The faster I was

I have for the past several years been describing my daily ride as the two hour ride.  I have posted occasionally on days when I was really strong (the older I get the faster I was) and it seemed relevant that I had finished the two hour ride in under two hours.

Of late and particularly so far this year I have found that the two hour ride is frequently more like a two and a half hour ride.

That's sort of OK, I don't have an actual job.  I can afford to just ride around, no need to push it.

Today though, I finished the two hour ride in under 2:15.  Not quite there yet but almost as fast as when I was faster.

Today I rode the Capitol loop, east and southeast down to the big white building, up the hill to the Cathedral, down Summit to Saint Thomas and then back across at Pelham into the nearby neighborhoods.  The winds were light, the temperatures were pleasant, I had a very nice ride.

It wasn't until I took a Fairgrounds loop as I neared home that I saw anything that beckoned to my camera.

My experience says that the benches come out at the Fairgrounds in August as the Fair approaches.  The exception is that newly sponsored benches appear as soon as they are ready.  Benches are color coded at the Fairgrounds, yellow benches appear in the yellow area, red in the red area, blue in the blue area.  Except that the first year of the bench the sponsor can specify a particular location.  Here in what I am pretty sure is the yellow area are two new benches.

The blue bench says "Philly cheese steak" an the red bench says "Elvis is here".  The white placard is the same on both benches, "Meet at Andy's Grille for Philly cheese steak and dancing" or some such thing.  This first year the benches and the message gets displayed in front of Andy's Grille.  Starting next year those benches will be advertisements for Andy's Grille but will be located elsewhere on the grounds.

I suppose this is a good point to insert that we have never actually sampled the Philly cheese steak at Andy's Grille.

So, I have ridden more than a couple of times since the last time I posted.  Mostly I didn't take any pictures but sometimes I did.

Backlog.

A grey day in May.

This is a very early photo.  The corn is doing much better than that.

We have had some rain and the ground is full of moisture, the corn is about to take off.

There is a new construction project over on the corner of Roselawn and Cleveland, a new iteration of the Bell Museum.  As part of the project this marker has been placed at the corner.

There's something Bob said on one of his first albums, "My Back Pages".  I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

Bloggers informational note:  The link is to a really good version of My Back Pages which unfortunately does require sitting through a 15 second advertisement to get to the content.  In this case I deem that an acceptable waste of the always most valuable commodity: time.  You get Roger McGuinn of the Byrds doing the first verse, Tom Petty up next followed by Neil Young, a guitar riff by old slow hand Clapton after which he sings.  Through it all you can pick up Bob rasping along on the chorus and at last he takes a verse.  And then George sings and Neil takes a guitar riff.  It's a worthy watch.

Happy birthday to the most wonderful daughter anyone could ever have possibly had.