Yard Posies and more out door...

Lots of nifty posies at the new gleaming center spire here at the gleaming towers of the gleaming One Utahdog Center World Congress of the Americas...

Walking Iris

Amaryllis

Some freaky looking Hydrangea thing.  Sorta looks like a Horta (hey that rhymes!)

Rose.  We had 9 on the one bush.  Rose 'Roids.

On to the out door.  Time to admit that this bike will never see dirt...

1988 Rocky Mountain Avalanche

...and admit that this one, like the departed EWR, isn't as fun as it needs to be to unseat the 650B Jamis Dragon.  Even with a new...

...RP23...and 5.1" short rockers...

...fresh rebuild TALAS... 

...and tubeless.  Still feels like the 30lb 5 inch travel bike it is.  It is nice to have a big bike (for me) though, so the jury is out on the Turner, but deliberations are heated.  The RM on the other hand, on the way out.

Different Paths

1984 Chrysler Laser Turbo.  One in a field in Ohio, and one in a diaper-lined OCDer garage in Florida. Neither are the '85 I had in college, although odds are that it looks like the Ohio car, if it survives at all.

Funny to think about how things start in the exact same place, maybe even sharing sweat and work, and then go their own way.

Out door...

Much goings on in the mighty world of business. Here in the filigree and marble lined management suite we are installing new plutonite-charged, iridium-glazed urinals in the women's bathrooms. Hey, you hit the first door available when you're trashed from a crazed weekend of hookers and snorting blow, er, I mean from a hard week of corporate management and responsible business stewardship, and that means if God and his architects who designed these hallowed halls placed the sit-down-marble more conveniently than the stand-up-marble, then its time to renovate. Shareholders would agree. Time to raise capital.

So in a fundraising maneuver, recently departed from the gleaming towers here at One Utahdog Center, World Congress of the Americas:

edit - $151.50

Cane Creek Double Barrel coil from the Turner, which has gone on an air-shock diet.

edit - $250.12

And also from the Turner a Vanilla RLC 9mm QR fork orphaned when a Talas 15QR arrived. Thats right, the Turner has had a double ended diet and lost her coils from both sides at the same time...

...and no that isn't a euphemism for anything to do with hookers and blow.

Henry

We lost Henry today. He was almost 12. This is the most representative picture I could find of him, Christmas 2008. Timid, scared, doleful and confused. He tried to bond and be affectionate, and succeeded for the most part, but just beneath the surface there was always the traumatized puppy that crawled, bewildered, into my lap at the pet store, unwanted and abandoned. Life sometimes isn't very fair. It usually isn't, actually. Henry was in many ways a symbol of that. Floppy and gangly, and dumb as a box of rocks. His previous owners named him 'Duke' and tried to toughen him up and lead him around with a chain. That plan failed miserably and at less than a year old he was a surprise return to the adoption center staff during a pet store adoption day, where we first saw him. Third shelf, huddled in his crate. Wondering what just happened, a situation he was usually in. I asked to see him, and was told he was not for adoption, that he would need to be reevaluated. I asked if he could just come out of the crate and play with us, and the adoption folks agreed, and he made straight for my lap when I sat down on the floor. We brought him home the next week.  

Henry just wanted to be loved. Actually, I don't think he knew what love was. What he really wanted was to have a full belly, a warm place to flop down, and people somewhere nearby, comfortingly close, but yet peacefully distant. 

I hope we provided you with that warmth and comfort. You were a good boy, Henry. We will always love you.