I’m way overdue for a bike ride post am I not? I have this week off while my wife’s in SC visiting her friend. They will be competing in a 3-day combined driving event. With horses and buggies. Calling them buggies is improper and I do so on purpose. My wife loves horses and these events and has a great time. And I arrange vacation time from work to align with these trips of hers so that I can take care of our critters (1 horse 1 dog 1 cat) and enjoy some peaceful solitude. That seems to be getting more difficult as I age. Always considered myself to be completely bore-proof. But true idling has become increasingly difficult. What an idiotic complaint!

Right. Try THIS you stupid human. You people and your giant brains! Sheesh.

Sleeping in every morning has thrown off my early morning workout while watching TV news, but as these autumn days march toward winter, I’ve been able to get out and ride once the temperature gets above 48°F. Much cooler than that is just not much fun. So yesterday I rode up to Newbury and brought the camera along.

CHICKEN FARMER I STILL LOVE YOU.

The popular and somewhat random graffiti along NH RT 103 in Newbury has had a sort of makeover. Over the summer it had been streaked with some kind of white paint or something that ran down over the letters. At one point I thought it might be bird droppings, but then realized that was not very likely because A) the rock face leans toward the viewer so any bird perched on the ledge would have trouble  hitting the wall (except in extreme wind) and B) there are no local birds big enough to make that kind of mess. I bet some anti-chicken farmer revolutionaries shot white paint balls at it. Long story short(er), (why is phrase always used way too late?*) some kind soul has rather effectively framed the message in a nice red box. It must have taken some time to paint around all those letters. Thank you for doing that whoever you are.

I continued north to Newbury village, stopping at the public library where a friend of mine works. I asked her to take a couple of pictures of me in my ridiculously funky cold weather riding gear. She reminded me that denim and cotton socks were poor choices, despite having the chamois padded spandex on underneath. And tucking the pant legs into the socks may keep them from getting caught in the chainrings, but …  I didn’t mention that I was also wearing 4 layers of Techwick, because, well, who cares? The outermost layer is worn for its high visibility, this being deer hunting season. Any stray bullets should see that I’m not a deer and veer off.

Yes, I’m waving at YOU, Internet. Photos by Rosie.

After leaving the library I headed up to the Sunapee State Park. First the beach, where I’d hoped to see a flock of geese in the lake but didn’t, then to the mountain where preparations for the ski season are well underway. They’ll be starting to make snow any time now. And we should be seeing some natural snow soon as well. Hooray.

As I was framing this shot, the chairlift started up. Yet more proof that God exists.

So I was back home by 3:15. Time to do some more puttering in the garden. I replanted the bronze fennel plants that I’d ripped out the day before. My wife told/asked me on the phone that evening (rather emphatically) that those were perennials and why the hell did I do that?! I didn’t really have an answer, but the roots were fine so I pulled them out of the compost pile and planted them back at the ends of some of the beds. They would not have composted that well anyway. Sour grapes? Oliver was nearby as I worked, getting some quality time with our toy owl.

“You call this quality time? I have to sit on this rock all winter!”

I guess the owl’s not really a toy, but a sort of scarecrow. Guess I will bring him in for the winter. He can stay in the greenhouse.

In conclusion, The End.

Oh yeah, before I forget, the title of this post is just a sort of experiment to see if I get any more traffic. It has nothing to with sex or machines. Obviously. What were you thinking?

*For the same reason, as vermonter recently observed, that people say “not to change the subject” when they intend to do just that. Quirky colloquialisms.

Not something to look forward to really, but try and stop it. Winter that is. The list of things that must be done before snow flies has always been a downer. But in the last couple of years I’ve managed to check most of the boxes on the list. Not that I have an actual list. It’s mental really. Get the gardens cleaned up and fall crops planted, bring in all the winter squash, get snow tires mounted on cars, clean the chimney, cover next year’s woodpile, put away lawn mowers, take out snow blower, etc. Totally mental. List I mean …

We had a new front door installed a few weeks back. Oliver inspects the work.

Hunter doesn’t seem terribly impressed. Big deal, another door I will always be on the wrong side of.

Our old front door was hideous, heavy, and weather-worn. Note funky mechanical doorbell.

My wife invested a great deal of time and effort on this project. And money. Turns out doors are not cheap. But she “saved” big bucks by doing the staining herself, which took a couple of weeks. It came out looking like beautiful mahogany.

Stained glass insert featuring 3 pretty flowers … need a nice photo from the inside …

The new door has a funky mechanical doorbell too, which was installed after the photo was taken. And the light fixture was upgraded too. Now this all makes the whole front porch look like the big old piece of crap that it is. A project for the not-too-distant future. I imagine that my wife is already dreaming up the details. She knows better than to tell me about those plans since I’ll just say how stupid I think they are. Can’t help it, it’s my first reaction to almost everything. Jeez that’s stupid. Isn’t it?

…

Ah, the smell of creosote in the morning. Yuk.

So I climbed up on the roof with the stepladder, chimney brush and ropes. Sweeping the chimney went OK until one of the ropes came untied. Fortunately I was able to pull the brush back up and retie the knot. It was a pretty day so after I got done with that mess I brought the camera up and got a nice shot of the whole backyard panorama.

I love this view looking to the west.

Back to a couple of weeks ago. Got all the winter squash and pumpkins harvested from behind the barn and pulled all the vines, cornstalks, and tomato plants. There was quite a nice pile of squash, but the pumpkins didn’t do well at all. Only 2 actually ripened on the vine, and of those the bigger one

Had to get all these squashes into the root cellar.

Loaded them into the Camry’s large trunk then drove them over to the house.

Back to the present. We took a ride through the remains of Hurricane Rick to the Mystic, CT area last Saturday. Visiting relatives. We saw this weird “house”. It was pretty interesting looking. Not sure what it was.

Happy Halloween everybody.

A brief rant … apologies to the sick, the dying, and the uninsured …

Nope, it’s not Medicare, not Blue Cross, Green Star, Red Crescent, or Yellow Pretzel. And I don’t mean the “Public Option” that my “conservative” friends see as communism either. (I submit to you, my right-minded friends, that INSURANCE ITSELF is a form of corrupt communism at its best!) The provider I’m thinking of is the ultimate single payer system.  Born here on earth into a human body? Congratulations! While it is a wonderful machine, it comes with no warranty, no operating manual, is quite messy for the first few months, and is later subject to the full impact of the Universe. Not much, but it’s all yours. So good luck. You’re IT!

Health Care Provider Number One: YOU.

The present debate about “health care” is largely missing the boat. All this endless chatter about insurance this and coverage that is driving me nutty. It’s not being said enough that there’s more to health care than repairing disease. There’s no HEALTH and little CARE going in this debate. What’s going on is the same massive conspiracy of complete consumption that’s been killing us since the Industrial Age. We buy in to the system of disease willingly. White bread and aerosol cheese. Garlic and onions give us bad breath, but we stink anyway from all the smoking and drinking. We can’t eat, sleep, or even crap properly any more, we’re allergic, diabetic, cancerous, and mentally ill.

Crunchy granola whole food hippie crapola you say? Two words: HAH!! Call it what you like, but it’s simple. Even your doctor will tell you to eat right, don’t smoke, stop drinking so much, and get regular exercise. WTF?!? NO PILLS FOR THAT?

And what IDIOT decided it would be neato to sift out the bran, germ, and other essential parts of the wheat because, dammit, REFINED is better?!? That wasn’t refining, that was OCD. Don’t stop till you have a fine white powder. White=Purity. Suck out all the goodness, boil it to hell, then put back the fractionated extracts. HYPERCRAP!! We still have this type of thinking running our Food Factories and squirting insipid, non-nutritive goop into cans, jars, pouches, tubes, and convenient bars you can just pop into your lunch bucket. I think it was comedian Billy Connolly who warned us not to eat foods that come in a bucket. He was serious. Did your doctor mention that you are what you eat? An apple a day …

What do we really know about nutrition? We know a lot more than we ever did, but a lot less than all there is to know. So we’ve identified some “vitamins” and “minerals”. Big deal. Calories and fiber, carbs and glycemic index, all grist for the brainwashing mill. Nothing like pseudo science to convince us “modern” consumers. Our food could stand to be a whole lot simpler than it is now, were it not for the fact that we’ve decided to live in big cities and spend our days chasing dollars through the streets. Obviously the only way we’re ever going back to any kind of agrarian society is after the frackin apocalypse. Is eating right really that inconvenient? THEY want you to believe that it is. Is there no safety, no security, no COVERAGE??? NO. NO COVERAGE FOR YOU! Sorry. We were born to suffer joy and pain and then to die. Let’s get over it.

Once you get over that, then you can be happy. Maybe. A little. But don’t get carried away because it’s not gonna last forever. Knowing this should free up some attention to pay to what you’re eating. Simplify. Now go run around the block until you’re all sweaty and out of breath. Then do it again the next day. And the next day. Etcetera. End of rant.

Two beds of garlic. Planted last weekend. Where the onions were.