Trippin' with Susan Straley

Greetings from the shade of my kitchen in Inverness, Florida, In two weeks Steve and I are flying to NY to watch the solar eclipse and visit his family.  This weekend they got seven inches of snow!   I can't remember if I purged my winter boots when I was cleaning out my storage or if they are stored up in Steve's attic.  I guess I will have to do some searching before I buy a pair.  We might even do some skiing or snow showing in the Adirondacs while we are there! As you can tell from the title of this post, we made it home from our bicycle ride.  I apologize to Steve, as I did not spend a lot of time planning this trip, I guess. And our motels turned out to be a lot further apart than I had expected.  We didn't always follow the Google path.  So we had three days in a row of higher than planned days.  50-ish.  And me on a new-to-me bike seat.  Let's just say, the pain made me wonder at times why I ever thought this would be fun. Steve was a great sport, though.  A rea

 Greeting from Lake Mary, Florida, Last night after I wrote to you, Steve and I walked the side walk and trail to the Honeysuckle.  There we ate dinner.  Bruce will be glad to know we broke our streak of bad luck picking places to dine.  This was yummy.  With spicey green beans, cornbread, black-eyed peas, steamed cabbage, and sweet potato tots for me and catfish and cheezy grits for Steve,   home style southern cooking. When we arrived back at the B&B it was all lit up.  Nice! I use Google maps with the bicycle level turned on to map our rides.  Most the time the routing is spot on.  But I had a hunch when we got to the end of the Spring To Spring Trail, that it was putting us on the road when it didn't need to.  But that was later in the day, let me start from the beginning.  We departed shortly after sunrise. It was a cold morning but by 9 am we were starting to peel off a layer. We encountered a group of cyclists doing another ride we want to do, the River to Sea Loop.  The

Greetings from Inverness, Florida. For those of you reading this in the future, in this week in time, the Republican primary elections are underway.  Donald Trump vs Nikki Haley are in a race to be the nominee for the Republican candidate for President in 2024.   Birders are talking about an absense of the normal amount of birds at their feeders.  Someone said an unusual circling of red-headed ducks was observed over the Mackinaw Bridge in Michigan. The period of inflation following COVID has slowed way down to almost normal levels, unemployment is down to about 4%, and the murder rate is down.  That is all good news. In Florida we have had a long stretch of colder weather and cloudy skys.   When the sun came out today with temps in the 50's 60's and 70's, we were very happy. The picture below was taken on a ride on a day when the temps were between 45 and 55 during our ride. We were pretty bundled up with long underwear and layers.  We joked that folks up north, experienci

 I love that you are with me in spirit right this moment.   I feel the glow. A neighbor at my RV Park who is a Florida Gator fan got this cute Christmas Decoration from her Gransdon.  It lights up at night. May you be blessed with some pain-free days and good nights of peaceful sleep (can you tell I am getting old?), lots of warm hugs and laughter, positive thoughts and good news, and of course fun, fun, fun in the next few weeks as we slide into 2024.  Time seems to go faster and faster as the years go by.   Tonight, Steve and I are hosting our first Christmas Eve party together.  We have some of his friends from his neighborhood coming, and some of our bicycle friends are coming.  And even, Joan who we met briefly in North Carolina at Oscar Blues Brewery is coming with her son from Zephyr Hills, FL!   We attended another large Christmas Party with many of our biking friends in attendance.  We did a white-elephant gift exchange of $10 gifts.  Steve got these cute socks. We had a littl

 Happy Thanksgiving!  I am grateful for you, friends and fans and fun folks.  Life is much much easier when surrounded by support, love and laughter.   I have been telling myself to write to you, I knew it had been awhile.  I just looked at my last blog, it was short and was dated September 23, 2023!    I said I was going to write you again in November, and it is the day before Thanksgiving.  Yay, I made it! My excuse for the long delay is traveling south and then reconnecting and having fun in Inverness, FL.  I also have been using writing time to dabble at writing book three.  Don't hold your breath, it appears that doing fun things with friends has a higher priority. You'd want to shoot me if I tried to tell you all that happened between then and now. Last I wrote I was still at Steve's New York home.  Remember, we had decided not to do the GAP and C&O Trail ride because it just seemed to be too much for the time we had available.  His mom was in rehab after having a