Pop Quiz: What is 142?

First, I want to apologize for my blog silence. I've been really busy at work lately, and that has left me with little time - or even desire, frankly - to sit at home on the computer and write. This week has been the busiest yet, but I was determined to write a little something tonight.

OK, now onto the quiz. The answer, as you can see above, is 142. Now here are your choices as to what that number represents:

A. My weight
B. My IQ
C. The mileage on my bike odometer
D. My most recent bowling score


All right, have you had enough time to come up with a guess? Then pencils down! :-)

So how many people chose A? Sorry, that's incorrect - the number is too low. At my height, 142 would be rather underweight for me.

Did anyone choose B? I wish it were true, but sorry, that number is too high - at least to the best of my knowledge. (And I'd say anyone who knows me would heartily agree. :-))

How about C? That seems like a good answer, since I have been posting a lot about all my bike rides. But no, that's not right either - although I'm closing in on that number pretty quickly! (More on that in my next post - which will hopefully be soon!)

So, for any of you who chose D, my most recent bowling score, give yourselves a gold star!

Yes, that's right, last Thursday I bowled one of the best games of my life, earning a score of 142! I know that's not really spectacular, but considering the other game I bowled that evening was an 88, and the fact that the last time I bowled (for real, not Wii bowling ;-)) was Feburary of 2008, I was pretty darn proud of myself for bowling a 142.

The funny thing was, the two other people in my lane had scores one point higher than the next. I was in third place, with a 142. The second-place bowler had a 143, and the winner had a 144! I did have the chance to beat them both, especially when I had two strikes in a row in frames 8 and 9 (and I don't know if I've ever done that, outside of Wii Bowling), but then I kind of blew it in the 10th frame. Still, I wasn't at all disappointed with my performance. In fact, I thought it was kind of neat how our scores ended up the way they did.

The other thing I want to mention about my bowling experience was that I actually used a respectable-weight ball this time. In the past, I would always choose a pretty light ball - maybe 8 or 9 pounds. But this time, I decided I should be able to handle a heavier ball, since I've been going to the gym and using arm weight machines for quite a while. So I found a 12-pound ball that fit my fingers well, and I used that for both games. Again, I know that's not really all that heavy, but it was a pretty big increase from what I used to use.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed participating in the Pop Quiz!

The Ascent

Because it took me so long to plant flowers on Sunday, we never did get to ride our bikes over the weekend. I was a little disappointed, but I was happy that I had been able to spend a lot of time outdoors - and as a bonus, I actually accomplished something as well!

Brian said we would definitely go for a bike ride on Monday. Then he casually mentioned that we would ride our bikes up to his parents' house to return a movie we had borrowed from them (Sideways, which we both enjoyed). Upon hearing this, I kind of flinched a little inside. His parents live in a neighborhood located about halfway up the side of a mountain - OK, not a mountain like the Rocky Mountains, but what passes for a mountain in this area. He reminded me that I said I wanted to get a better workout from biking than I had been. I then reminded him that I got more than enough of a workout the other day, riding 16 miles with my brake rubbing my rear tire! :-) However, I decided I was ready to accept the mountain-climbing challenge, so after a quick supper Monday evening, we took to our bikes and started our journey.

It's not really that far to Brian's parents' house from our house, and the ride to the base of the mountain is actually quite nice - a couple of gentle hills, but nothing too demanding. I even got to do some really good coasting at one point, which was quite fun.

But the fun ended not too long afterward, as we got ready to start the climb. Brian said the first section, up to the point where the road curves, was the worst. I was sort of surprised at that comment, since from my experience with driving up the hill, it seemed like there were steeper portions later on, but I soon discovered he was correct.

Wow! Was it tough! I was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf, but it didn't seem like I was making any progress. I felt rather pathetic as cars drove past at 35 mph and I was struggling mightily to go 5 mph. I suppose I should have tried standing up off the seat, but I really didn't think about it at the time, and I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable with doing that yet.

However, somehow I did make it past "the worst part" without having to stop. And what a relief it was when the incline became more gradual! We went a little further up the hill until we came to a little gravel area off to the side, and then we stopped for a moment to get a drink and catch our breaths. Then it was "onward and upward" again.

The funniest part of the whole trip was when a car drove by us, and we realized it was Brian's dad's car! We both waved wildly as the car continued up the hill, but there was no indication that his parents saw us.

Finally, after some more uphill biking, we got to his parents' house. When his mother opened the door, she was quite surprised to see us in our cycling attire. We told her that they had just driven past us a few minutes beforehand, and that we even waved, but she said she didn't see us at all! I guess they were deep in thought or conversation or something.

Anyway, we dropped off the movie, drank some more water, and then began the fun - but slightly scary - part of going down the mountain. It was certainly much easier than going up, but we did have to be careful not to go too fast, and we had to really watch our rear-view mirrors for cars coming up behind us, because with the wind rushing in our ears, we couldn't really hear much. But we made it down the mountain safely.

After we got back to level ground, we took a slightly different way to get home, and when we got back to our driveway, my trip odometer was at exactly 10.0 miles. So it wasn't my longest ride, but it definitely had the most challenging part to it that I've done so far. And I considered it a personal accomplishment to have "conquered" that mountain, because the last time I rode a bicycle, before I got my own a few weeks ago, was quite a few years ago (more than 5, I'm sure) when I borrowed Brian's sister's old 10-speed bike (which was too small for me, although I didn't really realize it at the time) and rode with Brian up and around the hills of his parents' neighborhood. It was not a very great experience for me, and I believe I did end up having to walk the bike up a hill at some point. So I was happy that this ride in that neighborhood went much better than my last one.

Annual Planting

After I won the "War of the Roses," I turned my attention to the market packs of vinca and celosia waiting to be planted. It took me about three hours to plant all of the flowers (hey, that rhymed!), which, when you divide 3 hours by 72 plants, means it took me about 2 1/2 minutes to plant each flower. It probably would have taken less time, if it weren't for the crumbly soil of the vinca plants - unlike the celosia, the vinca refused to come out of the market packs in one nice compact clump of soil with the roots all wound around the outside. So I had to take extra time with each of them, making sure I got enough of the roots and also enough soil from the plastic tray to give them the best chance of survival in our nasty clay soil.

72 plants sounds like a lot, and it certainly felt like a lot when I was planting them, but when you have a lot of ground to cover, 72 plants don't really make much of an impact. Below are pictures of my flowerbeds after I finished planting everything. I realize they don't look nearly as impressive as the example pictures I posted before. However, the plants will grow and fill in some of the spaces, plus in the larger flower bed, I wanted to make sure I left enough space around the mum plants that came back from last year and are starting to grow and spread. And besides all that, I really didn't want to spend any more money on flowers. I don't like gardening enough to enjoy spending lots of time and/or money on it. I basically do the bare minimum to make things look presentable according to the standards of suburbia. :-)








So now that I've finished that annual chore (pun intended), I'm hoping the plants will take root and grow well and add some color and, dare I say beauty, to the front yard throughout the summer months.

War of the Roses

On Sunday, before I started planting my 72 packs of annuals, I had one other task to accomplish: to tame a wild rose bush.

I mentioned in my other post that the flowerbed on the one side of the house hardly has anything in it but weeds. However, that's not completely true. There are two rose bushes close by the air conditioning unit, given to us as a gift a few years ago by my mother. While the one seems to be keeping to a relatively bush-like shape, the other seems to be more of the climbing variety, and it has definitely started getting out of control in the past year. But because I'm such a lazy gardener, I didn't do anything about it until this year.

On Saturday, when I bought my flowers at Lowe's, I also picked up a ladder trellis for the rose bush. The ends of the trellis are only about 2 1/2 inches long, so I wasn't sure how it was supposed to be secured into the ground (since I wasn't planning to attach it to the siding). I found one of the store managers and asked him for advice, and he came up with the idea of getting a couple of iron rebar rods, sinking them into the ground, and then attaching the trellis to them with hose clamps. I was going to go with this plan until another employee happened by and suggested something smaller that would be likely to work even better. So instead I got some stainless steel rods (much like wooden dowel rods) and planned to fasten the trellis to them with cable ties (aka zip ties). And, to secure the rose bush to the trellis, I found a roll of velcro-backed plant ties, which could be cut to size and secured tightly using the velcro.

So on Sunday morning, dressed in my long-sleeved shirt, capri pants, and gloves, I confronted the untamed rose bush. First came the easy part -getting the trellis in place. The stainless steel rods worked well - I was able to push them into the ground about 8 inches, and then I attached the trellis to them with the zip ties.

Then came the hard part - wrangling the thorny branches of the rose bush up against the trellis and securing them with the velcro plant ties. It wasn't quite a war, as the post title implies, but it was at least a skirmish. Those thorns were trying their best to get through my gloves and my shirt sleeves! However, in this battle of woman versus nature, woman prevailed, and eventually I got the rose bush sufficiently secured to the trellis, as you can see below. And I'm happy to say that everything is still in place as of Monday - even after a very breezy Sunday afternoon.


Here's a picture of how the trellis is fastened to the steel rods.

Weeds, Wings, and Warbling

So it's just about "10:15 on a Saturday night," as the old Cure song goes, and I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to write about my day.

It was a beautiful day here in south-central Pennsylvania, and I took advantage of that, plus the fact that we actually had no specific plans this weekend (a rarity!), to do some work in my poor neglected flowerbeds. Last year I never even got around to planting any flowers in them, which disappointed me, so I'm determined to do better this year.

So far, I'm off to a pretty good start. This morning I went to Lowe's and bought 36 packs of pink and white vinca plants. I always plant vinca in my flowerbeds because I like the colors of the flowers, the leaves are a nice glossy dark green, and most importantly, they do well in sunny, hot, and dry conditions. So if we get a dry spell in the middle of the summer, like we often do, they hold up pretty well. Here's an example of some vinca plants in case you aren't familiar with what they look like. The ones I got this year are the lighter pink color, and also white.

I also got 36 packs of celosia. I had these two years ago, the last time I planted annuals, and they were also nice, although at that time I only got yellow ones, and this year I got a variety: yellow, pink, and red. Celosia grows taller than vinca, so it looks nice planted in a row behind the vinca. Here's an example of what celosia plants look like, which basically look just like the ones I got:
Unfortunately, I couldn't just start digging holes and planting the flowers right away; I had to do some cleanup work first. My flowerbeds still contained the (wilting) leaves of the daffodils and tulips from the spring, as well as a few weeds, of course. My original flowerbed wasn't really in very bad condition, but my newer - and larger - one had many more weeds, as well as lots of stray grass. And the one along the side of the house - ugh. I really need to just plant some small bushes or perennials on that side, because I don't have much there but weeds and grass sticking up through the mulch. So it really needs something, but I don't really like to be bothered with it, since it's on the side of the house and isn't as visible. But that probably won't be happening anytime in the very near future.

Anyhow, after working from 1:30 to 4:30 this afternoon, I had filled a large garbage bag with plant leaves, weeds, and grass, and all my flowerbeds were ready for me to plant some flowers. But by that time, I was ready to quit for the day - I just didn't feel like starting on the job of planting 72 packs of flowers. I did water them as they sat in their market packs, eagerly waiting to occupy their new location, but then I went inside to wash off all the dirt (and sunscreen - yes, I learned my lesson after last week's sunburn) and talk about our evening plans.

After I showered, Brian asked me, "For dinner tonight, would you like to go somewhere that serves good wings?" I said, "Sure!" So after I got ready, we drove to Mt. Holly Springs to a little bar/restaurant called Three Pines. It's kind of a biker bar, but Brian's friend had told him they have really good wings. And he was right! They have 25 different sauces for their wings. We got some with Honey BBQ and some with Teriyaki. We liked both flavors, but the Teriyaki ones did get to be a bit much after a while, so it was good we got a smaller quantity of them. I had a small salad along with my wings (I had to have at least some vegetables with my meal), and Brian got some "Beef Veggie" soup (as it was written on the chalkboard of daily specials) which he said was pretty good.

After dinner, even though we didn't need them, we went down the street and got ice cream sundaes. We were going to get CMP's (Chocolate, Marshmallow, and Peanuts, for those not familiar with them), but they only came in a "Super" size, and we really didn't want anything that big. So Brian got a regular sundae with chocolate and marshmallow sauce (no peanuts), and I also got a regular one, but with hot fudge and marshmallow sauce.

On the way home, Brian asked, "Would you like to do some karaoke once we get home?" I replied with a resounding "Yes!" For Brian's birthday, I got him the Xbox 360 video game called "Lips," which is basically a karaoke game. It comes with a pretty good variety of songs, and there are more available to download on Xbox Live, and more songs are added about every week.

We sang everything in "Co-Op mode," which meant we took turns singing part of the time (usually the verses) and sang together some of the time (usually the choruses). I have to say, we make an excellent singing duo! For three of the songs we sang, we scored so well that we ranked in the top 50 singers - worldwide! So of course we were pretty proud of ourselves.

And that brings us to the present time. I guess now I'd better go get ready for bed, since I have a lot of planting to do tomorrow - plus we do want to try to get in a bike ride before the weekend is over!

Holiday Weekend - Monday

In the morning, I applied Weed & Feed to the lawn – though I had to run out when I was about 2/3 done to to get a second bag. Brian went up to his parents’ house to help get their new grill up on the deck, then when he came back, we got changed, put our bikes on our new bike rack (he got one that straps to the hatchback of the car, rather than the kind that mounts on a hitch – so far it seems to work just fine, and it was only $40, as opposed to the several hundred it would cost to get a hitch and a mountable bike rack), and headed down to Newville to ride on the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail again.

This time, it seemed much harder for me than the last time. I had a heck of a time keeping up with Brian – in fact, I was behind him most of the time! And although I noticed him coasting quite a bit, I found myself unable to coast for more than a couple of seconds before I had to start pedaling again. I couldn’t figure out why I was having such trouble – I hadn’t really done that much more exercising, and I didn’t feel any more tired than usual. But by the time we got to eight miles, I was definitely ready to turn around and head back. And those last couple miles back were really tough for me! I was getting really discouraged, not to mention tired! I didn’t think I was that out of shape, but Brian was going along without any problem, and I was trying my hardest just to stay relatively close behind him.

When we got back to where we started, Brian said, “let me see your bike for a second.” He said he thought he heard a funny noise. So he looked at the back wheel, and lo and behold, the brake pad was rubbing on the wheel! Apparently when he put the rear wheel back on, after working with my inner tube the day before, he didn’t put it on quite right, so the one brake pad was rubbing against the wheel for the entire 16-mile trip! That certainly explained why I was having such a difficult time riding and couldn’t really coast! And while that did make me feel better mentally, it didn’t do anything for my physical condition – I was exhausted! So much so, in fact, that I even felt a little queasy. (I think the heat had something to do with that as well, although we were drinking water as we rode.) But I survived, and eventually after some Gatorade and a nice long shower, I started to feel more like myself. After a while, the only physical reminders of my ride (and which I still have today) were my sunburned shoulders (I wore a tank top but neglected to apply sunscreen :-() and sore buns. ;-)

So over the course of the three-day weekend, I rode about 30 miles! I'd say I'm doing pretty well for a novice bicyclist!

And that concludes my report of my Memorial Day weekend. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program... :-)

Holiday Weekend - Sunday

Sunday's main event was a visit to my dad and stepmom's house. Laurie and Alex drove over separately from Brian and me, since they were heading back home afterwards.

We got there for lunch, and everyone but Brian had grilled salmon and asparagus. (Because Brian is a picky eater, he instead had a sautéed breaded chicken breast and broccoli.) Everyone did have angel hair pasta with Alfredo sauce along with their meat and vegetable. For dessert, we all had strawberry shortcake prepared with homemade biscuits. My dad always makes sure we are well-fed when we come to visit. He's an excellent cook!

Dad was anxious for us to see his new 'bike' - which is not at all like my new bike. His is a Suzuki V-Strom 1000, which is a 'dual-sport' motorcycle. It's the first motorcycle he's owned in about 15 years. It's very nice, but it's very big! And it is kind of funny, because he and I do have something in common right now - we're both getting used to being on 'bikes' again. He's taken his motorcyle out several times since he got it a couple of weeks ago (it's been a little difficult because of the rain), so he's getting more familiar with handling it.

We were there until the late afternoon, and then Brian and I decided to head home. We talked about going for a bike ride when we got home, but then Brian noticed that my rear tire was flat, so he said he would work on that, and I went for a walk in the park. When I got back, he said he checked the inner tube and couldn’t find a leak, so he figured what had happened was that the valve got opened somehow and all the air just leaked out. He refilled the inner tube and put the tire back on, and he said we’d check it tomorrow to make sure it was still inflated.