Suarez bites . . . for the third time

This is obviously the big news of the day, probably much more interesting than the details of my bicycle ride.

This is such big news that everyone will hear about it.  I am certain that the sports channel types are postively aflutter with commentary and video.  But this is so big I am willing to state that surely it has been on CNN, I bet even Shep said something about it on Fox.  If not Shep, then Billo will be all over it for sure.  In fact I bet it even made it onto MSNBC.  They have that afternoon panel, or at least they did the last time I watched, where one of the guys fancies himself a futbol expert.

Here's my take.  I am such an unbelievably big futbol geek that this is the second time I have seen it live.  I missed the first one (and the most outrageous) when Suarez was in the Dutch league but I was watching the Barclay's Premier League on what used to be called the Fox Soccer Channel when bite number two occurred.  It was Liverpool v. Chelsea, a big game.  I was watching.  And I was watching today.  Two out of three.

Too bad in a way because this is sure to overwhelm coverage of the other big story of the day.  Ivory Coast, with advancement to the knockout phase in hand based on having tied the game against Greece, instead, and in stoppage time, commits a clear foul in the penalty area.  Greece converts the penalty kick and instead it is Greece.  Greece advances to the knockout for the first time in Greek history.  Which everyone knows is a long time.

I managed to fit a ride in by leaving immediately after the early games (no doubt missing out on some hysterical reactions from the futbol media types about Suarez) and missing the first half of the second games.  The wind was mostly west but had shifted around to WNW instead of the quite persistent over the past several days WSW.  I wanted to ride north and check out the swamps out there to see how the recent record rainfall has affected those areas.

I rode through Grass Lake expecting to find that at the far end there was water in the tunnel which would be access interdite for travel to the further along Snail Lake Wetlands.  The water was even higher than I expected.

Back there you can see the utility lines along the street.  The underpass is slightly left of frame center near where a traffic sign is visible.  This view isn't much downhill at all so the water level that you see can be fairly accurately projected over to the road.  The water is nearly up to the level of the road.

For example, that water body to the right is usually a smallish pond deep down in a depression.  I estimate that the water is at least eight feet above normal out there.  Which means that the path is blocked and that most likely there is no visual evidence of the underpass.  I suspect the whole deal is under water.

That's a lot of water.

It was at about this point that I suddenly realized that I was too far from home on the wrong side of the precipitation probability.  I started towards home and immediately felt a few drops.

I ordinarily prefer to keep a pretty close watch on the pavement ahead but as I rode back through Grass Lake on this occasion I was mostly looking at the sky.  I knew I was in trouble.  There was one large black blob in the middle of the sky that was definitely rain.  And it was definitely between me and home.  And it was definitely starting to move over my exact location.

But as I looked at it I thought that if I could just quickly get a few miles south (quickly? me? on a bicycle?) that maybe, just maybe I could ride out from under the rain.  Fortuitously I was north of home meaning that south was the direction I intended to ride anyway.

I kept feeling drops as I rode along but never enough to consider it rain.  I was just riding on the edges.  I got a couple of miles and thinking to myself decided that maybe I could make it to the bike shop where I knew they would let me take cover until the rain let up.  That would leave me 5 miles from home and require riding home on wet streets but it would be better than riding those 5 miles in a downpour.  Which downpour continued to seem to be imminent.

I was riding up the hill to the bike shop when what to my wondering eyes appeared but sunshine clearly evident in the intersection ahead.  I had done it, I rode far enough south in a short enough period of time to get out from under the cloud.  Instead of ducking into the shop I rode on.

And quickly discovered how close I had come.  After passing through the intersection at the bike shop I rode half a mile of pavement that while clearly NOT wet was also clearly NOT dry.  Just a small amount of light rain at that location, but I was now riding where the rain had been earlier when I was looking at that one black blob of a cloud in the sky.

I got lucky.

Before I did much riding today I took a good look at the neighbor's tree which I know to be a Japanese lilac and determined that yesterday's tree is definitely not one of those.  Having been saved from the rain I was able to ride past yesterday's tree and get a close up view of the flowers and leaves.

After arriving home I visited Monsieur Google.  It's amazing the stuff you can learn on the intertubes if you type in "tree with white flowers and plain leaves".

Catalpa.

Arriving home I discovered that our neighborhood sinkhole seems to have attracted official notice.

I parked the bicycle and went out to the box to haul in the mail.  I discovered that the Father's Day card that my sweet dafter had promised she had sent me from Quebec (which was where she was on that actual day) had arrived.

Pesky girl.  The dang thing is in French.

As we all know, my French is weak.  But on the other hand it IS a greeting card and greeting card prose is usually fairly basic stuff.

Here's what it said on the outside:

joyeuse fête des pères

OK, I can get that part.

Flip it open and I am confronted with this:

Tout ce qui peut t'apporter le sourire le plus radieux, voilà ce que mérite un père aussi extraordinare que toi.

Un très beau dimanche.

OK, a lot of those are pretty common words.  The last part, for example, is clearly "a very nice Sunday".

I had to puzzle some of the rest though.  "Sourire" I do not know.  I think I recognize which is the verb though (peut apporter), and the rest is more or less about what is merited for a father as extraordinary as moi.

Monsieur Google has identified sourire for me as "smile".

Anything that makes me smile radiantly is what I deserve?

Merci, sweet girl.  You are the greatest.  You have just made me sourire le plus radieux.