Small Town Wren

There are some days that I think the weather is truly conspiring against me and my ideas of fun. I’m pretty certain that an act of malice can only be responsible for the horrid weather that has plagued me the past several weeks when I have wanted to have a picnic. Specifically, a bike-ride picnic with Daniil. For weeks now, we have been either rained out or colded out.

Yesterday was no exception. Beyond the fact that up until the day before we were told by a (mistaken) forecast that starting at noon, Sunday was to be sunny and warm.

Bullocks.  This is what we got:

I don’t even.

But rather than let ourselves be deterred, the picnic had to go on! Only, inside. And with less nature. Boo. But it was still lovely. And we had a lot more pillows, to say the least. Sandwiches were made, strawberries were washed, and pasta salad was packed. We even opened the windows to listen to the rolling thunder.

Yes, it was raining, despite how bright it looks out my windows. Blowout is blowout.

And look, I finally lit the candles Daniil got me for Christmas. We’ll just ignore that it’s almost 6 months later. They smell amazing. He was pretty insistent that lighting Cappuccino, Warm Sugar, and Wedding Cake all at once was a very terrible, not-so-good idea, but I showed him. Not overpowering in the least, and not too faint, either, for that matter.

And of course no picnic would be complete without me stuffing my face full of sammich. Absolutely not.

The kicker of all this being, of course, was that after our post-picnic nap, it was bright, sunny, and hot. The rain had blown through and humidity had set in. I know, right?  So the happy ending to this story is that we got the bike ride in after-all.

We’ll just pretend that the hard-shell bug flying into his eye never happened.

My boyfriend took this picture of me a few weeks ago in Indiana. I believe it is the perfect photo to sum me up as a human being.

I’ve been a little mean lately. I’ve been really relishing calling Daniil an old man ever since he turned 28 on Wednesday. But in my defense, he is an old man.

He didn’t actually want anything for the occasion, and I had class on the actual day, so I had the genius idea to go on a bike ride. It’d been awhile since our last ride, so it seemed like a great idea. I made sandwiches and everything. Sandwiches full of tomatoes. The sandwiches themselves were delicious, and the ride was really fun.

It was also really cold.

We rode through Fermilab, which is always beautiful this time of year. Past the bison, past the seed harvest, through the village… We made it to Blackwell Forest Preserve in no time and had our freezing, freezing picnic. Technically we were in an area that was closed since we were near the campgrounds, but we missed the sign entirely.

It started to rain on our way back, which just added to the hilarity of this misguided ride. Cloudy, cold, miserable, and raining. But it was incredibly fun. It was the thought, anyways.

Of course the sun came out as soon as we got home.

The Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago opened to the public today. As a member, I got to see it yesterday, and boy am I glad I made it out. It’s phenomenal! Daniil and I made a day of it, and I’m really glad he insisted we see it first since the line wrapped around the special exhibit balcony by the time we left.

The photograph above, labeled as Hyères, France, 1932, was one of our favorites from the collection. I’d seen several of his photos before as a number of them belong to MoMA and The Met in New York City, including this one. But it really caught Daniil’s eye as well. As I would discover over the course of the afternoon, he is really intrigued by the use of lines in art. I, however, am more about motion and what’s not in the frame. We spent the afternoon guessing how each other felt about each photo.

The portion of portraits was one of my favorite parts of the exhibit. It makes me jealous because of all the cool people I will never know that he captured. Such as Truman Capote.

And Albert Camus.

And Ezra Pound.

Cartier-Bresson is one of my favorite photographers, and he shot almost exclusively in black & white. An admirable commitment for a modern man such as himself.

I highly recommend it. The man travelled far and wide as a photojournalist. I was lucky to have a native Russian give his own opinions on the Soviet Union portion. The photographs from newly Communist China are also breathtaking. If you can make it, go.

Saturday night was the Chicago L.A.T.E. Ride, which I am happy to report I biked in its entirety. 25 miles isn’t a long ride, but it’s now the longest I’ve done in a single day. My previous record was only 15. There were a few moments where it felt like I wasn’t going to make it, I did so with flying colors and only a few injuries, and only having birds shit upon me twice. Yeah, whut? I’m not sure why I was the particular moving target for all the birds, but I ended up with scat on me from all directions. Ugh.

I went with quite a few friends. We ended up all feasting on Silk afterward, a product endorsed enthusiastically by Howard and me. And the sunrise was absolutely gorgeous, if not a bit skewed by clouds. I’m glad that only Daniil saw me have the mos disgraceful dismount from a bicycle ever. I banged up my leg pretty well on my pedal. But hey, my bike is a beast. It’s apparently the heaviest bike ever and gets more momentum than anything on hills.

The eggs benedict afterward was amazing, even if Pick Me Up was strangely out of hollandaise sauce. The drive home was not so fun. Was starting to fall asleep in the end there. Bed couldn’t have come soon enough at 9:30 Sunday morning.

Camping at Devil’s Lake was an absolute blast. While some of our hiking was less than ideal in that we got a little lost and ended up scrambling down a vertical boulder field, it was all-in-all a successful trip. I felt a little unsteady in my new Keens (still too used to being barefoot) so Daniil convinced me to screw the shoes and play out on the cliff outcrop with him. It’s a shame the pictures of Daniil, Erica, and me from here were never posted. Ah well.

In places where the consequences of falling weren’t quite as dire, I ventured out in the shoes.

Others, such as Daniil, were far braver than I. Granted, they have far more rock climbing experience than me. Both Daniil and Hannes made it all the way to top of Devil’s Doorway. They were the Crazy Foreigner Contingent of the trip.

Photos courtesy of Hannes van Rooyen and Daniil the Russian.