After the first day of our trip, we really broke free of the urban areas around Pittsburgh and got to enjoy some really beautiful scenery.  The GAP trail goes through the Allegheny mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, but the nice thing is that because the bike…

We’ll do a series of blog posts to describe the bike trip we just took in southwest Pennsylvania and Maryland the last week of August. So to start, a bit of background about the trail and what appealed to us about it. The Great Allegheny Passage (or GAP) is an off-road…

I participated in the Chicago Super Sprint triathlon today and had a great time! I had a lot of questions going in (Q. where do I put my glasses while I’m swimming? A. The special needs table. Q. How do I get from the water to the bike? A. Run…

Liam’s classes start tomorrow and he’s been back in Urbana since last Thursday. We stopped at my office on the way where Liam fit in an end of summer 5 minute internship in digital asset management. Here he’s sitting and thinking about metadata. Or just sitting. (Shout out to Courtney…

Miles and I got to visit Debbie, Jeff and Maddie in Florida earlier this month and we had a great time! We arrived pretty late at night, but she was happy to see us when we woke up in the morning. She sang us a lovely song. Maddie really likes…

After his tour of duty in the Mekong Delta, Miles went through some lost years…    Photo by Liam

We’re finishing up a lovely summer weekend here. After years of the delicious challenge that it was to control temperatures on the Oklahoma joe smoker, John listed it on Craigslist (to immediate response!) and went the Big Green Egg route. The BGE is a more otimized smoking, grilling and cooking…

It was a big week for birthdays, first Debbie on the 24th then Liam and Kathleen on the 26th. Happy birthday, all! We celebrated Liam’s birthday early so we could take advantage of the weekend, and gave him a cast iron skillet which should last, no pressure Liam, his whole…

We’ve been talking for years about making improvements to our parkway, or strip of land in front of our house and between the sidewalk and street. Parkways in Chicago are an odd bird, not owned by the homeowner but kinda the homeowner’s responsibility. Our parkway had two bushes / small…

We had a quiet 4th of July weekend, starting off with Cindy going for a half mile swim in Lake Michigan, something she’s started doing on a weekly basis! Here she is in her wetsuit:     And here she is setting off, it really is a lovely spot for a…