The Ride

Alright, on my last blog I wrote about how cold it has been around here and for anyone living north of Florida I don't expect much sympathy. But come on this is Florida and one of the reasons I moved here was to be warm. No I don't consider 40 degrees warm. As a matter of fact I no longer consider 50 degrees during the day to be warm.

One of the terrible side effects of having temps this low is that I am not able to ride the Roadie. Those of you that know me know that I really enjoy riding my bike. The only problem is that I am a fair weather rider. I am not one of those diehards that you see riding all bundled up in freezing weather or covered with vinyl to protect from the rain. No, at my age I enjoy a little comfort no matter how much I love to ride.

The Roadie has been sitting in the Roadie shed for what seems like an eternity gathering dust waiting to be taken out and given a little exercise. Well today I decided that it was time to put all the other needs on hold and go for a ride. We went to church this morning and had our small group meet at our house afterward and around 1430 with an outside temperature of around 65 degrees I had enough.

I changed into my jeans, put on my Harley boots, donned my leather jacket and headed for the Roadie shed. After disconnecting the battery minder from the battery, I pulled the choke, turned on the ignition and hit the starter. Well, the Roadie was mad because I ignored her for so long. At least that is how it appeared because when I hit the starter all she did was grunt. You know, like not now I have a headache. Well after a little sweet talking, yes it works with motorcycles too, she decided to wake up and those 1600 cc's of power came to life.

After letting her warm up for a while, Roadies don't like the cold either, I swung my leg over the seat and hit the throttle just to hear the power. Pushing back out of the shed I positioned the bike next to the pool without actually going into the pool, I need to draw a picture sometime, and put her in gear to turn and get her out the gate. After putting the stand down I put on my helmet and goggles and got ready to ride. Even though it had been a while since I last rode I was feeling really good and confidant sitting on that bike.

There have been times when I contemplated selling the bike thinking that I don't really ride a lot anyway and maybe I should just sell it. Then I go for a ride! Now my ride today was only about thirty minutes long but that was a very enjoyable thirty minutes. It's a biker kind of thing, but there is something about hearing the rumble of the exhaust, the unobstructed view, and the feel of the wind and sun all around you. When I ride, any thoughts of not having a bike go right out the window or in the case of the bike right over the handlebars. I don't have to ride a lot I just need to know that I can if I want to.

I can ride with my son in law or with some of the guys at church. I can take a nice ride with my wife on the back along some quiet stretch of road and stop somewhere for lunch or just to look at the beautiful scenery all around us. A car is a closed environment but a bike allows you to become part of the environment. OK so you can only eat so many bugs or shift to only a few positions when your bottom gets sore but where is your sense of adventure?

When I pulled the Roadie back into the shed after my short ride, I was invigorated. This is no small feat when you get into your sixties. I realized that as long as God gave me strength and the ability to ride I would continue to be a biker. There is something about riding that gives you a sense of freedom. I have had good days and bad days and then climbed on the bike and after a nice ride arrived home with a smile on my face and Kim saying "is that a love bug in your teeth?"

Baby it's cold outside

Excuse me but this is Florida and tonight the temperature is expected to drop down to around twenty degrees. Twenty degrees is below freezing, and for the mathematically challenged that is twelve degrees below freezing!! What is going on here; is this part of the global warming everyone is talking about? I moved south from the northeast part of these great United States to get warm. Twenty degrees is NOT warm!!

I am sitting in front of my computer writing this and I am cold. In Florida HVAC systems are all about air conditioning not heating. Yes the summers are hot in Florida but I remember a bunch of sweating going on when I lived in Delaware and New York. For my geographically challenged readers, that is in the northern part of the States. Heating in homes in this part of the country is mostly done by heat coils, not gas or oil which is much more efficient. We won't even start down that road.

This morning before going to work I had to scrape the frost off the windshield of mine and my wife's cars. I had to wear a leather jacket, gloves and a hat to keep from freezing. Yea, I know it was -20 degrees in Minnesota but this is Florida and if I wanted snowmen, skating on the pool and skiing I would live in Maine or Canada or some other Yankee land.

Traveling to work this morning I noticed the usual palm trees, green grass, colorful flowers but they were all covered with ice. No it didn't rain but the sprinklers were on as they normally are to keep the beautiful Florida flowers and grass growing as they usually do in Florida in February. Exception to that rule of course is my lawn which you can read about in a prior blog.

This is an area where many "snowbirds" come to in the winter from the northern part of the states to get warm. Maybe going from -20 to 20 degrees is considered getting warm but it doesn't work for me. I am use to winter lasting for about two weeks in January and then getting the pool ready for the grand kids. Well, I guess it is time to get into bed and get under the covers and dream about warm weather. The weather report for the weekend is temps going into the sixties. Hopefully there is enough Yankee in me to hold out for two more days. We'll see.

The Pool

The other day I was cleaning the pool and got to contemplating this 20,000+ gallon body of water sitting in my backyard. If i had a choice there would not be a huge hole filled with water in my backyard. When we moved to Florida five years ago and were looking for a house we found the one that we thought would be just right for us. It was a nice size, right price and in a nice established neighborhood with a pool. Now, living in Florida a pool would seem like a great idea, right? Yes it is when somebody else owns it and you get to visit and go swimming on a hot summer day. Try taking care of keeping the water crystal clear on hot summer days.

Mind you I'm not complaining, alright maybe a little, but that beautiful swimming environment does not just happen on it's own. It takes a lot of work and a lot of chemicals. Not only that, now the liner is starting to rip. You don't even want to know how much that will cost to repair. We are not talking about a little wading pool here but a very large body of water with a diving board and slide. Kim keeps telling me she wants a house by the water; I keep telling her, "look out the back window".

OK, back to the pool cleaning story. While I was skimming the top of the pool and trying to skim up some of the leaves and debris that settled on the bottom I thought about actually swimming in this pool. Last year I think i went in the pool once, and that was to retrieve some fallen object that i couldn't get with the net. I am not a pool person or for that matter even a water person. To me water is for drinking, cooking, washing and other water things that God intended, not sports. Never the less, back to the pool cleaning. After completing the skimming and lower debris removal it was time for the vacuuming. Yes you have to vacuum the pool also. All the leaves, twigs, dirt, algae, critters and anything else that falls into the pool eventually settles to the bottom. Ergo, you need to vacuum to get it out of the pool.

After you vacuum you need to turn the pool pump off and clean out the filter basket which is now clogged up from all the junk you just removed from the bottom of the pool. You put your hand in the basket and pull out old leaves, dead spiders and lizards that you just sucked up from the bottom. Put everything back together and start the pump going again. And speaking of the pump, it needs to run about eight hours a day which requires electricity which means a higher electric bill. When the pump starts running again you look at the nice crystal clear water and clean liner at the bottom of your beautifully maintained pool and say to yourself, job well done.

A gust of wind kicks up and every leaf in the neighborhood finds it's way to my pool like steel to a magnet. In the five years I have lived here I have had at least six trees cut down. Now don't get the wrong idea, I love trees, but i do own a pool. These were ugly trees, whose only purpose in life was to put leaves and pine needles in my pool. So why with the removal of these trees does every leaf from every tree in the surrounding neighborhood find it's way to my pool? And so the process begins over and over and over again.

So why keep the pool? For one thing it is probably to costly to fill it in. And for a more important thing my family loves it. When Michele and the grand kids come down in the summer, the pool is used from the time they arrive until the time they leave. Kathy said my granddaughter Brittney wants to have her sixteenth birthday at our house with a pool party. My niece Beth and her family come over and it is a joy to watch all the kids sliding, diving and just enjoying the pool activities. If the time comes that the kids no longer want to use the pool and it is no longer a draw for gathering the family together for barbecues and poolside fun, it will become a costly, time consuming hole in the ground filled with 20,000+ gallons of water. Until then it is a labor of love that I will enjoy, but complain about because otherwise it wouldn't be me. Maybe I could raise sharks and alligators.