Final (not entirely) Lazy Days

On Wednesday, I spent the morning writing out on the deck in the beautiful weather. The mornings and evenings have been chilly and it warms up in the day. Nonetheless, it’s always cool in the shade and on the bike so I try to remind myself to take a jacket wherever I go even though it’s June. 

I made a trip to the market and picked up some necessities. I really like our store, it’s called Market of Choice but Cathy still calls it the old name it went by, PC’s, which always comes to mind before M.o.C. and she knows exactly what I’m talking about. Kind of like how People’s Drug changed to CVS back in MD and we called it People’s for ages after. 

Anyhoo, I had my fun strolling along through the aisles. I really, really like grocery shopping. Whenever I’ve lived on my own, it’s always been an event I looked forward to. I just like the process of thinking out my week’s feasts and trying to find the healthy but relatively cheap options. And now, having read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I’m trying to find the corn-free options, and that’s not easy!

I noticed a sale on what looked like a really great root beer and saw that all but one had been snapped up by all the eager shoppers before me. Well, upon closer inspection, I noticed one of the main ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup. The cheap, plentiful and highly processed “sugar”. So I looked around at my other options and realized that this “gourmet” soda was, at sale price, the same price as some of the other good looking 4packs that used cane sugar and that were fairly local as well! So you can imagine the swagger this smart shopper employed as she pushed her cart on down the aisle.

Cathy and I had planned to go on the 6pm GEARs ride that evening and we knew that for today’s ride they’d be coming from the meeting location south so we decided we’d intercept them before they hooked onto Loraine Rd. Well we weren’t sure exactly where they’d pop out onto it so we parked at a cross street looking back and forth. Suddenly Cathy saw them ahead of us and we rushed to catch up. Well, just our luck, the last in the line just barely made the light between 29^th and Willamette and we were far enough behind that they hadn’t noticed us. We waited out the loooong signal and they were far ahead of us as we pedaled our hearts out after them. Where 29th turns into Loraine there begins a long uphill so we labored our way up, hoping to see the group around the next bend. After a great deal of exertion, we made it to the top, and there was the group! Apparently, they’d already broken off from the slower half so we pulled up (utterly spent!) and it was several minutes before the rest of the group arrived! Ha, well we weren’t too worse for wear and, luckily, the rest of the ride would be fairly flat.

The evening light worked it’s magic while we pedaled between the hills. I’m slowly getting to know some of the other regulars, there’s Garry who has my same bike (color too!) the Surly Long Haul Trucker (oh, love of my life..), and Gary, a friend of Cathy’s from when she biked with the group 10 years ago. He lives a couple streets north of us. Rick is a cabinet maker who built a perfect little wooden bench with drawers for shoe-storage that Cathy wanted for the front entrance of the house. There’s Mike, a big guy who coordinates the ride schedule and Sterling, a short man with a long gray beard who said he’d sponsor me as a racing cyclist, haha. There tend to be more men and only a handful of women, none of which I’ve seen more than once. I have only been out for three rides though. I am determined to keep it up, I absolutely love getting out for these treks and doing some longer distances. With the group, I’m challenged to go faster just to keep up. I hope my school/work schedule allows for me to continue with them!

That evening Cathy shared some of her fresh garden greens and we both made delicious salads.We were pooped!

For Thursday, I started my day out making muffins! I had gotten various ingredients from the market yesterday with just this in mind. Cathy made some of her really great ones a couple days before and shared one with me last night and that truly was the inspiration for today's endeavor.

I of course had some company helping me along, giving advice and making suggestions...

In the early afternoon I went down to campus to tend to some matters and I decided to head to the downtown area from there. I parked my bike and strolled around so I could get a slower-paced idea of the streets. It’s a nice downtown, seemed pretty quiet that afternoon. I think the whole of Eugene is much more low-key during the summer. Graduation was this past week and it seems like the visiting families, graduation parties and moving-out commotion is winding down.

I got a veggie bagel from Bagel Sphere and ate it in the park where they hold Saturday Market. There’s a big fancy fountain and some large fir trees that I enjoyed the company of while I ate and watched the people go by.

This will be one of my last lazy afternoons for awhile!