Waiting on Spring with Vermin and Bicycles

This morning, as an act of rebellion against the coldest spring that Plain has seen in 100 years, I biked to work in Chaco's. When I left the bus, frost covered my pea sprouts and, when I arrived at work, it covered my toes.

If I was still working at Stevens Pass, this bike ride would have been an impressive feat but, I'll be honest, my new job is just 5 miles from the bus at a 400 acre RV resort. Surprisingly, converted school buses don't make the company's "approved camping vehicle" list, so I guess I'll get to keep biking for a while.

As manager of the resort, I have a lot to do and a lot to learn, so for the past month my creative juices have been soaked up by digital reservation systems and back ground checks.  However, my bike rides remind me how fantastic it is to live on the skirts of the Cascades, surrounded by evergreens and aspens and, if this confounded winter would ever end, balsam root, lupine, and daisies.

Of course, the ants are also chilled and seem to think that the bus is a fine place to wait out the frost. Our resident squirrel is probably building another nest on our engine block. To top it off, we have a sneaky mouse, which managed to disappear from a drawer just as Steve's gloved hand descended on it and then to eat the peanut butter straight off a kill trap.

A humming bird with a brilliant red throat has been visiting our feeder, which hangs just a few feet from the bus windows.

Maybe if we built an ant farm and a mouse house, the vermin would be as fun to watch as the birds.