Portable personal transportation (among other things)

All my life, I've used and loved riding bikes. Even while in the Navy, I purchased a bicycle in France during a deployment, and even started a bicycle club on the aircraft carrier I was serving aboard, and unknown to me till I read about it by chance, my first ship the USS Forrestal (CV-59) kept that fine tradition of a bicycle club till its final days!

Back in those days, folding bikes weren't the craze they are now, and is easily being replaced by electric bikes. But in my mind, having a bicycle that can be folded and transported easily is the wave of the future!

I picked up my first folding bicycle over a decade ago while in San Francisco, buying online and the bicycle making its way - unknown to me at the time - from across the Pacific Ocean! Amazingly, it got to me in less than a week, which I thought was impressive if not impossible, but it did! I had used it a few times, but not as often as I would've wanted since the City by the Bay is full of hills! I had lived then in the middle of hills! I'd ride it from North Beach to Fisherman's Wharf, then along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. Once I even rode from the Ferry Building all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge and back to North Beach!

In my pre-teen years, I had a bicycle and by the time I was 14, I had rode my ten-speed bike from North Beach to the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped for fish and chips in Sausalito at Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips. Then I'd ride to Mill Valley, then up Mt Tamalpais, then speed all the way down to Stinson Beach for lunch, then ride all the way on the same route back to North Beach! These days with my advanced age, I can hardly believe it happened at all, and all several times before I turned 15!

Now Sheila and I have folding bicycles, two in Niagara Falls and two in Rota, one being my original white folding bike of San Francisco fame! Everywhere we ride, people stop us to say how much they like our folding bikes, and that they have never seen them before!!

Have you ever ridden a folding bicycle before? I know there are some pricey full-size mountain bikes available that fold too!! Amazing!!!! 

Our bikes in the minivan!

Sheila and our bikes along the Upper Niagara River

Our folding bikes are turning heads at the lower Niagara Gorge

On the Road (aGain)

We are on the road, traveling west to Michigan again and have we seen some gorgeous clouds!! I am almost always in the passenger seat these days, and using my handy but broken S5 to snap these untouched, unedited and uncropped pictures from within a speeding vehicle on the various roads, snapping quickly between road signs, microwave towers, billboards, trees and huge trucks zipping by. 

The stormy skies have been very veeery picturesque lately, even before we departed western New York (WNY). 

Have you looked UP recently to admire the sky? Let me know!

Recent Sights and Scenes

Just a few pictures of things seen over the past few days and weeks.We get out everyday (hopefully) and the things we see are breathtaking! Perhaps to others, they would think not, as most of the things we see are simple scenes that happen once in a lifetime: lovely clouds, gorgeous trees, a flower or something else.....  it's those simple things that touch our soul/alma to open our eyes, our hearts and our minds to something else that is so very pleasurable, aside from that device in the hand. 

A fabulous sunset of a few days ago

Last night's sunset over the Upper Niagara River

All of these and many more moments, are UNedited, uncropped and all captured with my screwed-up smartphone which is still acting up (every single day and even every minute) simply because my SSG S5 doesn't get Android operating system (OS) updates any longer. 

NOTHING works properly now  :(

It's stuck on version 5 forever, and since years ago, when it began with error messages (which now literally happens every minute everyday ~ really!!). I am angry that Samsung could create and build, then SELL such a "smart" phone that basically is worthless after its OS is not updated any longer. 

I can understand not supporting the OS any longer, but for the system to give so many errors every minute it is turned on, is beyond me. It should work as if it were new, and NOT be a pain giving errors and apps dying and having to be rebooted every ten minutes as it is now for over a year, and crashing every few minutes. Not even the Samsung apps work properly! 

There is not one app or samsung android function that operates correctly, and this has been going on for over a year!

You can bet my next phone will NOT be a samsung; they have lost a client that previously, I have raved continuously online about my previous S4, and now the S5 I have had all my time while in WNY....  now the only thing I would rave about is the unreliability of the phone, which is the only constant!

Enjoy the moments ~ moments that will only come once in your Life, no matter how many times you think it looks like yesterday, last year or whenever you saw it. It will never be the same - NOTHING is, though you'll think it is exactly like the last time! Those simple pleasures are truly the treasures of your Life! Enjoy it now while you still realize they are true treasures and pleasures that didn't cost you a penny, save for the time it took you to look up, see it, and stay in pause mode to enjoy it before it disappeared for ever!

Moon watches over feeding deer yesterday

Watching the rain fall

An hour after this, the rain could be seen (and felt!)

Oooooh, those gorgeous clouds!

Would you pause to snap or sit and feel the wind?

Looking UP gives fabulous views

Watching storm clouds roll in then feeling the cool winds of the rain

Late July 2019 sunbeams over the Falls!