nosrednayduj

Today we took out the rest of the dock. It's a very fast job if you have 4 people: we finished in less than 45 minutes. The lake level is still pretty low and so we were able to do it with two people in waders and the others on the shore carrying things as we disassembled. I measured the temperature of the lake a week ago and it was 45. Probably slightly lower than that now. The whole lake needs to get to be 40 before it can freeze. Next week it's going to be cold, lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s, so while it probably won't freeze completely, we will see ice here and there.

After the dock was out, I rode my bike down to the center of town where there was a small protest scheduled. I was surprised that there were only 15 people there, because the timing was perfect for the local UU church letting out, and generally speaking they are on the right, meaning left, side of these issues. And it was announced on the church social mailing list (which I am on, even though I never go to church), so I fully expected a large number of people to join us at around 11:40. But only a few did. It was cold, so maybe that was the issue. "Fair-weather protesters." Of course, I had my heated insoles in my boots.

I had a flat tire a month or so ago. I found a weird bulge in the tire material at the corresponding place to the hole in the tube, which I assumed contained a small piece of shrapnel, but I couldn't get it out. So I carefully arranged the patch to be under the bulge, thinking that the patch was pretty thick.

Then, I got another flat Friday. This was in a different place, and this time the murder weapon was easy to locate still in the tire and possible to pull out with needle nose pliers. But with two flats in a month, plus the funny bulge, it is now tire non grata, so time to replace. So off I go to the local bike store ("small business Saturday") but they don't have one, because it's the front wheel of my recumbent which is an odd size. So I had to order one (did not wait for "cyber Monday"). Normally, I would just curse and put the old tire back on my bike and hope that I don't get a third flat while the order is being shipped. But I recently got a replacement bike, so I can use it as a parts bike! Swap the wheel and all is good.

Issues: in the last four months most of the air had leaked out. Four months is a long time, so I just pumped it up. It's not the same rim width, so I had to adjust my brakes. It's not the same size of tire, being both slightly narrower, 1.25 instead of 1.5, and thus less tall, and also having less aggressive tread, also reducing the height. So the circumference is less. Which means that my odometer (which I see I neglected to mention in blogs that I replaced the wiring harness so it is no longer flaky) will read the wrong number. The wheel goes around a slightly larger number of times during each mile, so it records a mile somewhat earlier. Thus: cheating.

Ken and I went on a ride together, and he went 6.81 miles while I recorded 7.18, so we know that it is 5% high. Then I recorded 10.37 after that. Unfortunately I didn't look at the total odometer before I started off on this cheating plan, but subtraction shows that it was 1939 or 1940 (it only shows whole miles, and we don't actually know when it clicked over to the current 1957). I'll just keep track and adjust later; probably it won't be as much as the 5 miles or so that it owes me for the flaky odometer. Also, the new tire I ordered is likely to be a different circumference than the one I replaced. So there will be more adjustment needed. It will all come out in the wash on January 1 when I reset for the new year, and I will get new measurement of my circumference before then.

We dithered about whether we could take the train which would get us to the airport only one hour in advance. We decided to chance it, and in the end it was so smooth. We just breezed through pre-check. Then our flight took off on time, and there was room in the overhead bins for our stuff even though we hadn't paid for early boarding. The next flight was late, so we had an extra hour in Salt Lake City, but that wasn't terrible.

The rental car agencies want you to check-in in advance these days, but that's a really stupid idea, because you have no idea if you are actually going to get there on the right day, given the vagaries of air travel. I did check-in in advance from SLC, but only after the gate agent showed up and started making announcements that made it clear that we were actually going to be getting on that flight (like, the aircraft had arrived.) It does have the advantage that all of the up selling is done online rather than in person, so you can decline more easily.

Our Air B&B is a basement apartment, and it's a little funky because of how they had to shoehorn rooms in between structural supports for the house, but it's okay. After dropping our stuff, we hared off to the local grocery store to lay in supplies.

Sunday we did some outdoor exploring. We hiked to a large letter M that has been placed on the hillside above the University of Montana in Missoula. This trail is extremely well-traveled; we must have passed more than 50 people on the way up and down. They must have 500 people every day. Then we continued on for another (less well-traveled) mile to an old abandoned copper mine, which was kind of cool. You can't go very far in because they have filled it in, and also you kind of have to crawl for some of it. But it was "dark as a dungeon way down in the mine."

Then we wandered around on the university campus for a little bit looking at various historical markers and outdoor art, and had some lunch before our next adventure, which was to go to a natural Hot Springs in Idaho. (Not that far given that we are in Western Montana.) You never know what you're going to actually get when you visit a hot springs that you've only read about online. In this case the directions were slightly confusing at first because we went to the wrong parking lot, but after figuring that out and finding the right parking lot, we were able to walk up to the hot springs which was about a mile of mostly flat walking in the woods. The flora was very different because we had crossed over a mountain pass and were on the other side of it now with different weather, so it was dense pine forest, whereas in Missoula there had been some forested areas, but also a lot of grassy hillsides like you get in California. It had also commenced to rain (which we know about, so we were prepared. Also, we were going to a hot springs. What, we will get wet?)

First we had to find the actual springs. The first place you come upon is right next to a river, and too much of the river was flowing into the pool where the hot water was also flowing, so it was not actually hot. Fortunately someone who was already there gave us a report before we stripped. So we carried on to the next location. This had several different pools which were larger, and not right next to the river, so the only cooling was from the air (and the rain). There were some sites further on but we stopped here.

It was advertised as clothing optional, but when we got there, everybody was wearing swimsuits. Of course, we had not brought them because it was clothing optional. Before stripping, I mentioned this to a random older adult who was nearby, and he commented that he had intended to be naked but his kids had nixed that idea. I guess aging hippies are cool with nudity, but the younger generation is not? We forged ahead by stripping and just climbing in. Maybe some people were embarrassed but nobody mentioned it, and so we just hung out for an hour, and then dried off as best we could with our damp towels, redressed, and headed back to Missoula. It was a little hard to find a good place in the pool that wasn't just lukewarm, but we did find such a place to bask.

On the way back we stopped at a couple of historical markers and read about various explorers and naturalists who had been here in the 1800s. One of the places was a little park which somebody had done a lot of work on and was quite nice. I didn't actually remember in whose name it was, but some diligent Internet research eventually revealed that it is the "Devoto Grove Picnic Area & Trailhead". Recommended if you happen to be driving between Montana and Idaho on Route 12 and want to stop for 20 minutes. (Why would anybody I know be doing that? But you never know.)

At the visitor center at the top of Lolo Pass there were some educational materials about the Nez Perce and their struggle with the United States who was driving them out. This is the story recounted in the Fred Small song "Heart of the Appaloosa". It was interesting that one of the displays, which was about 100 feet from the main display, was all covered up in black plastic. I wonder if it was "too woke for Trump", and so they covered it up. We didn't try to uncover it and find out what it actually had said. I mean, the whole story was about the US doing pretty terrible things, and some of that was in the main display so I'm a little surprised.

Today is the start of Ken's conference, so he has headed off there on foot (it's about a mile), leaving me with an extra day because I'm just going to meet my cousin tomorrow in Butte MT, which is halfway to her house, and on my side of the Continental Divide. Unfortunately, while there seem to be a few interesting things to do in Missoula, they are closed on Monday. Dang. I will have another opportunity on Wednesday morning, and I'm going to go check out one of them before picking Ken up at lunch after the conference. For today, there is a nearby walking/bicycling self-guided tour of some outdoor things, and there are bicycles at the Air B&B, which we spent 20 minutes yesterday adjusting the shifters and brakes of. One of the bikes is totally not ridable, but another is okay. It's an upright, so I was concerned about how well I do on an upright.

Turned out it was sort of okay. I rode about 5 miles total I think, maybe it was a little more. Around the river walk, stopping at various little plaques telling us about the history of Missoula. Hit the grocery store again, and stopped to ride a carousel that has kind of a nice origin story, https://carouselformissoula.com/our-story/. My wrists were okay, my neck only hurts a little, my lower back is feeling it, and my crotch is sore. Last time I rode an upright, my wrists hurt a lot and so did my neck, and I didn't ride long enough for the other things to be a problem. Still, going to stick with the recumbent when I get home. Good to know that at least short rides are possible on an upright.

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The mine entrance and its sign

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There are benches on the way up to the "M" which has been funded by donations and so have plaques commemorating whoever they wanted to donate on behalf of. I liked this one the best.

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The M as seen from campus, along with a bit of the original first university building from the 1890s.

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The carousel, and me riding it. You can't tell but I picked a "horse" which was a dragon.

Valerie knew about an action in nearby town organized by Indivisible Mansfield and Beyond, so I joined her. This was not a big crowd, but a small number of activists standing on the road with coordinated signs. The theme was "signs of fascism", and they had us line the road about 30 feet apart so that the cars could drive by and read all of the signs and then at the end it said "our grandparents fought fascism" and "what will you do".

Burma Shave.



Tomorrow there will be another "random people hold random signs" action in our town, and I might go at the beginning for action #18. A friend of mine is getting married in the afternoon and the timing is tight. Or I might decide that one action in a weekend is enough.

We got tired of our Black Lives Matter sign being stolen. I suppose now they can vandalize it, but they haven't yet. On the other hand, meantime between thefts is several months.

The sign is glued to a quarter inch thick stainless steel plate where we drilled these holes to put the locks through. Locks are locked to ground anchors which go in over a foot into the ground. We had them left over from when Jocelyn had her aerial rig and we constructed a tent inside it for winter usage (which was not a success and only extended the season a little bit) and needed to be very well anchored to the ground. Then there is an angle bracket (also stainless steel) to keep it upright. It was more expensive than an air tag, but we think it will be more effective as well.

Speaking of which, I check on the one with the air tag periodically, and it has been in the same place since it was stolen. Apparently the battery has not yet run out. I keep thinking I'll drive up there and take a look at the neighborhood myself, but I haven't done that. Presumably the sign itself is in a pile of rubbish somewhere behind somebody's house, so I won't actually be able to see it. It must be on a private road, because there is no street view available.

I went to two protests, so I count them both. Ken wondered if I would get counted twice in the "5 million people across the country participated…" Of course there's not actually an accurate census of these things.

The local one was again at the shopping mall, picking up the Saturday morning shoppers starting at 9:30. This was less convenient for me, because it's further from the train station than the center of town, so I had to leave after only 20 minutes to catch the train into Boston. (I suppose if I hadn't bicycled I could have protested there for longer. But I felt like bicycling.) Unfortunately the train was inconveniently timed so I got to the Boston thing fairly early. On the other hand, then I got a good "seat" (standing location).

Lots of other people were on my train with signs, and lots more people were already on the Common when I arrived 40 minutes in advance of the start time, and tons of people were just streaming in from all directions. I will be interested to see a crowd estimate. It was enormous.

The MC had good energy. The music was some good, some mediocre, the speakers were "what you would expect at an event like this". There was a heckler who tried to interrupt Michelle Wu's speech. Michelle was very professional about it and completely ignored the guy, did not get distracted, made sure that she was right in the microphone so that her remarks were louder. She said various dramatic things that we were all supposed cheer after and so she paused at the right time and we cheered appropriately. So the heckler did not achieve his goals. The MC then talked about how "we don't all agree in this movement and that's okay, but we need to all be in the movement. We need to not be divided." Which was good and off-the-cuff and well spoken. A couple of other times he also had impromptu remarks on different topics.

I decided I was tired of standing around after 2 hours (more, including the time I was there early) and bailed to go catch the earlier train home. It's very confusing when you get walking directions and you're in the middle of the park which is full of people you have no idea what direction you're facing. So I walked for a while and saw if I was getting off the path and kind of wandered around until I found the path. Fortunately I allowed an extra 10 minutes for the walk to South Station, and I arrived early enough to be comfortable. Given the number of people on my train home holding signs, I was not the only one who thought that a three-hour rally was too long. On the walk back to South Station I did see some people coming towards the rally holding signs, so I guess we were the changing of the guard.

My annual square dance is in 2.5 weeks. Therefore, it's time to get the Covid vaccine. So earlier today I biked to the pharmacy, and now I am very tired.

I elected to get SpikeVax rather than mNexSpike because Ken says that mNexSpike actually was formulated earlier due to regulation delays, and therefore on an older variant. It wasn't hard to get them to do what I wanted, even though it's not the default for my age. They were extremely efficient; I was in there for less than 10 minutes, and got home in plenty of time for my 3 PM meeting.

But he didn't make it.

I heard today that my stepfather passed away yesterday at age 97. So there's no more need for angst about not being able to see him. There is just lingering sadness that I did not get to see him.

I've sort of already been grieving all this past year so it's not really making me upset that he has now actually passed.

My stepsister was actually pretty decent on the phone about it. She doesn't have funeral arrangements yet, and I'm crossing my fingers that she will in fact let me know what they are in time to buy plane tickets. Maybe I can figure out what funeral home they are using and find out that way.

I went to stand on the street corner in front of the UU church in town, along with 16 other souls, holding signs. This is a weekly thing, from 5-6 on Wednesdays. Usually I have square dancing at a time that would make this inconvenient, so when it was canceled this week, and Ken was away, Valerie and I decided to go. It seemed like there was a smaller percentage of cars with positive honking than at previous events. I didn't see any middle fingers, though. Maybe the drivers are getting tired of us.

In other non-news, summer seems to be at a close. There was a ton of waterskiing in August. It's nice that we didn't have a big cyanobacteria bloom. In June the lake management committee had alum poured along the lake bottom to hopefully keep it at bay, and it appears to of work. There was a big flap about it, because people were like "we will all die of aluminum poisoning" even though the amount that you get is really small, and that's if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do and sit on the lake bottom and keep organic material from feeding the algae.

I did ski last weekend, but weekday skiing might be done with, mostly due to lack of personnel, because the neighbor, who is a schoolteacher, is back at work, and random guests are gone, and it's starting to get dark early enough that "after dinner ski" doesn't make any sense. Plus Ken's knee is bugging him so he's not really skiing.

The boat starter has been behaving better, perhaps Ken taking it apart and putting it back together was helpful. Sometimes it still craps out, but not often enough to be able to take it to the shop and say "fix it" because they will not be able to reproduce the problem.

This week I've had a weird health issue, which is that on Monday and Tuesday evening I had a mild fever, but I felt really fine in the morning. Maybe the ibuprofen was still in effect. Today it was a lot later in the day before I started to feel bad, and I'm just feeling vaguely mediocre as opposed to actually bad. I run low normally, so 98.6 is a fever for me, but even I'm hard-pressed to say that 98.1 is a fever, which was tonight's reading. I'm coughing a little bit. I took a nucleic Covid test Monday and it was negative.

A local group has been organizing regular protests where they stand over an overpass and hold signs for the cars below to see. (The signs are actually bungee-corded to the fence, which is very convenient.) I went today, where I was one of about 15 people.

Because of the "motorcycles are everywhere" permanent campaign on that overpass, I'm not sure it was as effective as it could've been. The "FREE DC" sign was much larger and more legible, but I couldn't help but wonder if some of the people were honking because they thought we were promoting motorcycle safety. In fact, when we arrived a few minutes before the organizers and stood around next to the motorcycle safety signs, people honked. No flags, no free DC, just standing around on the overpass next to motorcycle safety signs.

Or, maybe they just thought we were right-wing nuts. The theory about the American flags was that we need to reclaim that flag; it should not just mean right-wing nut. And I approve of that sentiment, but I don't know how well it's working. There were also people driving on the overpass who occasionally honked, and there really wasn't much in the way of signage to show those people what we were about. There was one sign facing the road, but it was pretty small and people were often standing in front of it. So I'm pretty sure that everybody who was on the overpass and honked was either a right-wing nut or a motorcyclist.

I'm not sure I'll go join these people again. Though, it's 10 miles away from my house, so I could bicycle there. And then Valerie came in a car so I got a ride home.

Today was the annual triathlon in my town. The course goes past my house. I've blogged about this before, but apparently not recently. I started my own odometer at the top of our driveway and didn't look at it until I was back at the top of my driveway, so that's probably 10-15 seconds, but I went 12.53 in 56:57 for an average of 13.1. This puts me at #421 out of the field of 442 participants. And I didn't have to swim the half-mile first! Or save energy for the 4 mile run after. In my age group of 65-69 women, there were 6 participants, and I would have come in between #5 and #6. (There's a reason I don't really participate in these things!)