J.P.

It’s a first: driving to work with the top off. Kind of chilly but lots of fun.

So I thought I’d take the three of us to the local Panera for a little Monday evening wind-down. We’d perhaps enjoy a little treat, have a soft drink or iced tea and just relax a little bit as we played with our gadgets and the like.

Those plans were abolished when I spotted something ahead of us in line.

Two children. One stroller. One balloon.

The mother is oblivious. The child is in the stroller and is screaming at the top of its lungs. When the oblivious mother is reveling in her obliviousness, the child with the balloon hits the child in the stroller with the balloon. The kid yells louder, loudER, LOUDER, I tell you. To calm the child, the mother shakes a plastic glass full of ice in the child’s face and makes odd noises. She doesn’t make a tsk tsk sound or try to calm the child, she shakes ice in it’s face. The child is now yelling “maw maw” and then screaming.

Playland. It’s just around the corner.

I suppose I was a brat when I was a kid. My sister and I were often left out in the car while Mom did her grocery shopping. Matched up with our cousins once removed, the five kids left in the car once got so loud that a woman came over from another car and told us we were very bad children. My cousin once removed retaliated by sounding the horn. Constantly. Then we were quiet once she walked away. So the truth of the matter is, kids will be kids and I get that. I also get why my mother left us out in the car while she did the grocery shopping.

She didn’t want us to blow the roof off the P&C (grocery store).

People that were seated around the ice-rattling mother and her balloon bopping child with screaming mimi are vacating the premises like it’s nobody’s business. The guys behind the counter are talking about the screaming kid. It can’t be good for business.

Maybe we can relax at home after all.

To whoever sent this postcard to me I have to say thank you. This brightened my afternoon.

Ever since I was old enough to ride a bike on the road, I’ve always wanted to ride my bike to Oswego. Around 25 miles from where I grew up, as a young kid Oswego seemed like the closest place that would be interesting and that would be reachable by pedal power. I would ride to Oswego, look around the downtown area a bit and then ride him. It’d be roughly 60 miles around trip.

My mother wasn’t having any of it. She barely let me ride my bike to school (around five miles away) let alone riding my bike to Oswego and back. So the ride was out of the question. I never made the trek on my three-speed Huffy bike.

On Thursday I sent Earl an email while at work and simply asked him, “how would you like to meet me in Oswego for lunch on Saturday?”. His response was simple, “I’d love to.”

Earl and I had lunch in Oswego today. I left for lunch at 6:55 a.m. and arrived in the Port City right at noon. The ride was much farther than it would have been from where I had grown up; all in all I clocked 73.4 miles today on my Fuji 21-speed bike. I think making this trek in five hours is a decent accomplishment. I’m a little sunburned as I write this, but all in all I feel fantastic.

I found my “zen spot” shortly before the halfway point of the ride. By then it had warmed up to 60 or so and the countryside was enjoyable scenery. Several stressors from the week resolved themselves in my head and I was able to think about various things while riding along. I think this is contributing to the wonderful feeling I am having this evening.

I made a few brief stops along the route. I stopped in a little town called Lee for my first protein bar and my second protein bar was consumed in the front lawn of the New Haven Elementary School. While at the school I peek through the windows to see what time it was, as classrooms usually have their clocks over or next to the door to the hallway. This particular school had their clock in the front of the classroom. The clocks were recently replaced. I’m such a clock geek.

One of the things that I hadn’t accurately remembered was the number and size of the hills along Route 104 between the village of Mexico and city of Oswego. I knew there were a few hills here and there, but I didn’t remember the up/down, roller coaster approach to the road. Being that this stretch of the ride was the last part may have contributed to the slightly daunting feeling I felt while cruising along the former US route. (NY Route 104 was US Route 104 until 1972). I maintained my stride, though and Earl was able to find me along the waterfront along Lake Ontario at the Port of Oswego. Yay for “Find Friends” on the iPhone; it has proven to be invaluable in situations like these. Come to find out, Earl had been only a half dozen miles behind me for the final hour of the ride. He decided not to pass me and make his presence known as it psychs me out a little bit and makes me feel like the ride is over.

My husband knows me well.

I rewarded my body with a relatively healthy lunch at the local Ruby Tuesday before taking a scenic ride home in the Jeep with the top off.

I think I might take a shorter ride tomorrow morning, but it’ll be a loop so Earl can sleep in.

A couple of pictures:

As I rode the back roads and through a couple of villages on my bike this morning, I noticed that the world seemed quieter than usual. I wasn’t being hounded by vehicles trying to pass me, I didn’t hear the thump thump thump of unrecognizable tracks rattling license plates on cars and I didn’t see any school-aged children outside waiting for the bus. As I drove by an elementary school my suspicions were confirmed as the message board in front of the school proclaimed, “No school May 3”.

Apparently the local schools are closed today.

I am curious as to what has spurred this seemingly random date for a school closure. Are there extra snow days to be used up? Is Cinco de Mayo weekend a long weekend now?

It then dawned on me. School is closed today because the annual Town-Wide Garage Sale Event Weekend! starts today.

The exclamation point is mandatory.

During a break from working at home today I took a walk up the street and was nearly accosted by more vehicles than usual. And these vehicles were moving slowly, very slowly. An eyeball stared out from under the steering wheel.

Elderly drivers were in search of a garage sale. Apparently the sport is actually called “Garage Sailing”, but that doesn’t make sense because I haven’t seen one garage that looked like a yacht.

I digress.

The crazy cat lady woman up the street has put out her wares for the Town-Wide Garage Sale Event Weekend! and this has drawn the garage-sailors like, as they say, “white on rice”. Vehicles are parked haphazardly up and down the road and people are walking near the center line, apparently breathless from all the deals they are about to find at each of these garage sales.

Tomorrow is going to be garage sale hell in these parts.

It’s time to get out of town.

So it’s lunch time and I’m sitting in the Jeep on probably the most gorgeous day thus far of 2013. Today simply rocks. The sky is clear, the humidity is low and the sunshine is abundant.

I’m hiding in the shade of the big sign that pronounces the existence of the shopping center I’m relaxing in. I went to the “alternate” Dunkin’ Donuts today for a little change of pace. A change of scenery is good.

As I look out I see the beginning of the Adirondack Mountains less than a mile away. The trees are starting to show a more cheery color; the combination of rain earlier this week and sun for the past two days have started the whole spring thing around here. The days are getting longer, the birds are singing more, there’s little to complain about.

My iced tea even tastes a little better. I even had a friend stop by that wanted to share a PopChip.