Mothers & daughters and endangered species

This first one is special to me. I would have published it *somewhere*, even just on my LJ, if they hadn't taken it. It masquerades as an essay about improving relationships between daughters and mothers, but really, it's just an excuse for me to blather on about my relationship with my own Mom which is complicated but very important to me.

Improving relationships between mothers and daughters


And, there's a typo/punctuation mistake in this that I find really embarrassing. I swear that I didn't do it but that the copy editor added it in, but I didn't keep my rough draft, so I'm not sure.

What is the Most Endangered Animal in the World?

First bike ride of spring!

Whee!

I got the bike out and pumped up the tires and went for a ride. Normally, there's a fairly narrow range of temperatures I enjoy biking in, and 59 degrees was pushing it, but it was nice. I always try to make my first ride of the spring short-ish to avoid too terrible a case of "bike butt," so I took our usual short route. The sun flitted in and out of the clouds, and it was good to be outside working up a sweat.

I was working against a breeze and felt like I was really going at a slow slog, but I ended up doing our usual "short" route in about 23 minutes, and that's -with- taking a wrong turn and adding an extra two blocks onto the ride. At one point a couple years ago, that round trip was taking 25-28 minutes, so I guess I didn't slow down that much from taking the winter off biking. I use the exercise bike at the gym occasionally and actually took one spinning class over the winter, but biking outdoors always feels more challenging due to wind resistance, uneven surfaces and so on...