Ramblings From Justin Penney

My wife and I are in the last part of a nice little mini vacation for ourselves. Mine started a day earlier but that's ok.

Saturday Jacey worked. I changed the oil on the motorcycle and had some new rear tires put on the RX-7. I got to hang out with Dad while we were doing the tires then went over to Mom's for a while.

That night we had a party to go to. We stopped at the Jerusalem Bakery and Jacey got a falafel and hummus sandwich and we bought some pita and roasted pepper hummus to take to the party. We also brought a bunch of Boone's. At the last few parties everyone had been bringing "high school" drinks: Boone's, MD 20/20, Purple Passion, etc. During some of the discussions I brought up sangria Boone's and no one else had heard of it so we brought the sangria, sun peak peach and kountry kwencher varieties. As you can see by the pictures it was a damn good time!

Sunday we met up with Lumpy, Timmay, Mike, and Jason and went for a ride. It's labeled the "Hot Dog Run" given that the first time through they stopped and ate hot dogs at lots of places. Jacey and I passed on the hot dogs and had a salad and french fries instead. We weren't very good about sticking together and got separated a lot. After a few U-turns and phone calls we all got back together. It fell short (distance wise) but we rode for about three and a half hours all said and done. I was glad Jacey came. She doesn't like highway riding and I had assumed that she wouldn't come but she insisted and had a great time! This was also the first long trip on the GS550, went really well and it got a lot of compliments.

So after we got back from riding motorcycles we went and rode the Lake Vista Trail on our bicylces. This is a nice paved trail that goes around Blue Springs Lake. We rode the long route and had a good time. Four wheels good, two wheels better!

Monday we decided to check out the trails at Landahl. We got up, walked Lily to school and ate at Einstein Brothers. Then we went and bought helmets... and Jacey picked out a sweet black Haro that she wants now, and headed out there. Landahl has a bunch of trails that go through that range from really easy to really hard. We were trying to stick to the easy trails that were marked with a 1. A little ways in there was a fork and one way was 1 and one was 2. We took the 2. It was nice and still pretty manageable for us newbies. There were a lot more rocks and exposed tree roots but we were doing just fine. Whenever we came to a fork each path was pretty well marked and we stayed toward the 1 and the "Family Trail." That was working for us until we got to a fork that had no signs and we picked right. That was pretty darn wrong for us! It was a rocky, rutty mess! I could defintely see how it would be fun but Jacey is still leary abotu riding some and I'm pretty green to mountain biking so it was a little over the top. We kept trying to take the easy routes but ended up being completely lost.

All the sections of the trail have names. I saw Dave's Maze, Rim Job and Lunatic Lookout. Jacey said she saw the sign for Mikey's Tantrum too but I missed that. I think we covered a good bit of area and were eventually going to make it back but Jacey was getting frustrated and the difficulty and the being lost and the heat. Luckily a guy came riding past and we asked him. He told us how to get back on the path to the trail head. We decided we would take a look at the map and try tomorrow. We also decided that we needed gloves! Red raw palms from pulling up over ruts and roots. Ouch. We bought gloves!

We went to Heartland Guitar and chatted with Heather a while. I bought some strings and lusted after some gear (Blues Jr and an SVT-350H). Jacey made me leave!

We continued on looking for a road bike for me. We went to a few pawn shops and completely struck out. I remembered a bike shop menitioned in The Pitch and we went there.

Acme Bicycles is on 18th between Oak and Locust. Really cool place. There were a lot of old bikes there with new componentry and in really good riding shape. She really has a focus on commuter bikes. Her personal bike had the ultimate accessory... a basket shaped like a flask... with a flask in it! That's my kind of bicycling! Since I don't know how much use I'd get out of a road bike yet I decided to pass for now as everything there was pretty much over my budget.

We got back home and road the Lake Vista Trail... yes... again, it's close and a good distance, takes about an hour with a short stop in the middle. We rode backward from our normal route and then stopped by and picked up Lily from school.

Lily had her first swimming lesson today and made a lot of progress. She will now actually put her face in the water! After she got home she took a bath and started practicing holding her breath. Remarkable change from even last week!

We took Lily to Minsky's and to get some ice cream and came freaking home... where I'm not typing and drinking a beer and exhausted!

# posted by Justin @ 7:51 PM