushi before visiting Tammy's mother in her nursing home in Farmington. I have a 3:04 tee time to golf with Bob later this afternoon so it's going to be another full day.

I made it out on Tuesday for a longish ride up to Rogers and back. It's been at least a couple of years since I've done this route and with all of the construction along the way it may be a while before I attempt it again. Still, it was nice to be on some roads I hadn't been on for too long.

We're getting together with Keith, Karen, and Joe on Wednesday to finalize plans for our kitchen remodel that we hope to tackle in late July if we can get all of the pieces to fall into place. More on that in a later post.

I was back with the crew of guys doing trail work at the new mountain bike trail in Lakeville near Lake Marion yesterday morning. We were doing "rock armoring" of some sections that will likely be prone to remaining wet days after the rains have stopped. I'm happy to finally be able to give back in this small way to this sport that I've fallen in love with over the past 5 years. The one concern I have with doing trail work is the exposure to ticks and the Lyme Disease they carry. I prefer to not contract it. The woods we're working in are loaded with ticks. I'm careful to wear long pants and spray my shoes and legs with a spray containing nearly 100% DEET.

The new trail will be unlike any of the other trails I ride, with an entirely different flow. What it lacks in length it makes up for in berms and ramps/jumps. The trail isn't quite yet complete but should be open to the public in a month. It's nice to have another option to ride and I've already got plans to make it a regular part of my routine.

I had a mishap out at Murphy late yesterday afternoon. I had just ridden the new trails we were working on earlier in the day and felt good so I rode out to Murphy to do a lap there. About 10 minutes into the trail I let my right bar end get too close to a tree as I was negotiation a rock obstacle in the middle of the trail. Before I knew what was happening I'd done a face-plant into the dirt. I laid there for a few seconds to take a quick inventory of my body beginning with my teeth—all there—whew! The crash detection on my Garmin 820 went off and sent a text to Tammy to tell her I'd experienced some sort of sudden stop. I couldn't stop the alert from going out in time so I followed it up with a text to tell her "I'm okay". She received on her end along with the text, a map of my location. It's a nice feature but I'm still not sure how I feel about it. But it didn't matter because she's still figuring out her Google Pixel phone and didn't realize I'd crashed until I told her after I hurriedly got into the shower and cleaned up before seeing and telling her.

Post crash me

I tried to complete the loop but my left knee was begging me to quit so I bailed out early and limped home.

All in a day's work!