Tuesday, the softball team played a doubleheader. For the first time in a long long time, we played a game on one of the smaller fields. That was the first game, a makeup for the game a couple weeks ago when we didn't have enough players to field a team. The other team let us make it up, so we played an extra game. We played well, and won a close one 8-7. In the second game, we played one of the top teams in the league. They have a lot of young players that hit really hard. So, they were crushing it all night and I was afraid we were going to get mercied and shut out again, but we actually held our own and stayed fairly close, eventually losing 17-12. Most notably for me, I hit a hard single over the head of the left fielder (he was playing me really close) and decided to go for second, believing that with the big turn he had to make after chasing down the ball, I could beat a throw or at least beat a tag on a ball coming from the opposite side of the bag. It would have been close but I think I would have been safe, but anyway the throw got past the 2nd baseman and I did not slow down making the turn because I knew there was nobody close to the ball to get it and make a long throw the third. And there was no throw...so I will count that as a triple. I think that may be my first triple ever.

I went mountain biking again this week. It was fun going last week so on Sunday when I had nothing else to do in the evening I went again by myself. The trails were a bit muddy but not that bad. I rode from and to home so that added a couple miles. 

We finally took a puzzle that Missy completed earlier this year to Hobby Lobby to get it framed. It's been sitting on her floor for a long time now, and we really needed to get it up. Sometime last spring we found some puzzle glue somewhere so we used that to glue it together, it seemed to work pretty well. We told Missy we would get that done for her birthday so I'm glad we finally are.

The "new" truck went in to the shop at Ab & Tom's this week. Basically because it has been making a horrible squeaking sound when I turn left from a stop, but which goes away after a few miles. Plus the AC does not work very well. Anyway, the truck went into the shop on Wednesday, and by Friday it was almost done but I let them keep it until Monday so it could be done and tested out without being rushed. The squeaking may have been from the rear brakes (since they were worn away to almost nothing) or the front wheels (because the emergency brake assembly on both front wheels was trashed: one was sticking and one was completely frozen, and neither worked at all). In their words, "this is a big deal." Unfortunately. So, we will be without the truck for a few more days and play a big bill for it, it seems. 

 Softball had something of a comeback this week! Playing the baptists, at first I didn't think we were going to have enough players, again, but apparently several guys weren't having their texts go through to the group chat so some were playing but I hadn't heard from them. We did have to borrow a pitcher from the other FCC team but otherwise we were fine. This after I asked the other team to send players and I got 5 offers to come play for us... they came early, but weren't needed as it turned out. But we did well, ended up beating them 14-7. It was a close game until the late inning s when we pulled away. 

Wednesday I was all set to join the KCV ride at 6:30 but failed to remember that the rides are at 6. So I missed the group ride but did my own ride around the Winona trails and Grace College campus. Kinda bummed that I missed the group ride, those are more fun than riding alone.

File this under the 'who needs this' department: in the last few days the pump for the pool filter has been making a grinding noise. The motor is going. Not sure exactly what's happening with it, but I had to go to the pool supply store and buy a new pump/filter assembly for $500. 

Kinda cool thing happened this week. A couple weeks ago the fam came back from vacation in New Mexico, and I left my Kindle on the plane in Indy. I didn't notice it until we were well away, but I reported it to lost & found when I came back to get the baggage the next day, and I submitted the lost item report on the website. I'd gotten a couple messages since then saying that they didn't have it and didn't find it anywhere, so I was expecting that it was gone forever. Well, I got a message from the airline last week saying that they had found it and asking for shipping information. I got it back on Friday. Which, however, was several days after I bought a new one on Prime Day. So good news/bad news, I guess. Total surprise that they found it.

Speaking of riding, Trey extended an open invitation to the group to go ride the mountain bike trails with him at lunchtime on Friday. Apparently there are "sorta" group rides twice a week, basically not group rides but people go show up the same times twice a week and ride. Friday he was going with his oldest son, and I took him up on the offer. He loaned me one of his mountain bikes, and we rode the entire length and breadth of the trails over an hour or so. I forget how much fun mountain biking on the trails is, I need to do that more often. 

Saturday I was riding again with the 2MA group. However this must have been a busy week for people, because only 4 people showed up for the Saturday morning ride, all A group riders. I was going to beg off and let them go without me, but they all protested and insisted I come with them. They were definitely slowing down for me, but I rode with them as far as Patona Bay before peeling off and heading back. It was a good ride. I wonder how much I am limited by my equipment as far as riding goes, with a steel bike from the 80s that wasn't high-end even then. But anyway. I came back via Leesburg; I should have waited around by the depot because the rest of the group came back that way around half an hour later. I had about 26 miles at the end, they had around 40. 

In the evening on Saturday, the kids wanted to go to the mall in FW so we went. Had dinner, they walked around the mall a while, and we went home. Sunday there was a work party for the place where Beth works, which was mostly a get-together at the boss' lake house on Winona Lake. Nice place. Nice people. They had pulled pork BBQ and some frisbee games, and the kids went out with a couple of the grownups to go tubing or just boating. 

 The week after vacation is never a good time. Two events this week in particular fit that bill... on Tuesday, softball returned after a smoke-out and July 4. Unfortunately, there was also the fair this week and camp and other summer things, so we only had 5 players show up for the game. When it became apparent we weren't going to make it to a legal team, the other team agreed to play and loaned us a couple players, we also were able to "recruit" a couple more who were at the park but not actively playing at the time, so we played a game with 9 against 9. And, sort of chutzpah I think, we won. However, it was reported as just a scrimmage and not a real game, but they agreed to make up the game later on in the season. Which they didn't have to do, so that was nice.

On Friday, my group at work had another get-together for lunch and boating. After the morning, the group met up at a colleague's house on Barbee Lake and took their boat to Lakelife Restaurant for lunch. After lunch we just boated around the chain of lakes that is Barbee for a while until it was time to head home. It's amazing how much Barbee has grown/improved since Beth and I moved into the area. It used to be a pretty shabby dump but now it's quite big and new.

In the evening, the whole family went up to South Bend for my Father's Day / birthday present. Beth adn the kids had gotten me (and them) tickets to see a comedy show at the Morris Center. It was sponsored by Pulse FM and was a "clean comedy" event, with 3 comedians in the entire show. Two of them were really good, including the opener who made some jokes about "Flippin Arkansas" which Beth and I thought were very funny. The middle comedian was not good. He was just kind of an angry ranter and made silly faces and yelled. Un-funny, really. The headliner, a guy called Michael Junior, was really good and funny and had a great witness. So, 2 outa 3 comedians were good.'

The weekend was pretty chill, the kids worked some, I did quite a bit of yard work. Not a lot else. But that was cut short Sunday afternoon when I was mowing the grass in the backyard and went over a nest of yellowjackets. I got stung on the ankle first, which I thought at first might have been a thorn or a stick in my shoe, but I knew what it was when the second sting on my calf and the third behind my knee came within moments, which sent me running for the house. Then a few seconds later came the 4th sting, on my left butt cheek. It must have been just like the cartoons, with the wasps forming up into an arrow shape as they chased me and making an electric buzzing sound as the arrow hit my rear end as I ran. So I stripped and got in the shower right away, and the welts started coming up. By evening the swelling was going down a bit so maybe it won't be so bad. They do itch a lot though.

Land of Enchantment!

Yesterday we got back from a family vacation to New Mexico! The biggest reason we went there was because it was Mom's favorite place (or at least, on the short list) and we wanted to scatter her ashes there. Like we did with Dad at the Grand Canyon a few years ago. We left Warsaw a week ago Friday, headed to Indy for a Park-Sleep-Fly deal and stayed overnight in a motel near the airport where we could leave the van. I realized too late I forgot my hat and sunglasses. We had a late morning flight and connection in Dallas on the way to Albuquerque, which meant that we didn't have time to get lunch so the bag of snack mix had to do until we got there. We got lunch and the rental car (Hyundai Santa Fe - nice) and headed to the AirBnB that Thomas found. It was a modern cabin located inside Santa Fe National Forest, accessible only by a few miles of bumpy dirt road. But what a place! Right by a stream, with a hot tub, deck, 3 BR, secondary cabin with bedroom and bathroom (Alex took that), fully stocked kitchen, everything. What an amazing place. Sunday Alex and I went on a bike tour of the town of Santa Fe with Lauran and Thomas, while Beth and Missy hit the shopping downtown. The bike tour was a lot of fun, although we hit too many art galleries. I didn't really want to stop and look around most of them. Except maybe the wind sculpture ones. Anyway, afterwards we all hit the Railyard district to relax a bit, got some green chili cheeseburgers, and then Alex and I went to a big.... I don't know what to call it.... art installation? Weird escape room? called Meow Wolf, which Alex was super excited about ever since he found out about it. Apparently all his online friends know about Meow Wolf and are super jealous that he got to go. It's sort of an artsy setup of ~70 rooms built into an old bowling alley building, with each one by a different artist and with a different out there theme, but with maybe a third of the rooms built as a mock-up of a family house and connecting in with some overarching story about weird experiments and crossing dimensions. Cool, but more Alex's thing. We grilled dinner back at the cabin. Monday, we all headed about an hour up the road into the desert to New Mexico Whitewater Adventures to go rafting. At first we thought it was a full half day trip, but by the time it was over we'd only been in the river for around 2 hours, maybe. But it was a great 2 hours. We rafted the Rio Grande, through maybe 6 or 8 good rapids, and floated/paddled the rest. What a fun time. In the evening we went to a restaurant that Mom had really liked called Tomacita's, which we thought was ok. Tuesday was a chill day, mostly, we relaxed at the house, did a bit of hiking in the forest, and in the afternoon we scattered Mom's ashes in the national forest, by a flowering cactus and a desert juniper tree. In the evening we all went into Santa Fe to catch the new Indiana Jones movie, which we all really liked. Wednesday we hit the road, on the way to Carlsbad. The drive from Santa Fe to Carlsbad is full of nothing at all. Empty land. Desolate. Nowhere to stop for a bathroom break.... we stopped in Roswell to see the UFO museum and get lunch, but it was kinda disappointing. A lot of reading to do in the museum there, not much really interesting. And the visitor's center was closed. We got a few pictures in front of a UFO mural and that was about it... and drove the rest of the way to Carlsbad another couple hours away. Once we checked in (to a very janky hotel room...with a very non-level floor so all the drawers and doors wouldn't stay shut) we went to the National Park for the evening bat flight program. There is a stone amphitheater at the cave entrance, and every evening at dusk somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 bats fly out of the cave for the night. Not all in one huge group, but a constant stream of bats that is really cool. Thursday was cave day: we all did the cave tour. Missy and I walked down the natural entrance with Thomas and Laura, Beth and Alex took the elevator. But walking took longer than we thought it would so I was pretty sure that Beth and Alex must have already been and gone by the time we got there. We went on for a while, then Missy needed a restroom (which they have down there) and as we walked back to the central area, there were Beth and Alex! They had been waiting for us to show up for a while. Good thing Missy and I showed up when we did because they were about to go on without us. And Missy had been ready to exit. But I'm glad we found each other because the rest of the cavern was incredible! Like Mammoth Cave x10. We walked the whole length and breadth of the big room, over a mile, before coming back out. Amazing. Then we hit the road back to Albuquerque and overnighted at a casino resort. We had thought we were staying at the same one Laura and Thomas did but were mistaken, so we said goodbyes over the phone since they had an early flight Friday. Our flight was early afternoon, so we had time to hit the restaurant from "Breaking Bad" which is Los Pollos Hermanos in the show, but Twister's in real life. The kids thought that was cool. The food was ok. I forgot to gas up the car before pulling into the rental return so we had to go back out again but we still made it with plenty of time. The layover in Kansas City got longer and longer as the layover progressed, so ultimately we were there for around 5 hours. By the time we got back to Indy it was 12:30 am Saturday, and YAY our checked bags were not on the plane with us. Apparently they never got off the plane in KC and went on to St. Louis. At least it wasn't too far....it was 2:00 before we had things taken care of at the airport, the hotel shuttle stopped at 11:30 so we called an Uber to get us to the hotel and just got a room there again for the night. They had our bags at IND by 10 in the morning, so we picked them up and headed home. Oh yeah, I also left my Kindle on the plane and have no hope of ever getting it back.