Lake Wales Trailway

Saturday morning Danny and I packed up the dogs and headed to Lake Wales for hike #9 in the Trek Ten Trails series. This is the first one that we have done non-asynchronously in a long time. The hike was held at the Lake Wales Trailway and was fairly well attended – mostly by people older than us, but they were sweet, gave the dogs lots of love and made me feel a little less “in my forties”. The mayor of Lake Wales was actually in attendance to give a little history of the trailway, which is a former rail bed and apparently became a political hot potato for some time. The trail is now finished, nicely paved and marked. We were a little disappointed that the scenery wasn’t more “hikey”, but it was a nice walk. We did get a good laugh at a couple of dogs who ran up to bark at us from behind a fence that butted up to the trailway. One was a huge German Shepherd with a deep hearty bark and the other was a smaller dog with a little tinny yipe of a bark. Mutt and Jeff – the contrast really struck us as hilarious. It made me think of how dogs are very similar to people sometimes and I think we have all met the little yipers who is very vocal when they’re hanging with the big dogs. Just smile and keeping on walking…

Bravo! Bravo!

I was driving home the other morning after dropping my daughter off at school.  I approached a school zone and obediently cut my speed to 15 mph.  The cute little old crossing guard man actually turned, took a step toward me, clapped and gave me two thumbs up.  I guess he hadn’t had too many 15 mph-ers that morning.  It was kind of odd, but I did feel rather appreciated.

“Thank you ladies and germs!  I’ll be at this school zone all week!”

Out of character…

I was driving home from work yesterday, just like I do every other weekday. 5-7 minutes, depending on the lights. Well, almost like every other weekday – I took a slightly different route because there was an accident around the corner from my office. I entered my neighborhood, turned onto the street that is parallel to mine and headed toward the corner, which when turned is almost right at my driveway. As I drove up the street thinking of all the things I needed to accomplish during the evening, I noticed a lady walking down the middle of the road. She caught my eye mainly because she was walking up the street ON the street rather than on the sidewalk. She was also hopping along with a cane and had a hole in the back of her shirt. I slowed my car down and stayed a respectable distance behind her. She was very close to the intersection and I didn’t want her to hurt herself trying to hurry out of my way. I assumed that she would turn the corner or cross the road at this point but instead she stopped, looked left and right and then back at me. I waved her on and smiled to let her know that I would wait for her. Instead of turning or crossing, she waved me over to her. I pulled up to the corner and put my window down. The rest of the interchange went something like this:

Me: Hi!

Lady: I think I’m lost. Do you know where Seneca Street is?

Me: Oh, sure. It’s a few blocks down from the other end of this street.

Lady: Oh Lordy! My son told me to get off the bus at this stop – can you give me a ride?

Me: Um… ( I never pick up stangers)

Lady: I promise I won’t murder you.

Me: Sure, hop in. (As long as she won’t murder me, why not?)

She starts clambering in, hands me an envelope which she tells me has her ID in it, gets her feet and her cane safely in the car. I hand her envelope back to her. I briefly think about asking her to put her seatbelt on, but decide against it. As we turn the corner and head back around the block her seatbelt warning signal sounds like a bomb is about to detonate, but she doesn’t seem phased. The next 5 minutes go something like this:

Lady: Do you live around here?

Me: Yes, on this street actually.

Lady: Oh, do you know my son Blue? His real name is Henry but everyone calls him Blue.

Me: No I don’t think I know him.

Lady: Hmm… Well, you look familiar.

Me: OK, I think your son’s street is coming up here on the right.

Her: OK, just go slow. I don’t know the number, but I’ll know the house when I see it.

Me: Allright, just let me know.

Lady: Oh help me Jesus, none of these houses look familiar…

Lady: My son and his girlfriend and new baby just moved here and he said I could come visit.

Me: That’s nice. Well, we’re at the end of the street. Anything look familiar?

Lady: No, just let me out here and I’ll ask someone. Everyone knows my son Blue.

I pull the car over. She turns and looks at me very seriously.

Lady: Do you smoke weed?

Me: Uh, no…

Lady: Oh, well my son Blue sells it. God bless!

With that she shut the car door and hobbled off. I pulled away, smiling and shaking my head. I don’t know that I have ever received a weed buying reference and been blessed in the same sentence. I feel like I am supposed to get something from this experience, but maybe it was just an opportunity to give a lady a ride – sort of a cold cup of water on wheels. You just never know what kind on interesting characters God is going to put in your way on any given day…

4/19/08 Hike

Since last fall Danny and I have been participating in a local program called “Trek Ten Trails“. It’s basically a community initiative to draw attention to some of the cool hiking/walking trails we have in Polk County, FL and to get people off the couch and outdoors. The organized “treks” occur monthly at designated times and locations, but participants are free to hike them on their own schedule. Danny and I made the first couple of group hikes, but have mostly been doing them as we have time – mostly due to our rigorous wedding planning schedule. That’s all behind us now and the newlyweds are free to hike almost any weekend we choose.

Last Saturday we decided to make up the Saddle Creek Nature Trail hike at Saddle Creek Park in Lakeland. It was only a couple of miles from our house and dogs were allowed so we could check this hike off our list, exercise the dogs AND still have plenty of day left to clean the house (woo hoo!)

We headed out the door at approximately 9am. We remembered to bring water, our Trek Ten Trails booklets, digital camera and backpack. Halfway there we remembered we didn’t have our compass, but decided against turning around. We arrived at Saddle Creek Park, found the trailhead easily, found a shady parking spot and hit the trail about 9:20am. At 9:22am we had walked about one minute down the trail, been completely swarmed with huge mosquitoes and walked one minute back to the trailhead. We drove home, got a bottle of bug spray, the compass, made a turkey sandwich and were back on the trail just before 10am.

The trail was actually pretty amazing and enjoyable with a heavy dose of bug spray. There were a lot of ups and downs which is unusual for Central Florida. This site is a former phosphate mine, so the ups and downs are probably man made.

We did get some great shots along the way. As you can see there is quite a variety of terrain ranging from a ridgelike area populated with millions and millions of ferns to more typical “Florida Scrub” areas surrounded by a sea of palmetto. We only saw one snake – we veered off the trail to walk down to the waters edge – I didn’t get a photo of it because I was too busy walking quickly back to the trail where I belonged. Did I mention I have a thing about snakes?

One of our main purposes in our Trek Ten Trails quest is to find all ten geocaches - there is one hidden along each trail. We don’t have a GPS yet, so we have to rely on the written directions. The geocache on this trail was on the east side of the big oak tree near the vehicle turnaround after you hike by three benches. Sounds easy enough – except we didn’t even see one bench on the whole hike. We finished our hike about one hour and three reapplications of bug spray later. We sat under the hatchback of my car, cooled off, watched the dogs lick the water bowl clean and recapped the hike. We were perplexed at not having found the geocache. As we sat there I looked at the trailhead sign which read “Teneroc Nature Trail”. My gaze then wandered to a sign that pointed away from us that also proclaimed “Nature Trail”. My gaze wandered about 100 feet further to a second trailhead sign that read “Saddle Creek Nature Trail”, which I suspect has three benches, a vehicle turnaround and a big oak tree on it…

Ever wonder what dogs think about?

Photo Credit:  Alannah Six

Return to Sender…

A few months ago I had my first experience with a disputed item on eBay.  See this post for details:

http://betsyjanesix.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/46-days46-days

Today I received this item back “Unclaimed” from the post office.  I feel a slight sense of vindication now that I can prove to my buyer that I truly did ship the item, but he probably won’t care.  He didn’t get his book when he needed it and I have 1 negative feedback on my eBay account as a result.  I emailed him today to see if he still wants the book or a belated refund.  I don’t really care which he chooses, frankly.  What I really want is for Buyer:   Joseph from Philadelphia, PA to think that Seller:  Betsy from Lakeland, FL is honest after all.

Why do I care?  I don’t know.  I know I sent the book.  God knows I sent the book.  The USPS knows I sent the book.  eBay/PayPal took my side too.  When it comes right down to it though, reputation is important.

I’ll post an update when I hear back from Joseph…

14 Days and Beyond…

Thanks to those of you who have been following my first attempt at blogging these past weeks. I’m caught up in the last bits of wedding craziness – then a much needed honeymoon getaway. I’ll be back in early April with new posts.

15 Days…

Sometimes it’s not your situation that needs to change – just your perspective…

16 Days…

What kind of cupcake are YOU?

According the Betty Crocker website, if I was a cupcake I would be Bold & Spicy, just like their Chai Latte Cupcakes. Woo Woo!

If you are really bored, or really curious, or really into cupcakes, then click the cupcake above and you too can find out your cupcake persona. You do have to fill out the obligatory info screen and take a 4 question quiz, but it also enters you in a drawing for $500, so maybe you have have your cake and maybe some bread too…

17 Days…

I have discovered a new “weapon” in my arsenal of parenting power – my son’s girlfriend.  This discovery has taken place over several months of noticing that if his girlfriend knew about something I wanted him to do, he did it much faster and actually didn’t give me a hard time about it.

I had my suspicions about the effectiveness of this method, so I tested it.  I told Zach that he had to go the tux shop within a specified amount of time to get measured for his groomsman’s tux.  Normally I think he would have waited until the very last minute allowable and I still would have had to remind him.  I mentioned the tux fitting to Jenny a couple weeks into the process and it was taken care of far ahead of schedule.  Cool!

This week I mentioned a deadline for having his room cleaned – in anticipation of wedding guests – and they both spent yesterday evening cleaning his room.  She got him to throw away things I never could have.  Could it really be that easy?  Is this taking our family-wide passive aggressive epidemic too far?  It does pose me with a slight ethical dilemma, but I’m so happy I don’t care.

So, I’m happy to have a new weapon in my arsenal, but I also know that this is a weapon that is very delicate, should NOT be overused and could self-destruct at any time in a fit of teenage angst.  I guess I’ll enjoy it while it lasts…