June 17/18 - another day, another ride

I was in a rush this morning, out of here at 4am. It's about 2.5 miles from here to the 7-11 where I met Judith for our day's ride ... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

As per the plan, I took the X5 in for tires yesterday, leaving it at the Tire Kingdom in Port Orange. This is the third set of these tires that I've bought from tirerack.com and the third set that they've installed. Do you think that I like the tires ?

Sure enough, just after Sandy had left, they called that the car was ready. So ... after lunch I rode my bike up and picked up the car. After all, if I can ride 760+ miles, I can probably ride 15 miles to pick up the car. Besides, it's the "green" thing to do, right ? The rest of my bike riding isn't really green since I'm just expending energy, producing methane like most animals -- only a lot of it given the amount of riding -- it's not productive, from a green standpoint, but probably better than going for a joyride in my car or in a motorcycle !

Sandy got home later in the afternoon, having had her facial and whatnot. Abby and I stayed home otherwise. Oh -- after Sandy got home we went over to Lowes to look at and then bought an electric lawnmower. On the way back we stopped at the pet store and restocked Abby's food supply. Arriving home, I discovered that the lawn people had been here and cut the grass ... grrrr ... I didn't think that they'd come back until they had received another check, but I was wrong. I guess that they took Sandy at her word a few months ago and June was on their schedule. Basically two month's lawn cutting with the service pays for the lawn mower, but I guess that will be one month delayed now. I'll probably get them to come late July and then put them on hold indefinitely. With all the rain that we've gotten here (2 feet of water in the last couple of weeks) we actually have grass growing. Will wonders never cease.

We had mangrove snapper for dinner last night -- quite good but I didn't cook it enough so the last bit of cooking was in the microwave. It's a very soft fleshed fish and nuking doesn't exactly dry it out. Potatoes and salad rounded out the menu.

Onto today ... up at 3am and out at 4am, on the road with Judith at 4:30 and back at 2pm -- we rode the 137 mile round-trip to St. Augustine Beach. This is one of my Permanents, so we were doing the usual Control thing, only easier this time since there was simply a control at the beginning, turnaround point and end.

It was hot. I'm not used to this. I drank a lot but still got dehydrated, but not seriously so and since there was no ongoing biking requirement, lots of time to recover. My next bike ride won't be until sometime next week - this will have been the last long ride in a long time since my "normal" rides are in the 70 mile range.

On the way into NSB there were thunderstorms all around us. I was wondering if I would be calling Sandy to pick me up at the 7-11. I made it back in time though, and the thunderstorm activity stayed over the mainland. We got one very brief downpour -- that would have actually felt good on the bike.

So that's it, pretty much, for today. The dryer is acting up -- great -- we've had more appliance problems. These things are supposed to last a lifetime. E68 -- dryer turns itself on and starts beeping. Luckily the circuit breakers are close by. According to one website, that means that I'll have to replace the main control board for $185 ... great. How much has the dryer been used over the last two years ? not much.

Sandy picked up some wild Alaskan salmon for dinner. It should be good.

That's it ...