...a stitched image the Eastport field with a narrow bike path.
...a stitched image of the Eastport sunset.
My biking shoes are in my freezer in case they harbor undiscovered ticks.
Today for the first time I rode the Eastport trail. It's 8.5 miles long so I rode it twice!
I picked up 13 wood ticks (aka "dog ticks") mostly on my shoes and new socks. None became embedded. Wood ticks are not known to carry Lyme disease but they still suck.
Except for getting slapped by some weeds, it was a fun ride with a nice stretch through a large field. It's farther than Rocky Point and not as interesting so I don't plan to return soon.
One couple was getting started just as I was finishing at 8pm. They said they had never ridden there before. I offered them tick spray but they had taken care of that. But riding in the dark? I guess the old saying is true: "People are funny."
Today I learned that paint fumes are heavier than air. Maybe that's obvious once you think about it.
My knee is good, thanks.
After a straightforward front brake adjustment I got on the trail a little earlier in the evening than last time and finished just as the sun was supposedly setting behind the clouds.
My desktop is crashing again without an error message. This seems related to accessing the Internet so the network card is my prime suspect.
Today I had a delicious fresh peach, perhaps the most excellent fruit.
Sarah Vowell in Take the Cannoli:
Punk is rhythm, style, poetry, comedy, defiance, and, above all, ambition. Punk is wounded. It's what happened to Frank Sinatra's voice after Ava Gardner broke his heart. Punk means moral indignation.... Best of all, punk comes out of nowhere. Punk is a torch that's passed around, a rumor that spreads from one nowhere to another that guts and perseverance mean more than anything else.
I began a Rocky Point ride about 7:20 pm. I went late so it would be cooler but this meant the ride would be dark. Sunset was at 8:14. I brought my camera even though I thought it would be too dark for good photos.
That thinking was somewhat wrong. When I hit this sandy little downhill it was too dark to see details of the trail. My front tire hit a rut in the soft sand and decided to go sideways. My back tire decided to keep going straight. My left knee decided to absorb the impact of my fall. Caution: my knee is bleeding in that photo. On the plus side, my new socks are very comfortable.
My front brake is messed up so I'll see what my new book, Zinn & the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance, has to say.
After hot and sweaty racquetball today, I tried a different pizzeria....Luigi's. It took awhile since the guy burned my first one but the one I got was very good, better than the previous three.
Oh, and pizza is a cancer fighter. Oh and yeah.
The final show for Atom and His Package is set for August 29 in Philadelphia. This news gives me pause. I've seen him perform many times and he always brings the joy.
He's in a band now. There's hope for more goodness.
The carpet is mostly dry.
At a park Sunday a guy was fishing and snagged a turtle's leg. The turtle worked itself free after I took some photos.
I played only two games of hot and sweaty racquetball today but I got a good workout using a wet/dry vac when part of my apartment was flooded.
It's a basement apartment. This evening a downspout came apart and flooded outside the door at the top of the stairwell. Then water came down the stairwell.
The same thing actually happened this afternoon. I put it back together somewhat and told my landlady. She was going to have it fixed tomorrow. Tonight it rained again. I checked at 8:30 and the downspout was fine. At 9:00 it was gushing.
Here is the flooded part of the bedroom with the carpet rolled back and the soaked padding in a heap.
Here is the hall with the carpet rolled back, the padding gone and the fan in motion.
The living room/kitchen and bathroom were not flooded.
It's always something! :)
Lately I've been reading Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell. It's a collection of essays, kind of like a very well-written blog.
Egret in a tree at the Melville Mill Pond, Setauket, NY
My Windows crashed again. No blue screen. Tch.
'Twas another good Rocky Point ride. Last night's rain left some big puddles so I bypassed some of the main trail and cruised on the easy family trail which is mostly on hunting roads and less prone to puddle coverage. During my ride I saw one biker and five deer.
I picked up a friend to go to the Islip airport at 4:45 this morning. That's a plan!
After dropping him off I photographed the sunrise over the airport and the sunrise as seen from East Setauket.
My Linux is still unhappy.
My computer problems didn't keep me from biking Rocky Point, of course. Once again I had a fun ride. I saw the same two deer* just a few yards from where they were on Tuesday. They didn't pose for a photo this time.
While on the ride, I reasoned my computer trouble might be some hardware thing rather than IRQ-related. Once I got back to my apartment I tried a few things. The last thing I tried was lowering the clock speed from 720 MHz to 566 MHz, the rated speed. So far, so good. Maybe the processor was having trouble or maybe the network card (or something) didn't like the bus speed. I haven't tried Linux yet.
Catching up....
.... no one has called me for a job. I'm pondering applying more.
.... the birds seem to have found a new roost.
.... my neighbor's sixth veterinarian diagnosed her Rottweiler as having lupus. There is hope for an active lifestyle.
* presumably
Recall that my computer was crashing and restarting spontaneously.
I enabled Plug and Play in the BIOS....still crashed.
I removed and reinstalled the network card in Windows....still crashed.
I added the NetBEUI protocol....still crashed.
Then I disabed IRQ steering....so far OK. Now my network card and Ultra66 IDE controller have different IRQs. Perhaps they were in conflict.
The problem remains in Linux. I may rearrange the PCI cards and hope.
My desktop has be spontaneously crashing, seemingly related to network activity, perhaps an IRQ conflict.
It kept crashing while I uploaded this animated deer photo (486KB) from yesterday's ride. It finally worked when I limited the transfer speed to 1KB/sec. Wooh!
The dark image is the original, taken with a flash. The other one is color equalized. Have fun finding the deer!
Another fine day, another fun ride at Rocky Point. I saw two deer hanging out together and messed up taking several photos of them. It was somewhat dark. There might be one photo that is salvageable.
My five pairs of socks arrived today. They made me wonder what 11 pairs of socks might look like.
Today was Errand Day: barber, credit union, drugstore, grocery store and library.
Last week my mom asked me to recommend an online source for vitamins. I suggested Drugstore.com and CVS.com. She went with the former and then sent me the list of what she bought. One of the items on her list is fish oil capsules. Google helped me decide that I need fish oil capsules. Now, thanks to the drugstore errand, I have them.
Between errands I played racquetball. One remaining errand is taking my racquet to be restrung.
Tuesday is the scheduled delivery day for my socks.
* Props to Hook
I had a good ride this evening at Rocky Point. When I was leaving around 8:45 someone came and started getting ready to ride. I suspect he had a lamp.
What did I enjoy most in the first Harry Potter movie? The special effects.
My latest comestible is spreadable cottage cheese on toasted cinnamon raisin sprouted live grain bread.
It's time for the first Harry Potter movie.
Lightning overnight seems to have fried my USB modem. Yes, my surge protector has phone jacks. No, I wasn't using them. Dumb me.
So today was a good day to set up my home network by connecting my desktop PC and my notebook PC. After running a few wizards and a few restarts, it is working! My desktop is now using my notebook's Internet connection.
Perhaps I'll get a new modem but this is cool.
What a great day for biking! Cool, cloudy, slight breeze.
I rode all three of the optional steep hills. They are steep up and steep down and very fun. I also took another shot at White Birch. This time I made it through. It's all about anticipation and approach angle.
I stopped at a grocery store on the way back. These directions are posted for buying bananas:
Ripe for today [with photo of yellow bananas]
Green for tomorrow [with photo of green bananas]
Now you know.
Monday evening I ordered a crossover cable from Buy.com with free ground shipping. They shipped it from Harrisburg, PA, yesterday and it arrived this morning. Time from order to delivery was under 40 hours.
The crossover cable will connect my notebook PC to my desktop PC. I'm saving that excitement for another day.
Weather forecast for Thursday is sweet.
The birds may have moved on.
With rain possible tomorrow I hit the trail a little before 7 pm. Temps were starting to cool and most of the trail was in shade. I was probably the last one riding as no one else was in the parking lot when I finished. I stepped off my bike in the White Birch optional segment. The trail turns between two close trees just as it goes up a mogul. I stepped off there the last time I rode that section thus we conclude that this is the trickiest part of the whole trail.
I saw a piebald deer with a normal front and white hindquarters. I also saw and heard a black-throated blue warbler. I didn't have my camera with me but getting decent photos would have been tough due to the lighting and the fleeing/flitting.
It was dark when I got back to my apartment so I thought the birds might be roosting in the tree. I used a broom to try to roust them. I first hit some low branches and then tossed the broom to get a little higher. All this effort disturbed only a few birds. Wanting to get even higher, I launched the broom and it was caught on branches about 18 feet up!
That's when I should have taken a picture but I focused on the situation at hand. I need to retrain my brain.
I devised a plan of using a heavy orange extension cord like a lasso to knock down the broom. First try, baby!
I should have said that I had my backup racquet with me on Saturday when the string broke on the primary. For today's games I used my backup but I have no backup backup.
Today I ordered 11 pairs of socks. Froogle and Google helped me score. I'm happy they have the Internet on computers now.
A little over an hour ago I went outside and attempted to roust some startlings that roost in a tree next to where I am parked. I failed!
Star Wars and the Foundation Trilogy each have a capital city that covers one planet.
Coincidence?
The string on my racquet broke today during hot and sweaty racquetball. That string lasted since November, 2001.
Good job, string!
My 4th of July pizza has sesame seeds and nice bubbles. Sadly the crust is too light and the sauce is zestless. The other place I've had pizza with sesame seeds is Galesburg, IL.
I commend to you Atom's inspiring European tour diary.
In the previous entry I should have mentioned that most of the Rocky Point towers are gone although their concrete foundations remain. The one in the photo is the only extant tower along the bike trail, if memory serves.
No biking today. My muscles and some rain concurred.
From my library I have Star Wars episodes 1 and 2 on DVD for the holiday weekend.
Happy Independence Day
OH yeah. I rode for about 15 miles at Rocky Point today. I didn't take my camera on this ride so here's a photo from yesterday. Rocky Point once was home to hundreds of RCA radio towers.
I don't remember ever doing trail rides on consecutive days. I am sore. Weather forecast is questionable.
Whoosh! That's a seven second, 646 KB video of me riding down a mogul at Rocky Point.
OH yeah. Today I rode my bike about 17 miles on good trails. This was the first time since my flat tire in May. That tube still has an undetected leak after my skillful patch job so I replaced the tube. After putting the tire back on I couldn't quite adjust the rear brake correctly so I stopped at a bike shop to have it done properly and to get a new tube.
To make that video, I hung my trusty Canon Powershot S30 from a branch stub, set the timer and then ran over the mogul to my bike. You might notice the effect of the slightly swaying camera. I used VirtualDub to select, rotate and compress the video.
It was a very, very nice day.
One of my racquetball friends, Ritch, has a habit of hitting himself in his thigh with his racquet after a particularly frustrating game. After a series of mishits cost him a game today, Ritch attempted to hit his thigh but his aim was off (again!) so he hit just alongside his kneecap....ouch! What was worse, though, was that this caused him to pull up lame a couple games later.
I guess the old saying is true: "don't hit yourself."
