Breaking away

Sunday I had the good fortune to bring together two things I've been wanting to do for a long time: exercising on a bike and strolling through the woods. M³ has been meaning to get a bike for a while now, and since he frequently hosts visitors during the summer, he thought it would be worth it to buy two. I was late getting to the Forest Park station for our rendezvous, but it was just as well for two reasons: It was a chilly day and we didn't want to overdo it during our first time out. So it was good that we were out in the afternoon sun and wouldn't be tempted to stay out too long.

We ate a generous lunch and then spent some time tinkering with the bikes. Even with the seat pushed all the way back, mine still felt a little short, so we may pop into the shop some weekend to see what other adjustments we could make. Once we felt comfortable tooling around M³'s cute little subdivision, we took them across York Road to Graue Mill. There was some hippy-dippy event going on near the entrance, so we wove between organic diaper booths and beBirkenstocked seniors, plugged our ears to the siren call of a Heart tribute band, and plunged into the unknown.

It's a cute little park, maybe five miles of well-maintained asphalt and gravel trails along a broad slow mill creek. We wended our way across all three bridges, down the one and only hillock (whee!), and into the wildflower garden. That was a real treat. I've so seldom been hiking in Illinois that I don't even know the local woodland wildflowers. I saw some I recognised immediately (e.g. spring beauties, mayapples, buttercups) and others whose names I had to read off of the handy plaques. My companion was quite taken with the Virginia bluebells, and we were both fascinated by the bellwort.

We took it all so leisurely that after a couple of hours we'd done less than eight miles. Even so, our legs felt like jelly and we worried a bit about the aches and pains that would greet us the next morning. We awoke to...well, not nothing, but nothing out of the ordinary. M³ is now stoked to go for 10. He tells me that it's only five miles each way to Brookfield Zoo through Busse Woods, which makes it a perfect candidate for our next outing. Maybe I will finally be able to hold my own against my older brother in Florida this summer!

Vil du huske?

All the time I've worked here, I've felt a peculiar resentment of interlopers into the staff restrooms by my work space. At times, I've had to fight off an urge to ask someone, "Do you work here?" But I never did because, what the hell, it's not like I ever have to wait for a fixture. And how are they supposed to know? There's no sign at all on the outer door (see, telling patrons where things actually were wasn't part of the architect's vision) and if the diminutive "Staff Men" sign at the upper corner of the doorframe were any more understated it'd be subliminal. Now it's moot: Rather than invest in a simple sign that says "Staff Only" for the door to the back hallway--a measure that would've chased off all but the most brazen offenders--my superiors decided to plump for a passcode lock. (For extra fun, it was installed and operative before anyone in my division was told the code.)

As one of the early adopters, I had the joy of spreading the code to my colleagues, and it delighted me to hear the range of mnemonics they came up with. It's four-digits--readily interpretable as a Gregorian year--plus an asterisk, so candidates are plentiful. I immediately plugged it into Wikipedia and looked at the list of stars born on that date. One of them was famous enough that anyone would recognise his name. You could go so far as to say he's at the apex of rock royalty. So, as I went about spreading the digits, I mentioned him to everyone as a possibility.

No one took up the suggestion. Pablo plumped instead for a rugged character actor born the same year. His name said nothing to my Thuringian coworker, so I gave as an alternative a celebrated Austrian soprano; she held out for a tenor and settled for a baritone. The third member of our small section said she'd never forget it because it was the title of a Rybakov novel. Two of the women in the larger department had a parent born that year. The department head said, "Wasn't that the old address for the building?"