Daylight

Here are a few shots I took earlier in the month over on Gwynns Island at sunset. This basket decided to plop down on the beach and admire the views of Hills Bay and the Piankatank River.

I boldly plopped down right beside it and started taking its picture.  The basket really didn't want its picture taken, but I couldn't help myself;  the sun was hitting it just right. Also, I just discovered I love the word "plop."

Even a seagull feather looks better in the evening sun.  

Dawn and dusk are scrunching our hours of daylight like a vice. 

Scrunching?  Really?  

Take Two:  

Dawn and dusk are squeezing our hours of daylight together in a vice-like grip.

This Vitamin-D depraved lunatic deprived individual does not look forward to the cold, dark days ahead which stand between her and spring.

In the meantime, however, she will try to stay focused on the positive aspects of the impending doom and gloom of winter the change of seasons. 

For example:

1.  No ants!  At least not until spring, when they will hijack my house, carry me to the end of the dock and throw me overboard.

2.  No mosquitoes!  

3.  No fiddler crabs!

4.  No ticks!  

5.  No sunlight! No humidity!  Which also means no frizzy hair!

What are some other positive aspects of the November to March doldrums time frame? 

In other news, a few brief announcements:

• The Mathews High School Cross Country teams competed yesterday at King William. As of last evening I had not heard the results for the girls, but the boys won.  Next Wednesday is the District meet in Williamsburg.
• Tonight is Homecoming for Mathews High. Parade, football game, the works.
• The Bobby Stewart 5K will be at Williams Wharf Saturday morning.
• Sandpiper Reef holds its annual costume party next Saturday night at 9:00 p.m.
• Urbanna Oyster Festival is the weekend of November 5th.  
• Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here in three blinks of an eye.
• I guess that means spring and summer aren't really that far away.
• Have a great winter weekend.

Three Things

Step right up, folks, and welcome to another episode of As the World Turns Three Thing Thursday, where I share three random thoughts and you hopefully do the same.

Let's get started.

1. My stockpile of photos pre-loaded onto Blogger is dwindling, and even worse I've not had time to take photos, download and then upload them, which usually takes approximately several months days. Hence, we have the photo above of creek mud and periwinkles Canada geese at sunset, complete with too much glare, one leg missing, and one neck contorted into a water fowl pretzel.

In short, this photo represents the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay Woman Barrel.

2. This weekend there's a Relay for Life event at the high school, and our one and only Re aka Ann Marie needs sponsors. Please visit her site for info on how you can participate in the fight against cancer. In return, she promises to make some of her award-winning deviled eggs. Plus hush puppies. And fried fish. And macaroni salad. And succotash.

If she tells me she can fry chicken I'm going to have to put up a For Sale sign and move down to Bavon in spite of the infestation overabundance of insects and fiddler crabs.

3. This morning as I was counting the minutes of my life wasting away behind the steering wheel commuting to work, NPR had a piece on roller derby and how it's still alive and well with over 500 (!) leagues worldwide. I was born with no other purpose than to be a roller derby-er and would like to know where and when I can sign up. Do you they accept 45-year-olds with graying hair and Vitamin D deficiencies? Perhaps I can get the makers of Boniva, the osteoporosis medication, to be my sponsor.

Now it's your turn. Please share three things or more things. Random or related. Good or bad. Funny or sad. Mindless or cerebral.

Whatever you want.

Tour de Chesapeake

Above is the historic Mathews Court Green on a recent Saturday morning just before the Farmers Market opened up. The buildings which make up the court green date back to approximately 1795, the same year I was born.

While that may be a slight exaggeration, try telling that to my Vitamin D deficient blood. This is a topic for another day, though, this whole Vitamin D thing.

Anyway, the stately white building in the background has been many things over the years: a hotel; the home of 1930s MGM "Goldwyn Girl" Toby Wing-Merrill; and a daycare. Now it's a lovely restaurant, bar and B&B called the White Dog Inn.

What I really wanted to discuss today, though, is Vitamin D deficiencies have been associated with all kinds of horrendous diseases, and I'm convinced I have all of them this weekend's Tour de Chesapeake.

Tour de Chesapeake is an annual Mathews County event in which every single bicyclist this side of the Mississippi, north and south of the Maxon Dixon Line, descends on our nice, flat, below-sea level, fiddler crab infested roadways. They bring their children, aunts, crazy uncles, siblings, step siblings, Sunday School teachers, and BFFs--and they're all wearing spandex and helmets. On bikes. In the middle of the road.

It's more than just a little frightening when you're driving down to the court house to pick up a loaf of bread and you're not expecting the onslaught of bikes, helmets, fanny packs and brightly colored spandex.

However, this is a fun event for the bikers, and a portion of the proceeds are donated to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The participants also bring a great deal of revenue to the local businesses, which we love. Then they leave. And we love that too. Hi, bikers! We really do love having you in our county, honestly.

The bike routes range from 20 to 80 miles in length. I didn't know there was eighty miles to be found in Mathews.

Best of all for us locals is there will be music. And food. And music. I believe something is planned for Saturday night next to the very court green pictured above, however the Tour de Chesapeake website's information is from 2008.

I might be Vitamin-D deprived, but I do know it's not 2008.

This week's Gazette Journal will no doubt have all the particulars.

Anyway, a big Welcome to the County to the millions many cyclists coming to Mathews this weekend, and a fair warning to any residents needing to make a trip into town this weekend:

Get to the Food Lion before noon on Friday unless you're prepared to box people out in the snack aisle.
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Have you ever done any serious bicycling or participated in an organized cycling event?

If you were cycling down the road with your family and all of a sudden a herd of killer fiddler-crabs jumped from the bushes and scurried across the road, what would you do?

If a lone cyclist-- overtaken by horseflies and mosquitoes in the swamps of New Point-- screams but nobody hears him, does he make a sound?