We’ve had house guests the last two weekends. Last weekend, Jean’s brother Tom and his wife Lynne came Saturday morning and left Sunday morning. Robert was here from Friday through Monday. This weekend, Dick and Mary Brower from Hastings (better known by all their friends as “Leroy and Loretta Lockhorns”), came on Friday and left this (Sunday) morning. Don’t get me wrong…I enjoy having friends and family here, but I’m convinced that I don’t make a good house guest.
When I go out to San Francisco to visit Matt, Tonya and Anna, I get a room at a Bed and Breakfast a couple of blocks from Matt’s apartment. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being with them, but I’m one of those people that needs a little private time. I know that everyone goes to the bathroom except for Betty Lou Bell and Sue Ellen Kirschner, both really hot girls in my 10th grade English class, but I believe that time to be one of those private moments. I didn’t do well in Air Force basic training when there were 10 toilets all in a row…no dividers…no curtains…59 other guys I didn’t know either sitting next to me or waiting in line for someone to finish.
When you’re at someone else’s house, you either go to bed when they do or get up when they do. Often your sleeping arrangement puts someone out of their bed or is on the couch in the TV room so you’re the last to go to bed and the first to get up. You’re locked into eating group meals at times that fit everyone’s schedule and you feel like your hosts are trying their best, begrudgingly, to entertain you. I guess I’m better off in my own little room in my own little bed and my own little bathroom.
I mentioned earlier that Dick and Mary are nicknamed the Lockhorns. Some of you older people may be more familiar with “The Bickersons” and some of you younger people may be more familiar with J-Lo and whoever she’s married to this week. At any rate, we were taking odds at to whether Mary would help Dick have an unfortunate accident about half way to Florida and someone would come across the body next week when the spring breakers came down. That didn’t happen, but they aren’t home yet either. If you hear of a man being sucked out the window of a Midwest Airlines jet at 30,000 feet, you can guess what happened.
We ran 10 miles today and plan to ride over at Clermont tomorrow. The tentative plan is to ride the Great Floridian course, a 56 mile loop with Sugarloaf Mountain about two thirds of the way through. It’s a little different than the course the Trilanders rode back in 2001 but still uses many of the same roads. I’m a little concerned about my road bike gearing. You non-bikers wouldn’t understand or care, but I have 53/42 chain rings in the front and a 12/25 cassette in the rear (my bike…not me). With 700 wheels, I wonder if a 42/25 is an easy enough gear to get my oversized body up that hill. Oh, well…I’ll find out.
We’re heading for Michigan on Thursday, the 23rd and should be there Friday by about 3PM just in time to see the early spring breakers leave for warmer climates or the ski slopes. I’ll stay until my Tuesday hospital board meeting, then head back down to Florida for the month of April. I’ll need to get my taxes done while I’m there…anybody know a good accountant? Jean hasn’t decided whether to come back down or stay in Hastings. She’s torn between missing her friends and working at the fitness center and great weather for riding her bike down here. I think she’s leaning toward staying up North, but we won’t know for sure ’til the bus leaves Hastings at 2PM on Tuesday.
Better go and nourish my body. The 10 milers are tough on an old geezer trying to watch his calorie intake.
Just (Testing The Home Brew Every Chance I Get) Jack