fall is coming

This weekend has been cool (but pleasant), a warning to us that fall is just around the ocrner.

Friday evening I watched the celebration for Ted Kennedy. Really, what an interesting man he was. Full of purpose and passion, adventure, and many talents. A great advocate of public service, and a rock for his family, and the people of his state and this country. I'm 43 years old, and have lived in the midwest all my life, and in all the years I did not hear or read much about this man. Now I wonder why I never read or heard much about him. Because what I heard Friday night, and then again in the bits I saw on Saturday, showed me an incredibly fascinating person. I'm looking forward reading his memoirs. They are due out September 14. I just ordered it. I never buy books. I only get them at the library, too much wasted paper to buy a book, when I can borrow one from the library, but this is one I want to read and have in my house.

Saturday morning came early and a 7am start time for a bike ride. It was just getting light out, and a little foggy, but a beautiful morning. I always set out for a ride hoping to see things that make me smile or ooh and ahh. Usually its wildlife or a beautiful pastoral scene that I ride by. This entire ride passed, and very little wildlife, lots of pleasant countryside, the favorite Bear Wallow climb, that doesn't make me oooh and ahh, rather huff and puff. But it does bring a smile after you climb over a mile (which is a long climb for these parts), and then get a similarly long fun downhill.I finished up my ride with a ride down Shiloh road. Shiloh is my favorite road to ride that is within an hour of home. It loses (or gains, depending on the direction you ride) a few hundred feet in elevation, but over 3 or more miles. Its a roller coaster road through the forest. For miles, you make a tight left turn, then drop down 30 or 40 feet, then a sweeping right turn, a short uphill, a loping left, down, up, right. Over and over. Even going in the uphill direction it doesn't feel like you are going uphill because of all these roller coaster turns and dips. I take every chance I can to ride Shiloh, either direction. At the end of Shiloh I came to a small group of cyclists, then another, then a tandem (I don't really understand the interest in riding a tandem, I could not spend a bike ride staring at the back of someones head), more bikes, then a sag stop. I wasn't aware of an organized ride in the area, I usually hear of them, even if I don't ride in them. I wound my way back home, through campus, packed with new students, old students, thousands of cars parked in lots that have been empty all summer long, and I felt a little claustrophobic, even though I was moving on my bike. I suppose I'll get used to it, as I do every year.

For the first time in the 18 years that we have lived in Bloomington, we have a niece who is starting her freshman year at IU. SHe moved in this week, and her family came down to help her get everything she needed to settle in, and so Todd's whole family came to town and we all had dinner together. I would usually never go to dinner the first week of students returning to town, every place is way too crowded. But near Lake Monroe, which is about 10 miles south of town, a restaraunt recently reopend. Its called the Scenic View, because its perched atop a hill that looks toward one of the very few cuts in the hills surrounding the lake, and you have a beautiful of the lake, and the tree covered hills surrounding it. SInce its out of town, we assumed it wouldn't be too crowded. We were right, and we sat outside, it was a beautiful 70 degree evening. Had a good meal, and everyone stopped by our house to meet Max. The little kids wore out the dogs, and we didn't have to walk them last night! That doesn't happen very often.

Its Sunday morning now, and I just came back from a run. I'm not a fast runner, and when the run is a z1-2 run, I'm definitely not fast. As I was running through one of the local parks I hear a lot of chatter and laughter coming towards me, and the IU mens track/cross country flew by me. Oh the humiliation! They were absolutely beautiful runners. Oi, I felt like an old goat. Then I told myself, 20 years ago, I probably could have trounced them in the pool, and maybe still today I could hold me own against half of them. I felt mildly better. The feeling passedquickly, and I trudged back home, greeted by 3 dogs who can't stop licking the sweat off my legs, begging for a drop or two of the chocolate milk I was drinking, making me smile and laugh.

Sam is staring at me with his big beautiful brown eyes as I type this. I think he is smiling.