~18 miles @ ~11.5 min/mi

Insomniac roosters crow in Mom's neighborhood. At the corner of Hog Eye and Blue Bluff it's light enough to read street signs. On Bloor Rd a singlet-clad lady with Texas-sized hair, bound up high with a pair of sweat bands, walks along the side of the asphalt. Her nose is buried inside a paperback mystery novel, The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson. "Need anything?" I ask, and offer to share water or sports beans.

"No thanks, I'm fine," she replies. "My truck's just up ahead." Must be some pinko-intellectual. Evidence, besides taking exercise and obvious literacy: she has an Obama sticker on her vehicle and the gun rack is missing.

Soon thereafter a big jackrabbit pauses to watch me pass. The liter of lime-flavored seltzer water that I carry is running out at mile ~10 when I spy a cyclist's squeeze bottle lying in the grass by the shoulder of the road. The water in it is a bit moldy, but in my dehydrated state tastes great.

On Desau Rd the School Zone speed limit is a brisk 50 mi/hr. I pause to photograph it, risking a $200 fine for using my cellphone there. One more photo op comes at mile ~16, plastic flowers on a memorial cross. It's in Davis White Northeast District Park, near Loyola Lane. Based on the word "EFREN" on the cross it's likely in honor of Efren Gonzalez-Rojas Jr, who died near here in a 2012 car accident when he was run off the road (see [1]).

Pace overall is steady, thanks to cool-for-summer weather and morning clouds. The route includes a circumnavigation of Lake Walter E Long. It was called Decker Lake 50 years ago, when my first and last attempt to learn to water ski took place there. When I get home, Mom is taking a nap, so I do some Taiji in the driveway for 20 minutes to cool down. A passing cyclist says, "He's doing T'ai Chi!" to his buddy. I wave at them.

Runkeeper and Garmin tally the time and route.

^z - 2014-08-03