Hard news

I am going to post briefly here, about some news of note in my life, for context. This past week, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. We don't know what stage, yet. One of the harder parts of the process to deal with, the whole not-knowing. Surgery to remove a section of his colon on Tuesday, CT scan results soon. I have to wonder, does it feel strange to have a lot of people inquiring into the detail of one's bowel conditions? Probably. I, for one, am going to stick with an emphasis on Poop Strong. I know we could all cry into our teacups, and maybe that will happen at some point. But for now, Poop Strong.

What I DO know is that it makes me remember how important my father has been in my life, and how much I love him.

Then cue all of that thinking about one's mortality and such. Plus some thinking about how amazing the human body is, in its capacity to do so many different things, from thinking to building things to riding a bicycle incredible long distances.

Plus, I would say my dad is at least partial inspiration for the Eat-Poop-Ride concept.

Re-routing

Today it was time to figure out how the new routes to the grocery store and bLowes will go. I'm starting to agree with J and K about Palasota Drive, one of the major connecting road options out of here. It's obnoxious, and it can be a whole lot easier to just head towards downtown Bryan on Beck instead. I want to call Palasota an "east-west" road and Beck a "north-south" road, but that's actually all relative to "Aggie North," the axis created by Texas Avenue. This is...a special place.

Grocery shopping was no big deal - just 4.5 miles down to Brazos Natural Foods, then retracing my steps to stop by the Farm Patch and the H-E-B which used to be a half-mile from the Villa Maria house.

bLowes and Village Foods, on the other hand, required more extensive rerouting. So I boomeranged my way almost all the way into downtown, and then over to Carter Creek Parkway, which I have heard good things about from other bicyclists.

There were sections of Carter Creek that were very pretty, in that it was a wide, smooth road with little traffic and a decent number of trees arching overhead. I kind of wish I'd had a time-lapse camera so I could give you a sense of the trip, because the architecture was interesting as well - many a palatial Texas home, but some other oddities tucked in here and there as well. Highly manicured yards along most of it. Meh.

I partially struck out at bLowes; I managed to find six additional bike hooks to finish out the bike-hooking project, but couldn't find some of the parts needed to build Worm Bin Bench II. And after I'd gathered some 2x4's and a sheet of plywood and hauled them to the back to the saw, I observed an "out of order" sign on the saw station. Kind of makes me scratch my head a little when a hardware store's hardware breaks*, but there was no way I could get that sheet of plywood and those 2x4's home in the bike trailer without sawing them down to size, so I abandoned that effort for the time being.

The newer routes are longer by about 1.5 miles (one-way). I think this is going to cause me to do even more trip-chaining, to the extent that I am able. I'd rather that than have to spend time in a car.


* I realize that Lowes is not, actually, a hardware store, it's a big-box store masquerading as a hardware store. But REAL hardware stores carry fasteners which can be purchased individually, et cetera. I don't like the Home Despot either, but this was yet another situation that suggested maybe I should have sucked it up and ridden just a bit further so as to actually get the things I wanted.