I have recently gotten into Road Biking. This started from my friendship with Daniel Olsen, Mary’s piano teacher. He has been taking me on bike-rides and lending me his old bike. I’ve been in the market for my own road bike and when we sold the condo, we had the funds for it. Lily has been very supportive, and also she has been scared stiff that I will die biking (we know multiple people who have had close family die from road-biking), so I have committed to not bike the Alpine Loop (which has a tiny shoulder) and to research safety practices, and to get good safety gear. Accidents are a real and sometimes fatal thing for bikers and I want to be as safe as possible.
My friend Austin (from Qualtrics enablement) offered to keep an eye out for a bike for me since he researches local classifieds for bikes just as a hobby. He found me a beautiful bike, and would you even believe that the seller was located at Bear Lake? He’s had a couple calls about it, but it seems his distance has discouraged people.
Well, today I went to see him. His name was Gary, and he was the nicest man. We both wore our masks. I recently decided that the definition of a leader is someone who changes culture, and you can’t change culture if you are beholden to culture, so if I want to be a leader, I just need to wear my mask at all times and stop worrying what other people think about me, for example here at Bear Lake where it seems nobody is wearing a mask.
He told me all about his beautiful bike. You could tell he was very attached to it, but at his current home, there are gravel roads, so he needs to buy a gravel bike. He was very cheerful and it was a delight to talk with him. Paying him was very complicated. He didn’t have Venmo, and I tried to pull out the $950 from an ATM, but the limit was $300, and when I went to the second ATM, Chase Bank thought I was a fraud that had stolen the card, so I couldn’t pull more money out (I would have needed a third or a fourth ATM because the second ATM had a cap of $200) and Chase had over a 20 minute wait to talk to an agent, and my call dropped while on hold. We eventually figured out he had Paypal, and I jumped on his wifi to download the app and pay him that way.
I brought home lunch for everyone from a series of food trucks:
Then we all went to Garden City Beach. We are staying just outside of Garden City. The beach was super rocky and muddy, and the rocks were hard on my feet. But we still had fun experiencing the lake and getting wet. The highlight for me was sitting in the water for 45 minutes with Clarissa while she threw rocks (even big rocks) in the water as she babbled sweet sounds to herself completely lost in her own imaginative happy world.
I had a ton of fun chatting with Clark, Swathi and Lily at night while they puzzled. I heard all about Clark’s neighbor who is so handy. His name is Eddie. To give you an example of how handy he is, when a car repair was going to be too expensive, he just removed the engine from his car and figured he could do it himself. Eddie is moving soon, and Clark and Swathi will miss him, especially because he often gives them tips for home and yard projects. I was too tired to puzzled, but I had such a great time talking with everyone.