Endings and Beginnings

Kona
February 1997 - November 2006

At long last, I have a new ISP and with it, access to Blogger Beta, still the radical improvement that it purports to be.

There's so much news to tell, some of it difficult, some of it more encouraging. In my Multiples of 10 post, I stated optimistically that our dog Kona was going to make a run for the decade mark, which would have occurred on (Baja) Arizona Statehood Day, February 14, 2007. Her condition instead worsened, and on November 16th, BeanSS and I let her join her younger brother, Barnaby, in our memories.

We were consoled by the fact that Kona had lived a full life and went very peacefully, freed at last from the pain that had come to affect her. We were further comforted by the arrival soon thereafter of Clayton, an English bulldog/Queensland heeler mix (as far as anyone can tell). I'll post more on this exuberant, one year-old mongrel another time. All I'll say for now is that he has the kindest soul imaginable. That, and he pisses on his feet.

As many cyclists know, mindless stomping on pedals is a wonderful way to work one's way through emotional times. To that end, I kept riding back and forth to work through Kona's rough patches and beyond, right into the first truly cold (by desert standards) days of the winter. I finally wrapped up my work year with 137 round trip commutes, amounting to over 1,200 miles' worth of gasoline left unburnt. Wish I could make a few bucks selling carbon credits; we could use the money to adopt a sister for Clayton.