The Maple Leaf Bike Ride is coming up on Saturday, Oct 10. I would like to encourage everyone to come out and participate. Last year me, shelf-life, mom, and dad all did it and had a blast. I would also like to point out that I had the distinction of finishing dead last in my distance category (74miles).

Here are a few reasons I think you should do it:

• Riding bikes is fun!
• Proceeds go to the construction of new area trails!
• Those are really the main two reasons I can think of.

There are routes for riders of all abilities… anywhere from 15mi for the casual rider up to 100 miles for the people with legs of steel and $6000 bikes. Mom and dad did the 35mile route and thoroughly enjoyed it. I like the 70-80ish mile routes. Regardless of which route you choose, it’s lots of fun to get out and support area trail projects!

Here is the website with all the info and online registration:
http://www.carthagemapleleafride.com/

In spite of a very rocky start on Saturday and modest turnout on Sunday, I felt like Cider Days was a success and I think Bridget felt the same! I sold several prints and enjoyed the numerous compliments and encouragement I received. We learned a LOT about what we could do better next time and I enjoyed fraternizing with the other photographers who were ‘peddling’ their work. Here are a few highlights (and lowlights) from the weekend…

Here is Bridget’s mother helping us put the finishing touches on our booth saturday morning. We managed to cram a lot of stuff into a small area.

The festival opened at 10:00am, at approximately 9:57 it started raining. Initially the forecast did not call for rain and our tent did not have sides…so saying we were ill-prepared would be an understatement. Our booth, and some of my photos were basically ruined before the show even started.

I estimate that it rained for appoximately 5 of the 7 hours of Cider Days on Saturday, but thanks to some quick help by Bridget’s mom we improvised some tarp sides, keeping most of our stuff fairly dry for the remainder of the show.

Things took a turn for the better when we were awarded the “best regional artist”. We were pretty stoked to display our award. All in all it was a lot of fun spending the day showing off and occasionally selling my work. And most of all just spending time with good friends.

Hey everyone… for those that do not know, I will be participating in Springfield’s fall arts and crafts fair…Cider Days with friend Bridget. She will be peddling her earrings and I will be peddling my photography.

So over the last few months I’ve been working to get a collection of sale ready items to take. I made a lot of prints and mats and even framed several. So anyone and everyone is encouraged to come up to Cider Days and stop by our tent of awesomeness! For those not familiar with Cider Days, it takes place on Walnut Street.

Hopefully I will at least sell a few!

Sunday after church Grant and I decided to take a quick afternoon kayak trip. As we often do, we chose Center Creek, except this time we did a section of the river neither of us had ever floated before.

The furthest I had ever been down Center Creek was the park in Carl Junction. So this time we started there and floated down to the bridge near Smithfield, which is the last takeout point before the river flows into Kansas and merges with Spring River. I found this section of the river to be particularly enjoyable because it seemed to have an abundance of rapids compared to other sections, and there were a lot of large rock bottom areas. I also enjoyed the numerous small wet weather waterfalls along the bank… though there are several of these just upstream from my house as well.

It is also worth nothing that Grant and I have become fairly proficient at the logistics of a self-guided float trip, considering we both drive compact cars. Who would have thought a kayak can almost entirely fit in the trunk of a jetta with another one tied to the top without even taking off my bike rack!? Sweet lovin!

Saturday was the Gorilla bike ride in Pittsburg, KS, which coincided with their town festival “Little Balkan Days” (anyone know what a balkan is??). Though not exactly ‘easy’, the gorilla ride is significantly easier than the Tornado Alley for serveral reasons. A- It’s a few miles shorter and B- it’s totally flat.

It was a nice 68 mile ride and went past such landmarks as Big Brutus and the mined land conservation areas and we passed through the Kansas towns of Weir, Scammon, West Mineral, McCune, and of course Pittsburg. My only real complaint about this ride compared to others I have done was that the rest stops seemed really far apart. Aside from that I thought it was great and I really enjoyed myself. My ‘rents also participated on the shorter route.

So that only leaves the Maple Leaf ride next month and my season of biking will be more or less over until next year!

I often find myself buying various kinds of jams etc to spread on my bread for snacks and whatnot. The other day I went out to check on my raspberry plants and suddenly found myself with a surplus of berries. So I thought maybe I should make jam or something with them. In case anyone wants to try this at home, here is how it works…

1. Plant some raspberries.
2. Wait until you have so many berries you don’t know what to do with them.
3. Call mom to ask how canning works and hope she offers to basically do it for you.

Now that all that is settled, here are the steps of actually making the jam.

First, you need to rinse off the berries. I didn’t use any pesticides or anything like that, so it’s mainly leaves, dirts, and bugs that need to come off. For the record, rinsing these guys is kind of difficult and I’m not sure how effective my method was.

Put the berries in a pot and heat and smash them until you create a boiling pot of raspberry juice.

Add the same amount of sugar as you have raspberries. Continue boiling for about 5 minutes until it forms a gel like substance.

This is what it should look like when it’s done. You can either eat it now or freeze it. But if you want to store the jam in your cabinet for decades, then continue on to the next step.

Pour the jam into mason jars of whatever size you want. Make sure the lips are nice and clean, screw on a new canning lid, and drop the jars into boiling water for several minutes using this weird scissor-lift tool.

While the jars are boiling, lick the spatula thing.

Take the jars out of the boiling water and place them on the counter. Eventually the tops will make a ‘pop’ sound and you know it’s sealed. If they don’t seal then you’re pretty much screwed.

Now you have delicious raspberry jam that will last you throughout the winter months!