Biking at last!

Scott had sacrificed his display module, which turns the bike’s power on, by putting it on my bike so I could have power. Riding with no power, he was definitely getting more of a workout than I was, but as always, he uttered not a word of complaint.

I’ve mentioned that rail trails are generally flat, but for various reasons, when some “rails” are converted to “trails,” they need to depart from the original road bed for a stretch. We sometimes see this where part of the track may have been washed out at some point or where some development like a highway through town or a bridge that didn’t exist when trains were running is now in the way. The result is that occasionally there are hills on rail trails, and just a few minutes into this, our much-anticipated first ride of the trip, we were laboring up such a hill.

I powered up from pedal assist 1 to 2, but I was clearly even less fit than I thought I was. Obviously I needed good aerobic workout. It was a Lousy Little Hill, but I was huffing and puffing and trying to keep up with Scott who had no pedal assist at all. Partway up and feeling like a lazy wimp, I switched to 3 to get an added boost, thinking to myself, “I grunt and sweat on a recumbent bike at the gym for five miles every morning. I should be able to do this more easily!” Determined to reward myself with a whoosh of power as I neared the top, I pushed it to 4 (which didn’t seem to give me much whoosh) and then backed it down to 1 as I pedaled to catch up to Scott, who was parked ahead.

I felt wiped out and pulled over behind him for water, saying that that hill had really taken a lot out of me. “I actually went up to 4! I can’t IMAGINE you doing it on zero. I’m so sorry. I guess I’m just really, really out of shape.”

As we both caught our breath, I added, “It just didn’t feel like I was getting as much pedal assist as usual.” So… maybe I wasn’t in as bad shape as I thought. Maybe I just wasn’t getting the Level 1, or 2, or 3, or 4 pedal assist that I was setting on my controller… And maybe there was something ELSE wrong with my bike besides the seemingly unattainable display module… Oh, NO!!! Was another problem with my wonderful bike going to mess up this whole trip?!?

Hmm… But my comment about not feeling much pedal assist got Scott’s wheels turning. And that would be Scott, who never panics, never gets anxious, and to the best of my knowledge never even worries. = ) As I described to him my experience coming up that hill, what he was thinking about came back to me too.

There’d been a time during our July trip to the Rock Island Trail near Kansas City when my bike wasn’t seeming to get much pedal assist. As I rode along with the pedal assist set on my usual 1, it felt like zero, and the watts displayed, which are usually between 50 and 60, were were also zero. In an empty city park with a circular path between the small lake and picnic area, Scott did a lot of trouble shooting – inquiring, examining, test riding, and AI researching – and he figured out that the problem was that my controller wasn’t getting the message that I was pedaling.

There are three kinds of e-bikes, and all three can be pedaled powerless, just like the bikes we all grew up on. Class 1 e-bikes have pedal assist – usually at least two different levels thereof – which you can turn on at any time, but which only kicks in to provide power while you are actually pedaling. Class 1’s do not have a throttle; you know, that vroom-vroom twist handle like a motorcycle has that gives it extra power (and noise!) while you hold it twisted.

Our e-bikes are Class 2, meaning they have pedal assist – ours have five levels – and a throttle. Their throttle is silent, and it’s what I twist for a few seconds every time I get on and start to ride, in order to get moving more quickly than I can initially pedal, and so stay balanced. Hopefully all those hours of core muscle strengthening exercises will render me throttle-free one of these days! Anyway…

Class 3 e-bikes have pedal assist and a throttle that you can set and forget. On a Class 3, you can zip along without pedaling and without holding the throttle twisted, just as if you were riding a moped or a motorcycle.

Recently, we’ve begun to see signs on some rail trails that say, “Class 1 and 2 e-bikes permitted,” meaning that they only allow bikes that must be pedaled.

On that day back in July, I had experienced some problem that caused my controller to think I wasn’t pedaling (even though I was), and so it wouldn’t turn on my pedal assist. By definition, pedal assist only assists my pedaling; it doesn’t do it for me! With my bike upended for the second time, Scott figured out that there was some little sensor mounted kind of like… well, when we were kids, we’d clip a playing card or baseball card to our bikes with a clothespin, such that the edge of it hit the spokes as we pedaled, making a fun clicking or whirring noise. Similarly, my limited understanding of my e-bike is that there’s something down where my pedals connect to the frame, maybe associated with that big sprocket(?), and when my pedals are moving (every time this something thing goes by), the sensor picks up on that and sends a message to my controller along the lines of , “Hey, Patty’s Bike, the girl is pedaling now, so turn on power to her pedal assist, and keep it on till I tell you these pedals aren’t spinning.”

I believe I’ve mentioned that our bikes each weigh 70 pounds, that the rack they sit on for transport is a couple feet off the ground and has a 3″ lip around it, and that Scott lifts these babies up and over and onto and off of that rack many dozens of times. Sometimes things get bumped. He assumed – back in July – that that sensor had been bumped a fraction of an inch, far enough so that it wasn’t getting the signal that I was pedaling, and was therefore obligated to send a “Hey, Patty’s Bike, the girl’s not pedaling, and she sure ain’t riding no Class 3, so shut off the power to her ever-lovin’ pedal assist right now!” kind of message. And hence I had no pedal assist, even though I had it set to Level 1 (or 2, or whatever).

So back to me panting at the top of the Lousy Little Hill on our very first bike ride in Ohio…

The solution was a simple, very small nudge of an adjustment, and all was well. = ) We rode on, a total of 13 miles that day, with me on pedal assist 1 and coasting every few seconds to stay beside him and Scott never able to stop pedaling. It’s one thing to haul yourself 13 miles on, say, a traditional 10-speed-looking bike (20 pounds?) that has no gears. You pedal a while, then rest by coasting a ways before pedaling again. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to haul yourself 13 miles on an e-bike (70 pounds) that has no gears. You pedal a while, and as soon as you pause, your bike immediately stops, ’cause that heavy beast does not coast at all. You even have to keep pedaling – against resistance – on the downhills!

In typical Scott fashion, he never uttered a word of complaint, but trust me, neither of us wanted to repeat that scenario day after day after day on this trip! Something would have to change.

To be continued…

Saga, Chapter 2: How hard can it be?

Being a chivalrous gentleman and absolutely determined for us to go biking no matter what, Scott chose to plug his fully functional display into my bike. This was wonderful for me, as it meant I’d have all my normal power abilities, but it also meant that he would have none. He’d ride his bike like a regular, powerless bike. I was troubled by that proposition because I thought it would either be a real grind for him to keep up with me as I merrily rolled along as usual at Pedal Assist 1, OR I’d need to go to zero to stay back with him, which would be an even tougher grind for me.

But Scott the optimist assured me that it would be fine. After all, rail trails, which by definition run on the bed of former railroad lines, are basically flat, so changes in elevation are usually slight and always gradual. He was sure he could do it, and so we prepared to set out.

While I drove, Scott made a number of calls (perhaps calls #7 to #12?) to more and more bike shops in search of a replacement display for my bike. He had wisely photographed and written down the part number during yesterday’s surgical procedure. He called multiple places in Yellow Springs, Lebanon, Dayton, and Cincinnati (all within about 50 miles of us), some of which referred him to other individuals, bike shops, and authorized RAD e-bike dealers, but nobody had a new display for my RadCity 3 Step-Thru. However, a story was beginning to emerge, and the following background was gradually starting to make a little bit of unwanted sense.

A couple years ago, my front fender, a two-foot-long piece of curved black plastic connected to the bike frame by a metal bracket, cracked in two, and a two-inch section of it, the section attached to the metal bracket, fell off. Scott deftly duct-taped the broken piece back in place, but it kept scraping against my tire and was a source of ongoing frustration. The whole fender just needed to be replaced, so Scott contacted Rad e-bikes headquarters in California to order a new fender. They said it was not available just then. It was on backorder and they’d contact us when it was in stock.

We waited a few weeks, heard nothing, called back, got the same story, and repeated that process again with the exact same result several months later. To this day, we have never heard back from them and have never been able to buy a new fender, but on our July ’26 trip to the western end of the Katy Trail, Scott came up with a brainy solution, came home, fixed it more solidly, and it’s perfectly fine now, although still sporting a bit of strategically placed duct tape and four new screws.

Repaired fender!

Close-up

And why do I mention my fender situation now, you ask? Well, it seems that mine is not the only RadCity 3 whose display has failed, and evidently e-bike shops—and especially authorized Rad e-bike dealers—know this and have over recent years bought up the entire national supply of displays so as to have them on hand to replace on customers’ RadCity 3 e-bikes.

Having had no luck at all in locating a replacement display from any bike shop anywhere, Scott decided to call Rad Power Bikes (Rad’s corporate headquarters in California, the same place he’d contacted two years about my fender) and just order one directly from them, but they said those displays were… can you believe it?… out of stock and on backorder, and they would let us know when they got them in.

WELL!!!

My always calm, cool, and collected husband came pretty close to raising his voice, and his tone was uncharacteristically intense as he told the nice Rad lady that we’d been through this before with a fender, we were still waiting two YEARS for that part, and this current situation was not acceptable!

She was kind and apologetic and said we’d have to get the part from an authorized Rad dealer. Okay, that seemed fair enough. When we asked where the nearest such dealer was to Yellow Springs, Ohio, she cheerfully gave us the name of a guy “right there in Yellow Springs,” and we recognized his name as the same man we’d already talked to who told us (with NO bedside manner at all) that he doesn’t work on e-bikes and nobody does! Scott told the lady that, and she was shocked and slightly embarrassed. “That’s really odd. We show that he’s an authorized Rad dealer.”

“Well, maybe he was,” Scott said, “but he’s definitely not now.” And at this point Scott politely ended the call.

We then did our own online search for the nearest dealer who might have the necessary part and were ultimately directed to the corporate headquarters of a company called Rad Life Mobility in Deerfield, Beach, Florida! Like California, not particularly close to Yellow Springs, Ohio, but Scott called anyway. Maybe they could ship the part to the next campground we’d be staying at in a few days. Scott gave them the part number. I’d heard this nine-digit number repeated so many times that I almost had it memorized myself. After looking it up, that person said those displays were out of stock and on backorder, but they could contact us when they got them in. (Yeah, right.) And when would that be? Well, they hadn’t been given an actual delivery estimate, but probably a couple of months. They suggested we contact Rad Power Bike’s headquarters in California and order it directly from them. And at that point Scott was WELL beyond done with it all.

“Let’s go riding!” he said, and so we did; me with power from his display and him with no power at all.

To be continued…

Saga, Chapter 1: Black spaghetti

It’s still Sunday evening, and we just drove away from the place where we tried to take a bike ride and could not. Now, driving around Yellow Springs, Ohio – and have I mentioned that’s it’s a quirky little town? – hauling my bike that won’t turn on and Scott’s bike that is perfectly fine, the chronology goes something like this.

5:05 PM Sunday – Scott asks me to ask Claude (AI) for information about local bike shops. Amazingly, there actually are several bike shops right here in Yellow Springs, and I try to figure out which one(s) sound best. We disagree on that matter. I let him pick. We drive around past one that is dark and closed, and he begins calling others. Some are closed on Sunday. Some are closed on Monday. Most that have websites or answering machines say they open at 10:00 AM on whichever day(s) they are open. Some just ring forever, but one man who was specifically listed as working on e-bikes, actually answers our call and says he doesn’t work on e-bikes. He adds that really no one does.

5:30 PM Sunday – As we meander through the downtown-ish blocks of Yellow Springs, we see an upscale hotel-looking establishment with some signage about bike tours. Scott pulls into the parking lot where several folks are gathered for drinks and asks a guy, who turns out to be their man in charge of bike tours, if he knows of any shops that could help with my e-bike not powering on. He is kind and helpful, looking up and giving us names and numbers of a few possibilities, some of which Scott has already called, and wishing us the best.

Somewhat discouraged, we decide to head home for supper. I tell Scott I think we need to find someone somewhere who actually works on e-bikes. He says nothing.

The next day…

7:00 AM Monday – Scott is cheerful and tells me he’s going to tackle my bike problem. Hmm…?

7:15 AM Monday – Scott thinks some electrical element on my bike is not allowing my fully charged battery to turn on, and after doing some online research, says he suspects it is the LCD display module.

Research consultant at work

But he can’t trace the wiring between the display and the battery because there are several identical black wires all tightly zip-tied together into a snake. Scott selects an orange tool I’ve never seen before with an extendable razor blade and carefully slices through the zip-ties without nicking the insulation on any of the wires – like a surgeon, I’m telling you! – finds the one that runs from the display to the battery, and unplugs my display from the wire that runs to my battery.

Surgery in progress

He then repeats the snake-releasing process on his own bike, and I suggest we take some pictures of how things are connected so he’ll be able to see how they go back together. This is the backside of the display module on his bike.

Quite a bit of black spaghetti

We have the same brand and model of e-bikes, just with different frame shapes and colors; mine’s a white RADCity 3 Step Thru and his is a black RADCity 3 High Step. With our two bikes parked very closely and handlebars intertwined, he plugs my display module into his bike’s battery wire, and his bike does not turn on. He then plugs his display module into my bike’s battery wire, and VOILA! My bike turns on!!! Good news: My Hero has solved the mystery. J  Bad news: My bike’s display module has gone bad. L

The malignancy now identified, isolated, and successfully removed, today’s displayectomy is completed!

Display in hand. O, the joy!

9:00 AM Monday – Scott resumes calling bike shops in Yellow Springs and in surrounding towns to locate a new RADCity 3 display module. After all, since the whole reason we traveled to Ohio was to do as much biking on the Little Miami Scenic Trail as possible, we are pretty much willing to go wherever we need to go and pay whatever we need to pay to get that part and get on the trail! And since Scott has now figured out that’s it’s a “plug and play situation,” we don’t even need a bike ship to do the repair. We just need to obtain that part, and he’ll be able to “install” it in less than a minute. Hooray!

To be continued…

Jeopardy question: What is 38?

The number of phone calls Scott has made trying to solve our most pressing challenge in the first three days of our much-anticipated two-week camping and biking vacation in Ohio.

After two days of travel, we arrived at John Bryan State Park on Sunday afternoon, and after setting up our campsite, Scott took a bike ride to explore the area and get the “lay of the land.” That’s when he took the picture of the covered bridge in the middle of nowhere, as well as this gem that we weren’t able to identify, but which I’ll bet has an interesting history.

How about this bridge over the Little Miami Scenic Trail?

When he got back from his scouting trip, Scott asked if I’d like to join him on a short bike ride. “Yes, of course!” It was getting on toward evening, and he said we’d just go maybe ten miles or less. I loaded up my essentials while he loaded his bike back on Thomas’ back rack with mine, and we drove about ten minutes down the same steep, snaky hill he claimed to have ridden down and back up on his bike to get to an access point (a.k.a. “trailhead”) on the Little Miami Trail.

Scott unloaded our bikes, we strapped on the things we’d need – mainly water bottles and our trusty blue bike bag – and before we headed out, I, who like to document things, made the same notes on my phone that I always make when we begin riding: the date (which I knew, 9/28/26), where we’d be riding (which I also knew, Little Miami Trail from Yellow Springs to, well, to somewhere and back), and the odometer reading on my bike (which I’d see as soon as I turned on my bike’s LCD screen).

I pressed the power switch to turn on my bike, but I must’ve done something wrong. Maybe I fat-fingered the wrong switch. I pressed it again more carefully. Black screen. Hmm… Well, in the spirit of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I pressed the power button again. Nothing. Scott was waiting on me. He was all ready to go.

Now, I have learned to ask for help when I need it, and on tech stuff I often need it… “Hey, would you come over here and make my power turn on?” He came over. He pressed the power button. Nothing. But I wasn’t worried. Scott is always able to figure out tech stuff, and often I watch him do the exact same thing I’ve done repeatedly and unsuccessfully and it works for him. Of course, this is entirely unfair, but I’m usually so glad to be able to actually DO whatever it is I’ve been working on that I just shake my head in mild disgust and then thank him for helping me.

But he hadn’t gotten my power on yet. He said, “Maybe your battery’s dead. Maybe it got left on after our last ride and it ran down…” Well, our last ride had been ten days ago, and when Scott puts our bikes away, he always charges their batteries, so that seemed unlikely to me, but I guessed it was a possibility, so, okay, if my battery was somehow completely drained, we wouldn’t be able to ride tonight, but if we charge it overnight, it should be fine by tomorrow. That’s disappointing, but okay, I can flex.

To test this theory, Scott took my battery off my bike, put it on his, pressed his power button, and voila!, his screen came on and showed a fully charged battery! Hmm… so maybe it wasn’t a battery problem? Well, then what could it be? Something else must be wrong with my bike.

I was starting to get a pretty yucky feeling about the whole situation. And Scott, who, like me, hates to give up and quit, suggested we just go riding for a short trip with no power because he really wanted to me to experience the beauty of the trail. I was willing to try it, but then I realized something. When I first get on my bike, I’ve always needed to give it a little burst of power with my throttle in order to stay balanced as I start peddling because the alternative to staying balanced would not be good. While I was pretty sure that once I was moving I could with effort peddle the bike on the flat with no peddle assist, I knew I couldn’t get it started without that power burst. And since my bike seemed to have no power, there’d be no power burst.

“I don’t feel comfortable doing that, Scott.”

“Hmm… well, I don’t want to pressure you if you don’t feel safe.”

“I’m really sorry, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea. I don’t think I should do this.”

“Okay. I understand. I’ll get it figured out and get your bike going. Let’s go back to town. I talked to a lady who recommended the Sunshine Cafe.”

So, we unstrapped our gear from the bikes, Scott loaded them back up on the rack (they each weigh 70 pounds), and we went back to town. Driving around Yellow Springs – an “interesting” little town with a somewhat Eureka Springs-ish vibe that was full of mostly young people in statement apparel, street acts, dogs, music, and lots of historic buildings with quirky storefronts and unique eateries – Scott started talking about locating a bike shop that might be able to help us.

And so the saga began.

To be continued…

Initial Adventures

One of my husband’s many great character qualities is that he is an eternal optimist! It means that when Google Maps says it will take 6 hours, 11 minutes to drive from Walnut Shade, Missouri to Terre Haute, Indiana, he thinks, “We only have a six-hour drive today; no big deal.” I lean more toward the… shall we say… realistic?… end of the spectrum.

We had decided to shoot for a 10:00 AM departure on Saturday which was fine with me, as it would let me get in a gym workout before loading up and hitting the road. But there’s also the fact that no matter how well we plan and how many times we’ve done this “leave the house for a camping trip” thing, it always seems to take three hours from the time we start loading up till the time we actually hit the highway.  = )

Now, my strong preference is to arrive at a campsite mid-afternoon and leisurely get things set up well before dark. My Hero has also graciously agreed for us to eat out the first night of a trip, so I’m not pressured to cook supper while getting our home away from home is still in process.

I calculated that leaving home at 10:00 AM would get us there around 6:00 PM and put us setting up close to sunset, but we actually exited the home scene at 11:11 AM. Then, with our typical picnic lunch and several bathroom and/or gas stops ($4.69/gallon in Illinois, WOW!) plus a great dinner at China King restaurant in Vandalia, Illinois, we arrived at Terre Haute campground at 9:30 PM local time.

I don’t know what’s going on in the area, but when my ace travel agent was planning our trip, he’d had a hard time reserving any campsite for that night, and the one he was able to secure was quite expensive. We also had some problems with an incorrectly wired electric pedestal and a leaky faucet, but even in the dark, Scott dealt with all those issues calmly, creatively, and quietly. Since we’d only be there for 11 hours, we opted not to disconnect the camper and so had to sleep with it slightly unlevel, but at least feet downhill was better than the opposite!

That day during one of my driving shifts, Scott had done quite a bit of work to arrange a way for him to watch the Chiefs/Dophins football game on Sunday afternoon. What it took to accomplish that is a story for another post, but it reminds me that I should also mention the games. We do like to play games, and Scott always—in any realm of life, not just games—likes to have options. At home around 11:00 that morning we had both suddenly realized that we hadn’t loaded any games (horrors!), and then, well, we may have overdone it.

As you can see, we grabbed Dominion, Dominoes, Skyjo, Quiddler, Ringer, Rack-O, Cascadia, 5ive Straight, and Wingspan, but we also brought Quixx, Perquackey, and Bananagrams.

A subset of our games

Yes, that makes 12 games plus the ever-available several decks of cards! Okay, we’re crazy, but we do have options.

And here’s a word to the wise Midwest traveler: In addition to not buying gas in Illinois, you’ll definitely want to avoid driving on Interstate 70 in Indiana. We did that a year ago during our GAP Trail trip, and then it seemed like the whole state was under construction. Well, I can tell you that nothing has changed. For at least 75% of our time on I-70 in Indiana today, we were literally in construction zones, some of them quite creative.

I’ve read that the federal government funds 90% of interstate highway maintenance and repairs, and we all know how slowly the wheels of government grind. I think it’ll take ’em ten years to put Indiana’s 156 miles of Interstate 70 pavement back together. I’ve decided they must be working across the United States one state at a time. I-70 runs from Maryland to Utah, and the 2020s are obviously Indiana’s decade to have it ripped up. In the 2030s, Illinois will be the likely victim, and when Scott and I go camping and e-biking in our eighties in the 2040s, Missouri’s stretch of I-70 will have no drivable surfaces. = {

But Indiana can also boast good news on the ground transportation front: Their gas was only $3.89/gallon.

Scott did some exploring by bike today while I rested, and he came back with some amazing finds, including this covered bridge out in the middle of nowhere!

Bridge to nowhere? But what a find!

Then this evening, we took the bikes a few miles away to get make our first short run on the Little Miami Scenic Trail, and my e-bike would not turn on! Thus began a saga that will await my next blog post, but suffice it to say that The Brilliant One has been identified!

So, despite some early campground challenges the first night, e-bike challenges tonight, the Chiefs’ loss to Miami, and my losses at both Quixx and Perquackey, John Bryan State Park in southwestern Ohio and the surrounding area is just beautiful, the weather is gorgeous, we are together, and we’re enjoying many exceedingly abundant and totally undeserved blessings from God.

More adventures to come, I’m sure!

Glorious Monday!

As mentioned in the previous post, Saturday was incredibly wonderful, but Sunday, well, Sunday was about as tough as Saturday had been wonderful. We had some difficult – but important – discussions, it was miserably hot, and the sun was absolutely brutal. We rode 18 miles, but because of the alignment of the trail and the time of year, we were in direct sunlight nearly the whole time. At least there was no one around, so we were able to maintain the “never let ’em see you sweat” policy.

I think the high point of Sunday was Scott completing the sloth puzzle! (But where did those three pieces go?)

Five sloths, three butterflies, one puzzle whiz!

Today is Monday, and it has been glorious!

We rode on the Rock Island Trail from Windsor (the current eastern terminus) to Leeton and back, but after Sunday’s brutal sun situation, we went much earlier, and it was ever so much nicer; comfortable temps and lots of shade on our outbound run, and more sun on the return trip, but since we’d already seen the scenery once, we ramped up our pedal assist and zoomed back at about 15 mph.

Although I no longer have my original email from 30+ years ago (love2learn@juno.com), I do still love to learn and I am known for being curious. A triple portion of this trait was genetically passed to our son, Josiah who, like me, asks a lot of questions; his most memorable to me being, “What if photons had mass?” I digress.

While biking I notice things, comment on them, and ask questions about them. Then when we stop for a bun break I find out what Claude knows about them. Anyway, here follows some straight journal entry-type reporting from our day and some stuff we learned.

A Few Facts and Figures

1. Our timeline today:

5:00 AM – Got up

6:22 AM – Left campsite

7:00 AM – Picnic breakfast at Farrington Park in Windsor (beautiful and peaceful, bathroom with flush toilet!)

7:15 AM – Started bike ride to Leeton

10:00 AM – Arrived Leeton (we take lots of breaks because we’re not in a hurry and not trying to conquer anything), played Ringer at the city park pavilion and I won!

12:00 – Arrived back at Thomas in Windsor. In the 4 hours and 45 minutes we were on the trail, we saw a total of six other bikers. We loaded up; Scott drove while I napped.

12:37 – Arrived at our campsite, after having stopped at Whiteman Air Force Base’s “Visitor Center,” which Claude had told us is not a typical public state or national park-ish visitor center but a place to check in and tell the front desk folks why you are there and who you are coming to see. I waited in the car while with AC on full blast while Scott went in and was told in person what Claude had said. Whiteman’s main entrance is a literal six-minute drive from our campsite.

12:50 – Ate quick lunch of purchased salads; then Scott did all the work to get us loaded up to move out of our campsite by the mandatory 2:00 PM checkout. In order to stay here at Knob Noster State Park for six consecutive nights, we had to be in Site #7 for three nights then move to Site #24 for the next three. Today was moving day. = }

1:45 – We were consternated about how to move the camper and our two bikes from one site to the other. It seemed obvious to me that we could each ride our bikes to the new campsite, and then I could drive him back… and then… and… well… but then he gave me a look, THAT look, and I asked if it was a question like the fox and the hen and the corn… and then we both busted out laughing!

Scott took this picture as he pulled the camper out with plenty of margin to spare.

3:00 – Set-up at the new and much-improved site completed, we took a much-needed nap!

5:00 – Scott did a short Walmart run (corn on the cob, peaches, etc.), prepared a fine dinner for us, did the dishes(!!!), and now it’s 7:30 PM. I’m so pleased to be blogging.

2. When we go biking, I always like to find at least one interesting and memorable thing each day. We saw today’s interesting item before 7:00 AM! On Highway WW near Windsor, we passed an Amish man standing up on a black, horse-drawn buggy. It was a “pony cart” (a.k.a. “jog cart”), a light, two-wheeled cart with no real seat, just a platform to stand on. Windsor has an Amish community which established Lakeside Amish Mennonite Church Windsor in 1975. The Rock Island Trail road crossings near Windsor have signs that read “Horse Drawn Vehicles Prohibited.”

3. Dogs can smell humans one-quarter mile away, and even farther – up to several hundred yards away! – when it’s humid.

4. Wildlife seen so far on this trip (squirrels don’t count!): three red-shouldered hawk sightings (or maybe the same one three times?), three rabbits (not near the hawk!), one black rat snake, and numerous deer.

5. My bike’s gears have been slipping intermittently, which make pedaling decidedly unpleasant. It was especially bad yesterday, but thankfully better today. I’ve always thought my bike was a RAD 3 Step-Thru because its label says RAD 3, but Claude says the RAD 3 is a single gear bike. My bike has 7 gears, so it may actually be a RadCity 5 Plus Step-Thru. If so, it as a 7-speed Shimano drivetrain, and its tensioner evidently needs adjustment. Claude says you can adjust it with no tools but your fingers, but doing so requires putting the bike up on a stand and having one person (me) pedal it and change gears while the other person (My Hero) adjusts the tensioner. Scott tried to do this on the trail with the bike upside down and me sitting in a bag chair cheering him on while he “pedaled” with one hand, switched gears with the other, and adjusted the tensioner with a third. This was clearly not te optimal set-up, and while we thin it may have yielded some improvement, it wasn’t a total fix. I think we’ll need to take it to a bike shop or rig some way for Scott to work on it at home after this trip.

6. In other bike news, look what my odometer turned today!

Total after 4 years: 2,000 miles!

7. I always take two water bottles on a bike ride, and we usually ride 15-30 miles in a day. When I knew how hot it would be for our days on the Rock Island Trail in mid-July, I decided to carry three. They each hold 24 oz, and for the past three days I’ve been chugging all of them. I was proud of my 72 oz, but Claude says a rule of thumb for me would be 90 oz, and more “with heat, exercise, or if you’re outside a lot,” so I should probably up my intake.

8. The reason for the bright orange color of the water in a tiny a creek we saw today is most likely the presence of iron oxide. This area had old quarries and coal mining operations, which would have leached acidic, iron-rich water into the surrounding groundwater. When that water later surfaces, “the iron drops out as orange precipitate once it hits oxygen…This is literally called “acid mine damage” (AMD) and the orange coating is nicknamed “yellow boy” (Claude AI).

Stay tuned for more Rock Island Trail news.

In the Land of Ahhhhs

We’re vacationing in Central Missouri, camped at Knob Noster State Park and biking on the on Rock Island Rail Trail, and we’ve had a wonderful day!

While driving here yesterday, we talked about our personal goals for this trip, and I realized that my primary goal was simply to not work; “work” being defined as thinking, figuring things out, and making decisions. Scott has handled virtually all of that for us, in addition to doing ALL the physical work of setting up, loading and unloading, lifting and carrying, and arranging things cor my comfort. I told him today – with tears – that he treats me like my dad treated my mom. I feel like a queen!

Scott said one of his goals was to hear me breathe a loud “Ahhhh!!!” of contentment, and so far, as a team we are two for two on goals met. And it’s only Day Two. = )

On most of our previous biking adventures, by the time we do all normal our morning routines, eat breakfast, load up, and drive to the trailhead, we end up actually starting to ride around 11:00 AM, but this time, because it’s the middle of July and temperatures are forecast to be in the low 90s, temps are in the low 90s, we decided to forego some of our usual activities and target leaving the campsite at 7:30 AM – or by 8:00 AM at the latest. We made a 7:58 AM departure and got on the trail at an unheard-of 9:00 AM! It was a brilliant decision. The temp was only 78 when we started biking, we created our own breeze, and much of the trail was still shaded, praise God!

Some memories…

~ Even though it was a lovely Saturday morning, we had the ten-mile stretch between Chilhowee and Medford all to ourselves. In fact, for the first nine miles we passed absolutely no one, and in the final mile only two bikers and one hiker. The solitude was definitely “Ahhhh!!!”

~ We knew that there would be no “services” (water, bathrooms) on today’s ride and likely no benches. We normally bring two tiny, collapsible sit stools for periodic rest stops, but today Scott had the brilliant idea to bring our bag chairs instead. It was pretty easy to bungee them to the back racks on our bikes, and it was delightful to have something to lean back against during breaks.

~ The trees were lovely, and the birds were singing. We stopped about every three miles to sit and chat and appreciate the beauty.

~ At our first stop, yes, the birds were singing, and I could identify a couple of them – cardinals, mourning doves – but a couple miles into our ride, we started hearing an odd-sounding bird call. At first I couldn’t quite place it, but then it dawned on me that it sounded like a… could it be?… but that made NO sense… was it maybe a peacock?

Well, whatever it was made that same noise several times while we relaxing in our chairs on the edge of the trail, and I grew curiouser and curiouser. I told Scott that at the next road crossing, I was going to turn left and see if i could find out if somebody was raising peacocks for sale near Chilhowee, Missouri! I think he thought I was kidding. I was not.

The next crossing was a state highway, and I turned from trail gravel onto actual pavement, and a tenth of a mile up the road was a truly lovely, recently mowed spread – large home, curving gravel driveway, pole barn, numerous well-tended outbuildings, recreational stuff for grandkids(?) – and a sign at the road advertising Raw Milk, Eggs, Beef.

I turned in and Scott followed, but it appeared that no one was home, so I couldn’t ask if they had a peacock. My guess is that they had taken care of all their business at home and left the day before for a cruise to Alaska.

~ We played 500 Rummy on the Katy Trail-ish bench at Medford. I lost 620 to 405, but enjoyed the game.

~ On our way back to Chilhowee, we again stopped for a bun break on the White Oak Creek bridge, and while sitting there and thanking God for our wonderful day, a man who was biking westward toward Medford stopped to chat. He was probably in his 70s, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, and riding a trim, black e-bike. He told us that he’d bought the bike on Amazon for $590, and that included an upgraded seat, that he had recently replaced the battery, and was on his third set of tires. But get this, he has put 8,440 MILES on that bike in three-and-a-half years! And he’s done almost all of it on the 47.5 mile long Rock Island Trail! For comparison, we’ve had our bikes three-and-a-half years, and mine has 1,970 miles. I don’t know his name, but we will remember him as the 8 Thousand Mile Man.

~ We are using the Asch Principle on our meals this trip, and we brought leftover pizza and three potential crockpot meals, so we (Scott!) wouldn’t have to cook at the end of a long, hot day unless we (he!) wanted to. Our camper’s oven has always had issues and has never really baked anything properly, but this has no effect on My Hero’s determination to use every resource maximally.

The amount of time he spent trying to re-heat pizza in the oven was impressive, although I would’ve been totally fine eating it cold or using the microwave, I just asked Claude how best to do it on a pizza stone (use parchment paper or aluminum foil, of which we had neither!), said nothing, and thanked him for the end result.

Tonight we had picked up some “Garlic Butter Knots” from WM to go with our Stuffed Pepper Soup, and the needed to be baked. He was fine to handle that while I tried to help with the puzzle (see below), but the foil bag said to use parchment paper or aluminum foil on a cookie sheet (of which we had thought to purchase neither!), so he put it in on the oven rack, the bag melted, and the knots were burned, but we did not set the camper on fire!

~ The puzzle. At our library’s puzzle exchange a couple weeks ago, I picked up a 500 piece puzzle of grinning sloths. It’s lots of brown and white fur and tree barkwith some green leaves and a few blue butterflies thrown in for fun.

Scott loves a challenge and began assembling said puzzle on a large marker board at home. He also has several cardboard trays into which we’d sorted pieces of various colors. I figured he/we would resume work on the puzzle when we got back home, but no! He brought the marker board and puzzle trays with us in the camper and has been working on it at the picnic table.

We are having a grand time! Ahhh!!!

Door-to-Door

After the AC ran all night, I thought it might have dried out the front door a bit, allowing it to shrink enough to be opened.

So this morning I unlocked the front door, went around, and carefully got myself up onto the porch. Then I braced my left foot against the frame at the bottom and pushed hard on the door with my right foot. It didn’t even begin to budge.

Next, I planted my right shoulder and upper arm against the door and, like some defensive lineman in an (American) football game, shoved as hard as I could. Still nothing. That door didn’t move a millimeter.

I then grabbed the doorknob — confident that since I was pushing rather than pulling, it would not come off in my hand — and pushed as hard as I could with my (ahem) admittedly impressive upper body strength while at the same time doing a well-placed, right foot karate kick, and it finally came open. Whew!

But consider this hypothetical: Let’s say you’ve been working really hard for a couple of minutes trying to open a window that somebody else painted shut 20 years ago, and then suddenly there’s a loud, ripping, cracking kind of noise when you finally get it open. Well, that’s EXACTLY the sound our front door made. But it’s open! And now I guess I’ll need to do the same defensive linebacker, karate kick, shoulder-shove thing tonight from the inside to get it closed and locked. 

Thankfully, the doorknob is intact, and there is no splintered peephole at waist level in our front door.

I just did a bit of research on the interaction between relative humidity (currently 60%) and dew point (currently 74^o), and Google’s AI responded with this: “Meteorologists rely on the dew point as the definitive guide to human comfort because it does not fluctuate with the daily temperature cycle:

Under 55°F:      Dry and comfortable.
56°F to 60°F:     Becoming noticeable.
61°F to 65°F:     Sticky and humid.
66°F to 69°F:     Uncomfortable for most.
70°F to 74°F:     Oppressive and tropical (Your current conditions).
75°F or higher: Miserable and dangerous.”

With that knowledge, I checked the current dew point in Hong Kong where our daughter and her family live; it is a “miserable and dangerous” 78^o. Ugh! But they just left yesterday for a two-week vacation with her husband’s family in Sydney, Australia, where it’s now mid-winter and 60^o F with a much more pleasant “dry and comfortable” dew point of 46^o.

This whole stuck-door situation reminds me of Dr. Dolittle’s pink, llama-like, two-headed Push-Me-Pull-You. Until our Walnut Shade dew point drops back down below 74^o, I must remember to PUSH this door from whichever direction and resist my strong temptation to PULL on the doorknob. 

Relative humidity

It’s 9:21 pm, 80 degrees F, and, after six weeks of nearly daily rain, so humid that the front door no longer opens.

At all.

I actually thought about bracing my right foot against the inner doorframe and trying to yank it open, just on principle. After all, “opening” really is half of a door’s job, but I realized that if I succeeded, I’d then have to figure out not only what to do with a handful of ripped-out doorknob plus associated hardware, but also how to patch or otherwise cover the new, massive, splintered peephole created at waist level in our historic wood door! Neither my brain nor my brawn wanted to work that hard, so I left the door closed.

Anyway, only guests and Amazon deliveries come up on the porch. Guests can come in the breezeway like family, and I can go around to collect any packages, fill hummingbird feeders, or relax on our new glider, which I still call a porch swing because don’t you agree that “porch swing” rolls more trippingly off the tongue than “porch glider”?

Our nifty triple-seat glider

The middle seat folds down to a table with cup holders, quite classy

Our new-and-greatly-improved porch swing replaces this older model that we think we’ve had for at least 15 years. Scott put it out by the street at 7:45 AM and it was gone shortly before 1:00 PM.

We hope it went to a good home.

But mostly, we’re just glad it went away. = )

Sabbath joys

I’ve had a fun Sabbath. My definition of Sabbath is only doing things I want to do instead of things I (think I) have to do, and doing one thing that’s not normal.

Well, I did prepare and send out a short timely trip update – NOT a Sabbath-y thing to do! – because I thought it was very important, and unfortunately that resulted in contacting our IT genius and spending nearly an hour trying to figure out how to print out a bunch of screenshots, but I finally DID it! After that, I got back into Sabbath mood with…

1. A stop at the Ozark post office to mail some peanut butter with M&M’s cookies to Scott’s mom.

2. A pause at the Ozark courthouse square to snap a shot. It gets a point for having a legitimate courthouse square, but sadly loses two points because, as you can see below, the courthouse has neither a name NOR a date on it. Clearly an appalling documentation failure. ☹️

Christian County, MO Courthouse

3. A pleasant hour perusing the Christian County Museum and Historical Society. Lots of interesting stuff, photos, and verbiage. Much better documentation than the courthouse. I also bought a book about Bull Creek there. ☺️

I saw these two historical items in the museum and sent pictures of them to my dad. Since he recently did some clothing alterations with my portable sewing machine (at age 89!), and since he plays the accordion, I thought these would make him smile.

A 100 year-old sewing machine!

A really deluxe, fancy-schmancy, old accordion

4. A really fabulous lunch at a small, Claude-recommended café called Lolli’s, just off the square. I had pulled pork sliders, broccoli salad, and Kellybeans, all superbly delicious. I don’t like normal BBQ sauce, and I was pleased that they served their pulled pork sauceless and provided six different bottles of sauce you could self-apply. I opted for the smokey garlic, and it was an excellent choice. Then I heard someone mention cheesecake, and how could I pass that up?!? I bought a piece to go and will try it later.

UPDATE: (And I cannot figure out how to remove the large space above this update. Ugh.) Our power went out for four hours while I was typing the above, so I took that opportunity to sample a bit of the cheesecake; that being one of the few things one can do when one has no power, no lights, no internet, no phone service, and no water. I was pleasantly surprised! I was – and is and will be – very good. They only had the one flavor, S’Mores, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about actual chocolate cheesecake, but it’s very light chocolate, about the same color as the inside of a malted milk ball, and has a great texture and flavor. I think the term for the chocolate glazing on top would be ganache (GBBS anyone?), it is topped with a few lightly toasted mini marshmallows, and sits on a tasty good graham cracker crust; all in all another excellent choice from Lolli’s.

5. An unplanned joyride somewhere northeast of Ozark. I had gotten off 65 at the 2nd Ozark exit, Jackson Street I think it is, the one in the valley where they recently finished a long construction project to widen it to three lanes. That took me to the PO and then the square. I had ordered a pizza for pickup in Ozark, and for that you get off 65 one exit farther north at Lambert’s and James River Church.

After Lolli’s, rather than going back west to 65 and then north a mile or two, I thought I could just go north on back roads from the square, which is maybe a mile east of 65, till I hit whatever road it is that I could turn left onto and would take me back to 65. Papa Murphy’s is on that street on the north side, right across the street from Lambert’s. So I made a humorous probably 1.5 or 1.75 circuits around the square till Thomas finally said I was pointing north, and away I went.

I went along a river, past a ball field, and all over the place on scenic winding roads. Saw some homes of landed gentry, horses, lots of green grass, green trees, blue skies with big, bulging white clouds, all very fine. Fine until I came to an east-west T. Hmm… I turned east because on Thomas’ map screen, it looked like that road would head basically north. It did not, but it was a gorgeous ribbon road for a while, before appearing to end at some gated community-looking place. So I backtracked and went west, then turned north again and thought, “I had no idea it was so far to the Lambert’s exit!” Well, it wasn’t.

I ended up on Hwy 60(!!!), where I did finally turn left (west), and that took me two miles back into, not Ozark, but SPRINGFIELD where you go under 65 and have to make a really tight 20 mph loop to get up onto 65 south. Sweet Georgia Peaches! But I did get the pizza and made it home.

Please note that it is definitely time for Scott to come home. In trying to get the pizza into the oven, I partially dropped it, splattering shredded cheeses and a few chicken chunks onto the open oven door, where burning immediately began. That would be the same oven door I had JUST SCRUBBED a week ago. But I did my best at 425 degrees, and all was well till I tried to get the ever-loving pizza out of the oven 15 minutes later, when I did actually drop half of it, kind of folded in on itself, but managed to catch it without burning myself. It’s cooling now, and it’s been a great Sabbath! My next fun thing will be to try to create a google spreadsheet to put my courthouses online so I can access them from anywhere.

UPDATE #2: I figured out that I had already created such an online spreadsheet = ), but not all the information has been entered into it. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to tackle that task, but I got some tips from Claude on how to add links to pictures, so that will be a fun project at some time in the near future. I really do want to get my courthouses organized.