The Angel's of Mercy Benefit Run

I tried to post this yesterday, but Blogger wasn't cooperating with me. The video I want to post needs to be clipped a bit to fit too, so I'll try it again later


On Sunday we took part in a benefit ride to raise money for "The Angel's of Mercy".

It was a really good ride for a really good cause.
The route started out at Rohrer's Tavern, took the long way to Eggleston Ball Park, then the long way to Indian Creek, and then finishing up at The Dew Drop Inn. the weather was sunny, warm, and dry, but the 35mph gusting winds made parts of the ride a little interesting. All in all a good day and a great ride!

Stacey, the organizer of the benefit and ride, complete with the blue cast that matched the official color of the ride
The bikes starting to accumulate

A few pictures from the road that Lightnin took with the pseudo helmet cam:




Relaxing at Indian Creek before completing the last leg

Back out on the road

Ending up at the Dew Drop Inn

We Have Walls!

On Friday morning we hopped a plane to Jacksonville, FL, picked up a rental car and drove from J-Ville to Old Town, FL, pulled in the drive and that's what came out of both of our mouths: "We Have Walls!!!"

The place is coming right along and its really starting to take shape!





Here's Lightnin standing in what will soon be the bathroom




After calming down we met up with our buddies FC and Mrs. FC and celebrated at Bubba-Ques










The next day we all piled into the rental (a brand new Dodge Charger with only 5 miles on it!) and headed out to Cedar Key to take part in the Cedar Key Seafood Festival. It was crowded, but fun. The weather was perfect, the food was great, and the music and atmosphere was well festive!





After the festival we were treated to an awesome dinner of jerk chicken chili at FC's. It was very tasty and went well with a cold brew.


Yesterday we started off with a great breakfast at BBQ Bill's and then headed out to explore the local area. We ended up just sitting at the edge of our deck and watching the sun go down and the moon rise over our huge oak forest. It was so quiet that when you popped the top on a frosty cold can that it echoed in the woods, absolutely awesome!
















Well, it's back to the grind as we pack and get ready to drive back to J-Ville and catch a plane back to Cincy and we'll make one last pass by the property to say goodbye to the house, but we'll be back soon!

If this is Wednesday, it must Be Morocco!

I give you French Moroccan tuna with cream sauce, roasted garlic couscous, and peas in less than 30mins.
(Take that Rachael Ray!)





Some of you may get the old movie reference, but I'm guessing most of you won't! ;-)

This wonderful (if I say so myself) meal came about last night in what has become common practice here at the T&L household. It went something like this:

T - "What do you want for dinner?"
L - "I set out some tuna steaks, and I want to fix that Moroccan couscous."
T - "OK let's see what I can do!"

Foraging through the cabinets and the fridge I was able to locate a blend of spices that I have used on salmon before (cumin, coriander, garlic powder, Cayenne, and brown sugar) "This should go well with the couscous!" (I thought, out loud). In the fridge I located a part bottle of Ice Wine, and some sour cream and thought (again out loud) "This will make a good sauce".

So you rinse the tuna, coat it with the dry spice mix, heat a small skillet with a couple of table spoons of olive oil, drop the tuna in to sear it on both sides, then remove and set aside.

At this time open the package of roasted garlic couscous and follow the instructions, same with the Green Giant peas! ;-)

Deglaze the pan that was used to sear the tuna with about 1/2 cup of the Ice wine and reduce for about 5 minutes. Whisk in 2 table spoons of butter (real butter) 1/2 Tbsp at a time, then whisk in 2 Tbsp sour cream and remove from heat.

To serve: Place the tuna on the plate and drizzle a little of the sauce on the tuna in a fancy zigzag pattern, and be sure to have a small dipping bowl of the sauce on the side, add the peas and couscous to the plate.

It went really well with a glass of Syrah too!

Try it and you won't be disappointed, and it will surely impress anyone you serve it to!

Update on the Home!

This just in from our on the spot reporter FC:
















Now that the sub floor and decking supports are completed they should begin adding the logs this week. We'll be heading down in a couple of weeks to check on the progess and we should see the shell of the house taking shape!

FC thanks again for peaking in on the place and keeping us updated!
See you soon!

Happy Anniversary!

Today marks 27 years of marriage for Lightnin and I! It's been an amazing ride, never boring, sometimes challenging, mostly fun, but definitely amazing!













Happy Anniversary Sweetheart!

Weekend Update #5

I should say "Weekends" since I've been a bit lacking on getting these out on a regular basis!

So let me go back to last weekend which also happened to be Labor Day weekend:

That Saturday Lightnin and I both woke up early, I state this because Lightnin usually sleeps in on the weekend and doesn't usually get up to greet the day until after breakfast(provided by yours truly) is ready, but on this particular day she arose a mere 30min after I did! That being the case we decided to forgo the usual home cooked meal and get showered and dressed to head out on the bike and grab something to eat on the road. We decided to head to one of our favorite spots, Rabbit Hash, KY, where the Old Timer's festival was taking place. The air was crisp and we dressed appropriately with the required leather riding apparel.

Here you see Lightnin with a couple of new friends


Not sure why the grumpy expression here, maybe because after eating lunch I knew I'd look like the stuffed sausage that I felt like

It was a fun ride that was followed up with a bonfire at our friend's Rick and Julie's house
Yes it included smores!

The next morning Rick and I took of on a ride in the morning and I snapped this picture of the 2 bikes with a nice Kentucky backdrop









This past weekend we were invited to ride a long distance run, out to Portsmouth, OH. We met up with some friends, and met some new friends, and put in a little over 300 miles on Sunday. The weather was great, and the ride was too!

Here's a few random shots from that:



















Oh the other news is that we received a call from our builder on Thursday evening to let us know that he'll be starting the actual "Building of The House" this week. Awesome!

I guess that about wraps things up for this segment. Another busy work week ahead so I'll post when I can.

***NEWS FLASH***

They started cutting the logs today!!!!
WOOOO HOOOOO!

Ground Broken!

We took off at the end of last week to be at the property for the ground breaking, but traffic, rain, and road construction slowed us down enough the we missed the actual first breaking of the ground. This ended up not being a problem at all as we were glad to see the progress, finally!!!!!

This is what we walked up the lane to find on Thursday, the footers are poured!


Check out the size of the Live Oaks compared to the Port-O-Let

On Friday we returned to the property to see them completing the foundation, Awesome!




Perfect placement by Mother Nature on this palm


It was time to celebrate a little afterward with our good friend FC, after all he is partly responsible for this happening. We fell in love with this part of the world the first time we came down to visit!

One final visit out to Cedar Key for dinner and a sunset before we start heading north











Now the project is underway and I'll (and sometimes we'll) be making trips back down to check on the progress!

Weekend Update #4

Not a lot to share this report.

Harley and Me - The weather was absolutely beautiful so we put a few miles on the bike again, just over 150 miles total. Rode the bike into work today because we're likely to get rain the next few days.

Hops, Hops, and More Hops - The hops are over loaded with cones and should be ready to harvest soon (I'll try to get some photos). The plants themselves don't look so good because the Japanese Beetles had a feast on the leaves, but the cones are a plenty!

That was about it. Hopefully we'll be heading to Florida soon to witness the official ground breaking and footers being dug and poured!

Weekend Update #3

Let's start with Friday on this one!

Friday at work: This past Friday had to be one of the best days at work that I have had since before I moved to China! Sorry I can't be any more detailed than that here, but let's just leave it as one for the record books!
This only got better when I received a call from our builder, which leads to the next subject!

The Home: The builder called on Friday evening and let me know that he was able to be there when they did the geological survey of our property. The expert's recommendation is to start building!!!! The sink hole thingy, in their opinion, is an anomaly caused by heavy rains due to a small crack in the lime rock shelf that they couldn't even see on the Ground penetrating radar. the shelf itself runs across the entire property about 20ft down. They see no threat to the site that we chose to build on! The builder is going to line up the mason's to start working on the foundation and the clock has started, Hooray!!!

Harley and Me: The heat this past weekend was pretty stifling so we didn't put in too many miles. What we did do was meet up with our friends and rode to a place called Charlie's Throttle Stop for lunch. I had the opportunity to try the "Sweet Southern Burger" which is a cheese burger using a sliced "Crispy Creme" donut as the bun! It's totally wrong for you , but oh so tasty!

Chillin' with Lightnin': Sunday was spent inside with AC just chillin' and doing laundry to get ready for the week ahead.

Weekend Update #2

This past weekend we had some hot and humid Florida style weather which led to some pretty vicious storms.

I met up with our friends Julie and Rick to try to go to the Schutzenfest at Kolping on Saturday. After this blew in we decided to wait and give it another try on Sunday!
We tucked the bikes in out of the hail zone just in case!


Much better
Obviously before I talked them into trying the limburger cheese!



Release the hounds! (sorry for the blur)











It was a fun time and would have only been better if Lightnin would have been here too. She'll be flying back into town tonight and I can't wait to get an update from her on the situation down in the G of M!

Gulf Oil Update, They Capped the Well!

Hip, Hip, Hooray! They capped the well!

Yes this is still only a temporary fix and there is still much work to be done, but it's still the best news we've had in the past 88 days!

They'll have to vent it somehow to relieve pressure before they make the final tap into the vein with the relief wells or else the pressure on them would put us right back where we started.

I'll be watching intently until it's capped off permanently!

PS: From Lightnin

All-

There will be many pictures and maybe even a video or two when I return! It's been an awesome experience to work and mingle with the locals to see first-hand the extent of the devastation here in the Gulf. I'll get back to ya'll after the 19th! Take care!

Weekend Update!

Not much to report, but here goes:

Gulf Oil Crisis - If you watched the news then you probably know that they are trying to place a new cap on the gusher, let's hope this one works! Lightnin is still down there doing her part to keep the clean-up crews safe. If you get CMT then hopefully you caught the Jimmy Buffet benefit concert last night.

Lumber Dave (Who's this Jack guy?) - Saturday morning I had a chance to help out our friends Julie and Rick stocking up on some firewood! One of their neighbors had dropped a bunch of trees, pulled them out of the woods and dumped 'em in a stack. It was sort of a game of log climbing, twister, and "chess with a chainsaw", but we cleared out quite a little bit of the pile of logs. Next comes splitting and rumor has it that we'll pit man against machine!

Harley and Me - The weather was nice enough that I was able to put in a couple of hundred miles again this weekend. Unfortunately with Lightnin down at the G of M I'm temporarily without "Helmet Cam" capability so I didn't get any photos.

The House - Looks like we'll get the geological survey completed in the next couple of weeks, so depending on the outcome we might actually do ground breaking in about a month!

That's about it for this past weekend, I'll try to get some sort of photography to add to next weekend's update.

Update on the Gulf Oil

Lightnin hasn't been able to get on line to send pictures from her camera, but she has been able to send a few from her cell phone/camera. the quality is not as good on some of these, but you should be able to get the idea.

Here's Lightnin sporting her stylish safety gear, but more importantly is to look over her left shoulder (to the right in the picture) and you'll see the "Floating City" where most of the clean-up personnel are living during this operation.

Schmoopy's restaurant in Dulac, LA; evidence of the flooding caused by the storms over the past few days

Here's a mural on the wall of a building near Grand Isle, LA displaying the sentiments of the area.











That's what I have for now! She's hoping to get some pictures of the "Sandboni's" that are being used to help clean up the beaches.