The upside of crappy weather

What follows two days of rain? Monday.

It has been a bit of the summer that never was so far, although it is still early days yet I keep telling myself. The last two weeks have been getting better, except for the weekends which have been rainy and cold.
The upside: I can ride my motorcycle to work during the week and relax in the pool after a long sticky day.
I'm not getting a sunburn at work.
The cool nights are wonderful for sleeping.
Have I convinced you yet? I have almost convinced myself.
This week has been sunny and warming up and the forecast for Canada Day weekend is for more of that. Ironically the garden needs water. I'm hoping for rain.
The downside: Weekend chores in the garden get left undone and laundry goes in the dryer. The second coat of paint on a garden chair is still waiting, and plants that should have been planted a month ago are not. Like these.These are the results of the sweet potato experiment I wrote about last winter here. These are only a few, I had great success with getting the sweet potatoes to overwinter in storage and then got them to grow slips which then root in water for planting. I also tried just planting the sweet potatoes, and that was slower because there wasn't much heat in the greenhouse in spring, but once they started, they really got going.
The other half I took to work and they were not as successful but are starting to come on now.

Other things to do when it rains:
I did complete a sewing project that has been sitting there since April.Friends gave us this teak chair sans cushion in February, and I finally finished the cushions. I had hoped to also cover the cushions of another teak chair we inherited but I ran out of fabric and now can't find it anymore. Bummer.

I started some pottery that a friend has commissioned me to make. And I finally glaze fired a kiln of stuff that has been sitting around since I went back to work. Most of it came out OK. Maybe pictures later.

Team Ed Ride

The 50 km bike ride I did for charity was last weekend on Sunday. I would have blogged about it earlier but I had to wait until my fingers stopped hurting. This is us before the start, "While we are all still smiling" I think was the quote.
It wasn't so bad really. I had a couple things going in my favour.
Everyone else was ill, with colds or asthma or whatever and that meant that I could keep up with all the regular cyclists most of the time. Yay for viruses!
Also, I have a great bike. I will admit to stressing about my bike before the ride. My bike is so old that when Peter went to buy new tires for it, the guy in the shop told him that Cannondale hadn't made a bike with 24" rims for 20 years. My bike is an antique. And I went looking for a new bike last year and realized that there are a lot of new and improved features to modern bikes, like shock absorbers and more gears and big rims that make mine look like a Model T Ford. Happily, my group were not the up to date, hard core set I was expecting, and I am so grateful for that.
I will admit to being a little intimidated when I learned they were part of a cycling club that did this ride every Thursday evening.
We were 6 in our group and that is a good number. We cycled mostly together, or in twos chatting as the scenery went by. It gave us all a chance to learn more about each other, and I will say that those other five people were an interesting and diverse bunch. This was such a good experience.
I want to add that the best part of getting my bike on the road again is how you feel so much more connected to the scenery. I could smell the lilacs (and the chicken barns) and hear the birds and feel the road surface. When I was practising before hand, I would cycle past people and they would wave, or say hello, or nod. Other cyclist would call out too. I have driven the route we took many times, but doing it on a bicycle made it a completely different experience.

As we passed the end of our driveway, Peter and our friend Lynn were cheering us on with the Dog as Official Team Ed Dog (note the sign around her neck.) I had forgotten to mention the Cheering section to anyone else, so most of the group were wondering who those people were and how they knew we were coming.
On the way back, we stopped in for a photo op and chance to pee.
We had variable weather. It was cool in the morning, and looked very dark and foreboding as we were on our way to the start point at Clock Park in Wolfville. By the time we were at Star's Point it was clear and sunny, we all stripped off our extra clothes in Kingsport and except for the stiff wind sideways on the Port Williams dyke coming back the ride we had excellent riding weather.
The last leg of the ride across the Port Williams dyke up to Greenwich Corner and then the home stretch from Greenwich to Wolfville was the most grueling part of the ride. Besides wind and hills, I could feel my energy waning, and there were a few fleeting thoughts of just stopping and sticking out my thumb to a passing car. Beer kept me going but in my darkest thoughts, I remembered that the Port Pub was closer than Paddy's. I was trailing behind, if I stopped would anyone notice? When we rolled in to Wolfville at 12:10 we all headed for the pub, for the reward of a fry up breakfast and beer.
Between Toronto and Nova Scotia we raised around $5700 for the Princess Margaret Research Foundation. Thanks for all your support.