*crawls out from under my rock blinking in the bright light*
So I'm still alive.... Just been busy with other things that have distracted me from doing more fun self sufficient things. Very annoying I tell you! Well, some of it is, others not so much
Everything has been going well, even if it is crazy busy. I haven't had the time to be able to make another run of canning stuff, which is really annoying. I really want to get some things stocked up, and haven't had the time to be able to do it all at once. My weekends are pretty booked up over the next few weeks, which is going to make it difficult to get it done.
My friend just returned the two cast iron pans to me that he was cleaning up to get the rust off, and delightfully I just found this article:
http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2...ique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/?roostBDI=375678 He attempted to season them with a bit of olive oil, but now I think I'll strip them again and do it this way since this makes a lot of sense.
Only crazy news of late is that I was out with my friend, E on his bike, on my second ride ever, and we ended up laying the bike down. We were coming up to a street on the right and a car was coming down the road we were on very fast, and I think several things happened at once, but when he went to swing into the turn to the right the bike just went out from under us. I've been struggling to ride, it isn't easy at all for me, though this didn't change my fear level. I think I was a part of why we went over, I was totally unprepared to turn to to the right, and I think both of us had our attention distracted by the oncoming car that was moving too fast, and so he didn't prepare for the turn the way he should have. He probably would have been fine had he been alone, but with me on the back, over we went. We weren't going fast, but still slid about 10 feet. The bike pinned my right knee, which also got scraped up. I was (GRATEFULLY) wearing the leather jacket that a friend had given me since I knew that 75 degrees on a bike going 40+ was going to be CHILLY (as it was I was cold, even with the jacket on) and that jacket saved my elbow and shoulder from worse damage. I ended up with a pretty bad scrape on my knee, and smaller scrapes/bruises on my hand, elbow and shoulder. I think my face impacted his helmet on the way down, which is far better than impacting the pavement, which is what I feared when we hit. Our right feet were pinned under the bike when we stopped moving, which meant that neither one of us could get up. He was too far from the bike to be able to move it, and I tried rocking it, but it didn't move. When I realized that he was unable to get up, too, I reached down to the back of the bike and lifted as best I could, which was just enough for him to get his foot out. I didn't have the leverage to lift and move my foot at the same time, he jumped up and grabbed the bike and rocked it back up again. I sat up on the pavement for a second evaluating all the pains to make sure none of them were "broken bone pain" and was satisified. He offered his hand, and I realized that I needed both of his hands to get up, the pain in my right knee was strong enough that I couldn't leverage myself up since that is my "good" knee, and I depend so much on it. He pulled me up and I took stock again as he checked over the bike. Everything seemed to be ok, with the exception that it bent the handlebar a bit, but that could be straightened with a wrench. We climbed back on and headed to his house, which was gratefully only a few minutes away.
When we got there, his mother fretted over him, and his brother and friend were a bit wide eyed. I brushed off the pain I was in wanting to get home to my "good stuff" to treat my injuries. We debated taking his jeep back to my house or taking the bike, and he asked me what I would prefer, and I told him whatever he wanted to do was fine. He chose the bike and as I was pulling the helmet back on his brother asked if I was really going to get back on the bike again. I said I ride a 2000 lb horse, this is nothing. I really didn't have any more or less fear than I did before, which made me happy, but I know I have a lot to work on before I'll be really comfortable and actually ride better on the bike. It is scary to know how much I can influence the bike to the point of wrecking.
Otherwise, things are rocking along. Its a lesson weekend this weekend, and I've only worked him once on the ground. It'll be what its gonna be! As stiff as I am right now there is no way I'm able to work him again before Sunday! I just hope all my scrapes heal up quickly so I feel ok up there on Sunday!
), look at the gutter to get the drainage fixed so that it is no longer a mosquito farm, work on getting the cable buried in the back yard, look at getting some sort of support boards across the top of the cabinets so that I can store things up there and HOPEFULLY get some of these jars out of the kitchen floor, see about getting a shelf built in the corner so that we have a place to store the water jugs a little less in the corner where they get tripped over easily... you can tell I am on a roll! We'll see how much of that we actually get to. He's also going to take a look at the brakes on the truck, and maybe somehow check a few other things since he can do minor repairs.
Twice in one weekend!), then I'll get the mister set up in Storm's stall with E's help, going to make butter and hopefully pemmican, work on the gutter, repair the crepe myrtle, bury the cable, and whatever else I can come up with. Wish EVERY day was like this! Can't wait until we can have our own place where I can run my own schedule and do things like this all the time!!
) today, so I am dragging pretty bad. After E rode Storm, we were hanging around BSing and I mentioned something about vaulting up on him, and E wasn't sure what I meant, so I figured I'd make a futile attempt to do it, which is what I have done every other time. I checked in with Storm to make sure he was going to be ok and stay steady for me, and then put a hand in his mane right in front of the whithers, stepped back, took two steps forward and kicked up and swung almost right up. I had to squirm a bit to all the way up, but that is MORE than I have ever done before. I hugged him when I got up there, and lounged about a little bit, swinging my legs and laying across his back. When I decided to get down, I scooched all the way back and off of his butt. He never twitched an ear the entire time. He has been being SO good lately.
Size wise, I'd say he was probably about the same side as Stormy-13.2 hh.
Riding a bike isn't quite like riding a horse. You need to lean into the curves in a way you can't on horseback.
