Bruce celebrated his 75th birthday this week. It's really hard to believe that he's lived for three-quarters of a century. For his birthday, I gave him a new backpack since his old one fell apart. I should have taken a picture of him from behind, however, because you can't really see how great this backpack is.
We decided to spend the day hiking in Garden of the Gods. It's a gorgeous place to hike, but unfortunately, I forgot that most school kids had the day off after Easter (Bruce's birthday), so the place was packed. On top of that, the UV was off the charts that day, so even though I was wearing a hat, I ended up with a raging headache. Even Charlie was looking for shady spots before we got back to the Jeep.
Two days later, Teresa celebrated her birthday. Usually, I'm in KC around then so we go out for ice cream, but this year I sent her flowers instead. They're pretty, but ice cream would have been tastier.
Even though we had a really mild winter, 3 of our plants in the backyard didn't come back. I bought some replacements at Lowe's and Bruce put them in (with Charlie's supervision). We're under massive water restrictions this summer, since we didn't get much snow over the winter. So, Bruce installed individual drip heads on each of the plants. That should be much more efficient than sprayers, especially since the low humidity dries up any airborne water before it hits the ground.
Our bike club president, Bob, had heart surgery a couple weeks ago. It only took the surgeon an hour to replace an entire heart valve. Bob was home that evening and back riding his bike a week later - amazing how far medicine has come. I bought him an EKG cycling t-shirt for a get-well gift.
While the bike club has been on hiatus, I've been doing a little maintenance on my new ebike. Carbon fiber bikes are notorious for being uncomfortable to ride, because they have no shocks. So, I went on Amazon and found a bike seat with a built-in shock in the stem. To test it out, I rode to the Fika coffee shop, did a little sketching, and then rode over to Panera for lunch - about 23 miles total. The new seat was sooooo much more comfortable than the old one, so money well-spent.
