Bikes Are Groovy

As my more astute readers may have noticed, I did not blog on Friday. This is because I was on the annual Fat Tire Tour bike ride and pub crawl to celebrate the birthday of the Daughter of Dennii. This year Hardingfele and her office mate accompanied us, and they had a great time but wanted to leave after the fourth stop. Honestly, I never make it much beyond that myself, so I left with them. Someday I will stick it out to the bitter end…

At the first rest stop we had jello shots and fun prizes like absinthe-flavored dental floss and wasabi-flavored lip gloss. The coolest prizes were probably these little plastic mice to put on our handlebars, and whatever color the mouse was, its nose lit up that color. I got a blue mouse and a green jingle bell; Hardingfele got a green mouse and a blue jingle bell.

This year the ride’s mascot was Pepper the Boston Terrier (in a past year it was Sid the Hedgehog), and I bought a commemorative T-shirt but wore the one from last year, which said: “Bikes are groovy!” and had a penny-farthing bicycle with psychedelic designs between the spokes. Hard to get cooler than that!

After about 30 miles on a bike on Friday, I wanted a very different kind of exercise on Saturday, so Richard Bonomo and I went kayaking. In the evening I made brownies with raw chocolate chip cookie dough (found the recipe online) for a deck party, and we watched a beautiful sunset and then had a bonfire and tiki torches to light up the night. Some partygoers made s’mores using peanut butter cups instead of chocolate pieces, but I couldn’t eat another dessert after having one of my own brownies and a homemade red velvet cupcake. Then last night Rich, Kathbert and I had a delicious dinner including a bunch of vegetables from our garden: green beans, tomatoes, an eggplant, and a very large zucchini. And of course leftover brownies for dessert!

Famous Hat