DVD, flat tire, Dancing, Spring, and friends

No tree trimming today as I took a break from trimming. Instead I had a few hours left to finish watching the DVD box set of season 4 of the TV show "Six Feet Under". With all my subdivision work last week I had fallen behind on my DVD and movie watching and the box set was due back at the library today.

I finished watching the DVDs and rode my bicycle to the library to return them. I had ridden 3.5 miles down the road when I heard a single snap like someone popping bubble wrap. Strange. In less than a half mile I found my front tire was getting low on air. This was a first for me - I had never heard bubble wrap popping then having a flat tire. I haven't fixed the tire and tube yet so I don't know what caused the flat.

I was 3 miles from home as the crow flies and as the train tracks run for the most part. I walked along the train tracks. I tried to balance my bicycle tires on a rail as I walked. I found that I had to keep looking at the rail to keep my bicycle balanced on the rail and soon gave up. I also had a train come so I had to move well off the tracks to let the 10 car train pass by.

Some time later I arrived home. I fired up the "batmobile" and drove into town to return the DVDs.

I returned home in time to watching the "Dancing with the Stars" TV show. I know, it sounds like a gay thing for a guy to watch a ballroom dancing competition, but I enjoy it and I'm not gay. Go figure. Must have been all those Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies when I was younger. Besides, my Uncle Curt enjoys watching the show. If a longshoreman can enjoy watching the show, why not any guy? After watching tonight's show I can see most of the Stars have their work out out for them in learning how to dance.

What else today? The weather was nice and Spring-like: 62 F, some sun, some clouds, no wind. The snow in the Valley is mainly gone. I only find small patches of snow here and there in very shady areas. Now that the snow is mostly gone I don't see the deer near as much. Before the snow melted the deer would come out as early as mid-afternoon to search for open un-snow covered areas for grass to eat.

The mountains still have plenty of snow and it is nice to see the blue and white of the mountains surrounding much of the Valley. That was why I gave up pushing my bicycle on top of the train track - I wanted to look as the mountains as I walked.

My tulips on the south side of the house as starting to come up out of the ground. A nice sign of Spring.

I've seen some of Hungarian partridges (my "Huns") running around the yard. I'm glad to see many have made it through the winter. Lyle, another neighbor, and I are pretty protective of our neighborhood pets.

Lyle stopped by this afternoon to find out how the Planning Board voted on the River Horse subdivision last Wednesday. As he is an old logger and used to getting up between 3 am and 6 am to go drive a logging truck, he had left the meeting after 9 pm and before the final vote.

The road past my place is breaking up this Spring. Worse than other Springs. The road is just a few inches of pavement over an old gravel road. I can see dirt and mud through the broken areas of pavement. No much of a gravel bed under the pavement.

Near the entrance to my driveway - in the middle of the road - the tree stump had come up a little more. There are two 4 inch holes where parts of the stump poke through the pavement. The road traffic wears the stump down and keeps it from rising too far above the pavement. The County Planning Board and Commissioners keep approving new subdivisions without doing anything to improve the roads. Almost makes me long for the rational government back in North Dakota and Minnesota.

I traded some email with Amy. She gave birth to her first son March 8. I mentioned some about how her house is now with the new owners after she and Grant moved east of the Divide. A couple young men live there now - no feminine touches anymore. Here is the link to a photo of Amy and her newborn from her blog.