Speaking of Fall, we live near a couple of corn fields and at the end of the summer we took a lot of bike rides past them. We bought the kids new bikes last year but our old neighborhood wasn't very good for bike riding because there were too many giant hills and it was too close to major roadways. Our new house is in a somewhat better location with not too many hills, but there are no bike lanes so we are forced to ride in the road and this scares the crap out of me. I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but Polish drivers have absolutely no regard for human safety when they drive. They are the most reckless drivers I have ever seen in my life, and I am seriously scared for my life when I am on the road. I tried running on a main road once and will never do it again because I had to jump into the bushes twice. They drive SO fast, all the time - around corners, through quiet neighborhoods, past a woman pushing a stroller waiting at a crosswalk, and on the highway they are insane. The speed limit I think is 130 kph (about 80 mph) - of course I don't know this for sure because there are no speed limit signs on the stretch of the highway that I drive back and forth to school on - and no its not part of the unmarked autobahn from Germany. I am usually running late so at times I am going 140 kpm (87) - and every single time I am in the left lane, a car approaches behind me doing about 200 mph and tailgates me to the point where I can't even see their headlights in my rear view mirror anymore. The first few times this happened I literally thought the car was going to bump me to try to tell me to get out of the way - seriously??? Do they not know how incredibly dangerous that is? Obviously they never had a driver's ed teacher tell them 1 car length for every 10 miles per hour! It is definitely standard practice and usually there are about 4 or 5 cars in the left lane all tailgating each other doing 90+ mph. I have never seen so many accidents before either - I usually see at least one a day, mostly just fender benders but sometimes I have seen bad ones. The other day there was one on our small quiet street, the front end of the car in the back was completely smashed in so I am assuming the idiot was flying down our little road and didn't notice the person backing out of his driveway. It gets me so mad. And when the kids on their bikes are involved, it scares me even more.
Anyway, there is a loop around our neighborhood that goes about a mile and a half and that's all we usually bike (white-knuckling it while the cars blow by us). One day I finally decided to stop at one of the corn fields because, well, they were full of corn, and what is better than corn on the cob? Ava wanted no part of it, but I convinced Jack to grab an ear so I could cook it for dinner. I figured it would be the best corn on the cob ever since it was freshly picked. I am not sure if any of you have ever tried to pull an ear of corn off of the stalk, but apparently it's really hard! Jack struggled while I kept a lookout, but unfortunately he couldn't get it off before a car drove by and I didn't feel like getting off my bike (I don't have a kickstand) so we left empty handed. A few weeks passed and I always wondered why no one was ever out in the fields doing anything - I was really curious as to how one gets all those ears of corns off anyway. But unfortunately the weeks passed and the poor stalks grew browner and browner and no one ever did anything. And here I was so nervous that someone would catch us stealing a piece, I should have brought a knife and cut off a whole basket full. Oh well, we'll just have to do it next year!
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| Jack ready to get down to business |
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| The corn is still there.... |
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| All dead now : ( What a waste of corn! |
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