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.

Lunch at Betty's

I have a friend from church, Betty. She was the one who inspired me to grow my tomoatoes inside. She has a garden that is very productive and since I couldn't grow anything outside (the owners won't let us), I grew them inside in pots. I told her about it and sher, in turn, was inspired to grow some inside for winter use. She is twice my age but she's very friendly and a lot of fun to talk to. She had me over for lunch today. She met me at the exit and she took me on a drive around the mountain to see the colors before we made it up to her house. We saw a moose and tried to get a picture of it but it kept running out of view until it finally went into the trees and disappeared. She had told me about her house before. She said it was very small and that all 4 of her kids slept in the loft. I wasn't quite expecting it to be as small as it was. You walk through a small, closed in porch which is open to the rest of the house. The laundry room is in there. You walk through the hall. Bathroom on one side, bedroom on the other. Then you're in the main area. There' a one-butt kitchen on one side and a small living room with a wood stove which is the only heat for the house. On the end of the kitchen is a small dining area. There's a glassed in porch beyond that. The stairs to the loft are in the middle of the walkway to the porch. There's enough room for all four beds with bookcases between each bed and then almost double that across from the beds. The loft is almost the length of the house, plus the back porch. It was very cozy but I couldn't believe she was able to keep 6 people living in ther for the past 16 years! She lives up in Tollagte Canyon. The views were amazing! I wish I could live there.