It sucks that I have so few mountain biking options within an hour of my home. I make the drive a lot. It’s always worth it, for the most part.
Gail and I drove up to Ann Arbor with our bicycles to check out the Border to Border trail in Wasthtenaw County. We started in downtown Ann Arbor and headed east on the path towards Ypsilanti.
Jenny (my sister) decided that this hot, steamy Wednesday would be a good time for an evening trip to the Findlay Reservoir. We loaded three families into three cars and parked in the east central lot between the Blanchard River and Upground Reservoir Number Two.
On the way back to the car I spotted this bald eagle hanging out in a dead tree next to the river. The sun was to our backs and the sky was dark from a recent rain. The evening was windless and quiet. The only movement you could see in the eagle was an occasional head movement, which you sensed more than actually saw, as the white disappeared and reappeared. The picture doesn’t do it justice. It was all pretty awesome.
I’m in the process of bringing some balance to my reading. I focused the last few years on the “genre” angle and ignored any semblance of diversity in authorship. I’m committed to reading more books by non-white authors and non-male authors.
Here’s a screen snap from my booktracker spreadsheet in Google Docs. The highlighted percentages are the number of “pages” consumed. I’m not proud of this. I guess I’ll shoot for 50/50 split going forward, but I have a lot of making up to do.
I had a fun ride on this steamy July 4th. This pilot was visiting with someone near a farmhouse and he started taxiing down the grass runway while I was on the road parallel. It was kind of cool to watch. It was some sort of vintage Navy plane I think because I saw the word “NAVY” with some numbers after it.
This is a short Elmore Leonard western (232 pages) that I read in a day on the way back from vacation in the Mayan Riviera. It went fast and was a boat load of fun, which made the flight seem really, really short. That’s a great combo.
This is not the James Lee Burke novel for the uninitiated. It’s complicated, obtuse, and mystical. I’m deep in the series, reading them in order, and I generally liked this one. I found my mind wandering at times, but there were several riveting passages.
Sprawling Agatha Christie mystery that some classify in the spy thriller genre. It doesn’t include any of her regulars (Poirot, Marple, Tommy and Tupence). Fun read.