To go, or not to go, outside and play; or as Darling Bride said, “do you mean not feeling guilty?”
Saturday morning, 10am: Pearl Sue (our pearly white Subaru Forester) is loaded with Poppey (Darling Bride’s Townie e-bike) and Earl Grey (my gray Trek Verve 3 bicycle), snacks, drinks, and a paper map of the Pumpkinvine Trail, a rail trail about 2 1/2 hours of driving away.
Saturday morning, 9am: The new washing machine isn’t handling an oversize load well. The washer is just under a week old. Is it installed, level, all connections tight. Should we stay home until the load is done just to make sure?
- The week leading up: Thinking and talking about:
- The dead shrubs that comprise our front landscaping, entry level construction grade shrubs planted in construction grade soil.
- There is also a dead tree in our front yard, also construction grade and not even planted correctly. Worse than construction grade, perhaps – it is a “Princess Bride” movie grade tree: If Miracle Max came to check on our tree, he would proclaim it to be “mostly dead”; but unlike Westley who was mostly dead but “a big difference between mostly dead and all dead,” our tree shows little difference between mostly dead and all dead. We need to either remove or replace the tree.
- Not even sure if I should be writing about our landscaping, lest our Homeowner’s Association is trolling my online accounts.
- Adult Child 2 and her job search, now on the verge of completing a milestone in her graduate studies – somewhere between moral support and tangible guidance.
- Adult Child 2 also needs a new car, Great Grandma’s Nissan Versa is also “mostly dead.”
- Adult Child 3 and new bed logistics – get an upgraded bed from Nanna and Grandad, get it to AC3’s house, get the entry level creaky bed to Goodwill – at least we took care of that Friday afternoon.
- Wondering if AC1’s bed will fit a mattress upgrade from Nanna and Grandad.
Oh, the anguish of responsibilities left undone!
We leave our neighborhood about 10:30 or so. We drive north, passing by the Monon Trail, the Nickel Plate Trail, the Panhandle Trail, arriving at the Pumpkinvine trailhead and parking in time for a brief lunch. A beautiful spring day with sunshine and little wind. Maybe a good thing this is an all-day trip, we have left our home and our to-do list behind, now getting ready to leave Pearl Sue behind for a few hours.
The Pumpkinvine Nature Trail gets its name from how it meanders, twists, and turns; just like a pumpkinvine does. Used to be a railroad that carried agricultural goods and passengers in northern Indiana. Thanks to some area residents in the late 1980s and early 1990s, today the trail is very well maintained, smooth and wide, and the scenery is beautiful. We passed through farmland, wooded areas, wetlands, and parallel to some roads. This time of the year, the trees are getting their green back, noticeably so. The path is mostly smooth and flat. At the biggest hill on the outskirts of farmland, Darling Bride passes me with the help of electric pedal assist, and on the way down I pass her in kind. How to tell someone you are in Elkhart County without telling them you are in Elkhart: At one point a barn, bison, and a Recreational Vehicle manufacturer’s lot full of RVs were in sight at the same time.
We bicycled 10 miles northeasterly to arrive at Krider Gardens in Middlebury,
We took a break. Krider gardens originates from a landscaper from the city who exhibited a garden at the 1933-1934 World’s Fair in Chicago. After the fair, the garden came back and was restored after some neglect. The garden includes walkways, various structures, botanical garden greenery, small pond and waterfall, picnic areas, modern restrooms, a gazebo, drinking water, a swing arbor, and more.
The trail and gardens were busy but not crowded. Enough tail wind breeze to help push us back, and we stopped for ice cream along the way. Eventually, we returned back, continued onward into the city, but quickly decided we did not want to do that and finished back at the park. By the time we returned, the parking area was full to overflowing. A lot of people like this destination trail and it was well worth the trip.
After dinner at Texas Roadhouse (sweet potato and salad were wonderful, sirloin a bit dry and chewy) we made it back in time to cycle the dishes and laundry, then bed time and ready for Sunday church and rest. As it turns out, Sunday’s sermon was the Matthew chapter 6 passage about “do not worry.”
It was great to leave the concerns of the day behind and finally get to a destination rail-trail with my Darling Bride / best friend / bicycle companion, and looking forward to the next ride, maybe Nickel Plate this weekend.
Back to it now, time to think about moving along the mostly dead shrubs, tree, and car in favor of new and living replacements. Back to work in the corporate world – “…I’ve got so much more to think about / deadlines and commitments / what to leave in, what to leave out…,” as Bob Seeger sings in “Against the Wind – ”
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2vRsEC65NTA?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
Back to helping Adult Children wherever we can. Back to giving this online writing ministry thing a go.
When and where do you have to give yourself permission for rest and relaxation?