Man, I have so many things to post and at not much time to post them. So, if I have so many fun things to do and not enough time to write about them, I guess that's a very good thing. What it means to you all, is that now I'm finally getting around to writing about my day off LAST Tuesday.
I took a vacation day on Tuesday. It was supposed to be nice out and I thought I could garden in the morning and then go for a nice, long, ride after lunch. Of course, nothing ever goes exactly like you think, so while I did garden some and ride my bike some, it wasn't at all like I envisioned.
I woke-up giddy as a school girl at the prospect of a whole day to myself. I went on a nice little run, came home and was about to go on the porch with a blanket and a cup of tea, to read my book, but when I opened the door, Heidi ran out. My hands were full, so there wasn't much I could do. She isn't at all like Archie, who, all I have to do is say the word, "TREAT!" and he comes running. Heidi ran from one group of plants to the next. I had to open the breezeway, close the door to the laundry room to keep Archie from getting out and then leave the back door open in hopes that Heidi would get bored, or scared and run back in. I tried a couple of things to coax her, but all for naught. Instead, I decided to go about my chores and I hung the laundry on the clothesline and then started mowing the front yard. After I finished cutting the grass, I checked the laundry room to see if Heidi had gone in yet. I happened to see her little gray on the top of the stairs to the dormer room. Yes! I closed the door and decided to eat lunch and watch a cheesy HGTV show, before starting in on the garden.
I got about half the big garden's soil ready and then set a little fence around the area where I wanted to dig a smaller garden, now that one of our big trees are down and we might actually have enough sunshine in one part of my yard to grow tomatoes. I wanted to make sure John was okay with the placement. Sometimes unsymmetrical things bug him and, as you've probably guessed, I don't even notice things like that.
Anyway, by the time I finally got out on my bike, it was much later than I thought it would be, plus the winds were way stronger than the Weather Channel predicted. So, I originally thought I would ride to the Amanas and sit in their lovely beer garden with my cheese danish and drink one of Millstream's wonderful rootbeers and have nice little rest before I headed back and had me a tailwind. But since I didn't have the time or the energy to ride into a headwind that far, I rode to a little town called Oxford and then thought I would ride to North Liberty from there and take a bike path most of the way home to Iowa City. The big problem with this plan, was that I have NO sense of direction, so I rode down all three streets of Oxford, trying to find my way out of town and finally saw the little out building by John's grandparent's old farm that let me know I was finally on the right road to North Liberty.
That part of the ride was really nice. I had most of the road to myself and a nice cross or tailwind and then I hit North Liberty...Que' Lastima! I got there right at rush hour, with construction and was on a scary, busy road, and I decided to turn onto some road that was instant suburbia - all of the houses looked EXACTLY the same and there were all of these little roads that lead to nowhere. Guess how many of those dead ends I took? Eh, you don't want to know. I finally found a road that went into a trailer court and out the other side. I did pull out my phone and attempt to look at Google maps, but it didn't make any sense to me, because it didn't say this street is to the left of you, instead it said North and in my head I don't understand North. Sigh, sigh, sigh.
I rode around on the other side of the trailer court, until I found a bike path. I hoped it was the one that ended up on Dubuque Street in Iowa City, but sadly, I got spit out, right by the big mall in Coralville. From there, I thought I could actually find my way home, but there was a detour where I wanted to get on the strip and so I had to go a different way... I finally found myself in the dog park and took a lane that sent me to a dead end. Next lane? Same thing. Grrrrr. I finally found the right lane that actually went to a street and headed home. My 53 mile ride, took me almost four hours.
They always say that a bad day on a bike is still better than a good day doing almost anything else, and I'm here to tell you, even if you are a dumb a$$ and have no sense of direction and spend a frustrating afternoon into evening on your bike, it still is true.
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