Went for a bike ride with the ladies today. Brisk, but well played by all. A few pictures for you, which may be embiggened with a single click.
My ear worm from the ride (had the Bluetooth headphones on for nearly all 30 miles): Mr. Petty, King’s Highway. Enjoy.
Sally leads Happy Wife ’round the bend.
Otis (Oh-Tee) selfie.
Token Buddha moment.
I complained on Keebler’s web site that a box of crackers I had purchased was mostly schnibbles. A company spokesperson replied to thank me for sharing my concern about product quality, and said I should expect a coupon in the mail redeemable for ONE box of a Keebler product of my choice. Sure enough the coupon arrived Friday. What is a parvenu to do? Should I redeem it for another box of Town House Italian Herb schnibbles crackers, or maybe a tube of Pringles? Possibly a box of Cheese-Its (Happy Wife’s Achilles Heel)? I just now Googled: Tips For Handling Sudden Wealth.
Speaking of sudden wealth — you may recall that each year in Alaska since 1916 a contest is held to see who can guess the correct day/hour/minute when the ice will go out on the Tanana River. $2.50/guess. Last year I came within four days. Big whoop, right. Well, this year, Happy Wife ran her super secret Bayesian Inverse Factor Analysis algorithm (in Unsupervised mode) to make her guesses (8). 12 minutes! That’s right, the ice officially broke up on April 24th at 2:25 pm (AKST). One of eight of Happy Wife’s guesses: April 24th, 2:37 pm (AKST). This year’s jackpot is $330,330. That’s a lot of Keebler crackers, but I doubt we’ll be notified we won, or even that we’ll be sharing the pot with other close guessers, which is commonly what happens. (Happy Wife over my shoulder just now: “Who’s this We, Kemosabe?” I reply, “Why, dear, surely if your ticket won you would…” Husband is met by Steely gaze.).
At $2.50 a crack, assuming all proceeds go to the jackpot (doubtful given the costs of running the contest), that’s ~132 thousand tickets purchased. Surely one or more of those represents a guess closer than 12 minutes. But we she can hope.
How is it precisely determined when the ice goes out? As you might imagine for an Alaskan contest, it’s kinda kludge:
In 1947, reporter Georg Myers described it this way:
“Here is how the Rube Goldberg-like apparatus works. When the ice goes out, the tripod begins to move downstream. It pulls on the rope and raises the bucket of rocks. When it has moved 100 feet downstream, the official distance, then the pin is pulled out of the gadget holding up the meat cleaver; the cleaver drops, cutting the rope holding the rocks, tripping the clock and recording the time.”
So we press on with the few pennies we have, the sky is clear and the days are once again long, hopeful we’ll win the jackpot next year. In the meantime, would you look at this, my breakfast has arrived, lovingly prepared and titled, Springtime On A Plate (a seasoned, poached egg, grilled asparagus, oven-crisped prosciutto and a toasted English muffin).
