To Market I Go

This morning I had to do our usual market ride solo as Barry's back is ailing him.  Here's a photo he took before I left, showing the snazzy red bar tape he put on my bike recently.  The panniers were bulging when I returned; I couldn't have carried another thing!  

Little Dog, Big Smile

Paisley

A nice little trip to Ohio

Barry's mom Sylvia, dad Dean, and Barry

We just returned from a few days visiting Barry's folks in Ohio.  We had a good time and wonderful weather (unusual for Ohio!)  When we arrived late Tuesday afternoon, we were shocked to hear that Barry's dad, Dean, was in the hospital.  He had developed cellulitis (a bacterial infection) in one of his fingers, and it was terribly red and swollen, with the swelling extending into his hand.  I'd never seen anything like it; the closest I've come was a wasp sting on my pinky during college, but that didn't turn shiny and red, just fat and itchy.  So, our first evening in Ohio was spent visiting with him in the hospital, along with Barry's mom Sylvia.

Fortunately, Dean broke out of the hospital the morning after we arrived, and massive doses of antibiotics seem to be doing the trick.  He had another doctor's appointment yesterday and was not re-admitted, so we are hopeful that a full recovery is just around the corner.

One of our goals for this trip was to get a wi-fi network set up in their house and get them set up to use Skype.  For the most part, we were successful, but things were a little more complicated than we realized.  We purchased and installed a wireless router and got Dean's new laptop on the internet.  The trouble started when I attempted to upgrade his desktop system to Windows 7 from Vista.  He had purchased the upgrade software but had not yet installed it.  He gave me the go-ahead, and away I went, though I told him I'd never actually upgraded an O/S before and that I could make no guarantees as to the success of this attempt.

Oopsie!  I didn't even think about the fact that after doing its upgrade magic for hours, Microsoft was going to demand a product key for Windows 7, which was most likely in an email Dean received when he purchased the upgrade.  Whether or not he had printed said email, it couldn't be found nor accessed as we looked helplessly at the "Please enter your Product Key" screen, unable to proceed without it.  I must say, as much experience as Microsoft has with this, they really should warn you at the very beginning of the upgrade process to have your product key handy, because otherwise you are stuck in a no-man's land -- too late to go back to the previous O/S, but no way to move forward.

After googling from my own laptop, I determined that we were definitely not the first hapless would-be geeks to fall into Microsoft's web with this very problem, but the only "fix" was to call Microsoft to retrieve the key.  I suspect that could take an hour or more in their support queue, but hopefully will be doable without a re-purchase.  I left that in my father-in-law's hands and hope that success is right around the corner.

On a happier note and on a completely different subject, their yard was absolutely gorgeous; full of flowers and birds.  Here are a couple of photos I snapped:

This next one was taken on a walk nearby, simply growing along the road.  I thought these were delphinium or penstemon, but upon googling, determined that they were lupine, which you rarely see down south.  So pretty!

We took our Bike Fridays up with us as we'd had a couple of wonderful rides when visiting in the past, and this year was no exception.  We had a gorgeous day for a ride with temperatures only in the mid-70s and abundant sunshine.  We did a 26 mile loop from their house north and quickly into the country.  The route varied from nearly mountainous climbs and screaming descents early on to the flat Ohio & Erie Canal towpath.  It's always fun to ride in new places, and this was no exception.  

Unfortunately we didn't get any photos of the killer hills (which are never very impressive in photos anyway) as we were too busy trying to keep our momentum to stop, but this one was taken right after the really tough part of our ride; it was (nearly) all downhill (or flat) from here!

No worse for the wear!

The following photos are all taken on the towpath, or thereabouts:

A lovely garden where the canal used to be

Pedestrian/Horse/Bike Bridge over I-77...awesome!

Looking down at the interstate and glad we're not on it. 

We came upon Fort Laurens at the end of the towpath and briefly visited the museum.

All too soon it was time to leave on our return trip to North Carolina.  After arriving home Friday night, we tried our first "official" Skype call  between Barry and Dean's laptops, and it worked great!  This is going to be a nice improvement on cell phones with their choppy voice quality, at least as long as our internet connections are solid!