When Kenny and Jenn came over for gaming on Friday, they brought be a very cool Google bike jersey as a gift. I tried it out with the San Fernando Valley Bicycle Club early on Saturday morning, and it worked just fine :-)

The club has an interesting system: each person who shows up to ride goes over to a set of about four envelopes, where each contains slips of paper describing the route and telling the distance. The rider takes a copy and clips it to the handlebars for easy reference during the ride, in order to be sure to make the correct turns along the route.

They have a different set of such envelopes every Saturday and Sunday. There must have been some 60-75 people there to ride, which surprised me. Everyone had typical biker gear. This being my first club ride, I took the easy route as encouraged by their new-rider shepherd.

We rode 24 miles through the Valley on regular city streets, with five of us getting off course early on, so it turned out to be an atypical ride, but fun anyway. Next time I shall take a medium-level ride for a faster pace and longer distance and more of a workout. This short one at only 13 mph didn't even get me into a sweat after two hours.

Shelley and I drove over to Montrose in the afternoon on Saturday to wish Jenn well in her martial arts test. Unlike Kenney's, hers last many hours, and has no viewing area, so we did not stay for the whole thing. We browsed and ate food at a local street festival there for a couple hours then went to Larry's for gaming. We played only Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame, which I won handily because of a lot of good luck at the beginning. (It's not great as a game, because of lack of balance.)

Sunday we did a lot of make-and-mend projects around the house and it felt quite good to accomplish so much.

Finally, just before bed, we brewed up a batch of mead. Two gallons, using a desert honey, that we hope to have ready in a few months. It's been way too many years since the last batch, and now that Shelley's drinking she'll be able to share it with me.

Here's a flower from one of Shelley's new rose plants:



Good night!