Slow news week

I didn't have a lot of interesting things going on this week. And that's fine, because I will be busy most Saturdays for the next while. August 22, I will be going to Topaz incarceration camp; August 29, my ward has an outing in Midway; September 5, I will be in Montana; September 12, I'm going to Danger Cave; September 26 is the Restore conference; October 3, I will be at Wasatch Mountain State Park; October 24, I will be in Portland for the Western History Association conference; and November 14 is the Gather conference. That means I'll only be free September 19, October 10 and 17, Halloween, most of November, and all of December. But some of those days I will need to visit Logan, Cedar City, and Moab to complete the Independent Bookstore Crawl.

I went swimming on Monday and Tuesday this week because of the heat, and I went swimming on Thursday because of the rain. Though it flooded in some parts of Utah, there was no flooding where I was/am. At the Thursday swim, I swam 2,000 yards, the most I have ever done. 

I went running on Tuesday. And on Friday, I ran a route that was new, though I had been on all portions of it before. Connected to the Wild Rose Trail is the Eagle Crest Trail, which I pass frequently but have only been on a handful of times, because it is unpleasantly steep. (I thought it was called Eagle Ridge, but I guess they changed the name.) Well, now the new Bonneville Shoreline Trail (2021) cuts through the Eagle Crest Trail, so I was able to take BST and then go up the upper portion of Eagle Crest, which bypasses the excessively steep portion. This Friday run was more than five and a half miles total. 

And Saturday, of course, was North Canyon, which is my default for weekends because it's shady and not too busy. One portion of the trail is an aspen grove where there is an aspen stump directly in the trail, and there's some kind of mushroom growing on the stump!

Back in 2020, when I went up North Canyon almost every day, I began piling up rocks to block an unofficial shortcut on the trail. Six years later, the piles are substantial. 

This is the lower portion, and I think some of the rocks have washed away over the years from storms.

This is the upper portion. I can no longer toss rocks on here, because there are almost always lizards on the rocks, but they run away before I take the picture. I have to gently place the rocks down.

In February I took my bike in for a tuneup, which improved the brakes and the right shifting, but it made the left shifting worse. I took it back in soon thereafter, and the mechanic made some adjustments, but she told me to pedal faster and push the lever harder. That didn't help, and when I did my triathlon in May, I had to go up a hill in third gear because it wouldn't switch to second. So I took it back again yesterday, and they're going to look at what they can do, though the mechanic seemed a bit skeptical. Am I being fussy and picky? But I think it's reasonable for me to want my bike to work properly. I'm more likely to ride my bike when there's snow on the ground, and as I think about upcoming bike rides, I actually dread it if my bike isn't going to shift properly when I'm going uphill. Sigh.

That's it for this week!