Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

I envy my friends who live in town who can hop on their bikes and quickly pedal to the grocery store for, say, a red bell pepper needed in order to finish dinner or ride to the library to return books. I also envy my friends who commute to work via bike paths in the cities or by road in Northfield. It seems so ideal, replacing a car trip with a bike trip and it has long been my goal to ride my bike instead of driving my van on a trip to town. The thing is, I live 7 miles from the nearest town and about 14 miles from Northfield, the town in which I work and run most of my errands. A ride to Northfield would take me about an hour and fifteen minutes. A lot of the route is on busy roads and I don't like riding them alone and don't have panniers to haul stuff and wasn't comfortable riding on gravel and....well,  I haven't managed to complete my go somewhere goal. Until today, that is. Today I rode my bike home from work. True, I have to go back to town now to pick...

Some time ago, I updated my writing website found at www.myrnacgmibus.com using WordPress. My website now has a new look, greater capabilities and a new writing-specific blog – Writing Space . Why a new blog? Well, I’ve been blogging here at my  Idyllwild blog  since 2010 and, before that, was blogging on a iWeb based blog that I started in 2007. Though I started the blog largely to write about my writing life, over time I realized that my Idyllwild blog was mostly about bicycling and other fun things like flying and baking cheesecakes French macarons. That’s all great fun, of course, but I started to feel the need to create a new blog and keep it focused on writing and let my Idyllwild blog stay on the meandering path it’s already traveling on. I’ve been somewhat quietly posting content on Writing Space for some time now but am now officially announcing the launch of my new blog! Idyllwild stays alive here as “a blog tha...

I'm happy to share that I've had another feature story published in Piper Flyer Magazine - The Practical Piper Pacer. Cover and center title spread of The Practical Piper Pacer My first Piper Flyer article,   Airshow Entertainer: Lowell White’s Vagabond – A Piper Vagabond Finds Its Way Home , was published back in November 2014. Writing for Piper Flyer was a great experience so I was thrilled when editor Heather Skumatz contacted me to see if I wanted to write an article on Piper Pacers for the magazine. For a moment  I considered passing up the assignment because my schedule at the time was super busy and the deadline just two weeks away. But the idea of writing about Pacers - that's the kind of airplane I own and know so well -  was way too tempting. So, instead of passing up the opportunity, I asked Heather if I could write the story from the first person perspective (primarily to save time) and bump out the deadline a few days. She said yes to both so I g...

I got out on my gravel bike for a bit of gravel riding this morning. The ride, though short, was lovely. I saw three pheasants, a bunny on the run (I scared it), a dog and heard a bunch of birds singing. The gravel was wet but solid and fairly easy to ride. I'm doing 30 Days of Biking once again (for the 6th time with a couple of bonus rounds thrown in) so getting on my bike this morning was motivated by knowing that I needed to get my ride in for the day. I usually end up riding later on in the day, sometimes I even ride in after dark, so it felt especially good to check "ride bike" of my list of things to do early in the day. My rides for 30 Days of Biking thus far have been short ones - I let myself get all soft, squishy and out of shape over the winter and have been dealing with some medical limitations so I'm taking things slow. That said, I'll be stepping things up as the month goes on and really picking up the pace come May. You see, I've signed...

I mentioned a book that I liked in a blog post  Read More - Here's my stack of books  (from January 2014). The book is The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry  by Rachel Joyce . I loved the book and have read it twice already so I was extremely pleased to hear that that author Rachel Joyce wrote a companion book to the Harold Fry book titled The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy . The book was due to be published in the UK last year but was not coming until February 2015 in the US. I didn't want to wait to read the new book - but I had no choice! I placed a request at my local library to be the first to read the book when it came out - and I waited impatiently for it to arrive. Well, I got the book from the Northfield Public Library a few weeks ago and read it right away. I loved it! The story is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Fry book. Rather, Quennie's story parallels what is going on in Fry's story. A person can read the Queenie book without having read...

I just signed up for yet another round of 30 Days of Biking . I honestly have lost track of how many of these I've done. Thankfully, other people are keeping track - according to this Pioneer Press story by Molly Guthrey , 30 Days of Biking started six years ago. So, if we're in the 6th year and there were a few bonus rounds in September a few years, this will make my 8th 30 Days of Biking - or something like that. I guess the number of challenges I've done doesn't matter as much as the fact that each April I get out and I ride my bike every day and doing so makes me feel good. If this lovely spring weather we've been having sticks around into April (please! please! please!) then this 30 Days of Biking will be a piece of cake compared to other years when we've had snow, cold, sleet and rain to ride in. I do have a busy schedule this April because I'm in a musical, Oliver ! It's likely my rehearsal and show schedule will be more of an issue for me tha...

My copy of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - just £1.99! I've been super busy lately helping out with a Northfield Arts Guild production of August: Osage County as well as getting my daughter, Rose, to and from rehearsals and performances of Northfield High School's Rock 'n' Roll Revival XI. To top things off, I decided to audition for the upcoming NAG production of the musical Oliver! Well, I got in the show and I'm really excited that I'll be playing Widow Corney. We've already started rehearsals and things are going well. Just for fun, I decided to pull out my copy of Oliver Twist and start reading through the Dickens story that inspired the musical. I found my paperback copy of Oliver Twist that I purchased when I was in England for a January Term class through University of St. Thomas back in 1996. That visit was life-changing! (click HERE to read my previous post about my host parent, Bob). When I opened Oliver Twist , I found inside a Britis...