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.
Here is the map for this 10 mile urban hike.
I’ll see you at the back of The Lodge parking lot at Starved Rock next Sunday, 7/26, at 10am for the Starved Rock White Fence hike. Here’s a link to the map (broken) with tentative route and some notes on parking. I’m expecting to be out on the trail from 10am – 2pm depending on the crowd and how fired up we are.
We’re going to need to burn some calories to justify the late lunch at White Fence Farm on the way home.
The urban hike Spacca Black Dog went well. Let’s discuss. More after the jump.