Sure signs of spring

1.) The sea gulls/terns are circling noisily overhead. It's "hooligan" (eulachon) season and the "dippers" have been busy so the gulls are looking for their lunches. Always wondered where the silly things went in the winter. My neighbor likes to toss leftover bread, cereal, french fries, etc. out into our road so the gulls will come. I hate that because they make a mess of the cars and such. I figure it'll stop when her girls are all grown and gone . . . maybe.

2.) I've changed over my studded tires to my all-weather/summer tires. Holy cow! The price for that goes up every time, too. Or at least it seems so to me. $14.50/tire this time. I need to get rims for the extra tires and then the price will be a bit less - of course, I have to factor in the price of the rims, too, huh?

3.) I'm taking outside walks again. It started last week with three days during my lunch hour - walked a bit further each day until I was walking a tad over 2 miles in about 40 minutes. There are a couple of long hills in the route I use, so it is a pretty good workout. A co-worker joined me this week. Her comment after the first time was "you move pretty fast for a woman your size." She's right. I took it as a compliment. And, because of the extra mileage and such I dropped a bit over 5 pounds this week alone. My end of the month weigh-in is gonna be good, I'm thinking.

This morning while the tires were being changed I got my walk in early. Measured it afterwards and found that I had walked 2.8 miles in under 40 minutes - no hills. Heh.

4.) The street sweepers are out in force - they are preceeded by a water truck which wets down the sandy sidewalks, then they go along and pick up a lot of the sand from the winter road folks.

When we first moved to Alaska the road maintenance people allowed the ice to build up on the roads - the only time that was nasty was during spring breakup and your tires would start to sink down through holes and slushy to the pavement about 12 inches below. Nowadays they scrape to the road and then sand because of the black ice that happens. All of that sand is then thrown up onto the sidewalks and into the grass the next time the snow plow comes through. So, they are clearing off the sidewalks.

5.) The bikes are now out of storage and safely tucked into the garage. Yay! I am thinking about taking the 750 over to the office today to show to our receptionist who has expressed an interest in purchasing it. We want to give her first dibs, but hubby also has someone interested in buying it.

I hope to get the 1100 out for a spin today as well. It looks like we may get some rain, but I don't mind that so much. It has been a looooooonnnnngggg time since I've been out and I'm itching to do it.

Hope your weekend is a great one.

Posted by Purplemoose at April 23, 2004 09:41 AM