Of Bikes, Lemurs and Balloons

As is common on one of those ‘weekends in Cohousing‘, there’s rarely a lot of ‘sitting around, relaxing, and being bored.’ Yesterday started out fairly domestic, with a Metric Buttload of mowing. The grass and weed around here are growing like… well… like weeds. High humidity, warm temperatures, and a lot of rain will certainly do that. Right now we’re at the “need to mow every 2 weeks” stage. Thank goodness for electric pushmowers and simple garden tractors.
Cat and I got about half the property mowed – with me planning on attacking the field today (though the weather looks like it might not cooperate). Right now I’m wishing for a decent battery powered mower. One of my fellow cohousers managed to cut through the power cord already. A simple repair, but managing the cord is certainly tedious.
But we’re not through yet! Under the backdrop of Zach being sick (he’s been running a low grade fever for 3-4 days – we’re taking him to the doctor this morning), Beth and Tim convinced me to go on a bikeride.
Now, I have NOT been keeping up with my riding this summer. Small jaunts on the Giant bike around the site and up the road a bit, but almost no long distance rides on the Haluzak ‘bent. My brother in law had done a full tuneup on it recently, so it was ready to go, I just hadn’t taken the time to get out there. The other factor was I wanted to test a route to work – with the goal of occasionally bikeriding into work. Google Maps gave a decent route that totalled 14 miles each way. Workable.
So we rode it.
In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea to attempt a 40+ mile ride on the first day out. I ended up NOT making the entire ride – clocking out at 22 miles, and asking for a rescue from Cat. She and Steph and all the kids met the 3 bikers at Kimball Farm for ice cream and dinner, and I opted to ride back home in the car rather than bike it. I was wiped out.
Still, I’m pretty happy with doing 22 miles without completely disintegrating. The route was fantastic, with only 2 Killah hills (one of which I hiked up). The jaunt from my office to Kimball Farm is very simple (about 3 miles), though was probably the ugliest of the ride (riding along Littleton Road is not particularly fun, but it was the shortest of the legs).
Particular thanks to Beth for motivating me to get off my duff and hit the road. Both she and Tim were really supportive when I was flagging. I drank gallons of water, ate some tasty ice cream at Kimballs, and slept like the dead last night.
Oh, the title? Well, Kimballs was PACKED. But they had a lot of activities going on as well. As soon as Zach and I sat down while folks were getting food, I glanced over, and LO, this woman had a ringtailed lemur on her shoulder! She was part of an animal show going on, and was very friendly, but it was certainly not what I expected to see. In addition, there was a balloon set up in the next field over giving rides. Not a hot air type – the gas bag is sealed, and it was well tethered to the ground – it certainly had a steampunk look. It was quite surreal seeing it appearing over the tree line during dinner.
All in all, quite a day. Today we have a doctors appointment, and if the weather holds out, I’ll haul the tractor out into the playing field to get that cut.