I don't know what I am going to do with myself today. It is supposed to be hot and humid with three rain events: noon to 2 PM, 5 PM, and 9 PM. I guess I will try to cut the grass in an hour or so once the neighborhood is awake but before the rain. (It is a pet peeve of mine when people do loud outdoor stuff on Sunday mornings before 10 AM or so. It's not like I am Mr. Devout, but I still like the old tradition of quiet Sunday mornings.)

Some other things I might do:

• Empty dishwasher.
• Go through mail and pay bills.
• Do some more cleaning/organizing/straightening in the bedroom, kitchen, family room, and front room. I threw out about 40 pounds of old magazines Friday night that had accumulated next to my side of the bed.
• Go hang out someplace with air conditioning to read and people-watch. Starbucks? The mall? Bookstore?
• Check inventory and see if I need any food stuff from Meijer. Check-out their Sunday ad for healthy frozen meals for work.
• Kill time walking around Best Buy, Target, Fry's, etc.
• Go to Farm and Fleet? Sheri hates going there, but I can usually find a couple cool things to buy.

The flower bed right in front of our house has a lot of gravel mixed in which makes it almost impossible to get a shovel through. Last summer Mom and I sat down after I turned over what I could and picked individual stones out by hand. A couple weeks ago I noticed that there was an even and dense layer of stones covering the entire bed. They were there the entire time but each stone was covered in a then layer of mud so we couldn’t see them until after the mud weathered off. I sat down again for 20 minutes last week and picked out all of the stones I could see, and then turned everything over again. It looked very dark an well groomed. Not a stone in sight. After the few rains we had last week all of the mud has washed off the stones that were exposed and it looks like we never sat there picking out stones. I guess I will pick out all of the stones I can see again today, and then turn the bed over again. Maybe if I keep doing that one day it will be a nice workable bed. If I remember I will take a before and after pic. It really is amazing all of the stones that you can see on top of the dirt right now.

I am thinking about a bike ride, but I am not sure. I am interested to see how it feels to bike in hot sticky weather. Unlike other sports and exercise routines, when you are riding a bike you always have a nice strong wind in your face, so I am wondering if that wind will mitigate hot uncomfortable weather, or will it still be just as uncomfortable as if I was standing still. If I go for a ride it will probably be later in the day after I am done doing other chores so I don't tire myself out too much to actually do chores.

On a related note, when I am riding, about the slowest I will go is 6 mph. This is when I am going up a pretty good sized hill and I am on the tired side. Any slower than that means I am killing myself and I will get off and walk it up the hill. When I am walking it I have noticed that I am going about 3 mph.

On fairly level terrain with small ups and downs my average speed has been right around 10 mph with bursts up to about 13 mph. Anything faster than that means I am going down a long straight hill and gravity is doing most of the work.

I would like to try a cycling jersey but I think I would be self-conscious wearing one for a couple of reasons:

One, I think they are supposed to be worn fairly snug and form fitting. This is because, besides reduced wind resistance, the main purpose of the shirts is to quickly wick sweat from your skin to the surface of the jersey. It is then evaporated my the quickly moving wind which keeps you both dry and cool. The shirts are made with special man-made fibers to do this. If the shirts are loose they can't make contact with your sweaty torso to absorb the sweat and wick it away.

Second, I would be afraid that it would look like I was trying too hard to have that Lance Armstrong Tour de France look. They sure look cool though. I guess it also would be kind of useless until I start taking rides longer than an hour or two. These shirts are all in the $70 range.