the power of a child
Posted: October 2, 2014 Filed under: cycling, pearls of wisdom 27 CommentsLittle acts can change our day. Today I found this in my mailbox.
If I interpret this correctly, in the eyes of a child I’m skinny – what’s not to like?
It was from Tessa our neighbor’s six year old daughter. I learned a lesson too. Small sincere acts of kindness really do lift our spirits. Thanks Tessa, we’re never too old to learn.
Thanks Tessa, love is infectious, but it’s something that’s good to catch.
Pass it on.
sunrise – cycling
Posted: September 28, 2014 Filed under: cycling, food | Tags: bicycling, Chicago to Milwuakee, corn meal pancakes, cycling, food 11 CommentsAt 6:00 am, the train station is desolate. The streets to the train station are empty and the air is cool. We were soon to be off on the train to downtown Chicago and from there ride our bicycles up along the lake and paths the 120 miles to Milwaukee.
Naperville-station, as isolated as if the zombie apocalypse was upon us
Dawn rises along the tracks and soon enough the ride begins.
sunrise along the tracks
Every ride is full of wonders, like the scent of chocolate baking along the streets of downtown, or the sea of spandex when our path merged with a woman’s 1/2 marathon. It’s a chance to find mom/pop restaurants like the Mexican place in Evanston where you can get corn meal pancakes and the restaurant is so small that you have to walk through the tiny kitchen and ask the dishwasher move to get into the tiny restroom.
corn meal pancakes – like a corn muffin you can put syrup on – what’s not to like ?
Hope you ride your bike to new places and find adventures of your own.
cycling the old plank trail – rootbeer
Posted: September 21, 2014 Filed under: cycling | Tags: cycling, food, old plank trail, rootbeer 16 CommentsThe Old Plank Road Trail in Illinois is 21 very straight miles between Joliet and Chicago Heights. The easy ride will take you past many suburbs and you’ll see everything from Saturday French Farmer’s Markets, McMansions to 1950 style box houses, woods and wetland and malls and Costco. This trail was first a Native American game trail, and then a toll road where immigrants who couldn’t afford the barge fee on the canals paid a penny to walk along the wood-lined planked road instead of the rutted knee deep mud of the paths. It later became a railway and then finally a paved recreation path and a bit of a window into the settling of the Midwest.
It’s an easy cruising now, nicely paved past a variety of sights. There’s a great suspension bridge over the highway that must have won a prize somewhere, and halfway down the trail in Frankfort, where the tail passes right through town, you can stop at Build a Bun and get a custom hotdog and a root-beer. We found this new one from Missouri with the Route-66 brand.
refreshing – way to enjoy a bike-ride.
A new path, hot-dogs, sunshine and autumn air and a new root-beer makes for a great riding day.
the opposite of mass produced – food
Posted: September 13, 2014 Filed under: food | Tags: chicago land, food, gin, north shore distillery, spirits 18 CommentsWe went to a local wine tasting. Tried some reds and whites from California and Oregon. They were nice but we didn’t purchase any. On the way home we stopped at Standard Market where they were having a tasting by a local craft brewery of Gin, Vodka and Aquavit. Chicago Gin, I like the sound of it. And I like the idea that they are small enough to label each bottle by hand. It was pretty tasty, made by neighbors ( although Chicagoland has about 9 million neighbors ) it’s fun to purchase locally.
North Shore Distillery – check them out if you can.
cheers….
a million flowers on the back of the envelope
Posted: September 11, 2014 Filed under: cycling | Tags: cycling, flowers, prairie, rag weed, winter coming 23 CommentsI rode my bicycle, it’s fallen to 53 degrees and stopped by a hillside. If you do like back of the envelope calculations you might count a 2 x 2 square and find it had 100 flowers and that in a space that could hold ten thousand squares you could behold a million flowers.
Or you could just saw wow.
a million flowers
And enjoy it before winter comes once again.
blue
Posted: August 29, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized 31 Commentswhen my youngest daughter was a teenager she had a blue hair period, among other colors, but we would be out and people, especially little old ladies would often approach us out of the “blue” so to speak and tell her how attractive her hair was while I thought to myself, “Nooooooo!”
some pictures are their own description
She told me one day, “Dad, they just wish they had done it when they were my age”… how could I disagree?
May you do something extra-ordinary.
phone booth
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: horses | Tags: horses, phone calls, wyoming 24 CommentsWhen you’re in a mountain valley with no line of sight to cell towers, how does one make a phone call? Head up to the phone-booth.
Hold my ride while I make this call….
You can ride up on the mountain bike, or take the car, or go natural. But a one horse powered vehicle is a pretty good way to mix technologies.
Here’s hoping you can sometimes un-plug.
blacktooth and pinks – wyoming treasures
Posted: August 17, 2014 Filed under: travel, wyoming | Tags: big horn mountains, blacktooth peak, pinks, wyoming 8 CommentsBack down from the mountain, a couple more images linger. It’s hard to describe the mountain vistas, or the beauty of the flowers and I am loathe to let them go just yet.
Pinks – their local name – seen from horseback
Many mountain flowers are small and subtle, but pinks are small and brilliant
Close up view
As the seasons move toward winter the colors move to brown and grey, here Blacktooth Peak sits atop it’s royal robes.
Blacktooth Peak in the distance
After one last view, it was time to return.
wheels and hoofs – cycling and horses
Posted: August 16, 2014 Filed under: cycling, horses, travel, wyoming | Tags: bear gulch, big horn national forest, cycling, horses 5 CommentsWrapping up Wyoming for 2014, I took a cycling ride from the cabin to Bear Gulch. It was about seven miles with one thousand feet of climbing. These days, that’s a hard ride for me. At the top, the as far as I can go top, I sat on a rock and ate some local cherries we had purchased at a local farmer’s market.
Resting at Bear Gulch
Many of you who know horses may think they prefer to hang about the corral with their buds just waiting until it’s time to go out to pasture. However my I-phone horse translator tells me that this one was saying… “What do you mean you didn’t take me to Bear Gulch with all the sweet grass… Are you crazy ? ” My legs and lungs said I should have listened.
Bear Gulch… that’s a very serious matter!
western root-beer food
Posted: August 10, 2014 Filed under: food, travel, wyoming | Tags: food, root beer, Sheridan Wyoming, travel 10 CommentsThe cabin is a long ride up the mountain and the road is rough so when Jan stocks up at the grocery store I check for any local root-beer.
Bedfords comes in a manly bottle, no twist off cap – you need an opener, or as I have seen, teeth, or an eye socket. This root beer takes me back to the good old days.
found in Sheridan Wyoming
This one has a big strong flavor. It’s not as smooth as some from the East coast, but the big flavor makes it unique.
bwthoughts 