Mary and Bo recommended we take the North Little Rock side of the trail, since it was almost all through parks and thus safer and more scenic. It’s really impressive what they’ve done on the seven mile trail out to the Big Dam Bridge in North Little Rock. The bike itself was a pretty goofy ride, which made up for the discomfort of it being all around a bit too small with awkward geometry.

We rode with Mary and Bo to the top of the bridge.

Since Mary had to be at work that afternoon they left us and went back they way they came. In fact, both Dave at River Trail Rentals and Mary encouraged us to just ride the North Little Rock side of the trail and out to Rebsamen Golf Course and back rather than trying to navigate the on-road portions of the trail on the Little Rock side.

In the end we chose to ride out to the end of the trail on the west end of the Little Rock side by the I-430 bridge, which will be extended to take people to Two Rivers Park and out to Pinnacle. Construction was under way. Once out there Craig and I decided to take the Little Rock side back, if for no other reason than to see the entire loop.

They were all correct that the portion after the golf course, until you get back to river front park is not that great. Little Rock could definitely stand to improve the trail, and after being in North Little Rock the difference is stark by comparison, though in truth if they just did a better job of marking the pavement the experience could be greatly improved.

Still the junction bridge, an old train bridge converted to a pedestrian bridge on the east end of the loop is pretty great. If and when they transform the train bridge nearer to the Clinton library things will be even more exciting.

After we returned the bikes we headed over to Hillcrest to check out the antique French chicken coop that Chris had at Clement that has been taunting me since he posted the link on Facebook.

They also had a collection of truly beautiful glass beads in some awesome colors.

I know better than to buy them and expect they’d do anything other than take up space in my house, which I don’t need right now. After Clement we stopped by Leo’s and got milkshakes. Craig had been committed to a vanilla shake, but unfortunately they were out of vanilla ice cream and he was stuck with a chocolate shake.

That evening we picked up Goke and went to dinner at the Buffalo Grill on Rebsamen. At last I had my cheese dip.

After dinner we went back to Goke’s so I could look through her old photos in hopes of finding the one of Granny with her three kids, wearing the dress she’d given me. After finding all sorts of great old photos, and almost all of them well labeled, at the very bottom of the second drawer of the bureau I found the photo I’d been looking for.

After class we went to Boulevard Bread so I could get a good cup of coffee. We ran into my friend Chris of Clement . It was great to sit outside in wonderful weather and catch up with them both.

Later, we went to lunch at Za Za with my mom and Rusty and all had amazing salads.

The backstory of the two restaurants is really the gossip of Little Rock right now for those that like good food.

That evening Craig and I met up with Russ at Vino’s. It was great to see Russ after so many years and hear about Kaky. It’s funny to be so old and feel so young!

I’ve seen PHUMC grow physically in the years I’ve been away from Little Rock, taking up more and more of the surrounding area. WOW! I hadn’t actually thought through how many people must be members of the church for it to be so large.

After the service I went to visit the chapel, still my favorite part of the church. Then we took some photos outside in the courtyard between the chapel and the sanctuary. They aren’t particularly great, but unfortunately they are the only pictures I bothered to take yesterday.

After church we went to Goke’s house and met Alice and Mary for an Easter taco bar lunch. It was a great afternoon, but by the time we got home around 5:30 we were all beat.

Eventually we heated up the leftovers and watched Pirates of the Carribbean. All in all, quite nice just to have the downtime.

Yesterday Craig and I spent the day taking three flights from Portland to Minneapolis then Memphis, finally arriving in Little Rock after 12 hours of travel. The picture above was taken in the Memphis Blues Bar, Terminal B in the Memphis airport. Our layover was 2 hours and 15 minutes, which was longer than it takes to drive from Memphis to Little Rock, at least if memory serves. Thus, we drank $40 worth of beer, or 2 beers each.

Craig also took video of us passing each other on the moving sidewalks while in Minneapolis. I played with the “Hipstamatic” app for my iphone. Taking the picture above and several pictures of Craig, including this one:

After getting into Little Rock we went to Flying Fish with mom and Rusty and then drove past the Clinton Library and Heifer International. Wow! The river area downtown is so incredibly different from when I lived here last!

To celebrate spring I baked and froze what we were told will be the last winter squash of the season from our CSA share at the 47th Ave Farm.  It was a monster. Craig came home with it and said several people there had to come back for theirs, and that if we’d had a full share rather than a half it would have been even larger. You can get a sense of scale by looking at the cleaver in the photo above.

I had to first bake it for 30 minutes, just so I could cut it. It barely fit in our oven:

After it sat for a bit, I split it in half, scooped out the innards  and then baked each half.

When both halves were baked I scooped out all the flesh into a big bowl, which by the end was on the verge of overflowing:

The bowl of mashed squash weighed 13 pounds! It filled six quart jars and one pint jar.

After the innards were placed in jars I moved most of it into the chest freezer (can I get a hell yea for chest freezers!) leaving a couple of jars out to make soup and pies with this week.

I then used the recipe in Mark Bittman’ How to Cook Everything and made spicy pumpkin seeds.

Even though this whole process start to finish took almost 8 hours, and thus my whole Sunday, the seeds in particular are  so delicious and addictive that I almost want another pumpkin!

Then on Monday I made crust for two pumpkin pies and the first of the pies. Unfortunately, the filling sloshed all over the crust (and the oven window) and thus it looked as if the pie was burnt. It still tasted good, though not as good as the first pie I’d made last month with the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. On Tuesday, I made the second of the pies, and had even more trouble with the crust…this time it actually split in the pre-baking phase. I brought it to the office to celebrate LJ’s birthday, and despite not being beautiful in presentation when we cut into the pie it was delicious!

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Last night we went to see Hungry Ghost open for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at the Doug Fir. I’ve only managed to catch a couple of Hungry Ghost shows, but they are excellent. It’s exciting to see Sara play in her own band again, and great that she and Andrew play so well together. There’s also something awesome about seeing a mother of an infant rocking out and then hanging out after the show ends.

Last week-end we went to Dante’s for Red Fang on Friday night. I just assumed Sara would be home with Niko, but in fact there she was watching the show. Rock on, momma! And what a great testosterone-filled show that was. I certainly had fun, but I think a lot of boys just NEED that kind of heavy metal rock show.

The next night we went to the White Eagle for Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs. The show got a late start, which pushed them to a just before midnight start time. It didn’t matter, as always they rocked the place. I just can’t get over how amazing they are. At the end of the night as they were leaving the bartender said, “I see a lot of bands here. It was great to see a band that really knows how to play rock-n-roll.” So true.

Today, LJ and I took our lunch break at the Wednesday downtown farmer’s market for Tastebud’s amazing salads. Next week is the last week of the 2009 season. I’ll miss the market November-April, and especially the salad. They have a restaurant now, and I’ve been once. They do oven roasted vegetables, but I don’t recall seeing the salad on their menu.

On our walk back we encountered a shower of falling leaves. They had already covered the ground and the benches.

Last night Kevin Condron came over for dinner and then we went to see Where The Wild Things Are and later stopped by to check out another find FoPo drinking establishment, O’Malley’s? At some point Kevin asked me about the blog. Noting that it looked hacked. And it did. I moved the blog to a new server, then just left it with the “Hello World” message and broken image links for months.

This morning, despite having a rather lengthy to do list I sat down to try and get the blog at least closer to the state it was before the server move. Then I finally committed to change to The Unstandard theme. I’ve had this theme bookmarked for a long time. What both attracted me to it, and scared me from committing is that it uses images rather than words as the teasers. I know it is going to require me to think about posting in a different way. I’m excited to see where it takes me.

Aside from adjusting the old posts to accommodate a new theme, I also made a delicious vegan creamy chunky cauliflower soup. I had seen a link to the recipe in the comments from a bitten post, and bookmarked the page. A week or so later I saw through a Facebook status update that Vicki had made it and loved it. And so yesterday I thought I bought all the ingredients I needed. I should have read the recipe first, in which case I really would have bought all the ingredients I needed. Today I got the rest, made the soup tonight, and it was phenomenal.

I need a diet with more cruciferous vegetables and less dairy. Its nice to add a good go-to cool weather recipe to my arsenal.

I hope you all have a Valentine’s Day filled with love and surprises.