Category: Nature News

  • Happy New Year’s Eve To All

    By Andrea Menzies

    Happy New Year’s Eve To All! Here are some bike meet up park lunch photos for New Year’s Eve! Downtown in this area has been way too wild and violent for night events lately. I am just doing lunchtime meetings and BBQ for a while on weekends.

  • Happy Trails

    Happy Trails

    By Andrea Menzies

    My daughter Alexandria is visiting my aunt Jeannie in San Jose, California for part of Christmas Break. So far freezing airports didn’t block her in for travel, and she sent me an airport photo. Some weeks I am proud of being a single mother even if it is really expensive.

  • Family Thanks

    Family Thanks

    Thanks to my family Anne and Alexandria and my park bike club friends for many great gifts at this year’s frequent Christmas Holiday parties in Virginia.

  • No Calls

    The worst flu of the year came back. I had to battle nurses and insurance companies to get care today, and I am taking no calls as I try to heal up.

  • Park Day

    Thanks to the park fitness club for not being mad at me today after I was late. I was sick, but felt better by later in the day. I was feeling better, but got bad symptoms again that night. This flu season no one smells like roses.

  • Sad Story 2

    It was horrible news that a truck killed one of my Texas friends this week on I-35. It made me very homesick to visit Texas. They were a friend from Elysium in Austin I knew from my student years when I graduated University. I have loved spending time with my family in Virginia, and lunches with bike groups in Virginia. However the last 8 times I went out at night downtown in Virginia people tried to take money from my purse, people tried to drug my drink, con-artists swarmed me, gang fights broke out next to me, and gunfire rang all night. Every person I have tried to date in Virginia has been horribly abusive verbally and physically. Nights out for concerts in DC, Baltimore, Austin, and New Orleans have been great for music and nice friends for me in the past few years. It is therefore my vow and New Years Resolution NEVER to go out at night in Virginia again, and if a good band is on tour I will ONLY see them in a town outside Virginia. I will NEVER date a Virginia person again. If constantly going on road trips and train trips on the weekends is what I have to do, then it is what I have to do. The death of my friend reminded me that I had more and better friends every time I was not in Virginia. The government needs to spend more on clean and constantly running public transportation so that people do not have to get killed by trucks. I traveled internationally in my teenage years, and other countries far more poor than the USA have clean trains you can take bikes on everywhere at all hours. Uber is a tiny band-aide on the gushing wound that is a horrible transport system in the USA. The working class has to suffer as the rich have private airplanes and limousines taking them everywhere. The rich in private airplanes then vote on how much money is spent on public transportation, and make it worse every year. This spending cycle creates a horrible death toll daily.

  • Bike Kick

    The problem with being on a bike kick is it is hard to do in winter.

  • Biden Changes Sexual Assault Laws 2023

    By Andrea E. Menzies

    When I was a 92A rank E4 in the Army I was sexually assaulted. A tactic constantly used by abusers is to say the victim was “bad” and “immoral” and “deserved” pain to discredit the witness. I am single now in part because I will never date a military man due to the insomnia and constant nightmares from trauma. I am glad to see the NPR article saying they are changing the laws, but sad to see it had to reach 1 in 5 training women being violated before they did something real. Better late than never, but still very late. The old system was like putting a bunch of talking foxes in charge of a henhouse, and agreeing with their story that blood and chicken feathers were on their face by mistake. (1 in 5 is an article quote from the top of the second NPR image from “Biden Implements Sweeping Changes” July 28, 2023)

    https://www.npr.org/2023/07/28/1190731402/military-code-sexual-assault-biden-gillibrand

  • Thanksgiving Dinner

    By Andrea Menzies

    Thanksgiving Dinner with the family. My daughter is visiting from out of town to dinner.

  • Top School Photos of the Week

    I am still employed as a teacher, and here are my top School Photos of the Week before Thanksgiving Holiday Break 2023.