I had meant to get up early Friday to make photographs of Crater Lake. We hadn't an alarm clock in our room, though, and no means to arrange for a wake-up call (no phone). I hoped to rely on my body's natural alarm clock to get me up before the sunrise, but my body's natural alarm clock failed me. It didn't wake me until 8:30.

After a quick shower I took my bike (my new commuter bike!) out to scout the eleven mile lake-side trail. It's a beautiful trail: fully paved, about eight feet wide, mostly level.

I returned to the room and convinced Kris that biking should be our first activity of the day.

We'd gone no more than half a mile when my front tire went flat. We turned around and walked back to the lodge. While we ate the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet (in our case all-you-can-eat wasn't very much), the guys at the marina patched my tire.

We set out again, riding in the opposite direction.

The surface of the bike path was painted with numbers every now and then: "3-300", "3-400", "3-500". We tried to figure out what these meant. We decided that they measured the distance along the bike path in meters. The spacing was regular and might easily have been in 100 meter increments.

At about the seven kilometer mark we stopped at Silent Creek. We marvelled at the quietness of the water, at the bubble-like shadows floating beneath the surface, at the dead fish and the dead bird. We took some photographs with the digital camera. When we got back on our bikes, my front tire was flat again.

Grrr.

(Note: We did eventually complete the bike ride around the lake. I spent $8 to rent a bike (that did not fit), and it managed to make it around the lake without incident.)

In the evening, I had an ENORMOUS meal of tough filet mignon, tough chicken, and mediocre apple pie. I felt well and truly swollen after the meal. That didn't last long, though. I spent most of the night expelling that food, and everything else I'd eaten during the previous 24 hours, from my body. For the last two days of the trip, I ate very little. Very little.

In addition to riding bikes, we rode horses and we rode a canoe. The canoe trip was a source of marital strife, but the horse-riding was quite fun. I hadn't been on a horse since about sixth grade. (Torey Lam and I used to ride his horses, galloping across fields in the neighborhood, but that ended when a very-young Tony ride his bicycle into the side of a horse, which caused it to throw me and then step on me. Ouch! I've been a little frightened of horses ever since.)

(Further parenthetical remark: my poor right leg has been severely thrashed in its 34-1/2 years. When I was six or seven, I cut it open on some jagged metal in the back of a pickup truck. That required stitches. A few years later, the horse stepped on in. A few years later, I blew out my knee in soccer practice. Last year I blew out the ACL but good in a soccer game. Yikes. Statistically, it should be through with injuries, yes?)

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Harvest Festival   On Saturday, we drove south for the Briscoe Harvest Festival.

2002 — Network of Friends   With all of these friends, how can I stay sulky?