Archive for August 2022
Within Weeks
Indications hint at our fiber broadband connection coming within 4-6 weeks. We’ve been waiting for about a year since our rural Pierce Pepin electric cooperative announced the launch of a new subsidiary, Swiftcurrent Connect, to provide high-speed internet service to members.
Tuesday evening I received an email announcing it was time to sign up for the connection to our house. I logged in and signed up immediately. Just 12 hours later, Cyndie reported seeing a utility truck on our road.
They were hanging fiber optic cable on our electric poles. By the end of the day, I noticed a drop from the pole on the other side of our driveway, coiled up and ready for connection to a line to be buried alongside our electric supply up to the house.
I don’t mean to be greedy, but I’m really hoping we don’t have to wait the full number of weeks for that line to the house to be installed. Maybe the fact that the cable showed up on our electric pole about the same time they contacted me for sign-up is a good sign of their efficiency.
Either way, our wanting something like this for the ten years we’ve been here makes waiting a few more weeks seem like something we should be able to handle. Soon, we will be able to discontinue delivery of Blu-ray discs from Netflix through U.S. snail mail for our movie entertainment desires.
I look forward to being able to update software without fretting over consuming the majority of our allotted monthly data. We have been living under the arbitrary limitations of GB of data per dollar I was willing to pay. Our service provider gladly offered to sell us more full-speed data whenever we used up our initial 15 GB in a month but it was at what I felt was an excessive price.
Feels a little like we are catching up with the current century. Or, it will in a few weeks or so.
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Swings Escapes
In a moment of brutal reality that revealed the hazards of a lapse in attention, I failed on two counts while tending to the horses after their evening feeding last night. I stepped through the gates to pick up empty feed pans without closing multiple doors behind me. Then, I allowed my panicky reaction to overcome my attempts to calmly coax Swings back inside.
Sure, they look calm now, but just a few minutes before taking that picture, there was a lot of running, snorting, and neighing going on.
I noticed Swings start moving just as I was about to step back through the gates with an empty pan in my hands. I reached for the gate to keep her on the correct side of it but she moved uncharacteristically faster than I could react. Things then quickly went from bad to worse.
My response of, “No, no, no, no…” didn’t help much as I meant to implore her to stop but just as much was voicing my thoughts of really not wanting this to be happening. I was alone with them, as Cyndie had taken Delilah and a wheelbarrow to clean up after having pruned some raspberry bushes. The two big sliding doors of the barn were wide open.
I knew that if Swings stepped through the little half door I had not closed she would be able to choose whatever destination she wanted. Without hesitation, as I fumbled unsuccessfully from behind her to try altering her progress, she knocked over a fan to walk into the barn. As I feared, she then continued right outside through the big doors.
Instead of remaining calm and encouraging her to stay put, I simultaneously scrambled around to reach a lead rope, yell for Cyndie, try to type a text to Cyndie, whistle for Cyndie’s attention, and plead with Swings to stay put. I didn’t want my whistle to startle the horses, so it was barely effective at drawing Cyndie’s attention.
The other three horses in the paddock were getting riled up over Swings being on the outside and Swings kept changing her mind about where she wanted to go. It was beginning to feel rather like an episode of Keystone Cops. Horses running to and fro and me flailing around with a phone and a lead rope trying to position myself where I could steer Swings back toward the barn.
Luckily, Cyndie did pick up on my yells and attempts to [sort of] whistle for her attention and came to help. Swings decided to trot around the back of the barn. At least this took her farther into our property instead of the front side where she had an easy path over the hill and off our property.
Swings headed out of sight around the bend beyond the chicken coop but returned before we had a chance to head after her. She started up the trail past the compost piles but came back from that, too. I steered her away from going around the barn again and Cyndie prepared the closest gate back into the paddock, getting shocked by the electric fence in her haste.
Meanwhile, the horses in the paddock continued to freak out over the whole scene. By this point, Swings seemed ready to rejoin them and it just took the right circling around for her to arrive at the gate Cyndie was holding open.
Just like that, the whole adventure was over, and everyone returned to grazing. Shortly after, Mix came up to me at the gates under the overhang and I noticed her breathing still hadn’t settled all the way down to normal. I felt like she was commiserating with me over the drama we had just experienced.
I latched all the gates and securely closed the barn doors, freshly retrained about prudent management of access points at ALL times.
Lesson re-learned. Thanks for that, Swings.
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Past
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driving past the crow
that was standing on the side of the road
it is hard to know
if there is someone in particular
who knows where it lives
or will care when it dies
looking back at the stack of cars in the mirror
having successfully passed
the pokey driver at the front
watching the distance between us
grow
my hubris needs control
in the early foggy hours of a Monday
on the way home
from the lake
listening to a random shuffle of songs
auto-magically algorithm-ly selected
to fit the mood of the moment
sending miles and minutes flying
into the past
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Aha Moment
After resting my aching legs for a day –of which the left leg was proving to be the more uncomfortable one– I tried a brief, easy solo ride on the road bike yesterday afternoon. All the weekend guests had departed but I hung around for the rest of the day, mostly because of the simple fact that I could. I will be driving home this morning.
Yesterday, I experienced an “aha moment” during the first mile of spinning the cranks of the road bike. My left side still felt “funny.” Weak is one way I can describe it. I began to perceive a sensation that suddenly occurred to me to NOT be specifically coming from my left quadricep. I had a sense that what I was feeling in the leg muscle was more of a referred pain.
All at once, it hit me that I might actually be noticing the first signs of a hip problem.
Where do I pick up my membership card for that club of unpleasantness?
I rode a mere 11 miles and used battery-powered assistance the whole way. My goal was to allow my legs to do a little spinning without working them very hard against resistance. Mission accomplished.
Floating in the lake after I got back, the discomfort throughout my body seemed to be growing more and more aligned with what my mind was now telling me. Now I am in the place of wondering whether my mind is responding to the vague pains of my body or if it’s the other way around. Is my body starting to react to thoughts that my hip might be growing arthritic?
That’s pretty easy to test. I’ll start imagining my hip is perfectly healthy and see if the vague pains and noticeable weakness go away.
Anecdotally –if you believe this– I did recently decide I should be putting a pillow between my knees at night in bed when I’m sleeping. I can’t explain why I renewed this practice, but maybe it’s related to the possibility of a hip issue and my intuitive self detecting it would be a prudent thing to do.
I’m no Orthopedist, but it’s all making sense to me at this moment.
Or, maybe it’s not the joint, itself. The Mayo Clinic offers this:
Problems within the hip joint itself tend to result in pain on the inside of your hip or your groin. Hip pain on the outside of your hip, upper thigh or outer buttock is usually caused by problems with muscles, ligaments, tendons and other soft tissues that surround your hip joint.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/hip-pain/basics/definition/sym-20050684
The location of my pain is more on the outside of the hip and, as I originally suspected, my upper thigh.
I’m going to prescribe some extra rest and see what that does for me. See if it gives me any additional “ahas.”
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Other Pursuits
With my left quadricep still complaining about being overworked, I took the day off from cycling yesterday and power lounged much of the morning away on my own. I enjoyed the opportunity to catch some Premier League football on television which also provided a chance to nod off and rest more than just my leg muscles.
Paul and Randy did a short bit of biking before Randy headed back to the Cities. After some of the golfers finished one round, other pursuits beckoned. Ultimately, everyone who wasn’t still on the golf course migrated toward the lake. An attempt at water skiing was interrupted when the speed boat under-performed, behaving like the engine couldn’t get enough air, fuel, or both to keep up with demand.
Attention shifted to the pontoon boat and a three-hour cruise around the lake materialized.
The phone-camera selfies all became “us-ies” and David K and Steve kindly shared a couple of group photos capturing the fun. The vague possibility of stopping to check out Powell’s restaurant on the far side of the lake, “maybe for a drink,” became an excuse to have dinner out.
While the threat of rain lingered throughout the day, the few sprinkles that occasionally fell hardly got anything wet, including the drips that fell as we waited for our meals to arrive.
Back on shore as day turned to night, the benches around the fire pit were put to good use and old Derek & the Dominos songs played through a bluetooth speaker as a perfect evening for hanging around a fire transpired.
It was a day that served as an excellent example of how to spend leisure time on the lake. Sure beats workin’.
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Three Biketeers
Day two of Paul’s, Randy’s, and my biking-instead-of-golfing adventures up at the lake place was a grinding success. Did I say grinding? I meant grand success. Honestly, the conditions were better than average, practically superb for the combination of riding we had in mind. My only issue was that my legs felt odd at the beginning of the day and as the afternoon progressed the muscles kept threatening to cramp up.
I’m guessing I taxed myself a bit too much on our opening day gauntlet of rocks and roots navigating the Makwa trail. Instead of allowing for a day of recovery, we three biketeers set out midmorning for some smooth riding on the road bikes. Once again, I demonstrated my penchant for having my sense of direction reversed.
My intended route would have basically formed a rectangle on the map but I missed one turn while rolling along and chatting with the guys. Remaining oblivious at the time, I was surprised to reach a “T” with McClaine Road again, which we had turned from miles before. Our route had circled back.
Knowing I’d missed a turn we reversed direction and backtracked. I was mistakingly looking for the Chief River Road I wanted on our right. When we came upon it –and of course, it was farther away than I thought it should be– I discovered my sense of our position on the planet was backward again and it was a left turn, not a right.
The rest of the road ride was without confusion and we enjoyed a triumphant return to Wildwood where we found the sign was showing a new skew of its own.
We switched to our off-road bikes again for the afternoon and I finally got my first exposure to the CAMBA trail loops by the hospital, appropriately named, “Hospital Trail.”
It lived up to the reputation I had heard for a couple of years that Hospital Trail would be much more to my liking. Sharing a variety of the fun features of the more aggressive Makwa trail near us, the Hospital trail in Hayward offers a few loops that meander through a nice section of pine forest. There are a fair number of hairpin turns but it has far fewer sharp changes in elevation or complicated rock obstacles and almost no tree root hazards.
It probably shouldn’t have been as taxing on my aging leg muscles as it was but for the rest of the day I found myself tetering perilously close to having my quads and calves seize up at one wrong move.
Pickle juice, I was told. No, I erred by asking for a scoop of two different flavors of ice cream from West’s Dairy. The serving size in the cup could have fed a family of five. I ate it anyway. Raspberry Delight with Mint Chip.
It’s what a biketeer would do!
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Riding Makwa
That was a heck of a ride to start my long weekend of biking in the woods of the Chequamegon area, especially since I haven’t been on my mountain bike for what feels like forever. It reminded me why I am more of a road rider at this point in my life.
I’m up at the lake again, this time as a member of an annual golf weekend that two of Cyndie’s brothers co-host. Since I don’t golf, I serve as companion to any former or part-time golfers who are also cyclists. Arriving early enough yesterday to sneak in a first ride with Randy and Paul, we picked the Makwa Trail as the nearby familiar option.
One of the main advantages of Makwa is its lack of any long or severe climbs. Other than that, it provides a brutal dose of unending roots and rocks on a meandering single track that taxes strength and forces constant quick navigating decisions. There are countless hairpin turns and tricky obstacles that show up right when the elevation makes a distinct change. Talking to self, “Do I go over this rock or around it? Should I downshift before I hit these roots? Do I have enough strength to recover from careening off-trail, holding tight as I muscle the bike back on course?”
It is, in a word, exhausting.
In a sentence, it is exhausting with several moments of fun rolling that don’t actually last long enough to catch my breath before rapidly finding myself holding on for dear life again to muscle through the next challenge.
We drove to a spot near the middle of the full Makwa length to start our riding toward the north trailhead. My computer logged it as being over 8 miles of trail. We opted to ride a parallel gravel fire lane road to return to the car. That distance was somewhere around 5 miles. That reveals approximately 3 miles of extra twisting and turning on the singletrack.
What it doesn’t expose is how much more effort it took to conquer the rocks and roots of the singletrack compared to the much smoother graded gravel.
Back at the lake, a soothing swim did well to help me forget how exhausted I was during the ride. We then dined at a nearby restaurant before driving to town to meet up with a majority of the golfing crew at Angler’s Bar. Festivities continued back at the “cabin” vacation home which kept many up much later than common sense would dictate.
I will be lobbying strongly today for a jaunt on our road bikes this morning before we return to the woods in the afternoon for more off-road punishment, I mean, fun.
I forgot, …why is it I don’t golf?
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Much Quieter
Thank goodness it was much quieter last night than it was Tuesday night with all the stormy weather. There were two rounds of thunderstorms that actually disturbed the wee hours of Wednesday morning. It was around 1:00 a.m. that Delilah and I woke up to the rumbles of thunder. Then the rain and wind picked up and Delilah was barking ferociously at the flashes and booms.
Eventually, one of the strikes got close and the energy of the dog, of me, and of the storm all perked up considerably. I certainly didn’t need what came next. BANG! My least favorite aspect of a thunderstorm. The flash and boom were simultaneous and my first impression was that the lightning bolt hit our house or a tree right next to it.
I didn’t feel like the electricity of the lightning shocked me but the adrenaline shooting through my body was causing about the same reaction as though it had. In the darkness between flashes, I couldn’t see how severe the wind was so I relied on sound to help me decide whether any action was required or not.
The fact that there were suddenly emergency vehicle sirens wailing didn’t provide much comfort. I scouted every window for a possible view of emergency lights flashing but saw none. With no useful information gained, I decided to return to bed where I updated the radar views repeatedly while waiting for the storm to run its course.
By the time the second storm woke me, I was too sleepy to worry much. It looked less intense on the radar, the thundering was much less, and Delilah must have decided not to bother even barking. I fell right back to sleep.
When morning arrived and I got Delilah out for her first walk of the day, we quickly arrived at the first evidence of the intensity of the storm. The top of a tree with a 12-inch diameter trunk snapped clean and came down across one of our trails.
There were smaller branches down everywhere. A tree in our woods fell and got hung up on the trunk of another tree so it is now at a 45° angle.
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There was a branch down in the paddock under the willow tree and several branches from a cottonwood on the southern edge of our property flew all the way into the hay field.
I spent most of the morning cutting up and hauling branches away, all the while keeping an eye out for any sign of a direct hit from that closest lightning strike. Never spotted anything telling. A fuse blew in the controller of the electric fence. Imagine what it must have been like for the horses. They were remarkably mellow when we showed up to serve their morning feed.
The most mysterious feature was the large swath of tall grass in the drainage ditch that was pressed flat to the ground in the opposite direction of the water flow. Must have been a downburst of wind that flattened it that way.
Thankfully, there was never any hail that I heard. The lack of any residual shredding of leaves helps support that perception. As for rain, the gauges had barely an inch captured.
The part of the noisy night that sticks with me most is the intensity of that loud clap of thunder and how it was soon followed by sirens.
Sleeping last night was infinitely more restful.
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Heartwarming Moment
One of my favorite scenes to watch is when the four horses choose to make their way together out of the paddocks and into one of their two fields. The herd sauntered out into the hay field yesterday morning after they had finished their rations of feed and the scene warmed my heart.
We don’t know why they spend most of their days standing in the dusty gravel under the barn overhang, stomping flies off their legs and periodically munching on old, dry hay. That’s where we usually see them, which makes the times we spot them out on the grass more thrilling.
From the manure drops showing up in the fields, we know they must be doing some wandering at night so at least they are taking advantage of the open gates we provide. I really like that we can give them full autonomy most of the time. Just because they don’t move when I think they should doesn’t mean they aren’t fully satisfied with their accommodations.
The opinion of the vet who reviewed pictures of Mia’s wound is that it is not a problem and looks to be making progress in healing. That’s welcome news. One of the handlers from This Old Horse stopped by with a salve to apply around the outside of the sore to keep flies away.
It is very reassuring to have the rescue organization supporting the well-being of the horses. Relieves some of the pressure of being responsible for large animals which allows us to focus more of our attention on simply loving them up and giving them a good home.
It warms our hearts that we’ve been granted the opportunity to do that.
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Twice Blessed
I arrived home yesterday, shortly after noon, and found everything in such great shape I could hardly fathom our good fortune for having found our latest house/animals sitter. Not only does she provide excellent care for our horses, dog, and cat, she cares for our home in every way. I swear it was cleaner when I walked in yesterday than when we left it last Thursday.
She brings in our mail and hauled our trash bins up from the end of the driveway. We checked in with her on Sunday night when we learned there was a tornado warning and she was already aware and waiting downstairs with Delilah.
Everything down at the barn looked great. We’ve been watching and treating an open wound on Mia’s leg that I thought still looked bad so I tried to get a picture to send to Cyndie for her review. Mia did everything she could to foil my attempts.
The good news is that those with better knowledge than us about this kind of thing have a more positive opinion of the progress. Someone is going to stop by to apply more salve to assure things keep going in the right direction.
From the looks of the property, that storm threat the other night didn’t bring much in the way of wind or rain. It is very dry and the prediction is for it to be hot and continued dry for the rest of the week. That’s not very conducive to the main concern I have right now about working on the gravel edge of our new asphalt driveway.
I only have two days before I’m scheduled to head back up to the lake for some biking in the woods. I’m holding onto the possibility that I won’t be working too hard here prior to that departure.
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Relative Something 