Biking in the cold....

One more month left of disappearing sun but for today, we have sun. So despite the windchill of 24 degrees out I went.

Ann Arbor is surrounded by a greenbelt of farms. Young farmers lease the land and so far, are doing quite well. This is one of their barns

Actually I took this last week. I said that apples are overproducing this year to make up for last year's no crop. These are crabapples getting in on the act too.

Well not is all prosperous on my route

Country church which is the sole source of traffic on weekends. I try to avoid it when services are letting out.

It's a balancing act weighing more cold and less wind with later on when it is warmer yet windier. Parts of me were overdressed; other parts froze notably my ears, knees and toes. But it was good to be on the bike on such a sunny day. The strong east wind portends rain tomorrow. I can tolerate much more cold while running but I think 30 degrees is the absolute lowest number I can stand biking.

I am afraid of slipping in the doldrums. I had a nice long talk today with Soulmate which cheered me up.

Also sources of pleasure:

From last week. Mission impossible  is having all 3 look at me.

babies are easier

Josh sent me this of Allie's first laugh

I was going through old pictures. Turns out I had gone to an Indiana covered bridge before. This one is in Bean Blossom, Indiana (love the name). This was about 10 years ago before Naomi even hit puberty (and now has a 3 year old). Below that is Steve and his siblings during the same time.

Mammogram anxiety

Steve and I have opposing philosophies:

His: If it hasn't happened; it won't happen.

Mine: If it has happened once, it will happen again.

Lightning does indeed strike twice or sometimes many times. Even houses  in our neighborhood were struck twice in one year causing devastating fires even though they weren't likely targets.

Next week is the dreaded mammogram. Now the reality is that I am maybe only 50% more likely to have a bad mammogram than the average woman. Chances are, it will be clean. Chances are that I am more likely to have a new primary than a recurrence at this point. And mammograms do not detect what everyone fears the most: mets. But still I dread the day. It will bring back the day 5 years ago that everything changed, a dividing day with relative content on one side and supreme fear on the other.

And to make things more annoying, according to the reminder I got in the mail, it is a diagnostic mammogram versus the screening one I swear I was promised by my onc last year as it is 5 years out. What's the difference? A thousand bucks. Screening mammograms are covered by my insurance; diagnostic are not (not until a high deductible is met). I made a phone call a few days ago to straighten this out. They haven't gotten back to me yet.

A pretty, sunny day here though it is cold. I ran in the morning and had my Livestrong class in the afternoon. I did weights. Then dynamic balance exercises with the group. Try standing on one leg with your eyes closed....

Hope.....

I returned to my cooking class for survivors the other day nervously because I still had a cough 2 weeks after becoming ill. It is one thing to expose a newborn (and her parents) and an almost 90 year woman to this crud, it is even worse to expose immuno-compromised individuals on chemo. Checking various sources, the contagious period lasts as long as 5 days after the first symptoms appear so everyone should be OK. Plus I was not spewing anything.

Immediately Hope plopped down next to me. She is a Stage 4 breast cancer survivor who now has 8 month old twin girls. The last time I saw her, a few months before the birth (she used a surrogate), she had long flowing hair and looked fairly healthy. The other day, she was bald and yellowish and tired. The cancer has been in her bones, liver and brain. She refuses to listen to guesses on how much time she has left though her husband knows. For now, her new chemo seems to be working and she is very optimistic and cheerful. If all it took was a good attitude, she'd be cured. She is about Shanna's age and lives just a few miles from her.

I think of how tired strong healthy Josh and Julie are taking care of one baby and am amazed that Hope can take care of 2 while doing chemo. Her husband is often gone but her still working out-of-state relatives come in to help when he leaves. She is an amazing person. She proudly showed me photos of her peanuts, though she occasionally posts on Facebook. They look very much alike though they are from different eggs. One  is significantly bigger and more advanced than the other.

Another young mom was there. She was not a patient but her toddler son has been battling leukemia since he was 9 months old. He still needs a year of treatment. He has the kind that has a 90% survivor rate but still, how unfair for a little one to go through so much.

What people go through.

The storms came through last night wreaking havoc though our power was only gone for a minute. There was only a 75 minute window in which it was not raining so out I went for a bike ride. Just as I was putting the bike back into the garage, the deluge started.

Back to making photobooks as my living social deals are about to expire. I get these things thinking I have all the time in the world and then find myself frantically putting things together.

And tonight, I deal with this mess my hair has become.

Out of jail

I decided to get a run in early the next morning. It seemed to take forever for the sun to come out. I ran through the city for a while until it was light enough to run through the woods. Lots and lots of deer. Unfortunately, Hoosiers let their dogs run loose so I was followed by menacing dogs on several occasions.

funky breakfast cafe

Included in our stay was a breakfast voucher for the Jail House Cafe. It didn't cover much but fortunately the coffee was very, very good and the internet actually worked. So yay!

So back to tracking down those bridges with our handy map. When we were getting gas, Steve left his wallet ( I can it his man purse) on top of the car. He realized this about a half mile later. It didn't seem to be in the road. Back to the gas station to see if it was there or if anyone turned it in. No. Then to slowly go down the road again. Not there. We did see a pick-up truck where we had turned around (in an unopen business). Hmmm. Then the pick-up truck followed us honking and flashing its lights. Yeah they found it. So there are some good pick-up drivers out there. Yay them. And yay me for not whining to Steve on how I knew this would happen some day.

We tackled the area north of the town this time. We missed all those due east of us. Oh well, another trip.
A highlight for me was going by the Amish school during its recess. Lots of buggies parked nearby. I know they hate their photos being taken but I couldn't resist one taken from the car window:

The kids go to this school until 8th grade, then to work. Indiana has the highest percentage of Amish people per capita though PA and OH have more in absolute numbers. Then is NY then close is MI.

We ate a tasty lunch in Marshall, Under the Arch. It had a small bake goods store within. Sassafras jelly anyone? We did get some toffee fudge.

More bridges, these all were in Turkey Run State Park. I had been there twice before camping there when Naomi was a newborn and later on a weeklong bike ride. We stayed in various state parks in Southern Indiana (which for the record is hillier than hell unlike the northern half). The park is beautiful but this time we concentrated on the bridges. My favorite:

Then the slow ride home as I was avoiding Indy. Indiana has many little counties all with very elaborate courthouses in their county seats. Should have taken more photos. Michigan in contrast has very unimpressive courthouses. Ann Arbor is the county seat but it has a small drab courthouse even though its population is 20-fold or more than those Indiana counties.

A highlight: I thought I saw eagles in a corn field and asked Steve to drive back to them.
Are you sure they just aren't turkeys?
Well turkeys would have made more sense but I swear I saw white heads. This is where his camera came in handy. The first picture is what my iphone would have recorded. The next two have the telephoto lens.

Our Night in Jail

The local Hoosiers said we missed the end of the fall colors by a week. Oh well, no fall foliage/covered bridge shots for us though I guess the colors of the bridges should shine. We were lucky that it wasn't too cold or worse, raining as we walked quite a bit looking for those bridges.

It was a much longer drive there than I remembered even though a new freeway opened up in Ohio lopping off 30 minutes or so. We stopped in Zionsville, a fancy suburb of Indy for lunch at a place we ate at long ago full of rich ladies that lunch. We walked around some admiring the cute shops. One restaurant featured soft drinks I never heard of. Rhubarb soda? Lavender soda? We ate dessert at a patisserie specializing in French macaroons. The owner was a former airline attendant assigned to Paris where she became obsessed with Laduree macaroons. Once she figured out how to make them (and I bet they are difficult), she opened up Le Dolce Vita mangling the French and Italian language. My favorite: Caramel Sale. Now 'sale' is Italian for salt but she is describing a French macaroon. In French, 'sale' means dirty which isn't what she meant. So her language skills are sketchy but excellent coffee and macaroons.

Fancy bathroom in lunch place

The French macaroon place

nice iron work on one of the buildings

We were mired in traffic jams around Indy so on the way back, we avoided coming any where near it.

Rockville, county seat of Parke County is 60 miles due west of Indy almost to the Illinois border.The mayor of the town, Debra, owns our Old Jail Inn, the former county jail. 2700 people live in town, another 1200 right outside in the Women's maximum security prison and the town is surrounded by 1000 Amish (she claims that makes them diverse). Do the women prisoners count as they can't vote? Yes because the city provides utilities to the prison. Famous prisoner? Daughter of Ariel Castro (crazoid in Cleveland that kidnapped 3 teenagers) who slit her baby with a knife due to craziness. And they have the three generation scary family there of murderers. We were the only customers that day. And as she was off doing mayor stuff at night, we had the entire jail to ourselves. Sort of spooky. Included in our voucher was breakfast at the Jailhouse Cafe, a jail tour (did that on our own) and a bottle of wine from the Drunk Tank that is open on weekends only in the basement. Good wine.

But while there was daylight, off we went equipped with a  not very good map (and we couldn't use our phones as it is in a Verizon dead zone and the internet wouldn't work either in the Inn) to go find those 31 covered bridges some of them on deserted one lane dirt roads. We got lost several times. I think we saw 12 bridges in all, half on the first day, half on the second. We missed about 5 nearby that we just could not find. The countryside and the bridges were very pretty as hopefully our photos indicate. Restaurants were few even though we were staying right on the town square (Jailhouse Cafe is not open at night).We found a Mexican (well, I guess they have some diversity)restaurant on the outskirts of town that seemed to be in a remodeled car garage. But the food was very good . Then we went back to our deserted Jail for the night.

Below is the door for our Bonnie and Clyde suite: The  guns were the decor and the cellblock which had about 6 less expensive rooms. One of the pictures is the outside of the building.

Unlike the former inmates, we had a pillowtop bed which was comfy. We needed extra blankets as we couldn't figure out how to make the heat work. Nor did we had internet. Maybe Debra turned the router off? But the wine was tasty and there were lots of interesting books on Covered Bridges and Famous felons (what a combo) so we were entertained. We could have watched TV if we chose but it was a fun day. More tomorrow.

Hoosier Holiday

Too tired to write: In the meantime, photos:

We got the deluxe Bonnie and Clyde Suite

Pillowtop bed. Bunks overhead were original inmate bunks

A Cellblock with the less deluxe rooms

Parke County Courthouse

Other rooms not so big

Steve in our room

Outside The Drunk Tank: good wine too. A bottle was included in our deal

I like the reflection

This thing was scary huge

No running across these bridges

Eagles in a corn field

Inside graffiti. Some of Naomi's friends call her Nay-Nay

Long story short: we slept in a jail and saw 12 out of a possible 31 bridges. Fun times..will elaborate later.