Some skinny old dude I saw at the firehall gym.

While leaving the gravel parking lot at a farm market a few days ago I managed to drop my steel horse on myself. The back wheel slid on some rocks I guess. Fortunately it landed on me and didn’t damage the bike.

I was a bit bruised and beat up, but combat effective. Apparently dropping 550 pounds of bike on a 68 year old man is contraindicated. Back to full capacity this morning.

Follow me for retirement tips!

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I don't think I've posted this here before. Maybe I'm just being a weirdo, but it makes me chuckle every time I go by it. (It's the former public phone box outside a local brewpub/restaurant near my rowing club.)



And yes, that's exactly what you'd think: A tin can on a string. (The electrical box to right of photo serves a car charger for customers, so it's not that these guys are just low-rent about things like the phone box.)

Along the stretch of river I paddled on Friday is an old phone booth. Yeah. Funny stuff. There's a mannequin in the phone booth with a sign that says, "Have you seen my girlfriend?" The owner of that property also has a line hung out over the river that he hangs a four-pack of Rainier Beer from. Yeah. Good stuff. So on Friday I helped myself to one. I just tossed it in my canoe and had it at the take-out. It was a club trip, so not even one Rainier is allowed while on the water. I'm OK with that. My favorite flavor - free! Fun to paddle right under the little thing and reach up and grab one. Made me smile.

The day before someone I knew met us at our campsite and took me up to meet up with another fellow in a different paddling club to go rescue the raft he had to abandon a couple days before when he went under a log (novice crew on more advanced stretch of river), lost their paddles, and ended up in the ER for hours later that night. We paddled it four and a half miles to the next ramp where we rolled it up and stuffed it in his car. About a mile into our paddle, we found the cooler he had lost. We never found the paddles.

On the way home yesterday I stopped at the dam of a little reservoir to meet the dive club. I got buddied up with a novice. It was a reminder how far my dive skills have come. I was a novice once, and someone would look after me. Now I get to return that kindness. It did mean I had a pretty short dive. My buddy had a bit of a panic from down around 60 feet and bolted to the surface. I came up slowly (safely) and she was OK. We still had plenty of air, but I suggested we just drop down to 30 feet and swim back. She wanted to dive more, but I thought we should head back. I impressed myself by swimming right back to the place we had put in. During the pre-dive brief, I showed my buddy all my equipment even though I didn't expect she'd be able to rescue me if I were in trouble. I checked out her kit so I could help her if needed. I said I don't have any need to go deep. She said she likes to go deep, but there's really nothing to see down there. My plan was to stay above 60 feet, but we ended up down closer to 70. I brought us back up, and that's when she started to drift down the steep slope. She was able to come back up, but then she didn't stop. She just kept going up, up, up, and out of sight. I followed. I'm glad she was OK. I think one issue was she had too much lead. She also just didn't have good buoyancy control. I hope she keeps improving her skills.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@Unclemac: Wow!

I'm looking at planting fruit trees in the backyard but I'm thinking I might need to do something like a fence or suchlike to keep the wind from causing issues for all of them.

UncleMac wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@Unclemac: Wow!

I'm looking at planting fruit trees in the backyard but I'm thinking I might need to do something like a fence or suchlike to keep the wind from causing issues for all of them.

Stake them for the first year or two. The trunks will stiffen up. The tall grass bends in the wind. Trees do too. Either that, or like they do along the Oregon Coast, they can become Krumholtz.

Sunset from our upper deck...

Nice job with the diver Mtaratoot. Despite lead dives in Jamaica old rescue diver habits are ingrained. The dive leaders have gotten used to and depend on me for another set of eyes.

Am I the only one who misses the Newsfeed? It is so much harder to keep up with the people whose progress I was following and from whom I learned some interesting things.

Hey everyone!

Now that my fitness challenge group is on a break for a month, maybe I can remember to pop in here more and post until the next session starts up. We have a chatty group and by the time I got done reading and posting, I had run out of time since I still work and have other activities.

Hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer! Hard to believe we are over half way through 2024 already.

~b3achy 😎

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I learned I became briefly newspaper famous in an article about the local urban farms (and how they relate to the local farmers markets). This was (kind of horrifyingly) a published photo of me at my favorite farmers market, looking both grumpy and disoriented, and standing in a shocking hips-forward posture. All publicity is 100% not good publicity, at least if this is an example.

On the brighter side, I went there again today, and got a perfectly delightful blueberry/lemonade ice pop, with whole blueberries in it. It was excellent, especially with temps around 87F (30.5C) at the time.

So easy to be self-critical. You look fine!!