27-VI-2000.
We discovered that there's a lake nearby, perhaps 15 minutes drive, as it's on our side of the city. It's called the Hydraulic lake, because it's artificial - there are no natural lakes in Virginia anyway. I guess some engineer tried to explain how it's gonna work, and the most intriguing word struck a chord and stayed as the name. Well, if the R10 road became Rio road... And now they have the Hydraulic street, not named by anything from the fluid mechanics, but rather after the lake it leads to. So we bought swimsuits, something to spread on the sand, sunblockers and whatever else was missing, and hit the road. Decided to buy a family season ticket, at 70$, which is for one car, two months, and as many people you have in the car, which should pay off after only four visits. Unfortunately, we did that only on the second round and eventually ended up in the red - we already paid some 18$ for this time.
The lake is fine, the sand is not too fine, which is good, not so sticky and getting into everything. What we thought we saw of fat Americans so far is near to nothing, compared to what we saw here. There was a lady in a folding seat, in the shallows, water just around her elbows, who didn't move for as long as we were there. I guess she couldn't get up from it without some serious help. We declared her the local founder of buddhism, she was so impressive and unmoving. Eyeballed her at 160kg or more.
I discovered that I'm among the few people not wearing boxers. Sorry guys, boxing is the noble art, and I never aspired to any nobility, not by blood. By mind, perhaps sometimes, I guess I had my moments.
When we came home, there was some serious rain. The Poozhoe came clean... It still sits there, don't know what to do with it. It's good that we have this terrace so I can go out and take pictures without getting wet. At least it wasn't so hot while it rained; the next day was a true dušegupka (soulloser, word adopted from russian), with all the moisture and no wind. We thought that these tall trees, 20m at least, would give us shade, but no, shade means nothing when the air is hot, soil is hot, everything's hot. And humid, so sweating doesn't help, it doesn't cool you off because it doesn't evaporate.
We installed a double fan in the window by the dining table, and bought a big box fan (just 12$), which helped a bit, but not much. It was still hot, you just felt less bad.
So while Go had lectures at the local community college, I'd go to pick her up and we'd all get into the Corolla. Because it had AC. Says „down on the corner there's a plate, says "spectrum therapy". That's where they send bonkers programmers, each gets a Spectrum to get better :)“.
Correction: this time we actually went to the other lake, south of town, which we liked better than this one, the beach is better and it's somehow all snug in the valley, and the beach is somehow better ordered. It's just that it's quite a ride to get there, so we gave up and didn't repeat this. The shots with this article were made on 02-VII-2000. (which I discovered when I found the code to read EXIF data in the jpegs, which Agfa would save some days, and some not).
Mentions: 02-VII-2000., Agfa, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Poozhoe, in serbian
16-I-2023 - 30-VI-2024