Once a week Cee asks the questions on her blog, and I answer them here on my blog.
• Have you ever participated in a distance walking, swimming, running, or biking event? Tell your story.
Yes, *sigh* back when I was a crazy, younger, athletically inclined woman who followed the crowd, I was a cyclist. I did lots of 30+ mile bike rides for charities, and even once went so far as to go on a Backroads bike tour vacation.
This adventure in hell vacation started in New Bern, NC, and involved days of bike riding on dodgy, bermless country roads, littered with dead snakes and frogs. Roads, filled with 18-wheeler lumber trucks zipping past us, spewing bits of pine bark and needles as they went by. It was scary.
Throughout the tour we were on a strict time schedule to get to ferry-boats to go island to island along the NC Outer Banks, with the goal of getting to Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
However, this did not happen because a huge storm, the aftermath of a hurricane, disrupted the ferry service to Cape Hatteras. Meaning that our last ferry-boat was abruptly cancelled, leaving us stuck one island short of Cape Hatteras, on Ocracoke Island. In a dumpy motel.
So with torrential rain falling and nowhere to go, we abandoned the pretense of cycling, made note of Ocracoke’s famous ponies, and drank excessively in the one bar that was open while it stormed, all the while lamenting that we were never going to get to Cape Hatteras.
Which *sigh* was the whole point of the bike tour.
• Name one thing not many people know about you.
I will not wear the color orange, so keep all your sports fan gear away from me.
• What is your favorite flower?
Tulips. Graceful and colorful, with no excessive leaves to muddle up their lines or draw attention away from their colorful petals.
• Things I want to have in my home (paintings, hot tubs, book cases, big screen tv etc)
While it’s true that I like things, and that if my life had gone in a different direction I might have become an interior designer, I feel that for me to list all the things that I want to have in my home would take hours.
• Optional Bonus Question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
Last week’s gratitude award goes to the cats featured in the YouTube video below. They make me smile. I’m beyond impressed by their focus and skill– and that any human being was able to get them to do what they’re doing.
This week’s looking forward to something goes to Zen-Den listening to S•Town podcast so that he and I can discuss it. At length. Produced by Serial and This American Life, S•Town is the most compelling investigative-journalistic-true-crime-ish story I’ve heard [or read] in years. Think Southern Gothic genre. The language is coarse. The topics are mature. And the story is so good… in a bad way. Highly recommended.
On a beautiful sunny afternoon, I parked in front of the donation door at our local Goodwill. I started pulling items out of the trunk of my car, and was carrying two folding chairs, one in each hand, when I tripped over a 3″ high little curb painted a jazzy shade of yellow.
And with that I face-planted myself on the cement sidewalk.
Save for a small scratch on the little finger side of my left hand & a scrape on the top of my right ankle, I didn’t hurt myself. I went down too quickly to even tense up, plus I’m somewhat plump in my older years which helped keep me safe.
I kind of bounced more than I splatted.
I’ll admit that it was a fascinating experience to calmly realize that I was falling face down onto the sidewalk with no way to stop myself. No one near me to catch me.
Just me on my own, falling down. Unceremoniously.
And what was going through my addled brain as this was happening? Well, to be honest, and you wouldn’t want me to be anything but that, I was thinking: “Hmmm… well at least this will make for a good story.”
Yep, no need to worry about me, my gentle readers, I have my priorities in order.
Once a week Cee asks the questions on her blog, and I answer them here on my blog. 
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 