Rest day

I’m in an area of hotels and fast food joints. The restaurant at the hotel next door looked interesting. Google maps said it wasn’t busy. After a 15 minute wait for a table, I waited an hour for a glass of wine – and it took the server two tries to get the right one.

Salad took another 10 minutes. A wood-fired pizza (which I’m used to seeing in a few minutes) was another 20 minutes. It’s a good thing I wasn’t hungry after a 90 mile bike ride. All told, an hour and a half plus to get food, in a nearly-empty restaurant. When I ordered a second glass of wine to go with the pizza, I think they went to stomp the grapes. I had to stop eating so it wouldn’t end up as a dessert wine. The server even said, “There are two drink orders ahead of yours , so I’m just going to pour it myself.” She offered to get a box for the pizza and I said I didn’t want to finish it before the wine came. That seemed to induce her to pour the wine. And the bread basket never came. The words were spoken: “I’ll be right back with your bread”, but that was the end of it. Oh, and the pizza was undercooked. The salad was good. Then they charged me for the wrong wine that I sent back.

The hotel has a washing machine for guest use. Note that’s A washing machine. There are more than 50 of us needing to do laundry. That doesn’t count any other guests.

Instead I checked out the hot tub and went to bed. I awoke at 4:15 and considered the laundry, changed my mind and went back to sleep. I checked again a few minutes before 5 and there was a long line. I went back to bed again, tried the hotel free breakfast when they opened at 7, then walked to a laundromat which was faster and cheaper. As a bonus, it was near a coffee shop. Coffee shops out here aren’t used to anyone ordering an espresso. I’ve found a few that charge 50 cents for an extra shot. If you just order a double espresso, it’s a dollar for the two “extra” shots – versus $5 or so if you add some milk.

When we leave here Monday morning, the overnight low is forecast at 74 degrees, with a high of 110. Our destination (Mitchell, SD) should hit a mere 102 – with a brisk headwind on the way. (For those of the Celsius persuasion, those numbers are ~23, 43, and 39.) The high has been revised upward thrice since I first wrote this. I’ll stop looking. Martha and the Vandellas are in order here.

Before we leave the Badlands behind…Photo by Adrian Amelse. This photo may be on the next half-fast cycling club jersey if the resolution is high enough.

A bicycling chiropractor?

Heat wave!

We got five inches of new snow last night but today it got above freezing for the first time in a month. It was below zero (F) every night for two weeks (and at most, single digits above zero during the day). But now, time to take off the jacket and leave the hat and gloves on the shelf! Bailey (my canine pal) and I went for a walk. Pushing 40 and probably to surpass that tomorrow, it was almost warm enough for passive solar heating from the front porch.

turn it up.

Another day and warmer still. Pushing 50 (10 degrees C), a 70 degree (F) rise in a few days. Used passive solar heat today. I woke up today to a strange site. I believe aliens landed in the night. I found this snow tower in my front yard. It was too dark to photograph (and I had to get to work). By the time I got home it had melted somewhat, but is about 5.5 feet tall and 2 feet square. (A 2 foot carpenter’s square is next to it for scale.) Something about the proportions struck me so I measured carefully and found it to be 66.6 inches tall. I re-measured the sides and found them to be 66.6 cm. Oh, the horror!