My colleague found the switch that controls the Internet. It’s safely kept aloft in a jet, guarded by shock troops disguised as flight attendants (which explains a lot).
Guam-P
For the last 7 years, I’ve been keeping an eye on my pocket change for the Guam-P quarter, along with all the other state and territorial quarters issued from 1999-2009 that I’ve accumulated since they started the program in 2003. For about three years, the elusive Guam-P has been the only hole in my collection.
Finally complete, thanks to whatever chain of events led that quarter to end up in my pocket this week.
Remarkably unremarkable
I had a lunchtime walk around the NIH campus today and happened on this emplacarded anchor sitting in a little street island. I headed over to take a look, hoping for a good story. The anchor used to sit in Staten Island outside the predecessor to NIH itself. It came from a Coast Guard cutter.
Well, ok. I would rather pretend it was the very anchor that accompanied the first vaccines to workers on the Suez Canal or something.
Best tiles ever
Best initial rack ever!
Hungry Lion Bike Tour
With several buddies, I rode in the Hungry Lion Bike Tour yesterday, starting out in Whitingham, just near the Brigham Young memorial, and meandering around the Mohawk Trail area.
Fall is definitely in the air, with some trees turning and temperature at the starting line only about 50. The sky was a beautiful blue, the winds were quiet, and overall it was a great day to be out. We mostly stayed together, but then Elizabeth and I eased ahead of the others, and pushed less and less easily through the final third of the ride. She is headed to Hawaii for the Ironman World Championship in a couple of weeks, so when I gratefully tucked into my post-ride burger, she got back on her bike for another couple of hours.
The early part of the ride was livened up by the passage of dozens and dozens of vintage motorcycles, all participants in some rally of their own. We had some great stretches of silky new pavement, and we even went by Lake Sadawga, home of floating islands.
At the finish, I didn’t win any raffle prizes, but I did get to eat delicious barbecue and drink good beer while listening to World Way, my favorite local reggae band. In fact, they are the only local reggae band I know of, but they’re my favorite.
Let them eat flowers
Birthday week continues with a beautiful cake from Amy’s and an effulgence of homegrown nasturtiums. They are more peppery than we realized, especially the stems, but somehow it worked with the cake anyway.
Thanks, honey!!
Fallopia Japonica
A friend pointed out this roadside plant the other day, which is pretty this time of year. Although I’d never really paid attention to it before, it’s everywhere.
Big green leaves, long fuzzy cream-colored flower stalks, what’s not to like?
Everything, it turns out. She called it American bamboo, but it’s more commonly known as Japanese knotweed, aka Fallopia japonica. It’s massively invasive, really hard to get rid of, no local predators, a new northern kudzu.
Doesn’t every parking lot kiosk have a house?
Well, ours does… maybe keeping it out of the weather will help it not be out of order so often.
As we come up on five years of relatively close observation around these parts, it seems like parking meters and traffic lights have gotten an inordinate amount of municipal attention. On Main Street we just replaced several chirpy walk signals with a much quieter talking signal… after just two or three years. All in the name of progress, I guess.
Still stylin’ after all these years
The original Honda Insight was such a cool idea. This one has been held together with duct tape so long that the once-matching tape has faded to a beautiful palette of sunset colors. Reminds me of a print from the doctor’s office way back when.
Happy ending
I discovered this cool trail some months ago, and I wrote about how it was great to have trails to walk on, but I wrote also about how I was sad to see so much trash along the side.
Some neighbors went a little further than writing about it on their blog, and picked up all the trash the other day.
Awesome!
An exuberance of festivals
It was big times in little ol’ Brattleboro this weekend.
The Tiny House Festival got a ton of press, but we were not impressed. For the money, you can buy a really nice RV, with a much better use of space.
There were some cool designs, but overall, meh.
And speaking of RVs, it was time for the twice-annual all-night contra dance, so our parking lot completely filled up with conveyances big and small.
With our visiting friends to back us up, and some liquid courage (the monkey glands were just the beginning), we asked to go in and take a look. Wow! It was much more graceful and fun to look at than we had thought. The people we talked to were super nice, if perhaps a tad eager to introduce us to their cult, er, hobby.
The next day, after Brian and Denise got on the road to their newly empty nest, we went to the Guilford Fair, our second visit.
The draft horse pulling is still the biggest draw, and quite a sight. The teams can all pull a 5,000 lb. sled with no trouble, and the best of them can move 8,500 a few feet.
But there’s more… including a surprising number of things you can win a prize for. There were a lot of blue ribbons given out.
I have a feeling that many divisions were uncontested, but the whoopee pie contest was fierce.
And of course the livestock barn…
And the show ring…
And then it’s back to school, and the harvest picks up, and we await the leaf-peepers next month, and then we start to think about cold days. But not yet.
Monkey glands
We had a great visit with Brian and Denise this Labor Day weekend. Brian’s special cocktail this time was surpassing tasty, even with a name like “monkey glands.”
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 