Whats been going on

Whats up slacker? That's what I've been saying to myself about blogging lately. This is what tends to happen with these blogging adventures of mine. I start off great and then as time progresses my blog digresses. Well a lot has happened in the past week or so since I last checked in. It finally stopped raining for one. I mean it seriously rained for about 2 weeks straight and it was downright miserable. The world didn't end like some were predicting. The Giro d'Italia is still going on, yes its still going on. The seedlings are finally outside hardening off and are going in the ground Saturday. Our favorite outdoor bar opened for the season! Yay for beers overlooking our local golf course which in turn overlooks the LI Sound. Its pretty sweet. And I survived the trip into NYC for Maifest with Caroline and Erica. Great day hanging out on the Hudson River drinking German beer and having fun. Yikes I probably should have kept my sunglasses on for this pic. Geez open ya eyes girl! Some pretty intense looking clouds rolled in so we dipped outta Pier 81 and headed across town to Times Square to check out some of the loonies. It was Judgement Day after all so we were bound to find some kinda scene.
OK well that wasn't hard! But then again its NYC and its Times Square so anything goes! Man I love NYC for all its kookiness and craziness. Theres no other place like it in the world and I wouldn't trade growing up in its shadow for anything! As much as I love the mountains and the slower life people live up north and out west, I have to say that this is where I belong. Which brings me to my last piece of news. We signed a contract on a house today. Yep right here in the town we both were born in, grew up in, and guess what? Its 4 houses away from our current location. Needless to say the inlaws are thrilled. Hubby couldn't even make it off his childhood street for Pete's sake. That's what this town tends to do. I'm not going to get into too much detail about the house just yet because we are still waiting for the sellers to sign the contract and then we have to work out financing. So there are still a lot of "ifs" but we cut a rather large check today and met with the lawyer so we're moving along here. Keep your fingers crossed that this whole thing works out. I'll explain more later on like in mid August.

Rain Rain your Making me Insane

The weather has been absolutely awful these last 3 days. It has pretty much been raining non stop and at times its been literally puring buckets. Its nice that I don't have to water the garden but I'm also a bit worried that this rain is just a bit too much for my infant garden to handle. Everything is just sopping wet. At least all this rain is forcing all the remaining pollen and green crap out of the trees. My patio is completely blanketed in it. I haven't even been able to get outside to check on things since the weekend so I have no idea whats emerged. I really hope this weather turns around soon because I really need to plant the seedlings soon and I haven't been able to harden them off outside either. Oh well, unfortunately I'm going into NYC Saturday so I won't be able to do any work out there. What the heck am I saying unfortunately for? I'm actually going to a Maifest which a German festival that celebrates the onset of spring. And we all know what those German's are good for. Beer, schnitzels and pretzels. Not too mention Liederhosen and om pah music. I'm going with the girls Erica and Caroline so we're looking forward to our day out sans guys. And with the exception of a few concerts I haven't been out in the City for a day time adventure since the NY Yankees ticker tape parade back in 2009. At least that's the last time I can think of off the top of my head. Anyway its time to check out so I'll sign off with a few photos of my soaked patio.

Here's hoping for sunny skies.

On a better note

Eeek sorry for the rather depressing post a few days ago. As you can tell I like the rest of the cycling community have been pretty upset over the loss of Wouter Weylandt. But life goes on and so did the Giro. Its Friday night at 11pm and I'm watching a replay of stage 7 right now. Other than that I'm pretty beat and I don't have much to report this evening. I did a good deal of weeding out in the garden this afternoon. My onions look awesome and the lettuce is starting to emerge as well as my peas. Last weekend I planted some pumpkins and gourds and I put in my green beans. That pretty much leaves my seedlings left to go in. They still seem kinda small so I'm not sure they will survive out there yet. I'm going to start hardening them off outside this week and then I'm going to put them in next weekend. I've also been working on a golf club cover for one of my friends. He's a huge Grateful Dead fan and asked for a Steal Your Face cover. Love it! He always challenges me with my crocheting. Last summer he asked me to make him NY Yankees club cover. He's got good taste, and the NYY cover is a huge hit down at our golf course.

Anyway if you get the Universal Sports channel I suggest you put it on sometime over the next two weeks and catch some of the Giro. They head up into the mountains next week and those stages are the best. The scenery is amazing and it brings back so many fond memories of my various trips to Europe. Each time I was over the pond I was high up in the mountains. Here's an old photo I just found from my first time over there. I'm at Monte Rosa in Italy, just like where the Giro is going on. Man look at those mountains. So majestic! Well as they say in Italy. Ciao!

Thoughts on cycling

In case you didn't already know my husband is the 3rd generation owner of our town's local bicycle store. So bicycle riding is a pretty huge factor in our simple little life. I'm also proud to say that I was into mountain bike riding before me and the hub got together. I had always done some "trail" riding around my town as a kid with my dad and then when I lived upstate I did some more "aggressive" riding with my college beau on several occasions. So by the time I moved back home I was pretty stoked on mountain biking. So when Rick and I reconnected (since we had already dated back in middle school) I was pretty pumped on the fact that his family owned our town's bicycle store. I mean rugged Long Island girl marries into bicycle store owning family?? Jackpot!! But don't get me wrong, we're not millionaires by any means. Our little shop struggles like hell especially when it comes to competing with the big box stores that can sell bikes at a fraction of what we sell them at. But at the same time those big box stores can barely assemble one of those bikes and they sure as hell won't take them back for repairs. So that's where we come in. My husband's grandfather opened the business back in 1964 as part motorcycle part bicycle store. It eventually morphed into just bicycles by the time my father in law bought the business but there is still a huge part of our business in motorcycle repairs. We are super happy to say that we are one of the oldest continuous family owned businesses in our town. Its kinda scary though because owning a small business these days is HARD!

But anyway where I'm going with all this is that me and hubby are very much into bicycles. He commutes to work each and every day via bicycle, we own 12 bicycles between the two of us and we spend a good portion of our summer and fall weekends racing them. We also enjoy watching competitive bicycle racing like the Tour de France and lesser known races like the Giro d'Italia and the spring classics such as the Paria-Rouboix and Tour of Flanders. May is the month in which my favorite race the Giro d'Italia takes place so I've been watching very sneakily at work (since its on live between 8-11:30am US time) and then what I don't catch I watch later at night. So Monday I was watching at work (ssshhhhhh don't tell anybody) when suddenly there was news of a terrible crash involving a rider. Well anybody that watches professional cycling knows that not a single day goes by during these 3 week long races where a rider doesn't get f---ed up. And its part of the sport and its part of the reason why we love it. As sick as it sounds. But anyway it turns out this poor lad from Belgium on Monday clipped a low wall while descending the Passo de Bacco in Italy going about 50mph and was thrown probably about 30 feet from his bike landing on his face which tragically resulted in his death. Absolutely horrifying! I mean one minute this young guy (Wouter Weylandt age 26) is stepping off his team bus in the morning in his brand new team kit ready for a day on the bike and next thing he's laying dead in the middle of the road of some mountain pass in Italy. I'm sorry if I'm being kinda blunt on this whole thing, but that's pretty much the reality of all this. And I've been deeply saddened and troubled by this poor innocent cyclist death the past few days. It just goes to show the extreme risks cyclist and athletes in general go to in order to be the best. And to make it all the more worst this poor cyclist's girlfriend is 5 months pregnant with their first child. God help them. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

So this cycling tragedy really shook up the cycling world. And it shook up my world too because each and every morning my husband wakes up at 5:30 am and heads out on his bike for 30 miles on the crazy roads of LI. And every morning by about 10am I start getting super stressed when I don't hear from him. Usually its because he's at work by that point and too busy, but still I end up calling him like a psycho stalker because I can't focus on my own work thinking the inevitable. Needless to say we've been lucky so far.

Out on the trails during races though.. well that's a whole other story. My husband Rick is fearless. I don't know what it is but he's missing that "maybe I should take it slow" gene or something. Hands down he has No Fear. Just like those t-shirts from the 90's haha. So sure when it comes to racing that's great because he ends up winning so many of his mountain bike races because of it. It makes me think though because these professional cyclists who are descending these mountain passes in the Alps of Europe have to be missing that same gene as my babe. So I worry that at some point he's going to have a major crash and end up getting hurt too. Now he's had his fair share of crashes, but being a mountain bike racer myself so have I. But still he goes way faster than me and hits way crazier lines than me. Truth is, I'm not embarrassed to get off my bike and walk down or over stuff I'm scared of.

Ok Ok I'll stop with my worrying so much here. I just have a lot of emotions going on over Wouter Weylandt's death. And I can't help but be able to relate a bit of those worries I feel every day with this tragic event. I'm going to sign off now so that I can watch today's stage of the Giro but I'll leave you with some photo's of Rick's fearlessness. Yikes! Good Night Friends.

Crashed out of the 2010 World Cup at Windham Mountain with a taco'd wheel.
Going over the handlebars at the Saratoga Spa Cyclocross Race. Ouch.

Oh and its not just cycling that he's fearless at. Yeah he'll go ahead and launch a rock off some steep ass slope that I could barely even ski down for gosh shakes. It was so high up that those mountains off in the distance are the La Sal Mountains of freakin' Utah. We were in freakin' Telluride Colorado. Sigh... thats my babe!!

RIP Wouter Weylandt 5/9/11

Saturday Fun

It's Saturday night and I'm sitting home fully beat and overly ready for bed. See last night I stayed out way too late for my friend Michael Jordan's birthday. And no its not the Michael Jordan that everybody on Facebook today thought it was. Its my Irish red headed friend Michael Jordan not #23 Air Jordan we all fantasize about. In fact my Michael Jordan and I have a fun time when we're together because my name is Sharon Jones and theres a great successful soul singer thats super popular right now named Sharon Jones so Michael and I love to tell people that we're the white versions of our famous namesakes. Yes I know we're so lame-o.

But anyway I woke this morning totally disheveled from last night and fully unmotivated. So I managed to make my way out to the garden, got on my hands and knees and plucked out all those damn pink flower pedals that have been making me crazy the past few days. After I satisfied my angst towards those damn flowers I somehow gathered the strength to plant my herbs in that spot I recently created between the almond and peach trees. So in went mint, basil, rosemary, sage and dill. Hopefully they'll survive better than I did today all hungover and such.

After all that I had a date with my folks to play golf so I slogged my way down to our local golf course and played nine holes with the good old parentals. I hate to admit it but I had to stop and beer up my golf bag, yikes thats pretty lame but sometimes only the hair of the dog that bit ya can help ya. I played pretty crappy I'd say but sometimes I'm my worst critic. The sky was amazing though which always catches my spirit. Theres something about a dark grey sky against green trees or whatever that always fascinates me. Here's a few photos proving my point (taken with my phone)

Man what an awesome day. And I got to spend the day with my mum which is great because tomorrow is mummers day not too mention Monday is her birthday. I even got to try out my golf club covers which is good because since my last post I've acquired two orders and I was able to figure out that the way I made mine sucked because they kept falling off my clubs all day. So I was able to recognize the flaws in my current design and now I can make the next pairs for my friends much better.

Anyway its much too late now and I'm finally getting out on my mountain bike tomorrow for the first time this season so I must get to bed. My first mountain bike race is less than three weeks away and like I just mentioned I haven't been on my bike since October. Yikes I'm scared!! Wish me luck. Check ya laterz

OK Trees enough already

So you know how yesterday I was complaining about the flower buds annoying me in my garden? Well that was peanuts compared to what I came out to today.
Gosh I feel like I need a freakin' vacuum to get all of it up. I mean what the heck do I do? Do I rake it or pick it up by hand? Or do I let it just decompose or hope that it blows away? I have plans to plant a lot of stuff this weekend so I'm not sure what the heck to do. Either way I'm finding it mildly amusing especially since I don't remember it ever being this intense back there. Or is it that I'm finally paying a lot more attention to whats going on back there? All I know is that I'm seriously praying that we don't get any major hail storms this summer because a few years ago we had one serious thunderstorm that sent about 2 inches of silver dollar sized hail raining down on us. And it totally decimated the plants I had out on the patio. My one houseplant that was outside that summer has just finally recovered from it. The holes in the leaves were seriously comical looking. Anyway I don't really have much else to share today because I didn't get much done. Thursday nights we stay late at our bicycle store and some friends come down and we order pizza's and we drink. I love Thursdays because of that. I hope your Thursday's are just as enjoyable.

Accomplishing!

Just a quick update on my latest doings. I finished crocheting myself up a set of golf club covers for my woods. I used a hand dyed hand spun orange wool that I have tons of. I purchased this wool from some nice women at the Rhinebeck Wool & Fiber Festival back in October. Its got great texture not too mention how much I love the color orange to begin with. Plus the orange will look so great against the beautiful green colors out on the course.

The number of lines on each cover will let me determine what club is under there. So the one line is for my driver, the three lines is for my three wood and the five lines is for my five wood. My clubs were given to me as a gift from my grandma back when I was 13 so they's pretty old and definitely not so fancy, but they get the job done just fine by me.

And in other news I finally dug up the area where I intend to plant my herbs. I had a bunch of bricks left over from when I initially rearranged the area so I went ahead and made a separate bed in between our almond and peach trees. I turned over the soil, ripped out a ton of weeds, grass and roots and then laid down a good heap of compost. I'm going to plant a lot of stuff this weekend. Its shaping up back there, but the fallen flower buds are kind of getting on my nerves. Makes it look kinda messy right?

And I've got some activity going on if you take a look closer. Some seedlings have made an appearance. Check out my onions
And there's some serious radish action going on too.

The yard is blooming and getting greener each and every day. I'm totally loving making little bouquets to brighten up my rather dark apartment.

I even managed to squeak in a 3 mile run yesterday and a big HUGE 4 miler today! Stoked on that! So needless to say I've been pretty busy lately. Cheers to spring!!

Camping Trip Summary

Well Granola Girl survived another weekend out in the woods. I had a really good time with my sister and my girlfriends who came up Saturday. Let me tell you a little bit about how it went.

We rolled outta work around 2 pm which allowed us ample time to try and cram all our gear into the sis's Nissan Altima. Wow I forget what not having a station wagon is like and I'll never know because I aim to be an owner of one forever. I mean we could have stuffed all the crap we brought and probably not even needed to put the back seats down. But whatever I know so many people think their farty and too family like, but when your constantly traveling to camp, mountain bike or ski having a station wagon is freakin' awesome. Anyway we managed to get off LI before rush hour which is amazing and even up thru the Bronx without any traffic which is even more amazing. So a quick hour ride up the Taconic Parkway later and we're at the campground. I mean we might as well have pulled the car over onto the shoulder and just pitched the darn tent right there because the campground was literally on the parkway. Hmmm not too quiet and relaxing, but luckily our campsite was on the other side of the campground road away from the parkway and on a little ridge that overlooked the rolling hills so the sound of cars whizzing by at 75 miles an hour wasn't as noticeable from our spot. Ok whatever it was totally noticeable but like I mentioned previously, this is car camping, with the non outdoorsy sis and brother in law so I was ready for the worst.

Tents went up, chairs came out, beers were cracked open, rain fly established over the table and we were ready to chill. Cooked up some burgers and corn and started getting a little too hammered. Good thing I thought to grab the rain fly because it ended up raining Friday night so the 3 of us were able to hunker down under it and still stay dry and have some laughs. It was pretty damn cold up there too.

Next morning my 2 girlfriends Caroline and Erica showed up so we got them setup and then headed into my favorite little town of Cold Spring NY for lunch and a stroll amongst some of the antique shops. Here's the cute little restaurant that Hubby and I always eat at when we're in Cold Spring. Its called the Cold Spring Depot and its an old train station that has been converted into a great little restaurant with outdoor seating. Its pretty crazy when an Amtrak train comes screaming by at 75 miles an hour while your eating outside. But what the heck, we got the parkway in the campground and the railroad in the restaurant. Very fitting.

I mean how quaint is this place? I'm not sure how I feel about the bright colored umbrella's though. I mean I am a lover of all things colorful, but I thought it gave the place a kinda circus like feel. It did make it bright and cheery though as we were sitting and eating.

Ahh I don't know now that I'm thinking about it. I couldn't help but feel like I'm at the Carnival waiting for the merry go round. Regardless the weather was a totally ten and we fully enjoyed ourselves. We then stopped at an antique shop where my sis and Caroline got coerced into buying the five dollar mystery bags. Oh those girls!! So we excitedly made our way back up to the parkway.. I mean the campground and settled down to see what the heck could possibly be in those bags. I mean check out the excitement written all over them girl's faces! Well to cut to the chase the bags were filled with complete crap... except for Caroline's. My girl pulled out a Skiing Magazine from 1979 and let me tell you we were screaming with laughter. You see the whole reason I know Erica and Caroline is because we met skiing. I met Erica in Big Sky Montana and I met Caroline in Whistler British Columbia. They are both from LI and they both happen to be ski bums just like me. So imagine the excitement when she pulled that mag outta her bag. It would never had been as great if Laura had gotten the mag so we felt it was fate. I mean come on check this vintage awesomeness out.

Leapin' Liechtensteiners! Get me one of them yellow one piecers man. It don't get much better than that! Anyway to sum it all up we had a wonderful time. The weather held out Saturday night which was great especially since Erica and Caroline didn't have a rain fly for their tent and we had a ton of laughs. I'll leave you with some photos of us girls having fun playing amongst the trees and rocks. Now just sit back and listen to the traffic. Cheers!!

Yay for fiddleheads!!