River dispatch #4

Sister Bets and Jon. Since Eberlizing me a few months ago, Jon's life has pretty much lacked purpose. He's off to Portland. See ya buddy.

Pia Mission.

Simulation.

Midnight Century is just a few days away. It's going to be a grind this year. I've barely ridden since coming to the river: a handful of rides with some buddies and Sister Bets, but generally it's been family hanging, fishing, swimming, floating, and cheap-beer swilling.

All in all, I'm not on track to break my Midnight Century time from last year. I'm thinking 7:30-8 hours. Maybe a tad longer if I attempt to enjoy it. Bike: Elephant with Hetres.

See you there.

Pat Rick. He's into the fishing.

Technically, the best picture I've taken for a while. It was a fluke. I accidently had the camera on "full auto" mode. So it popped the flash for a nice fill light. I used to remember to do that.

After we tipped the canoe in the big bad "rapids." Even though we were both PFD'd and the "rapids" consisted of about 1-foot waves, and the water was just past our knees -- even considering all of this, it was still pretty freaky. There's a great moment when bad things happen -- that one-half of one-half of a second where you know what's going to happen, but don't know how it will end. That's livin!

Wife Liza visited this weekend. Going two weeks without Liza hangs is not great and makes me more of a grump than I might otherwise be.

Maddie and I are coming home Friday. Then off to Seattle for a few days for Sister Bets and soon-to-be BIL-Andy's wedding. Then Maddie and I are back to the river for a proper vacation finish. Liza, poor thing, continues to work. I guess someone has to.

Much pondering of the future has happened on this vacation. This is normal vacation mind-wander. But getting in some extra time has really helped separate the fantasy vacation-think-chaff from the meaty mind-wheat. And apparently makes for really awkward metaphors too.

More to come on both fronts.

The cheap fat bike has found it's home for sure. It's popular around here. Sister Bets had a sweet front basket on it while she was here. I need to re-work that. Without easy load hauling, the utility of this bike is limited. If I were super-motivated, I might consider a giant hacked porteur style set up. You cannot screw up this steering down any more than it already is.

Turns out Beth has some chops: she manual'd the fat daddy about 50 yards.

Local critters.

Maddie driving. This picture was taken upside down and all the smart photo-editing software apparently likes it that way. I've run into this before. I can't believe there's not an img element in html that lets you just hack this out. Web nerds: let me know.

Karaoke. A lot of Taylor Swift happened there.

Beth: witnessing my perpetual skunkitude on the fishing front. At about 7 AM.
Actually, we had a good day on Saturday. Two walleyes and a rainbow. We ate them. Verily.