Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Tell me about cycling in the Western Suburbs

Yesterday Jim and I experienced long distance cycling at it's best. It was the first truly hot and humid day of the year and we both wanted to ride at least a hundred miles. We took our time, stopping repeatedly to hydrate and adjust ourselves. Here are a few shots at the fifty mile turnaround.  Fifty miles from home and here we are, in the great wide open plain.
Stats: 93 farenheit
Humidity: 75-85
Miles: 105
Hours out in the world (including stops): 9
Gatorade: 3 large bottles apiece
Other items: two large bags m&m's, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, trail mix, three carb-protein filled bottles (me), 4 water bottles (jim), two bananas, starbuck's iced tea, half-caf-coffee, and a turkey/swiss sandwich.

look carefully, brisk wind out of the southwest which was a headwind up until our turnaround.

there are those who take time during the last weekend of may to meticulously mow lawn.

That way back home.  It looks perfectly do-able now, but by the time we go over about twenty train tracks and stop at a thousand signs and lights, it's a little exhausting.

Holiday Weekend

Some of our neighbors aren't afraid of showing their own sense of flair.

photo credit: Addie

Sunday evening walk. Could we be any happier?
Ahh summer! I Heard that there were more than a few folks who regard Memorial Day Monday as a time to go ahead and work.  Call me nostalgic, but of all the holidays, this is simply the best.  It's the portal into the next season.  Although Oak Park saw some rain and downright depressing weather this weekend, it was obviously an opportunity to slow down, take a walk, work on the yard, eat some burgers, play a family game.  It was quiet and subdued and topped off by an amazing ninety-plus degree day with a pink sunset.  One friend of mine wondered aloud, "where I got my rose colored glasses?" Up until now,  I thought I left them back in California about twenty years ago, but every once in a while, everything seems simply perfect and I can be as optimistic and sunny as ever.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Must be summer...or...not winter....

Haircut time! Need I say more? I've spent the last twelve years going into salons requesting that they not make me look like a suburban housewife. Well. Duh.  What is one to do with this request, really? Here we are, after all, in the suburbs, and my biggest dilemma of the day happens to be deciphering shades of white bath tile. Nevertheless, hunky Dave did his best and I must say I'll be back.

But it can't be too bad, and the unencumbered woman rises like a phoenix from the ashes. Here. I am...meeting my man for a brew at 4:30 in the afternoon at The Beacon.



Friday, May 13, 2011

Heat Index is What?

OK, OK. Enough is enough! We sure put up with a lot around here.  Exactly one week ago I was standing on a play yard blogging, wearing hand-knit gloves and hat. Go ahead and see for youself! This week Mama Nature blasted the heat and threw us all into an utter state of shock. Today we were somewhere in the high eighties with a heat index of at least ninety. After teaching today I trudged out to the Forest Preserve and went for a run in what felt absolutely sweltering, although it was slightly cooler than yesterday and nice tree cover provided shade and beauty.
And so it goes. Life in Chicagoland...ya gotta work for it, here.


Monday, May 9, 2011

When I'm forty-four...

So I'm almost forty-four and sometimes I feel blissfully youthful.  However, sometimes these days I feel more like sixty-four.  Today as we drove home from the pool, I was describing the new triathletes of the summer (every year we get an influx of triathletes at the pool, anywhere between January and May). At least one of these athletes, as a rule, is doing "their first ironman!" and they are so cute and excited and nervous.  I may as well be sitting there with a ciggy hanging out of my mouth, "yeah, kid...I know iron...it's a love that'll suck you dry. Ya give it all ya got, then, bam! you wake up a few years later with creaky joints, empty bank account, and an expensive bike in need of repair."  As I, shall we say, mature, I've realized that there is small joy (and decreasing possibility) of me dusting these people in the pool (or anywhere else), so I'm considering further polishing my mentoring/wisecracking/unsolicited advice skills, all of which come in handy if one is attempting to employ expertise with minimal physical output.


Ya wanna talk iron? I'll talk iron, with ya, sweetie.
Yup....I've seen it all...
Let me tell you about the time I won the whole thing...oh...that was somebody else, but I saw someone win the whole thing!
I joked, in the car, that it is just a matter of time before I meet a triathlete at the pool who was born the year that I participated in my first Ironman.  So....here's the deal....a few years from now, at the pool, when I meet somebody who was born on or after 1994 and they say "and I'm training for an ironman!", I'm going to promptly get out of the pool, walk to the nearest bar, and grab a beer.  I don't care if it's six in the morning.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Vote for me!

 So I'll admit I was pretty excited about entering Rejuvenation's Make Your Home Your Own contest, and I had my mass email ready to send out first thing this morning.  The contest is an opportunity to showcase some sort of home improvement project that includes hardware or lighting that the folks at Rejuvenation create and sell.  So I pressed send on my emails at about 6AM and waited for the results to start rolling in.  I jumped on my trainer, got a little bit of exercise, and by 7:30 I got my first email from a friend who complained that the captcha that they had to insert was improperly read. (Captcha, I think, is the squiggly little letters that we have to re-type when we are submitting information that is sensitive to us, such as a one-time vote).  So I started running around the house making sure that everybody had voted (they hadn't) and when Peter complained that he hadn't even received my email I really started pulling my hair out.  According to Addie, she couldn't type in the captcha, either.  At this early stage, almost nobody on the website had received any votes, except some gal in Pennsylvania who had somehow garnered eleven votes, already.  Me, I'm in panic central, but by the time I leave for work we've somehow managed to log at least three votes.  Meantime, I go out into the world and do my day.  Here I am at work, wondering how things are going out there...

It's 10:30....are they voting for me?  Can they get into the site?







When I finally come home at 4:30, I've got a slew of emails from friends who say they've voted for me.  By my calculations this means that I should have no less than 10 votes, and, naturally, more, since I have friends who will vote and not email me when they do so.  Imagine my sadness when I go to Rejuvenation and they've only logged 4 votes for me!  Living in Chicago, I should have learned the tough lesson, by now, that politics are dirty as a rule and if you plan on throwing your hat into the ring you better be well connected and have a thorough plan.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  Meantime, my people have another 11 days to get it right and post those votes.  If I can log fifty votes I'll be happy!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Wildlife Illinois

And who said that there is no more wilderness in Illinois? From the saddle of my Kestrel, today. Lonely, windy, but sunny and bright. Ikea AND Costco...we have it all!