Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Weekend Wrapup

Welcome back, kind patrons. After wrestling with my blog nemesis (my freaking PC) I am once again attempting to holler at you. Twice this past weekend I attempted to regale you with splendid stories of what I've been doing, only to have my laptop just close my web browser. Having had this problem in the past, I used to resort to typing in notepad then pasting it into the Blogger window for publication. As you might imagine, this is annoying and doesn't allow me to preview the post or make use of any automatic features like inserting pictures and hyperlinks. For now I'm going to try to write in notepad; we'll see how long it lasts.


Friday's Bike Ride

Friday, being the last day of nice weather for a bit, I joined forces with Johnny A of Thursday Night Run and Josh Billings fame and Danny Badmeat of HW Engineering fame to go for a bike ride. We met up at the ol' Stockbridge Bowl boat launch, mounted our trusty steeds and headed down routes 183 and 7 towards Connecticut. It was a perfect day for a bike ride, warm and sunny (but not too warm, just right). Ahhhhhh. You just wanted to take a bite of the tasty air.

As we rode through Great Barrington, we were thrown back in time by the Model Ts driving around, and even a steam boat on a trailer. "What the hell is going on?" we thought aloud. Even the guys driving the cars were wearing those funny old school driving caps and leather knuckle-less gloves. Those Great Barringtonians (Great Barringtowners?) are some wild and crazy folk. What's even better is some of them looked at us like we were crazy. Damn they're wildin'.

When we finally decided to head back towards home we were torn between continuing on towards the MA/CT border - an unknown distance - and just going back to the cars. Mr. Badmeat was new to cycling and his nether regions were strongly suggesting that less would be more, so we turned around and headed for home. 2.5 hours and 37 miles later we were back at the boat launch. Mmm mmmm, bitch! A delish ride.

Side note: We were less than 5 miles from the CT border. Damn!


Picnic Table Project

After three months of not working on JO's picnic table, we figured we should finally meet up (as in I should drive to Albany) to put the wraps on it. I loaded up the A-car with the tools I thought would be handy and drove my sweet ass out there.

After a brief pool closing mishap set us back about an hour, and a tooling problem (we didn't have a big enough drill bit) sent us on a trip to the Home Despot we were able to start. We kicked it into overdrive and powered out the table.

The directions were a waste, so we just assembled it as we/I saw fit. My supreme knowledge of all things mechanical gave me Yoda-like picnic table insight and the final steps of the assembly went off with only a few hitches (read: JO can't work a drill). What's important is that it's done and it's sweet. Below is a picture of the table, complete with the built in blur. The thing weighs in at probably 200 lbs (surrisly, the shit is heavy) and is uber sturdy. It should hold up for years.

Nevermind on the photo of the table. Once again Blogger is refusing to let me upload a picture.


Monday Night Kayak Trip on Pontoosuc

After overdoing it on Saturday, I've been nursing a tender ankle and have been unable to run. What's an outdoors junkie to do when he can't run? Obviously load up his kayak and hit the high seas of Berkshire County. A nighttime paddle on Pontoosuc was just what the Dr. ordered for my ankle. By the time my boat hit the water, the sun was just about down. Paddling in the dark is both meditative and scary as hell. The meditative portion comes from the fact that you really can't see the water, you just glide along. I had my headlamp in case there were other boats out there (I counted one) but it didn't do much for my own visibility. The scary part is being on the water in the dark, plus there were bats.

I got to paddle through the bat feeding frenzy which is simultaneously really cool and really scary. Having hundreds of bats whipping past your head in the dark is a surreal feeling, and while I know they know what they're doing there's always a fear that one will crash into my face. At that point, I would remove my life jacket and throw myself into my watery grave.

As the night grew cold, the trip drew to an end. I was approaching the boat launch when I got a little close to land. As I moved out from shore, I heard the sound of an animal slipping into the water. Without a clear visual, I can only assume it was either a muskrat, moose or The Swamp Thing. Of those three, there's really no preferred choice - they're all scary as hell. As soon as the first hair (or tentacle) hit the water, I let out the loudest, most womanly scream I think I've ever made. It was similar to the sound Homer Simpson makes when startled, only in the dead calm of the evening the presence of the Y chromosome was imperceptable. Yup, very womanly. Luckily only one person was there to witness it, and we took my car so we reached an agreement and my secret is safe... unless someone reads about it here.

Well folks, that should keep you up to date on what I've been up to. I'll try to keep things interesting, but my life is pretty much a lot of the same thing. Y'all take care now, ya hear?

I said ya hear?!

Over and Out,
Old Coot

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ah, thanks again for the a.m. chuckles. Perhaps that creature was none other than Laura, Albert and Willie just trying to pull one over on Nellie and Mrs. Olsen.

"Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him.' and I just took off." -Pre