June 30, 2005

Our money is gone, vanished, missing from the face of the earth. At least that’s what Kris thinks in her paranoid sort of style. The truth is that our money has been withdrawn from our account in Ohio, but it hasn’t shown up yet up here. This is a challenging scenario for anyone with the least bit of paranoia. Kris checks the website for our Alaska accounts on an hourly basis. She did find out that, for whatever reason, the bank in Ohio did not follow our instructions and wire the money. Instead, they issued a check and sent it to our bank. It will probably show up tomorrow.

We stopped at the botanical gardens today. We are trying to learn more plants. We now can identify about a half dozen and are starting to learn our trees. The botanical gardens provided a good display including a 2 mile loop hike with occasional signs identifying the native plants. The mosquitoes were unbelievable.

We went for a mountain bike ride with a local club tonight. It was a challenging ride, with lots of roots. There wasn’t too much up and down, but enough to provide a few challenges. The group was mostly older, which was a pleasant surprise. One of the guys knew Kris from the Internet. We had fun, in spite of horrendous mosquitoes.

One of the riders asked us to drive his car home for him so that he could ride his bike. We did since it was on our way. Would you ask someone you just met to drive your car home for you? It was kind of neat. The first few miles were tough since I was chasing mosquitoes out of his car.

I guess that is the theme of today’s post. The mosquitoes had a great day. It rained quite a bit today, keeping things moist. The clouds combined with the smoke from wildfires burning down on the Kenai Peninsula, keeping the sun from showing. And we hung out in their territory. We used the heavy deet repellant and were still getting bit. On the ride, we just kept pedaling because when we stopped, we got swarmed. We got a great workout that way. In spite of all this, I am still thinking it was a great day.