Virtue is its own reward

[jhetley]

Decided to do the bike ride this evening rather than tomorrow, due to a chancy forecast. (Yes, I _do_ remember cursing the false weather prophets and their goat entrails, but even a broke clock is right twice a day. A metaphor that will soon lose all meaning, with digital timepieces everywhere....)

Anyway, out by the airport in the same place I saw that melanistic woodchuck a few days back, I came upon a crow poking at something on the pavement. Except that, when I got closer, that shadow against the evening sun turned into a Cooper's Hawk that got into a huff and flew off with his dinner. _Then_ I realized that what I had taken for poplar fuzz blowing across the pavement was actually down plucked from the mourning dove corpse.

My wife pronounced the death of one mourning dove to be a good start. They coo a _lot_, early in the morning, right outside our windows.

And the spellcheck doesn't believe in "melanistic."

14.9 miles, 59:10

Comments

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

What sort of bike are you riding? I seem to have dented a wheel rim so I'm not riding these days. I need to see if any of the myriad of bikes laying around outside have good tires on them. I think the old bike without gears is in good enough shape to ride.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly riding a Trek touring bike, aluminum frame, 24 gears. The touring bikes are a little more durable than sport bikes, wider tires and such, more suitable for the kind of road that Maine DOT sees fit to provide. And I need that "Granny gear" third chainring on the hills. Gray hair and ancient legs, you understand.

Also have a much older Raleigh mountain bike, also aluminum frame, that I use in the spring when the roads are at their annual finest, and on the carriage trails down at the national park.

If you aren't careful, you'll get my lecture about leaving bikes outside in the rain....

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Just got this comment...

Goose has been hearing quite a bit about leaving her bicycle out in the rain. :-p I put my bicycle in the shed next to unixronin's motorcycle.