Posts Tagged ‘friends’
Bursting Hearts
Latest heart shape update: I find myself wrestling in my mind over leaving the natural imbalance of the two sides or working more intently to bring greater symmetry to the piece.
This is from the third large tree that fell last summer: the oak. It can roughly be compared to the size of a soccer ball, and as a result, it is a pretty heavy hunk of wood. Another option I’m keeping in mind is that shrinking it down to reach a more symmetrical shape would likely eliminate the remnants of the inner bark that have yet to be sanded away.
That inner bark does add some unusual aspects to the overall look, but it also obscures the appearance of the classic oak woodgrain that might be hiding just beneath. The next time I get my hands on it, I expect I’ll go with whatever my heart tells me to do next.
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I gave our hearts to friends who host an annual Gopher football tailgate party memorial in honor of their daughter, who was a passionate fan.
We didn’t have tickets to the game, so our visit was just for the pre-game festivities. As soon as we located our friends, we were accosted by a loud bear of a guy from an adjacent gathering who kicked over his son’s drink in his zest to wrap us in a wonderful, loving hug.
Our next-door neighbors at the Wildwood lake place up in Hayward were tailgating right beside us. On top of that, Cyndie was able to facilitate a special introduction between the two. Her friend, Lisa, and our Wildwood friend, Tom, had yet to meet in person, even though they had worked remotely together on a memorial garden for Lisa’s daughter.
While we were all enjoying the festivities, it occurred to me that my cycling friend, Doobie, would likely be tailgating, too. I shot off a text to him with our faces in front of the Gophers canopy and learned he was already inside the stadium, volunteering at the M Club. He kindly invited us to join them because they had tickets to spare.
It was an embarrassment of friendship riches.
We had to pass up the chance to watch the game in person because we already had a date for the afternoon with our kids to hang out together for happy hour at a pub conveniently located between their two homes. So, it was a combination of friendship and family riches, for which we are greatly blessed.
We were able to achieve all this fabulous socializing due to the help of local UWRF students, who we have hired as short-term animal sitters for just such occasions.
It’s no wonder I find myself wanting to sculpt bigger-than-life heart shapes. My own is bursting with goodness via the connections with lovely people!
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Truly Gorgeous
We were blessed with about as nice a day for bike riding in late October as one could hope for in our part of the world. Afternoon temperatures rose into the 60s(F) yesterday, and we enjoyed every bit of it.
Our gang of intrepid pedalers reached Stillwater in what felt like a blink of time. When we arrived at the photo frame, a mom was taking a picture of her daughter. Bob volunteered to take a picture of them both. In turn, she agreed to take a picture of us. We asked Lilly to stay and be in our picture, too. Her mom said Lilly smiled bigger for ours than when posing with Mom.
Before stopping for some lunch, we rode up and over the Hwy 36 bridge, pausing for a portrait in the middle, overlooking the beautiful St. Croix River.
On the other side, we were in Wisconsin for a short loop before dropping down a big hill to cross the old lift bridge that is now limited to bikes and pedestrians. This delivered us back to the bustling energy of families with young kids in Halloween costumes, enjoying festivities along the riverfront.
Navigating our way to a little market where a few of us purchased something to eat, we took advantage of public tables to consume some sustenance.
I brought my own lunch.
Bob gave me a thumbs-up of approval.
While sitting there, I caught sight of a very attractive woman approaching from the market with her arms full and visibly gushing with a glow of love. She was looking at an equally handsome man who was cuddling a tiny bundle that I knew had to be their beautiful baby.
I couldn’t help myself as they tucked the blanketed cherub into their pram and prepared to move on. I approached them to let them know how truly gorgeous it was to witness their obvious love and joy radiating so unmistakably. Their baby was 9 weeks old. Their happiness was such a delight to see.
I’m glad to have intruded on their space because they seemed really delighted with my gushing over them, and that rewarded me with a burst of their love energy.
The ride back to our cars was a continuation of superb cycling weather and scenery, and we reached just under 30 miles ridden by the time we finished.
I wonder if my legs will feel stiff in the next 24 hours. I hadn’t been on the bike since we did the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota.
I’m really grateful I didn’t pass up this opportunity to get out and enjoy the fabulous day and my fabulous cycling friends.
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Great Outdoors
It’s a beautiful day. I am going to go for a bike ride with friends.
It won’t be forest bathing, but it can be just as beneficial. I am going to breathe in the great outdoors while rolling along in conversation with precious people.
If you are in Stillwater, MN, wave at us as we pedal past on the Gateway State Trail. I’ll be the one with a huge grin on my face.
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Work Dreams
After you retire, if you want to know how to start dreaming about bizarre work challenges again, just drive the commute to your old day job to walk through the workplace and visit all your former coworkers again. I did just that last Tuesday and was rewarded doubly.
I enjoyed the pleasure of seeing their precious faces again, while they applied their trade skills in a spiffed-up facility under new ownership and management. As a bonus, I was rewarded with a mostly unrealistic dream a night later, involving imagined situations I was supposed to play a role in, while having no idea how to proceed.
It was a treat to see them all looking as good as always, and have everyone still remember who I was. Of course, it helped that I brought a batch of Cyndie’s home-baked scones, fresh out of the oven, to distract them from any lingering memories of why they hoped to never have to listen to my lame attempts at humor ever again.
– Lynne, I’m sorry it took barely a few minutes before I came up with some snarky remark to poke fun at you. –
In the years since I retired, I haven’t noticed missing the work, but I frequently miss being with these people. We spend more time interacting with coworkers most weeks of a career than we do with our families. The folks I was lucky to be with for many years were a very special work family for me.
If only I could convince the staff that they should hold their next company picnic at Wintervale Ranch. I’m sure I could talk Cyndie into baking some desserts for the occasion. I would even promise not to make the manure composting area one of the main features I’d show off.
After a day up at the Wilkus’ cabin in the middle of the week, Cyndie and I have taken advantage of an opportunity to get away to her family’s lake place for the weekend. We brought Asher along, too, so we only needed to find coverage for twice-a-day horse feeding for the few days.
Since we prefer to wake up at the lake whenever possible, we drove up last night under the cover of darkness. I think it might have helped me avoid any more dreams about the old workplace.
When can I expect to start having dreams about weird situations of being retired?
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Couldn’t Fly
We drove home. The weather didn’t clear up enough in the Cities for us to fly Mike’s plane back. Not for lack of us trying to will the clouds to lift. We checked for promising progress frequently throughout the day, but that didn’t seem to help. A watched weather report doesn’t necessarily clear.
The focus of our dual-purpose trip shifted more toward the speedboat motor getting serviced and the boat being brought back to the storage building on their secondary property.
That gave us time to kill, which we used for another walk through their woods.
There was a fair amount of bright fall colors in the leaves near the ground.
However, there were very few leaves of any hue left in the branches overhead.
The boat dealer told Mike they could have his motor service completed by 3:00. If flying weather was going to improve enough, Mike suspected it wouldn’t happen until around 4:00. The potential was there for us to accomplish both his main goals, even though Mike was more than willing to take care of just one and call the trip a success.
If a window of good flying weather conditions opened up, we would take it immediately and leave the boat to be picked up on a future trip to their cabin. We plotted a course of action for the day, packed up our gear, and left the cabin to walk more trails on their property.
After that, we headed to town for a late lunch and then drove to the boat dealer to wait for the service work to be completed, watching flying conditions on an app all the while.
It wasn’t improving at all.
The call to report the boat was ready came at about 2:58. We hooked it up and drove back to their property to park the boat and trailer in their storage building. Then we drove back into Grand Rapids and stopped for one last check at around 4:00.
It was obvious, which made it an easy call, despite how badly we both wanted to fly. We were driving home, and into the dark of night. The flight would have taken around an hour and twenty minutes. The drive was over three and a half hours.
However, fear not! We had each other and my digital music library for entertainment. The time passed easily, especially with Mike doing the driving. It’s a route he has traveled for 40 years, making him an excellent tour guide for points of interest along the way.
I was only away from home for 35 hours, but Asher gave me a greeting when I walked in the door like it had been a LOT longer. I suppose he was measuring my absence in dog-years.
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Striking Scenery
The day started as brilliantly as it ended yesterday. The timing of the sunrise has moved late enough that our morning walk with Asher on the way to feeding the horses brings some wonderful displays in the sky.
Early in the afternoon, I met Mike at the Flying Cloud Airport, where I parked my car before climbing into his SUV for the drive north. The fall scenery was looking pretty impressive, a couple of hours north of the Cities, despite the sputtering rain from a gray cloud cover. If it had been clear and sunny, it would have really popped.
The clouds to the north of the precipitation put on a show of their own, which I captured through the windshield.
One of the chores during this trip was to move their boat into town (Grand Rapids) for winterization service. We arrived to hook up the trailer with time to spare for a walk in their woods. The scenery around the pond, with its glassy surface, was particularly photogenic.
It’s a little past peak for brilliant reds and oranges up here, but the tamaraks are just short of reaching their peak fall beauty.
Our plan to fly Mike’s plane home today is teetering on the edge of acceptable weather, which is exactly why they had to leave the plane here the last time. It will be disappointing if we have to drive home, but we will return today one way or another.
It would be a first for me to view fall colors from a small plane. My fingers are crossed.
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Creating Sawdust
My arms got a good workout yesterday using a grinder on a “Y” section of the oak tree that fell while we were walking past it during the summer.
I got a good start on it, but there is still a long way to go. While I was working, I had a sense it could be compared to giving a haircut, but that usually gets accomplished in under an hour. I also figured that it could be a little like mowing the lawn, but that frequently gets finished within a day.
My projects sculpting wood tend to last for weeks. I have two more levels of finer-grain discs yet to use with the grinder as I refine the shape more to my liking. Then I will switch to sandpaper to work on smoothing out all the tool marks, eventually working it to a silky finish, revealing the ultimate beauty of the wood grain. Or something like that.
Even though it is just starting to get exciting, I need to take a couple of days off from making further progress on it. I invited myself to tag along with our friend, Mike Wilkus, on an overnight trip up to their cabin. We will be driving up to just north of Grand Rapids this afternoon and, if the weather allows, flying their small plane back home on Wednesday.
Mike has helped us out on numerous occasions over the years, so when I heard he was going to take care of this task alone, it was an easy decision to ask if he wanted a copilot to keep him company. It sounds like tough duty [hee hee], but it’s what a friend would do.
The newest wood heart will be there for me when I return.
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Classics Live
Oh, what a night! Cyndie and I met our friends, Mike and Barb, in St. Paul last night for dinner at Kinkaid’s and a fabulous performance by Classic Albums Live (CAL) doing the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts. I can’t say enough about CAL’s formula of presenting a pristine rendition of classic rock albums live on stage – “note for note, cut for cut.” It is truly exhilarating to experience.
It was a beautiful October night in the Capital city, although getting there was made more complicated by road construction and increased traffic due to simultaneous MN Gopher football Homecoming and MN Wild NHL hockey games happening.
Rice Park downtown was full of life.
Most of the people around us were headed to the hockey game, but at the Ordway, we found a crowd of like-minded album fans all fired up to relive our past by listening to Sticky Fingers together live. It’s like we were teenagers in our bedrooms again, listening to a record until we had every note, every pause, imprinted in our minds for decades to come.
It occurred to me that the CAL musicians are pulling off something that the original artists probably rarely, if ever, have done. When recording albums, the artists were in studios and laying down multiple tracks with a variety of effects to create their masterpieces. After that, the songs get mastered by the Producer to fine-tune output levels and dynamics. The band and the Producer will settle on a track order that won’t necessarily have anything to do with how hits are performed live by the group for the rest of their careers.
Classic Albums Live musicians are so committed to authentically recreating the albums live on stage that their performances more closely resemble a classical music ensemble recital than a rock concert. The musicians dress in black to minimize attention to themselves, and they don’t try to mimic the original artists’ looks or performance styles.
They excel at recreating every note and sound (mistakes included, if there were any on the album), which can get complicated sometimes on multitrack recordings. The CAL performers become adept at quickly grabbing a shaker or cowbell to come in at just the right moment while still playing their other instruments.
One of the more difficult tricks they pull off, which the original artists likely never faced, is rapidly changing instruments in the limited time available during the pause between songs on an album.
We have become such fans of this concept (we previously saw CAL perform The Beatles’ Abbey Road) that we stopped at the Box Office before last night’s show to purchase tickets for the next time CAL will be at the Ordway. They are doing The Eagles – Greatest Hits in March of 2026.
As if Canada needed one more thing to be proud of, they have given the world of album lovers the greatest gift in Classic Albums Live. I tip my tuque to the founder, Craig Martin, for over 20 years of this superb concept.
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Silly Horses
We give them this fabulous sail that casts a large shadow and filters 95% of the UV rays, dropping the temperature by an easy 10 degrees F, but they can’t give up their affinity for that damned willow tree.
Gotta love ‘em.
Maddy, from This Old Horse, came by yesterday because we reported Mix was looking like she was hurting again in her back end. The consensus is that it isn’t one leg or the other, and it isn’t either foot. It’s possible her issue is arthritis, but Maddy felt it seemed more muscle-related. She massaged Mix around her hips and butt and lifted her hooves to do some stretching while I held a lead rope attached to a halter.
We decided to start giving Mix the same pain management dose that Light has been getting each morning to see if it will provide some relief. All we can do is watch to see if she appears to start moving a little easier. They’re all old horses, though Mix is the youngest of the bunch at 21. They all tend to move like old creatures at this point. The fact that they can behave so spry most of the time lulls me into forgetting they are justified in having age-related aches and pains.
I should probably say, spry when they aren’t napping, since that is how they like to spend most of their time.
Yesterday, I had a wonderful exchange with our friend, Patty, who astutely observed a curious sight in the photo of Cyndie and Mix between the fence boards. I noticed it, too, upon seeing the image on my computer. How many of you other horse-savvy readers spotted something? If you did, can you identify what it is?
Patty guessed correctly.
Here is the image, again, for your reference:
If you have no idea, click here for a clue.
What could that be?
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Special Visitors
It was a special day. The high September heat was a bit burdensome, but the glorious sunshine provided a good opportunity to share some of the wonder and glory of our precious early autumn Wintervale sanctuary with friends. Pam and John are like family, having lived in our home and cared for Asher and the horses many times when Cyndie and I are away for a weekend at the lake or traveling to places like Iceland or, more recently, Maine and Massachusetts.
Yesterday, they came for a visit, bringing a friend, Jess, whom they met on one of their travel adventures in Egypt. If I have my facts correct, supported by her endearing New Zealand accent, Jess’ current residence in London is not where she was originally from. Having our little nook of nature and rescued horses revealed to an international audience ranks high on our scale of rewarding pleasures.
Having been clued in to Jess’s fondness for caramel rolls, Cyndie baked up her standard wide variety of versions, with or without raisins and nuts, chopped or whole.
When the company arrived, Cyndie turned over control of the kitchen to Pam, who produced a divine quiche for lunch, such that the delectable foods we were enjoying competed almost evenly with the great outdoors and interactions with Asher and the horses that were the primary draw. Pam’s key lime pie for dessert was award-worthy.
Asher was his adoring self, leaning heavily into Jess to make sure she felt well-loved while not so subtly seeking affection for himself.
Even though the horses were noticeably sweaty and likely not that happy about the heat, they were surprisingly attentive to our presence at a time of day that aligned more with them napping. Light was first to arrive and leaned her head over the top board, remaining there at length to engage and nuzzle with each of us in turn.
Mix eventually did the same over the gates before we headed back indoors.
John Bramble gave us mostly good grades on the state of things in and around the barn. He chastised me for the cavalier level of security on the gate chains, as I had only secured one of the two.
We have trained him well.
I showed off my composting process for Jess, producing the thermometer probe to display the middle of the pile was cooking away at 70°C (160°F). I should be embarrassed to be so proud of our piles of shit.
The day was a classic win-win as we felt as grateful to be able to share our love and peacefulness with them as they expressed being grateful that we did.
Putting our Wintervale “LOVE” flag at the driveway entrance to greet them when they arrived and for them to carry when they departed wraps the day up perfectly.
Travel safely, Jess!
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Relative Something 