A common feature of every ride this month has been chicks - geese, usually, and turkeys. I get the feeling their attrition is pretty high. The geese are too brave and the turkeys are dumb. There's a colony of geese hanging out on the northwest bank of Lake Natoma, and they are brazen. The adults just stand or sometimes even sit on the warm bike path pavement while the chicks forage and cross at random. Yesterday afternoon, I saw a family of geese set out across Hazel Avenue by the aquatic center. This is a rush hour choke point because it feeds a bridge over the American River from US 50 to Orangevale and Fair Oaks, and it's six or more lanes wide depending how you count. The sidewalk here is up against a retaining wall here so they couldn't really go back, they could only follow the sidewalk, or cross. The first adult cut in front of me to get into the road, and the fuzzy little ugly ducklings followed along. Traffic stopped for them northbound. I didn't hang around to see how they fared southbound, which is not choked and going 55+. This morning, it was a family of turkey chicks that I flushed out of the weeds on an unpaved path near the same place. The lead one made it right in front of me and my tire struck it. I think that it knocked him aside and he didn't get run over but I'm not certain.

My bum ticker is feeling good yesterday and today and I'm trying to figure out why. Today I'm trying to copy yesterday's diet just to see if I feel the same.