Picking Flowers and Berries on Cheryl's 14 Mile Run.

Wildflowers Of Iowa...arranged By Cheryl.

Today has been a wonderful day thus far.   First it started off with a gentle rain that quit the moment we began our run.  The clouds kept the sun away and the rain cooled the area to a pleasant 63 degrees. Perfect running weather!  (well,  compared to what we have had this summer so far.)

As we trotted and biked down the usual path,   Cheryl has been searching for various flowers to add a little color and life to our drab scoring table at work.  In addition,  any left overs get the glory of beautifying our coffee table at home.   For this reason,  Cheryl has been sending us out to the trail mid-week one a mission to find more color.

And then it happened....

End of the Mulberry Season...

Begin Wild Black Raspberries!

Instead of flowers,  we found berries!  The Mulberries are almost finished here,  however, the black raspberries are out in full swing!   We stumbled upon a guy picking buckets of them last week....upon closer inspection, we discovered that he had not even made a dent in the stockpile.   There are LOTS of black raspberries out there!   (  We used to call them "black caps" because they have no stem when you pick them...and kind of look like a stocking cap or helmet.  Perhaps it was just a local thing passed down from various family members.)

Red Domestic Raspberries ( In store)

Well,   Cheryl discovered that she LOVES these things...  no surprise because she really enjoys the red raspberries they sell at HyVee.  These guys taste sweeter and are fun to pick.  I told her about the "white" version.... not really white, but rather they are an orange color and taste somewhere between the black and red versions.

Orange (white?) Raspberries!

And then we found them!    In the middle of the run today,  we found and entire section of these guys.   Cheryl stopped in the middle and forced me to clean out my bike pouch to fill them with the orange version of  of the raspberries. (Golden Raspberries)    Currently,  she is making raspberry tarts out of creme cheese and puff pastry.  They are VERY good and highly addicting.   Hopefully we will be able to control ourselves a bit and avoid eating them all tonight.  ( there are a lot of berries to use up after all...)

Our daily haul..in the Fridge.

I'm rather excited about the next species of berries ripening up along the way.   The Black Berries are still green but ripening up steadily.

Black Berries are up next!

  And when they finally come into season...it will be EPIC!  There are so many of them growing wild out there that we could easily fill a 5 gallon bucket and not even touch the several dozen other "patches" located around the trail.   I'm not sure what it is about the wild grown black berry..but they are much sweeter ( my opinion) than the store bought ones or the ones at the farmers market.  My theory is that the harder the berry has to struggle,  the sweeter it becomes.

Baking is done....Let's Eat!

For aesthetics, we should have mixed up the colors. 

As I eat one of the puffs Cheryl has just put in front of me,  We both note that the orange raspberry is not quite as "flavor filled" as the black ones are.   They seem to be overpowered slightly by the cream cheese.   That being said,  they are still AWESOME and I find myself eating another one before I have the ability to finish this posting.

Still,  VERY tasty! 

Hope everyone is enjoying the day today.  If you happen to live in Iowa,  Enjoy the weather as much as possible....  it is a nice change from the heat and humidity we have been tolerating as of late.

Me Blogging.  And enjoying Tarts and Tea

Oh!  And if you have the chance....  grab a glass of ice water, scissors and an empty  bucket; and get out there and pick some wild
flowers and berries.   It really is a great time.   Whenever you discover the 4th dimension.... hiding somewhere in the hedgerow in your back yard...you want to share that with as many people as you can.

Bike Tire Fix...Part 2!

This time,  I tried to keep things simple.   Just Fix the TIRE!    This is a challenge for me..not because the actual task is difficult.   Rather,  because I am one of those people who seeks perfection and messes around with things until I make them worse.

Ok,   That is somewhat untrue.  How about I simple mess around with things either because I try to maximize my time or my effort.   Usually I simply make more work for myself in the end.   This is why I hate people who have a hyper attention to detail....It's a quirk.

So,  when you set in your mind to accomplish one task,  things go much better.   I pulled the outer wheel off and turned it around. (something I had wrong from before....it's a tread thing)

Put in the new inner tube and  walked down to the Casies  to fill it with air.

It's on the bike now and works fine.   Sure there is still a bit of a wobble, but it does not rub the rear brake (at least from what I can see.)  So I'm ready for Cheryl's long run tomorrow.


I'm home at the moment, by the way.   Only a select few scorers got to work today to finish up the prompts.   I worked last Friday,  so it's my turn to take time off.   I'm OK with this.  However,  Cheryl still has to show up and back read
...  and my check will be smaller in the end.

While writing this and working on my bike,  I have the apartments to myself...therefore I can crank up my favorite songs and have no one complain.  ( usually Cheryl...who does not like my barbershop chorus stuff.)  However,  every now and then I come across an oldie that makes me warp back to the '80's.   Enjoy Linsey Buchingham.  ( I hear he is one of the greatest guitarists.   I'm sure it is an opinion being as how music is such a subjective....subject)   Ok...enough of the lead up....Enjoy Going Insane!    '80's BABY!  YEAH!

The Tragedy of Threes...In The Form Of A Bicycle.

I had such high hopes today!   I had the entire day to myself and wanted to fix a pesky problem that I had been putting off all weekend:  Fixing my rear bike tire.

A little history.    Over the last three weeks.... I have had "problems."   First:  I thought my bike rim was bent...turns out I broke the Axle.   One sloppy, dirty, greasy afternoon later.   I fixed it! Yeah!  ( Axle grease is a PAIN to get off of your hands..and it clings to everything.)

However!   I installed it wrong.   Hey!  Live and learn from our mistakes...right?   I failed to tighten it sufficiently so the bike was riding on the locking nut, NOT the actual axle....   So...the axle bends ( but does not break at least!)    Time for another order to Amazon.

THIS TIME...I install it properly.  Yeah!    And then....

I break a spoke.  A common wear and tear issue that I have fixed countless times.   And...unlike the axle,  it is not even "life threatening".   I'll fix it on Monday...when I have plenty of free time and will be looking for things to do.  Add in that Cheryl also purchased a group of 20 spokes while ordering my axle.   I'm all set. What could possibly go wrong?

HOWEVER!   All of the spokes are too short.  That is right,  I carefully measured the spokes and actually told her to order a size that  was slightly smaller. (because my other spokes were too long.   Long Spokes tend to pop tires when you adjust them if they do not have at least a little bit of play.)  It's an oversight on my part, because I would simply not know until I had to replace an actual spoke....  Like now.

Luckily, I had an old spoke that I cut down to size.   It fixed the issue and works great.   Problem solved!   Let's go down to the gas station and pump this bad boy up.  It's a lovely morning so I walk there.(because Cheryl has the Subie at work today)   Puff it up and we are ready to ride!

I hook up the tire to the bike, only to see that there is still an unusual wobble in the rotation.   Turns out,  a small section of the inner tube is trapped between the rim and the outer tire.   An "easy" fix.  Let's do it now.   Pop!   Fzzzzzzztttttt!   And...end scene.

So I popped the inner Tube.   With no means of patching it,   I'm at an impasse and done for the day.  Instead for fixing the bike...I have  ( once again)  made it unusable.  I can only solve-so-many problems-only-to-cause-new-problems-to-emerge so many times before I throw in the towel.

There is a small silver lining in that I was able to ( hopefully) fix Cheryl's sewing machine.  Or at least tune it up a bit.   I will require her to take a look at it before claiming victory just yet.
It's a good thing to,  because I was about to write an entirely different Blog post about  Life being a harsh Mistress that we forced to marry and endure her whims against our will.
 Luckily I have backed off from that post and decided to write this one.   Besides,  I forgot most of my barbed poetic muses that I pieced together as I walked my bike back from Casey's in the hot Iowa Sun.

Hope everyone is having a better day than me.   Or at least better than I had going on this morning.   Things always look better AFTER something disastrous happens.  ( Or usually...maybe.   We shall see)

A minor note:   I'm probably missing the big picture here in that Life is trying to show me I need to either....Buy Stronger Bike Parts....OR   Go on a Diet!   Because it seems the rear bike tire is the one with all of the problems...and all of my weight on it.   Do they even make bikes for "husky" guys?   that are not ...wagons. Perhaps I need to investigate that instead of wondering why the problems keep persisting.

Custom Race Shoes and TheTotally Awesome Dogbane Beetle

So,  After a marathon....it is strongly urged to take a few days off from running to allow yourself to recover.   Preferably,  take any entire WEEK of doing NOTHING!   Then again,  what do the "experts" know?    And how does Cheryl respond?


"FOOLS!"   As she runs her way around Wellman every morning this week.  On the hard rocky farm roads in the humid heat.  "They are all MORONS!"

Ok,  she never really said that.   But it was implied.... I just know it.  So keeping with her idea of super human achievement...and reckless pursuit of perfection,   we ran  14.5 miles today along the Keota trail.

And that was when the fun began....

Cheryl's big toe has been bothering her for a while since the Marathon.   Around mile 10, the pressure from her shoe was pressing down on her toenail,  causing a rather annoying pain.   Time for some emergency field shoe surgery!

Would it not be awesome if everyone had a set of tools that they could whip out whenever they need to cut the toe box out of their constricting shoe?
Having none of these essentials,   she was forced to use my tiny Swiss Army Knife to cut out a hole in the top of the fore-foot.  (Called the "toe-box" by people in the know...)  She said that lots of trail runners do it,  so it seemed like no big deal to cut a  hole in a perfectly good pair of $100.00 running shoes.   Whatever works, right?

Cheryl's New Custom Shoes!

It did temporarily fix the problem, and we were able to finish the remaining 3 miles without too much pain and suffering.  However,  now she is concerned that she may not be able to run tomorrow...AND has to buy another pair of shoes.

One of Nature's Gems!

But hey!   It was not all bad.    Before we left the trail, I discovered the most awesome beetle I have yet to see in Iowa.   Behold!   The Dogbane Leaf Beetle!

Big colors in a small package!

Try to capture all of the possible colors 

Now I love all God's creatures,  great or small.  But insects have a special place in my heart.   This guy is not as creepy awesome as the Mole Cricket....Nor as strangely awesome as the Preying Mantis.
Instead,  it is awesome be-dazzlingly colorful!  The little guy escaped before I could show Cheryl,  but I noted that he was not as clumsy as the Japanese beetle....( a local pest....pretty much everywhere)  Instead he was a fast moving guy...on par with a ladybird beetle.   But mostly his color changed as you moved around him.   The iridescence along his back wing-covers changed from red to copper to blue.   Many of these Google pictures do not capture it.   But to put things in perspective...see him side by side with a Japanese beetle.   Compare the colors and the legs.   Japanese beetles are Scarabs.   Although there are a lot of subfamilies of beetles.  I'm pretty sure ( taxonomy was very complicated!)  the Dogbane Beetle is not in that family.   (or branched off of it.

Japanese Beetle.   NOT the Dogbane!

Dogbane Beetle

  Things to note:   antenna on Japanese beetle vs Dogbane.   Also the legs and feet.  It is a minor detail, because they are both  roughly the same size ( about 1 cm long.) and can look the same color from a certain angle. Also,  the Dogbane runs and flies similar to a ladybird beetle.  The Japanese Beetle "runs" like a turtle tipped over onto its shell!
 I could  try to find the "blue " version, but they seriously look like totally different beetles altogether.  Better to stick to the similar colors for comparison.   The one that grabbed my attention looked brilliantly RED in the sunlight.    This one is the closest I can find online that is similar.

Kind of Red like this!

So,   impress your friends with your new found knowledge of trivial things. The Dogbane Beetle....and how they are NOT "just like" Japanese Beetle.

Yes,  same beetle....different angle of lighting.

And just for fun...lets show off the blue version....   Remember these are all the SAME beetle....only different angles of lighting.   Isn't Nature Awesome!   Enjoy!

The Franklin Ground Squirrel. A Rare Find.

 We are home today...well I am anyway.   Cheryl ran two miles this morning.  ( see...no marathon damage after all!)  and is currently at work.   I'm being a bum, nursing a sunburn, and making sure the cat gets as much "kitten time" as required to earn his forgiveness for abandonment.
 So...with my new found time...I could try to put the new axial on my bike...but that sounds like a lot of work...possibly in the dangerous outside...where the sun looms in a constant state of ambush...

Better to fix the minor spelling and grammatical errors in yesterday's post AND show off the cute pictures of the Franklin Ground Squirrel!

I guess he was a rare spectacle in Duluth.   They are sorta, kinda "common" by the welcome center where we stopped, but they are not found anywhere else.    We both noticed that it was an odd little creature that did not fit inside our typical "rodent" library.   Luckily,  he was pretty friendly, and allowed us to get close enough to capture some clear photos.

We also took several pictures of the city before we departed.  The new camera was awesome here since I could zoom in on the foggy city from the overlook without paying 50 cents to use one of those touristy binocular stands.  Call me cheap if you must....but we paid way more for the camera.   I'm glad it is earning back it's price tag.







Other than that.   I plan on saving the earth from Alien invasion for the remainder of the day.   Earth can never remain safe for long...and I have been obviously sidetracked this weekend.
 My pixillated men rely on me to send them into battle and  not get them blown up.   It's a huge responsibility....and I  usually don't take responsibility seriously.



Enjoy the "informative video" about the squirrel.   So next time you can  impress your friends when you go out west and see one of these guys.   You'll be the only know who notices it is NOT a prairie dog.