Monday

I had great expectations of getting this done yesterday, but some yard work and an unplanned bar-b-que got in the way.  I have found those bone-in pork chops as an easy fix on the grill.  Too bad The Winniferous wasn't around to partake in the leftovers.

The golf event on Friday-Saturday was quite a bit less than a satisfying experience.  It may have felt better if I had played decently, but without practice, my game is what it is.  There were several aspects of the event that were each irritating enough to give the whole thing a Meh grade.  Mostly, these things are part of a country club's culture, and as an out-of-town member, my integration into the Geneva culture is fairly superficial.  It works for an evening of dinner and drinks...and for a simple round of golf on Saturday mornings.  Two and a half days of brotherhood?  Not so much.

That bike ride yesterday with my pal Pete was an effort.  We had to pass on the Sunrise Café route as the rains delayed our departure until almost 0800.  Traffic gets bad up there when church services get out around 0900.  So we took an alternative route...and elected to stay on East-West roads as much as possible due to the wind.  Glad to get the work in...TOMRV is Saturday! 

I also got the experience of changing my first flat tire of the season.  We were out on the Cody School road past LeClaire when my front tire just went down.  Fortunately, I had a spare tube in my seat bag, along with the other necessary tools to swap out the bad tube.  Even better news, I had a compressed-air canister and necessary regulator, that gave me a Plan C option when my mini-air-pump failed.  The change took a total of 20 minutes, but almost half of that was trying to get the pump to work.  All good training for life on the road.


(Blogger is now giving me more warnings about incompatible software.  A new limitation is that I can't size-down the pictures.  I really need to go elsewhere with this tome.)

Moving on...

I continue to admire the new 2015 Ford F-150 trucks with the new aluminum body parts.  Ford did a revamp of their main-line truck series last year with the increased use of aluminum...and the truck appears to be a commercial hit with consumers.  (My partner in the golf event just bought a new one and is very happy with it.)  The bad news, from my perspective is the pricing.  I had taken a detour through the Lindquist dealership in Bettendorf a couple weeks ago to check out their inventory, and while I expected some high numbers, I was surprised that most of the new trucks on their lot were in excess of $45K, and many over $50K.  Ouch!.

I'm sure my golf partner paid close to $60K for his new ride.  I mean, it had every option that you could imagine, including onboard wifi.  As much as I like the look and feel of the vehicle, I would never pay that much for any car/truck.

And finally, another sign that the apocalypse is upon us, they had a guy on Squawk Box this morning essentially bragging about his decision to default on his college loans.  He's a 57 year-old bleeding-heart liberal with writing connections to the NYT, Slate and The New Republic, among others.  He did an op-ed piece in the NYT last weekend explaining his student-loan history.  Essentially, his argument is that his problems are somebody else's fault, and blames "the rich" for being rich and taking advantage of  financial conventions available only to them as a result of their entitled position.  No wonder he's a NYT poster-boy.

Make it a good week in your neighborhood.

BCOT