The blueberries are very good.

The regular ride leader was available today so she and I set out for a tour de blueberry fields. The primary crop locally IS blueberries as clearly the local sandy soil is well suited to the commercial production of blueberries. There are several operations within easy bicycling distance, including our personal favorite and the blueberry brand heartily endorsed by all of us here, Bowerman's.

On the other hand, sandy soil makes corn cultivation problematic, the corn certainly doesn't do as well as the corn that Mrs. Smith and I are used to reviewing.This photo was taken quite close to the street entrance to a local golf course named "Legends of Macatawa". That's another of the legends of Macatawa for scale.

A fair percentage of the fans of this bicycle blog are present at this moment in this house and their reaction to yesterday's "nude descending a staircase" was almost shockingly uniform and completely unanimous.

So today's photo is "dude descending a staircase".Interesting tidbits include that yesterday's photo included Wireless on the deck at the top of the stairs reading a book with her back to the lake. Today's photo was taken by Wireless and includes the non-nude person on the deck at the top of the stairs reading a book with her back to the lake. The photo is fairly obviously posed as you may be able to note the dude's retirement jewelry on his left wrist and he is not nearly at the stage yet where he will be wearing that to the beach.

It looks like rain but Voeckler wanted a bit of exercise and I am always up for re-cycling so we set out to try to get in a few miles in Waukazoo Woods. At an elapsed distance of only about three miles we both noticed a few drops of water on our faces and quickly concurred that we should bolt for the barn.

I was hammering along, not exactly at full sprint as I was trying to gauge the effort necessary to make it back to shelter while riding at maximum output for that distance. I wasn't at full out effort but I did think I was riding pretty fast. Voeckler, in what I am certain was intended as an effort at assistance, chirped from behind me, "We can ride faster if you want to." Well.

The second result of the change of courses for today's ride was that we approached the bottom of the dune from the opposite direction, necessitating a 180 degree turn just as the hill begins. This completely ruled out the possibility of the surprise long sprint and besides, if you try it every time, it isn't going to be a surprise very many times.

I hit the incline in the lead but Voeckler quickly and effortlessly dusted me off, easily taking the spotty jersey points at the top of the hill and riding away to an easy victory on the downhill finish. *sigh* But we had fun and considering the short duration of our effort we both pronounced ourselves to be adequately worked out.

I choose to be optimistic about the news this afternoon from France. Eighteen of the twenty teams in Ligue 2 got the new season underway. By not playing (Nantes at Caen on Monday night football on France 3), Nantes has risen from a tie for last place in the Ligue (although also admittedly slipping from a tie for first place) and currently stand tied for 12th. Nine games were played, seven teams won, all of them are awarded three points and move ahead of Nantes. The other two games ended in ties and those teams each receive one point to also move ahead of les Canaris.

Nantes is even on points with all of the teams that lost today but is ahead of all of them in the table based on goal differential. Due to goal differentials, Nantes can only move back to first place by winning by three goals on Monday.