Ride in the breeze/Ridin' the breeze

I know it's been quite a while.

These past few weeks, and the next few have been and will be busy, with not a whole lot of time to do anything other than my school and work responsibilities.

I'm currently working on a new employee manual for one of my jobs, which should kill three birds with one stone: first it will be used as a report for one of my assignments. Second, it will be useful to Dan because that's what he's wanted me to do: basically condense all of the things I know and do for the company and write them up in a report for a new employee. Third, it will hopefully result in my replacement! I desperately need one :)

Today I took a bike ride out to see the Stillwater parade at 9:00 which they had for homecoming. It was fun to see all of the floats and vehicles they had. The "lawnmower" team was very funny (and impressive) to watch, and Joseph absolutely loved the tractors of course. When the first one came along, he was sitting near me and I said "Hey Joseph, there's a tractor" and his head snapped around so fast! Dan said "that got his attention!"

Later that afternoon, after having finished a report for my circuits lab, Jonathan was getting ready to leave for work and I decided on a whim to bike up there with him and continue on, trying to get to Dr Allison's house to collect his signature (he's never on campus). The wind was positively howling, going directly north, so the ride up there was a breeze! (if you'll pardon the pun).

According to weather.com, we had a steady average of 22 mph winds with gusts of 29 mph. I made it up to about airport road almost coasting the entire way. I needed to find Rogers street but though I had a general idea where it was, the only specifics I had was a recollection that it was somewhere past Lakeview.

So when I got near Airport road I turned back and peddled a bit south. It was nearly painful! I struggled to go past a jogging pace, right on that busy highway too, since there were no sidewalks! I backtracked for about half a mile, thinking it might be down Liberty, off of Perkins somewhere. I couldn't find anything but I did find a mailman and if anyone knew where Rogers street was, he would. He said that it was north a ways, before Airport road he thought. So I biked back north about 3/4 of a mile and didn't find it. So I headed south again. The wind had picked up and in that area where there were no trees and just a flat road going over a hill, man! It was hard peddling!

I saw a couple of guys outside the Stillwater radio station and stopped by to ask them if they knew where Rogers was. One had a map so we looked it up and it turned out that it was about 3/4 of a mile /past/ airport road. I again headed north. Going north was easy but I was dreading the return trip.

"Oh well, I'll have a good story to tell about getting Dr Allison's signature" I thought. I pulled into his driveway, which looked rather vacant. There were a couple of old newspapers on the doorstep and the mailbox was full of mail. I knocked on the door but didn't get any answer. I nearly shed a tear....

So then for the return trip. ARGH, UMMNGH, EEEPH, OORF.
I felt I could almost have made it faster walking back! Lots of people zooming past me, going to the big football game. Plump people wearing orange and driving big, shiny trucks with OSU flags. I almost flagged one down to give me a lift ;)

Traffic was worse today and several people made an attempt to run me over, though I clearly had the right-of-way or even a crosswalk signal! In the end, I made it down to OnCue, ordered a big Dr Pepper flavoured Icee and then biked the rest of the way home. Golly the wind was strong! I know I'll sleep well tonight ;)

upposedly, according to Google maps, I biked about 10 miles in about an hour. It took about 15 minutes to get up there, and 35 to get back :) Woowhee!

Until next time... whenever that may be, this is The Shadow.