Pedal for Pets.....

How could someone resist doing a bicycle ride named Pedal for Pets? Good thing it wasn't Pedal WITH Pets. I don't have a little trailer to pull behind my bike like Katydid does. Katydid does...that sounds strange.

Oddly enough, summer time is pretty sparse as far as organized cycling events go. That's when most of the cross-state rides take place, so I guess folks don't schedule rides that might conflict with those. Or it could be that with the temperatures hovering in the low bajillions here in Georgia, ride organizers are afraid of being sued by masses of people who have suffered heat stroke. Even though they require riders to sign waivers before participating.

This ride was about a 2-hour drive from my house, so I left around 5:15 this morning. Then I turned around and went back for one of my water bottles (it was in the freezer), and I left again around 5:20. I had to drive right smack through downtown Atlanta, and I was mesmerized by the light fog hanging around the tops of buildings. I would have taken a picture of it, but that's hard to manage at 70 mph. And they sort of frown on someone stopping on the interstate. Or going below 70 mph.

This was the first year for this particular ride, and I think they did an excellent job with it. The routes were good, low traffic and not too many hills. They overlapped with several other rides we do in that area, but they had enough variety in them that we didn't feel we were just repeating a ride we had already done. I wanted to take a picture at one of the intersections were there were symbols painted on the road for a number of different rides. But I didn't. I'm a butthead.

The rest stops left a little to be desired, but I suppose I shouldn't criticize them in their first year. They had the usual bananas and oranges (cut into convenient pieces, which is always a nice touch), and they had some Clif bars (taste a lot like sweetened sawdust, but they're supposed to give you energy, so whatever). They also had boxes and boxes and boxes of honey buns. Seriously? I can't eat a honey bun and remain in an upright position, so I can't imagine eating one and riding my bicycle. That immediate burst of energy would wear off after 500 yards, and they would find me napping in a ditch.

The t-shirt wasn't much to write home about either. Not that I needed to write home. Especially about a t-shirt. Maybe I'm just now finding out that I'm not a fan of green. I'm pretty much over the ride/event t-shirts at this point anyway. I know I should decline them, thereby potentially helping a charitable organization save a little bit of money, but I can't bring myself to take that step. It's like I have to have SOMETHING, some visible, tangible evidence that I did indeed ride my bicycle 66 miles. Never mind that they gave me the t-shirt BEFORE the ride, and I could have brought it home without having ridden a single mile.

I had just uploaded the route to my computer when Hubby walked past my computer.

"What do you think that looks like?" I asked, pointing to the map.

He first said, "Texas."

WTH? Did someone amputate part of Texas without TELLING ME?

Then he said it looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I can almost go along with that one.

My first impression was that it looked like a dove, flying to the right. No, I don't know what happened to his wing either. Maybe it's the part of Texas that got lopped off. He even has a nest all ready for him, right up there above his deformed wing.

That "nest" is actually something I find pretty cool. On this particular mapping software (and some others that I've used), bike trails are marked in green. The town where all these lines appear is Peachtree City, which has billed itself as a very bicycle-friendly town. I have a friend (one of those riding across the country even as we speak) who lives there, and she uses her bicycle for EVERYTHING. She has a trailer she can pull behind her when she goes to the grocery store and other errands. I think this series of bike trails is an incredible thing for a 21st century town to have.

Skies were overcast for most of the day, and that made temperatures bearable for a while. The heat started getting intense toward the end, but at the end of a ride you can stand almost anything. My trip home was uneventful, even considering the fact that I drove past Turner Field at around 2:00, not knowing the Braves were playing at 3:30. Oblivious, I sailed right through downtown. Rozmo was not so lucky, sitting in traffic on I-285, desperately in need of a gas station and a restroom.

I'll definitely take tomorrow as a day off the bike. Good night!

Shock Factor....

I'm guessing it was an attention-getting thing. In my younger years, I had quite a few t-shirts that were risque at the very least and probably offensive to some. But I never stopped to consider that they might be offensive. I just wore them for the attention and the shock factor.

One t-shirt I stole from a guy my mom was dating at the time. It had a cartoon drawing on it, and it said, "Mabel's Cat House. Our Customers Come First."

I thought it was funny. And I WORE it.

Groan.

During my skydiving years, I saw a t-shirt in a catalog that I just had to have. This was in the late 80's, and the message was actually kind of appropriate. It said, "Remember when sex was safe and skydiving was dangerous?" The words weren't all that bad by themselves. But on closer inspection, the illustration was a few shades beyond risque. It was drawn from the perspective of being inside a small airplane. You could see little parachutes floating down to the earth. In the background was another airplane. It was shaped like a penis. On the ground was a target, and it was an egg. Not a chicken egg. The little parachutists getting ready to leave the plane were sperm. They looked really happy.

I wore that shirt proudly. Oh. My. God. What was I thinking? If I have ANY defense in this matter, it is that this was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before the internet, and I only had a tiny picture in the catalog to go by. I couldn't discern what the picture was at all. But then the shirt came, and I STILL wore it.

Shudder.

After I started teaching, I saw someone wearing a t-shirt one day, and nothing would do but I would go to THAT particular marina (who buys t-shirts at a marina anyway?) the next time we were at the lake, and I had to have THAT t-shirt. It was very colorful, covered all over (front AND back) with multicolored cartoon drawings of animals. In every imaginable position of procreation. Only you could tell by the looks on their faces that they weren't interested in procreating.

I wore that shirt. To a faculty picnic.

Our legendary football coach (the stadium is now named after him) was there with his wife, and she suddenly shrieked, "I LOVE that shirt!" It was one of those designs that you might look at all day long and not process what the images were doing. They just looked like cartoon animals. After Foskie saw them, however, (yes, that's her real name), EVERYONE was staring at my t-shirt. And that was OKAY.

Heave.

It is with great relief that I can report today that I don't have any of those t-shirts so I can post pictures of them here. Even better, there are no surviving pictures of me wearing any of them (that I know of).

Apparently I've FINALLY grown out of that phase. I still wear t-shirts with messages, but they were more likely to be associated with UGA, hating the University of Florida, Georgia Gymnastics, bicycle rides (BRAG in particular), or being a Navy Mom. I think it's okay to wear those proudly.

Every now and then, however, for reasons that I cannot determine, I slip back into those old habits and see a shirt that I JUST HAVE TO HAVE.

That happened this past weekend at the motorcycle ride. Weesa and I spotted the shirt at the same time, and she laughed and said it was cute. She walked on, but I. Had. To. Have. It. Twenty-four dollars for a t-shirt? No problem! I've GOT twenty-four dollars! Never mind that I was purchasing it from a vendor under a tent at a motorcycle ride.

I couldn't wait to wear it. I got home and tried it on to make sure I'd bought the right size.

I sent a picture of it to Sweet Girl and Katydid.

Sweet Girl said, "Cute!"

Katydid said, "Huh?"

I showed it to Hubby when he got home. By then I was already asking, "Where in the hell am I going to wear that shirt?"

He said, "I guess you can wear it to the casino. But please don't wear it if I'm NOT around. I don't want people to get the wrong message."

What was I thinking?

Is there hope that I may yet grow out of the temptation even to BUY things like this?

Good Lord.

In a time crunch here...

....'cause it's going on midnight, and if I don't get my blog posted in the next 21 minutes, I won't have posted every single day since I started. And my all-or-nothing personality just can't handle that. It's every day, baby.

And the fact that I spent all day at Epcot with my sweet girl does not excuse me from my blogging responsibilities! It was a last-minute, impulsive decision that we made this morning. Her doctor said she couldn't drive or swim post-op, but he said NOTHING about riding down to Orlando and walking around in the 95 degree heat and melting all over Epcot. I waited and waited for it, but he didn't mention it. So we figured it must be all right.

I'm all for being impulsive and flying by the seat of our pants, but this could really have been planned better. Like if we had thought about spending the night with my friends Wilson and Nurse Boop, who live a mere 10 minutes from the greatest place on earth. (We did, however, get to share a meal and a couple of pitchers of beer with them, so it wasn't a total loss.) Or maybe waited until first frost to go mingle with about a billion other human beings from many different countries.

Why is it that I'm surprised to hear young'uns speaking with a British accent? It always makes me smile. It's like I thought they talked "normal" like we do here in the South (HA HA HA HA HA) up until adulthood, and THEN they developed their British accents.

Here's one of my two favorite t-shirts from today. I'm gonna make a point to take pictures of great t-shirts everywhere I go from now on.
If you can't read it, it says "Beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer." I think that is a profound statement. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And it's attributed to someone who is probably very famous, but I can't make out the name at the bottom. And I'm in a time crunch. I was going to take a better picture, but I had already mortified Sweet Girl by taking a picture of the guy's shirt while we were in line for the Nemo ride, all while I was PRETENDING to take a picture of Sweet Girl herself.

My other favorite t-shirt was on a very large lady (and I can say that because I almost qualify for that description myself), and it said "I suggest you take the stairs." It was almost, almost totally ironic, except that she was going up the stairs. BETWEEN two escalators. So she gets points for having the nerve to wear the shirt in the first place, and for actually using the stairs. Couldn't take a picture of this one because I'd already used all my mortification points for today.

Gonna turn into a pumpkin in seven minutes. The last time I was up until midnight was either while I was writing my dissertation or after a Billy Joel concert or during college football bowl games. None of which followed a 12-hour day on my feet at Epcot. So I'm done.