unconnected

I have been working hard at home...getting a lot done. But most of it is not interesting..at least not in pictures. So here's some random shots from the past week or so. Ever since I found out that the camera phone is a fairly good camera, I have been taking way more pictures and having a lot of fun with it since I always have a camera with me. :o) Not all of these were taken with the phone but most of them were.

I have entered the 2nd month of logging my food for the GI doctor. This month (starting today) will be gluten free. I made myself a batch of buttermilk pancakes as a farewell to gluten for the time being. Next month is dairy free. Both months will be tough!

a weekday bike ride

In the winter, I don't usually get to ride my bike during the week because I only have about an hour of sunlight after I get home from work and I need to use the daylight to walk the dogs. It's very stressful to walk the dogs in the dark because of their agression issues toward other dogs. If I can't see a dog until we're close to it, it causes problems. All our walks end in the dark but I can get some daylight during the walk at least.

Jack has been limping a lot lately, not even using his rear leg sometimes after we get home from a walk. And Jasmine has been really stiff too so I decided they needed a reast for a couple days at least. I took one of the days they had off to take a bike ride. Woo hoo!! I had a great time. It was warm enough for a short sleeved jersey and shorts. And I even got to see one of the best sunsets I had seen in quite some time (that slowed my ride down considerably since I couldn't get far before I had to stop to take another picture. The dogs didn't think it was a win/win...but I did.

A beautiful evening and I got in 13 miles!

Green smoothies and my weekend

This weekend seemed busier than it was, I'm sure. Adam had his birthday party on Saturday. So I spent Friday evening vacuuming and doing general clean up. Mostly, I didn't do much since I was distracted by watching America's Funniest Home Videos.

Adam came home from the PO box with a package for me from a friend in France. A Christmas card (we don't check the PO box very often) and a bag of organic, French spices. There was a recipe on the box to use them in but since I don't read French, I don't know what it is yet. She said she'd translate it for me. So a nice surprise to start the weekend. :o)


The world was still wet on Saturday morning. I love the look of wet wood.


To start off my weekend right, I had a green smoothie for breakfast. It's a great way to get your greens in. Plus it was so good! This one was lots of kale (my first kale smoothie in my new blender...worked much better than my last blender), peaches, grapes, strawberries, mango, pineapple and orange juice. It made two large glasses full. I drank every last drop.

I first started drinking these when I was doing the raw diet. I can't reccomend these enough. They pack vitamins, minerals, fiber and yummy goodness.

After I finished cleaning, I went for a bike ride. Get this, it's in the middle of January and I was wearing shorts and a short sleeved jersey! It was around 68 degrees!! I am loving the warm winter. But I had to pass the garden on my way out the driveway and found all these water bubbles. I really liked the looks of them.


Action shot.


Back in the subdivision at the end of the ride, the sun was shining down a side road. I had to turn around to get a shot of it...I couldn't go by without one.

To prepare for guests, the dogs had to be loacked out. They weren't too happy about it. I wasn't thrilled with it either since the ground was still wet, but the deck was fairly dry and it was plenty warm out so they were fine. But they still tried to convince me they would be happier inside.

Even my nephews came out. I didn't get any pictures of them on the phone camera (I used it to take all the pics on this post, except the top one) so I don't have access to them right now. I watched Samuel a while and also played Mario Kart with Isaac. That's his favorite part of coming to our house. He LOVES Mario Kart and we are the only people he knows who has it.

After they left, the dogs got to come back in and hang out while the rest of Adam and his friends and I played games. We had pizza and cake.

We played a game called Iron Dragon. It was fun but long. I think we played for 4 hours. Adam was on the verge of winning. He deilvered a commodity to me so I payed him just enough to make him win so we could quit. See him without his glasses?

Bear was creating trouble. He kept laying under the table and people would accidentally graze him and he'd let out a growl. He finally settled in behind me, out of the way.

The dogs said it was a long, tiring day.

Saturday's bicycle ride

AFter working all week on getting enough sleep...and extra even, I am starting to feel more human again. I am getting some of my energy back. Finally, after a couple months of not being able to go for a ride, I got to go on one on Saturday. The weather was so nice! It was in the mid 60's! It rained on me in the beginning but I kept biking and it eventually stopped. I didn't really know where I was going...just exploring really. I made my way to one of the local bike trails. It's got nice scenery and no vehicles, of course.

I though they had extended the bike trail but I rode to the wrong end to ride the new extension and they had it closed off in the middle so I couldn't get through to check it out. I wasn't ready to head back home so I went to explore some more.

At the end of the gravel road were a couple horses and a community garden. That's a place where you "own" a plot and you can plant veggies. I spent way too much time there because I was amazed by it.

They even had a chicken coop but the sign said they were on vacation.

After my visit at the garden, I decided it was time to head home. Adam's cousin was in town so we were meeting for dinner and I wanted to be able to walk the dogs before that so they could enjoy the nice weather too.

Great ride! Now I need to keep on track with my sleep so I can have energy for riding.

40 miles

Ok, I interrupted myself with that last post. I still only have my camera phone for my rides so I decided to play around with some of the photos a bit on the computer after snagging them off my phone.

Last November, or possibly as late as December, I cant recall, I collected as many rose hips as I could find. The fall was short last year and froze the vast majority of rose hips before they could ripen. I milled them in a food mill and took the pulp and added an equal amount of honey and mixed. It came out to about 2 sandwiches worth. I read about this method of preserving fruit (rosehips specifically) and wanted to see if it would actually work. I just love learning about old ways of preserving, especially when no heat and sugar is involved...though I do regular canning too and enjoy tha food as well. I put it in a cabinet and left it to see how it would be in 6 months. I forgot about it until Saturday when I was thinking about what I could eat on my bike ride. No white or brown sugar so this was the only "jelly" I could think of to put on my pb&j sandwich. I dug it out of the back of the cabinet and gave it a sniff. Seemed alright. I gave it a taste. Tasted alright. I figured I'd know if it was bad if I got sick. I didn't get sick and it tasted fine so I was call that experiment a success. I hope to collect a lot more this year...maybe I can get a whole jar's worth this time. This may be the first thing that came out right on my first try.


So, after collecting enough food for a ride, I took off. I thought it would be a cooler day since it had been but summer has returned. I had no idea where I was going...it was a day for exploring. I changed my mind about where to head to and wandered around until I ended up on these dirt roads I discovered last year. Not a single car passed me the whole time and I even got to see a deer dart off into the woods.


About an hour into my ride, I stopped at a small, wooded park to eat an apple and rest. The trees were bizarre with hollow trunks, bent in weird positions and leaning precariously.


I ended up getting kind of lost and when I saw a Subway, I stopped and sat inside, ate another apple and drank as much ice water as I could manage...then napped intermittenly for about 30 minutes. I found a way home and took off down that road.

About 30 minutes from home, I saw this old, abandoned house. I had seen it years before but forgotten about it. Each time we'd pass it, I always wanted to stop to explore the house but there's nowhere to pull over so I didn't. But on the bike, you can stop anywhere you want. :o)



The front door is in the middle of the house with a window on either side. On each side of the door was a cool painted pattern. I am thinking that it may have been used as a general store or a restaurant at some point and these are the remnants of their hanging signs.

I didn't dare go in since the porches were completely dissenegrating. But I found a couple of windows that weren't boarded up and I peeked in. Look at the floor in this kitchen. I just love the way they painted the wood.

This is one side of what was once a bedroom.

And here's the other side. That was all I got to see of the inside. If only I were 12 feet tall so I could see in the upstairs windows.

This is definitely the cleanest abandoned house I have ever come across. The floors are in such good shape, the paint isn't peeling off the walls either. It's in exceptional shape for something its age.

Once I was only about 10 minutes from home, I went to make my final turn and there was an accident on that road and it was completely blocked off to all traffic, including cyclists. I rode just past the cops and went through a grassy field past the accident and got on the road. Another plus for biking. It was a fun ride but I was so glad to get home.

Seeing the good

I am alive! Lots of good things happened to me yesterday but by far, the best thing that happened is that I am still alive.

This past weekend, I was not feeling well. My sinuses had been giving me problems for 1 1/2 weeks. I think it's from breathing in all the dust in the warehouse since I've been working out there everyday. On Saturday, it wiped me out and I slept most of the weekend asleep or near sleep.

Since I had gotten a lot of rest, I was feeling ok yesterday and really wanted to go on a long bike ride. Usually, I feel like I HAVE to go for a ride, not that I want to...at least until I get out and get warmed up. About 15 minutes into my ride, I stopped to take a picture. The camera went wonky. The screen was all blurry and filled with weird colors. Not good. I still had hope that what was stored on the card was ok and just the screen was bad. (No, the camera is toast.)

I remembered about half way into my ride that I had my phone with me and could use that camera if I needed to. It's not the best but it will do in a pinch. I did use it when I got to a cool old log cabin.

The cabin is a two story structure with hand hewn, square logs, fitted together so well at the dovetail joints that I would assume a professional made it, not an inexperienced frontiersman. It also leads me to believe that this is the original land where it has always stood. They usually don't go back together quite as well as they originally stood once being rebuilt after a move.


Behind the house was a well with a wooden cover with leather hinges. How cool is that? It's been cemented over under the wood for safety, I assume. Behind the well is a two seater outhouse. The weird thing about this one was the scratch marks all over the outside. I'm thinking perhaps a racoon wants in!


There was a single wagon axel, rotting.

This place was magical. It was kept immaculately though there was no house that someone lived in and no sign as to what it was which leads me to believe that someone privately owns it and maintains it. I really appreciate that! There was even a garden...not the fanciest garden (flower, not veggie) but to have it in that setting was really neat.

There was a cute little birdhouse on an outbuilding that caught my eye.

I also really liked this bell. Look at the bull head in its design. Pretty clever. That's the barn.

So all those pics were taken with my phone. There's no zoom or flash but it did a decent job so I'm glad to have at least something for my bike rides.

I was about 10 minutes from home. I was riding on a stretch of road that is generally more busy than the rural roads I usually get to ride on. I could see a car behind me about 25 car lengths but no one between us and a big enough gap that I would be able to make the left turn that I usually have to stop on the shoulder and wait about 5 minutes for the cars to go by before it's safe for me to cross.

With that space open to me, I moved out into the middle of my lane to show my intentions to the guy coming up behind me. I slowly made my way over to just beside the center line and just as I was making my left turn, I hear breaks squealing, a car skidding and a horn honking. I couldn't look back because I knew I would freak out and crash if I saw what was going on. So I pedaled as fast as I could. Turns out the guy decided he was planning on going around me in the other lane (even though I was on the line and it would have been safer for him to go on the other side, especially since the car coming the other direction was coming up on us as well). As I made the turn, he had to slam on his brakes because he was in the proccess of going around me. I do have a rear view mirror and I use it but I was looking ahead at the car coming toward me, not behind. I figured I had given that driver warning of what I was doing by my actions...appearntely, he didn't understand. He yelled at me as he was going by. I pedaled as hard as I could out of there, afraid he would turn around and track me down on this empty road to scream at me some more...perhaps that was just my adrenaline spike talking. He never materialized.

Back at home, I turned on my computer to check if my pictures came out or if what the screen on the camera displayed what I would see on the card. Nothing happened. My computer isn't working. Adam thinks the mother board went bad. It worked the night before and we didn't have a storm. Not sure what happened.

But none of these things bothered me...well, the camera thing did until it was put into perspective for me. I came close to becoming a bug on someone's windshield. Even as he was yelling at me, I didn't care...it didn't take it personally, like I usually would. I am alive! All the rest doesn't matter. And the whole ride was great (except that little bit). The adrenaline quickly dissapated and I was able to enjoy the last 8 minutes of my ride knowing I wasn't being stapped to a board and loaded into an ambulance, or worse at that very moment.

Bike ride to the garden

I am trying to fit everything into my schedule. It's tough. If I drive to the garden, it's a 40 or so minute round trip. If I bike there, it's a 1 hour 45 minute or so round trip. That doesn't count the time spent weeding or watering. I do drive there sometimes but sometimes, I just have to hop on my bike...to save on gas money as well as to fit in some much needed exercise time. So I do spend an extra hour commuting when I take my bike but it's time well spent to me.

When I take my bike, I put my rear panniers on to carry some clothes to protect me from the thick misquitos, a pair of shoes and sometimes a container if I think I may have some produce to bring home.



The ride to the garden is mostly more rural roads...at least compared to the roads around my house. The closer I get to the garden, the less traffic there is, except for one road I have to take for a few minutes. Then it's back to rural roads.







We had our first picking of green beans and got enough for a very hearty amount for each of us. There are a few more beans on the vine now...but they're still growing. We finally have pea blossoms and the bush beans look like they might produce something soon.


And of course the squash are trying to produce something as well.


On the ride back, I take a different route. This route has 4-5 fig trees lining the road at one point. Each time I ride past them, I stop and grab a handful to snack on for the next couple of days.


Here's the green beans after I got home and washed them. There's some kind of caterpillar eating holes in them so I have to do research to find out how to get rid of them.


Dinner that night was homegrown green beans, foraged figs, homemade sauerkraut, homemade wheat bread with honey and butter and a small bowl of lentil slaw (which is sprouted lentils, shaved carrots & diced tomatoes, with a apple cider vinigarette).