Today we had Sam's 16th birthday party.  The theme was Alice In Wonderland.

I fixed a friend's boat recently, so he offered me the use of it whenever it's not in use.  Here's a picture of sunset on the Corsica, the night we first took it out.

My kids found a blue grasshopper the other day.

     I wrote this last week, the day after my first group ride in years, but I had to go to work, so I didn't get the chance to edit it until tonight.

     So I finally got in my group bicycle ride last night.  I knew I was at the right place, when I saw a bunch of guys pulling their pants off in the parking lot to reveal the spandex bib shorts underneath and donning their jerseys.  Twenty eight miles and just shy of a thousand feet of climbing with a group of 30 guys (and a girl) whose weight appeared to range between about 120 and 165 compared to my 230, and most of whose bikes cost thousands of dollars more than mine.  I hung with them for the first few miles, then got shot off the back of the pack like a pea squeezed out of its pod.  Luckily the bike shop owner, a very fit 50ish guy, on his first ride back since surgery to repair a torn miniscus, and another girl who might have been 5 years my senior, hung back so I wouldn't get lost.  When I say hung back, though, I mean cruelly kept about 150 yards ahead, so I would have them in sight, while accelerating away if I ever caught up.  They'd wait at stop lights, long enough to catch their breath, 'til I arrived, ask if I was ok, then be off before my wheels ever came to a stop. I spent 51 minutes of my hour and 40 minute ride with my heart rate above 170, which translates for me to the threshold where my heart can just barely pump blood fast enough to resupply the oxygen my muscles were using.  I also spent 13 minutes at or slightly above 180, which is my anaerobic level, or a level where my heart is giving all it has and still can't quite keep the muscles resupplied.  Imagine that burning you get in your thighs when you climb a big set of stairs and then multiply it to a level where you simply zone it out or have to quit.  I offered once, told them to just go on without me, I'd find my way back, but they wouldn't hear of it, so I kept trying despite the fire in my legs and lungs.  About an hour in and halfway up what they call Stair Step Climb (because it climbs, then levels off and climbs again 3 different times, I could feel my energy dropping, so I grabbed a Clif bar from a pocket in the back of my jersey.  I was in my lowest (easiest) gear and was still at the limits of my ability.  Every...single...stroke...of...the...pedals was an exercise in will power and burning, pulsing pain. I grabbed the packet and stuck it between my teeth.  I pedaled a few strokes, 'til I got to a flatter section.  I had just enough energy to tear the package, and stick it back between my teeth.  I pedaled a few more strokes, took a big bite and stuck the rest of the bar back into my jersey pocket.  Then I chewed, and learned a new lesson.  At that level of exertion, chewing an energy bar while grinding up a hill and sucking huge, ragged breaths, takes concentration and effort to make sure the air goes to the lungs and the food down the stomach.  I was the rest of the way up the hill and around the next corner before I was finally able to choke down that mouthful of peanut butter energy bar, squeeze a mouthful of water from my bottle and start picking up speed.  It took a few minutes, but before long, my breathing came a little more regularly and the pain eased back to a measurable level.  Of course, they looked back, saw I was recovering and put the hammer down.  Up and down the hills we alternately ground it out pedal stroke by pedal stroke and flew effortlessly.  The work was rewarded on the downhills when at speeds approaching 40 mph, we swept left, right and left again around the snaking curves, feeling the wind against our faces and keeping it easy on the pedals to conserve energy for the next climb.  The bike shop owner, whose other knee was now giving him trouble, took us on a two mile shortcut from the original planned thirty, but when we got back the lead group had still beaten us back to the shop and were off their bikes and resting.  Why subject myself to this torture and the humiliation of being the slow, fat guy in the bunch?  Three reasons.  First, you never get better if you don't hang around people whose ability exceeds yours.  Second, and you may not understand it if you've never experienced it there is a point during extended, hard exercise, past which your body begins to release endorphines, wonderful chemicals that make you happy and make all the pain go away, at least temporarily.  I would imagine that the endorphine rush is what a drug like heroin would do synthetically, and the first time you experience that natural rush, you can become addicted.  Third, the wonderful feeling of skimming along just above the earth that is almost like flying.

       Today I hurt.  Though I have ridden for years, I found muscles I didn't remember I even had, but I am glad to have taken the opportunity, and now I know of a ride that goes out on one of my days off, so I may be able to work it into my schedule regularly.    I'm really looking forward to the next ride, already.

     Inspired by @simret, and armed with some advice from a local pro photographer, I took three of the kids out to a very dark field tonight.  It took about 35 pictures and some serious waiting for the moon to come out from behind the spotty cloud cover, but finally, I got the shot I wanted.  I hope you enjoy.  ISO 100 ,f22, 1/80, 70-300 Minolta lens at 300mm.

   My boss, one of the ones who is no longer at our company, owed me one, so despite my relative low seniority at our company, he got me a week and a half vacation during the prime June/July window.  Problem is, we have had just shy of $4,000 of unexpected car expenses this spring, so vacation turned to staycation and we're trying to keep the cost low.  That means swimming at the house, fishing and visits to the zoo and Smithsonian.  We had no firm plans except that the two Wednesday nights I was off, I would be able to enjoy the group ride at the local bike shop.   Since the bicycle shops around here have their rides on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays and I work Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, this was a rare opportunity, so you know what happened.  My 19 year old said she had been feeling left out, because she ends up working or going to school every time we do anything, so instead of being around for my ride, we were in DC all day Wednesday. I'm sure I'll live, but as usual...the best laid plans of mice and men...

    We got on the road early to get one of the prime parking spots at the bottom of the hill, but needn't have worried, because the crowds were small and parking was plentiful all day.  To top it all off, the weather turned out to be high 70s (25C) all day with a nice cloud cover.  It was so nice, the animals were outside and active at almost every exhibit. The National Zoo is set on the side of a hill, so the optimum plan is to park at the bottom and walk up while you're fresh so the return trip will be downhill. So what did we see?

     Right away, we saw the tiger.  He wasn't very active, but at least he gave us a good yawn.

     The lion was more cooperative.  I have enough pictures from him for a post of his own, but here are some of the best.  It was almost as if he was showing off for the camera.

     As we were walking toward the big cat exhibits, someone asked what the big cables overhead were for.   I told them that they were for the orangutans, but I had been visiting the zoo my entire life and had only ever seen them use the overhead cables once.  Of course, as we left the big cats, the orangutans made a liar of me.

     They made their way across and down and played for a while, allowing us to get more pictures of them as well.

     After the apes, we visited the reptile house.  The false cobra was curious about us, so we got to see him up close.  These snakes can open their ribs into a hood like a cobra.  I don't think I'd stick around to identify whether it was real or false, if I encountered one in the wild!

     Then we saw the more common (and very poisonous) water moccasin and some other interesting reptiles like the king cobra and some chameleons.  This is a water moccasin, otherwise known as the cottonmouth.

     We saw a snapping turtle with a head almost as big as Isabel's and an even bigger mouth.

     I can't remember what this little guy is called.

     Farther up the hill were the giant pandas.

     ....and then it was down the hill to see the elephants.

     Hmm...what shall we visit next?

    Wolves...

     Seals...

don't forget the lemurs!

    and all sorts of exhausted kids and parents.

We got to the bottom of the hill, ready to get in the car.  The kids were beat, just look at the expression on Isabel's face.

So, what do you guys wanna do?  Think we should go home? "Ooh! Daddy, can we go to the museum?"  and so we made our way downtown and made it a two for one trip, taking advantage of extended hours at the Natural History Museum.  We were almost out of juice in the camera batteries, so not many pictures from there, but as we were leaving, Rebekah asked if I could get a picture of her holding up the Washington Monument while it is closed to repair structural damage caused by last year's earthquake.

     It was truly the best trip I've ever had to the National Zoo, and it was a very good and enjoyable day.

       So, I gotta go to bed, but I thought just before I do, I could at least post one or two pics from today.  More to come later.

      I was tagged by @making_a_comeback_05 to create a list of 16 things about myself.  I always enjoy reading these when other people write them, so I'll keep it going.  Plus, if you haven't figured it out yet, I love telling stories.

     1. For ten years growing up, I lived in an old mansion my folks tried to restore.  It had 11 bedrooms and one of my favorite memories from that time was when my mom covered the stairs with mattresses  one rainy day and let us use it as a sliding board. When we first moved in, it had been condemned and it didn't have electricity.  Squirrels lived in the space between the floors of the second story and the roof of the first.  You could hear them running around throughout the day.  We had to get beekeepers to come remove the hive that had taken up residence in the closet of what was to be my first bedroom.  They said there were more than likely over 150,000 bees living in the hive when they came to get rid of them.  Until we got a lot of work done on the house, we took our baths in an old zinc tub that we filled with water we had boiled on the woodstove, then added cold water so we wouldn't get scalded.  In the living room, there was a large, silver chandelier that held candles instead of electric lights.  We were sitting at the dining room table (which opened to 20 feet when all the leaves were in) with all the uncles and cousins for a huge Christmas dinner one year, and my uncle, kept slapping at his neck, wondering what bug would be biting him at that time of year.  When we figured it out, we all had a big laugh.  He was sitting directly under one of the candles and the hot wax was dripping onto his neck.  

     2. While we were living in that house, our neighbor had a farm where he raised and trained trotting horses.  His day job was owning and running a small sewing factory where he did contract work for large name brand clothing manufacturers.  The blanket I use when I stay overnight in the work truck, is left over liner material from a job he did making coats for London Fog sometime back in the early 80's.  He gave a bunch of the leftover material to my mother, and we had all sorts of things made from it. My blanket is the only surviving item I know of made from that material.

     3. The only new vehicle I have ever owned was a racing style motorcycle I bought just after I joined the military in 1991.  A month after I bought it, I was driving in southern New Jersey on a brightly moonlit night.  I went around a curve too fast and ran into a 6' high curb.  I flipped over.  The motorcycle and I separated after the first bounce, and I ended up 85 feet away from the point of impact.  The motorcycle was about 25 feet past me. It was still driveable, but barely.  I had a passenger on the back that night, as we alternated driving responsibility to our night job as janitors for the offices of Thomas Scientific.  He hit a small, newly planted tree and broke it off, cracking his collarbone in the process.  I had a severely bruised thumb, where it had been jammed between the handlebar and the tank on impact.  Those, thank God, were the totality of our injuries...those and some severe aches and pains for a week or so.  We had been lucky enough to land on a very soft, grassy lawn.

     4.  When we lived in the big old house, we often had visitors.  Some, like missionaries traveling through on furlough, would only stay one night.  Others, like a couple of brothers who were having hard times, stayed for months.  Though I still don't know all the details, one of my Dad's brothers was fighting with his wife, and she ended up dead.  It was not ruled to be murder, because she had apparently been attacking him, but he was found guilty of some lesser charge and did a couple years in the pen, so during that time, their children (my cousins) lived with us.

     5.   I have had a multitude of jobs. I have baled hay and planted fields.  I have delivered calves (as a farm hand) and helped deliver babies (during my rotation through labor and delivery while retraining to be a medic in the USAF Reserve).  I have driven tractors, excavators, taxis, charter buses, semi trucks.  I made pizza in the store for Little Ceasar's, I delivered pizza for Papa John's, and I now deliver supplies and food to stores for the other, larger pizza delivery company.  I have built cubicles for new offices at AMD (the computer chip maker) in Austin.  I drove a forklift at a turkey processing factory in Waco.  I cleared the brush from a riverbank behind a hundred year old hotel that was being reopened as a restaurant, and was then hired to be head waiter in the restaurant.  I have put cable (for cable TV) up onto telephone poles in Wichita Falls, TX.  I have washed windows, washed dishes, dug ditches, laid bricks, fixed airplanes (my first job in the Air Force), cleared land, mowed grass, and more things that I can't even remember just now. My daughter said she counted one time, and I have had more than 40 jobs.

     6.  My Air Force commander, after seeing my test scores, surprised me by recommending me for the Air Force Academy.  I was summoned to his office, and with him and my first sergeant present, the surprise was sprung.  They were very unhappy when I refused the offer out of hand.  The military life drove me crazy.  The regimentation was fine.  I couldn't stand the bureaucracy.  I would be given a problem, and when I came up with a solution, the answer was most often, "We thought of that already, but we can't do it, because it's against policy."  I would say, "So let's follow the procedure to get the policy changed."   "No! We don't do it that way!" It was like beating your head against the wall.  If I had stayed in and attended the Academy, I would have qualified to retire as an officer on April Fool's Day, 2011.  My wife was very angry with me, when she found the letter from the Air Force Academy a year or so after we married.  

     7.  If someone, even someone physically inferior to me, attempts to start a fight with me, I will walk away.  I will run if that's what it takes.  If someone, even someone physically superior to me, attacks another person, I cannot bring myself to walk away or stand and do nothing.  Most times, it costs me nothing, because bullies don't like to be confronted by someone who is not scared.  Once, I took a pretty good punch to my head from a guy much larger than me, when I interfered with his beating of a small woman. I'm not sure who was more surprised, me that he hit me, him that he hit someone who could fight back, or the woman that someone would stand up for her. I got her to the cops, but never heard if anything came of it.  

     8. Back in the early 1990s, the Phillies made it to the World Series.   I'm an Orioles fan, but I was living in New Jersey, and a couple buddies suggested we make the drive up to Toronto to see the next game of the series.  We didn't have tickets or even much money, but we took the 13 hour drive anyway.  Within a half hour of arriving in Toronto, we had tickets to the game in the Hard Rock Cafe overlooking the first base line, and a free place to stay.  Total out of pocket for each of us was less than 200 dollars.  We found a man who was just trying to unload the tickets he couldn't use, and a couple who said that because we were military, we could stay at their house if we didn't mind sleeping on mattresses on the floor and if we would be gone before they left for church in the morning.

     9.  It makes me angry when people keep their pets alive through cancer and other ailments that make them miserable.  I think that making an animal suffer so you won't have to deal with loss, is selfish and mean.  Because of this opinion, I am thought of by many of our friends as heartless and uncaring toward animals. I find that to be ironic.

   I was looking for a laptop bag for my wife, who is going to start college tomorrow.  I found an old soft sided briefcase from my days on the road, and inside was a notebook that contained a journal.  In the midst of the memories of being new parents, I found this story I had written, dated 2 March 2000.  

    It seemed a year had passed, these few days since the funeral.  As father and daughter each struggled with their own grief, life began again to return to normal.  The phone was again quiet.  The doorbell had stopped ringing.  He had returned to work today and she to school.  A hundred times their conversation stopped short this night.   "Mom, can I color?...Oh"  "Dear, where are the new checks?"  and again, "Oh." followed by a silence that conveyed a slow dawning of the realization that this was forever.

     At bedtime she asks, "Daddy, can I sleep with you tonight?"

     "Of course, honey," he says, brushing a tear from her eye.

     Sleep would be welcomed, but the bed still smells of her, and it eludes him.

     "Daddy?"

     "Yes?"

     "It's dark in here, isn't it?"

     "Yes dear?"

     He yawns as sleep begins to dull his senses.

     "It's an awful dark night, isn't it, Daddy?"

     Awake again.  She cannot see his tears. "Yes, dear,"

     "Daddy, are you facing me?"

     "Uh-huh." He pauses.  "Why do you ask?", but she is already asleep.

     "Yes, dear.  I am facing you."

     So I looked up my old boss today, and he was excited to hear from me and had some news from the grapevine.  The news wasn't good for me though.  He said the word up the food chain was that they haven't interviewed anyone they're willing to hire for the job I applied for.  Since I interviewed, I'm assuming that applies to me as well.  It's not official, but sometimes the grapevine has better news than official channels.  The call ended well though. He said he thought I was more than qualified for the job, and he'd hook me up with his resume writer and the headhunter who helped him find his current job.  So though the current opportunity appears to be ending in failure, the prospects are excellent that I will find a similar job with some more leg work. I now have two supervisors from different jobs and one of my biggest customers from when I was in business for myself who will wholeheartedly recommend me, so there's a start.  I'm pretty sure I made a fatal mistake in my interview when I answered the question, "What would you change if you got this position?"  I responded by saying I'd try to deal with an issue that is a huge elephant in the room at our company.  I knew it would either kill my chances or make me an excellent choice, but I gambled and it appears I lost.  I've learned mostly to hold my cards, but on some issues, honesty is the best policy and if I got the job, I would have made efforts to address the issue, so I couldn't leave that unsaid, and it may have cost me the job.  I may also have not gotten the job because they don't think I'm qualified.  Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct one.  Anyway, it is enormously liberating to finally know where I stand and to be able to start moving on, so I suppose it's time to take the next step and start seriously applying for new positions, all the while making the best of the good job I already have.  Hope you all are doing well.  I'll resume updating when I have a little more time.

     "Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"  Thoreau

      I saw this short film and was reminded of another day, many years ago.

     July 2, 1997

     We were just kids, excited, apprehensive, headed to the maternity ward to have our second child. The elevator doors opened and a young man stepped off pushing a woman, apparently his wife, in a wheelchair.  Their expressions were grim, her face ashen and devoid of emotion.  As we were getting Tina set up in her room and wondering aloud what had happened, the orderly filled us in. They had just left the maternity ward. She had had to come in to deliver her almost full term baby who had died in utero.  For a moment I gazed into a chasm of empty hopelessness and was very afraid.  Then the moment passed, and we were back to the business of preparing for the arrival of our little one.  It has haunted me for years.  Their child would be 16 this July.

     Our Samantha will turn 16 this July 2.

     I'm a storyteller.  When I was an over the road trucker, the rare treat was the evening when, after I had parked my truck and showered, I moseyed over to the truckstop bar, ordered some dinner, and found that the group around the bar was personable and talkative.  Many truckstops don't serve alcohol but have a large bar anyway, because men who have been alone with their thoughts for hours on end, like to sit around and talk with other, similar men and the waitresses at dinner.  Most nights would start out with everyone eyeballing the menu or looking down at their plate and eating, 'til one guy would get up the nerve and open with an innocuous question, "Smokeys everywhere today, huh?" or "Good Lord, is this winter ever gonna end?".  Then the dam would break loose.  Small talk at first, with everyone giving just enough to make sure there weren't any real nut jobs present. The stories would start to flow, and with the general male competitive nature, coupled with their desire to impress the waitress, be she young and pretty, old and personable, or just as mean as a rattlesnake, the one upmanship would guarantee better and better stories until the calculators started whirling in our heads and we reluctantly admitted we would be pretty useless at 3 am if we didn't get back to the truck for at least a little shuteye soon.  The best part about those evenings was that while the other guy was telling his story, it would get the get the gears going in everyone else's brains, and he would be lucky to finish his story before someone gave a little laugh and, "You're not kiddin'!  That reminds me of the time when...."  

     If you think about it, that's how our kids learn a lot about us, as well.  Last night Rebekah fell off her scooter and ended up needing stitches, and the whole evening we talked about various things that have happened to us.  Things we might never again have spoken of if her mishap hadn't prompted the memory.   "There was that time when I was delivering a load in Atlantic City and cut my finger.  I talked for days about how efficient that ER was.  They got me in and out in 45 minutes, stitches and all.  Then I got the bill for $1,800, and I've had nothing good to say about them since."  "When I was a little boy, I was hanging upside down from a tree when Mom called us in for dinner.  It startled me and I fell and landed headfirst on an orange crate.  You know what an orange crate is? (the explanation followed)  Anyway, my head was killing me, but I went in and sat down to dinner.  We said grace and started to eat, and at one point, I reached up and held the top of my head  to ease the pain.  A few bites later, I happened to look at my hand as I prepared to take another bite, and saw that it was splotched with a lot of dark, clotting blood.  Took me a few seconds to figure out, it was from my head."

     I'd like to do some posts that tell stories, and I'd like to hear your stories as well, so here's my proposal. Using something you've read (or seen) either in my blog or someone elses' as a prompt, write a post telling us a story from your past.  Then tag me and/or whoever provided the story that prompted you.  It should provide for some good reading and enjoyment.  Doesn't need to be long or fancy, just give us a little glimpse into your life.  I will enjoy your stories and will remember things otherwise forgotten that might prompt me to write even more stories from my life. You might be surprised at the fond memories that can be dug up by this little exercise.  Anyone in?