Random stuff and riding at Lake Massabesic

Today I took my car in for its first oil change. Now when I bought it I got invited to this new owner's reception, which promised a free oil change if you showed up. At the same said reception, I also won a $20 gift card to the dealership. Now when do you suppose that I remembered either of those facts this morning? Of course, after I had paid and had been tootling back towards Manchester for 10 minutes. However, good news is that while I was waiting in the waiting room, I had brought my knitting and finished the second sleeve for Mya's jacket and cast on the first pocket.


I called Shawn on my way home and woke him up (he wasn't estactic about this) and asked him to be ready to go for our bike ride when I got home. He was fairly cooperative, especially for him since it was before noon. He even wore the helmet, although he flatly stated that he wasn't going to wear it when he went biking by himself. Since that hasn't happened yet, the actually going biking by himself, I don't think I'll worry about it at all. There isn't a statical probability of getting hurt if you ride without a helmet, if you never actually go for the bike ride.

This is a picture in the same part of the trail that I went biking by myself a month ago or so. It's amazing how green and different it is. There were waterlily buds but they weren't really blooming yet. We ended up riding this side of the trail much further than I had gone last time, and went through a neat little tunnel thing, and then to the street. We turned around and went back to the park and then rode on the trail on the other side of the street.

I was doing my nature girl routine again today. The Jackson in me requires that I take pictures of interesting trees, birds, plants and random fauna. I'm not sure what is up with that, but we all do it. Seriously if you saw the entire set of pictures I took in Vegas during our honeymoon, you would see all these pictures where I am trying to get a good shot of a western chipmunk at the Hoover Dam because they look different than our chipmunks out east. In that spirit of things, here's a picture of a weird flower that I'd never seen before. Anyone know what it is? It was very small about 3/4 of an inch, and just growing by the side of the trail.

I also threw on the brakes (almost going over the handlebars) and yelled for Shawn to stop so I could take pictures of the lady slippers that were by the side of the road. He thought something was wrong, and was not impressed that I was again, taking pictures of flowers. He didn't know what a lady slipper was. (These city boys, I mean really.) When we were growing up, it was always a big deal to see a lady slipper. They are endangered and you don't see them very often. But again this may be a weird Jackson thing again. I can't tell you how many pictures of birds at the bird feeder my grandmother has, which are all fuzzy because she insists on trying to take them through the picture window.


This picture is Shawn pretending to try to be action guy with his mountain bike. It was pretty funny. He had some better poses, but they were fuzzy because I still had the camera set on the flower setting (see there's a flower setting on the camera for objects closer than 28 inches, it can't just be me right??) We turned around just at this point, because it had been 4 miles, and we had about a mile and a half to get back. We had already gone about a mile longer than we'd ever had, but it wasn't bad because I kept stopping to take pictures of stuff.

On the way back we stopped at the boat landing and stood in the breeze a bit. Ignore my hair, I'd just taken the helmet off. It was a really good ride, we ending up having done 5.6 miles. We both got these fancy little trip things that tell you our trip miles, average speed, current speed, time, and time of this trip. At one point I managed to get the bike up to 14 miles per hour, which I think is pretty good for a gravel trail, and despite the fact that my leg kinda hurt from where I stratched it pretty deeply with one of the wires holding the fenders on (little protective dohickey came off and I am just not gracefully getting off the bike.) I may have ruined the capris I was wearing with the little blood spots coming through. We'll have to see what it looks like after I do the laundry. Calamity Jane strikes again!

We went to lunch when we got back, and I was supposed to accomplish a lot of other stuff, but I ended up taking a 4 hour nap. Shawn's asleep so he can get up for his early morning shift at 4:30 am, and since I had the power nap, I'm going to try to push through and finish as much of Mya's jacket as I can tonight. Cross your fingers for me!