It turns out I’m not as think as I smart I am.
On Saturday, HW was out of town, so I had some free time that I used on lawncare and some cleaning and laundry and things. Around 11:30 I decided I should take a bike ride, and more importantly, I should throw my bike in the truck and cruise over to Old New Castle and have me a look around. So I did so, packing along a camera, my water, all kinds of tasty jaunpiece. I rode south through some kind of park on the bayfront, which smelled strongly of ass, and then back up a little bit, and found a little cut-through over to Route 9, which appeared to have nice wide shoulders that I could ride on without fear of having The Story Of Me concluded via high-speed impact with a jackknifing semi.
So I headed south on Rt. 9, noting some pretty homes, some rather nasty looking junkyards and warehouses, and then came upon a massive park of soccer fields. So I stopped for a bit and watched irate parents yelling at referees, and continued south another 1/4 mile or so, when I came upon the Ommelanden Shooting Range and Hunter Education Center. I’ve wanted to find out more about the place, so I stopped in, took a look around, watched some very poor shotgunners attempting to knock orange clays out of the air. Then I continued back north, and rode the few miles back up into New Castle.
I rode around on the side streets for a little while, and then locked the bike into the bed of my pickup, and took a bunch of pictures (appearing in this space later in the week, depending on my spare time to edit and post them) of the neat old buildings and some of the colonially-dressed peeps wandering around. I also poked my head into Immanuel-on-the-Green Episcopal, but didn’t linger long since I was wearing my bike shorts, and I didn’t think the Lord would approve having my pasty-white thighs so egregiously displayed within His House.
Then I threw the bike back in the pickup, grabbed some McDonald’s, and headed home to finish up my day of doing random homeowner jaunt. Sarah got home around 5pm, and immediately said, “Look at your nose! It’s bright red. What did YOU do today?”
That’s right, I head spent the hours of noon-2pm outside, including approximately an hour of riding my bike without any cloud or tree cover whatsoever, and it had not occurred to me that perhaps I ought to apply some sunscreen. My nose is burnt, my forearms are quite toasted, and most annoyingly, the tops of my thighs are beet red.
The lesson as always: I am an idiot.
