ok, so my guys rode down the salmon river valley yesterday 113 miles, bypassing sun valley and avoiding climbs........scw came up with the route that varried greatly from the one that daddy had originally planned........they had a tailwind, and the 113 miles took less effort than one might think........thus, they are a full day ahead of schedule, which might mean that they will be this side of yellowstone on monday..........alas, the joy of their success was soon dampened by our news that the dock is still in the tree due to the high water and that the boat is still sunk and that the rain continues...........

ok, so mm has entertained herself today by taking free iq tests on-line.........with varying results..........the lowest was 116, with two 145's and a 151.............now, we all know that mm does not really have a 151, nor hopefully a 116, so she will simply be happy with a 130......i did learn from this bizarre experience that one can learn how to take these tests....know what questions are likely and what the likely answer is even if i don't know the answer...........

ok, so there were two rather good letters to the editor in the paper tonight........one in which a guy named goodlett talks about being a good witch having to deal with all of the christian psychopaths in what should be a free america....the other is from a woman who lambasted bush for being a semi-illiterate idiot........great stuff.........i hope to save them for those who are riding out west...those who are merely out of town can look them up on amnews.com.............

ok, so no applause is necessary................mm has gone from being just plain mean, to a bonafide mean genius.........last night fox did a 2-hour special program called testing america. or something like that.....they had a studio audience divided into groups......scientists, teachers, blondes, bodybuilders, students, construction workers, and celebrities........and these folks, along with those of us at home, and those on-line....took a 60 question IQ test.......there were sections on memory, logic, reasoning, math, etc.....with analogies, word meaning, number sequences, addition of strings of numbers, and stuff like which pattern folds up into what shape.......the celebrities were pretty lame.........talk show hosts i had never heard of, an olympic athlete, and yes.....heidi fleiss, the ex-madame turned author.......the computor kept tabs on how each group was doing in relation to other groups........the scientists pretty much kept op top the whole way......in fact, the host randomly picked one to talk to...and he turned out to be a rocket scientist.........he joked that he thought about being a brain surgeon..........anyway...........in the end, they averaged scores from all who particpated on line and in the audience.........and the results were as follows......the state of washington topped the list as smartest state.....boston as smartest big city, chantilly, vs as smartest town overall (averaged 134.......).........men averaged 113, women 111.........one of the scientists had an IQ of 138...the highest in the audience, so they gave him a trophy....no word on who, other than the bodybuilders, had the lowest.........ok, so mm had a score of 130...........just barely enough for mean mamma to join the mean mensa society............obviously, this test is no measure of sense........scw asked me on the phone last night when fox was going to have the test for 'lick of sense'.........., asserting that i had little of that......now that is in itself a rather mean comment......that's my boy, a chip off the old block..............

ok, so mm and company here at home have a fresh problem......there has been so much rain in the past 2 days that our rowboat has sunk, and somehow gotten itself under the dock, which is up so high as to be in the sycamore tree............ecw could not believe (on the phone) that acw and i could not manage to undo this situation.......frankly, i do not want to risk life and limb to rescue either the dock or the boat.....as it is, acw gave a valiant effort.........on the other hand, i did manage to repaint the front porch, and redo the upstairs bathroom curtains, and take a wonderful 2 hour nap....all on sunday...........i still have shortlist of home projects i want to complete before i leave for wyming.........

speaking of wyoming, i woke up in the middle of the night with a fresh worry.......our plan for meeting our guys calls for us to drive up through tetons and yellowstone after it probably closes...................when the road will be blocked off.........i may have to book a room in jackson hole for monday night and plan on meeting them on tuesday...........

ok, so my guys are in idaho......mark one more state off the list.....they are heading toward the sawtooth mountains......

the following article was online this morning...makes me want to go back to barcelona.....

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- More than 7,000 people gathered at daybreak Sunday and shed their clothes in the morning chill to take part in artist Spencer Tunick's largest work yet -- an installation featuring a sea of nude bodies covering a central Barcelona avenue.

The New York native has achieved worldwide renown for his work, which often features large numbers of nude people posing in urban settings. Though he refers to his art as "temporary site-related installations," he is best known for the photographs he takes of these events.

"I want people to feel uncomfortable that they've demonized the body," Tunick said in an interview with The Associated Press shortly before staging his Barcelona installation. "I want them to feel uncomfortable at first and then realize it's just skin. Yes, the body can be a shape."

He called the Barcelona installation a great visual success. "I created a river of bodies like I've never made before. It was an amazing pink and tan carpet."

At 4 a.m. (0200 GMT) people began arriving at Avenida de la Reina Maria Cristina, a broad thoroughfare lined with fountains. They undressed in a nearby building and were naked for more than an hour as Tunick had them pose four ways: standing, lying down, curled up in balls and hugging each other.

"For me this represents the fragility of the body," said Joan Alexandre Betriu, 53, a participant who called it a "vital, aesthetic and moral" event.

Irene Mohedano, 34, posed with her 5-month old daughter Irene. "This is a work of art," she said. "It may be my only chance to pose for something like this, so I have to take advantage of it."

Tunick said he uses people as raw materials to change perception of space. "I'm using the body as a substance, an abstraction. If the body is nude in front of a background, it creates a new meaning for the background. It makes you think about the background in a different way."

Barcelona joins London, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Santiago and many other European and South American cities in hosting Tunick.

Sunday's spectacle was his largest yet. Until now his grandest project of this type was an installation involving 4,500 nude people in Melbourne, Australia in 2001.

"In the U.S. they consider the body a crime," said the artist, who has been arrested five times in New York City for working with nudes in public. "In other countries it's celebrated as something special."

Barcelona was particularly accepting of his work, Tunick said, citing praise from Mayor Joan Clos.

Though Tunick insists his work is far removed from commercial nude photography, he recognizes that the fact that he works with nude bodies is a major factor in his success.

"My work is about form, the shape of the body. I'm not creating a provocative photo, I'm saying this is the body you shower with, the body you go to sleep with," he said.

"I've gotten a lot of global recognition because I'm making compelling work that's doing something new with the body. I'm bringing the bodies closer together as substance."

ok, so mm brought her portable tv to work, and watched the women's final of the french open.........i was pleased to see justine henin-hardenne win, because she beat serena, and because she is so small, and because she hyphenated her name......she dedicated her win to her mother, now deceased, who took her to see the open 11 years ago, and said she thought she could win it some day........quite sweet......i enyoyed listening to justine accept her prize in french.........we have seen serena accept so many time sin english that we often forget that the world does not speak english as the first choice....... the opponent kim clysters, spoke in flemish............

ok, so they did not call last night.....a fact that i did not realize thoroughly until i woke up with the rain and cold at 3:00 am...........and then i cold not go back to sleep for all of the worry about every worst case scenario........i went to a party after work with the running community.......everybody wanted to know how they are doing.........gentle readers, be aware that most of these folks see my husband as much or more than me when you add up his running and biking time........they miss him as much as i do..........at the party there were people who had not heard about the grapes of wrath testing debacle, and ecw's refusal tolet scw take along the 2 full-size books in the bike bags, and the buying of the cliff notes.......one friend looked incredulous that we had failed to simply download both books on our palmpilot.........and then even more incredulous that we have no palm pilot..............having the internet is a big step for the c-w's....lets not be too hasty about technology.........

ok, so my guys are tired and they are taking a day off.......they rode 82 miles yesterday, including 3 climbs.......they are somewhere in eastern oregon...when they call after i go to bed, i kind of blank out on just where they are..........ecw spoke of renting a car, and sightseeing for the day........

ok, so my guys visited the john day fossil beds national monument, near john day, oregon......they rode 75 miles yesterday, and are beginning to sound weary....i would not have gotten past eugene............i am so proud of their effort.......

ok, so my guys are in mitchell, oregon, which looks to be halfway to idahol.......they say it is hot, with a steep climb ahead today.....they have mailed back their dirty laundry, so that i can bring it back to them all washed and ready to go the third week.......

ok, so this bit fo news was on cnn.com this morning......doesn't it make you proud to be an american?

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Talk about what you can do for your country!

In an unusual act of patriotism, a Nevada brothel is offering free sex to troops returning from the U.S.-Iraq war.

The Moonlite BunnyRanch in Nevada, a legal brothel, also plans to extend 50 percent discounts to the military for the next few weeks, proprietor Dennis Hof told Reuters in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Hof hit on his unique gesture for honoring U.S. troops when BunnyRanch star and former Playboy magazine centerfold Sunset Thomas was flooded with letters from the front lines.

"We were receiving about 20 letters a day," Hof said. "We thought, when these guys are done we'll do something special for them."

Thirteen men and three women in uniform have shown up so far to claim their gifts. All told, the free and discounted sex will cost Hof about $50,000 -- a worthy sacrifice, he said.

"We want to feel patriotic and feel we are doing something for our servicemen," he said. "If we owned a Dairy Queen we would be giving away free ice cream, but ... we own the sex capital of the world. What better way is there to give back?"

ok, so ......i am home absolutely alone.......acw is at work, ccw is at swim practice.....to which kind neighbors gave her a lift......and my guys are abike.........i got to read the new time cover to cover without anyone trying to steal it........i might just take a nap.......

ok, so my guys rode in to sisters, oregon a little ahead of schedule, and opted to ride on to redmond (sp)...for an 80 or so mile day.....they are making good time, which should give them some leeway in case of bad weather.........food was their main issue today......there were no restaurants/gas stations/groceries for the first large chunk of their ride, so they were forced to survive on powerbars and water for much of the day......

ok, so let the madness begin......scw received his first bit of bizarrely addressed mail today...to stephan crow-web..........like the computer couldn't handle either end of the hyphenated name, yet retained the hyphen........we in the c-w family are well-versed in hyphenated-maladies.............we go to pick up film ,and are told that no film exists...so we must remind the clerk that c-w begins with a C.......not a W.........and..lo, the film is found and all is well..............there are times, when callers ask for mrs. w,....or worse, mrs. webb.....that i briefly wish i had a name like smith......but even that name can be smith or smythe...so there......but even crown should have been an easy name...one syllable...........so why not keep the n...why does it end up as crow..............counting crows,...black crows.........such a shame that a name gets such little respect..........

ok, so today we catered a funeral wake........which turned into a lot of fun after the family left and the funeral director stuck around to help finish off the buffet.....seems that the family, who ironically insisted on a lavish spread, balked at the cost of an urn........and showed up at the funeral home with a teapot from the deceased's china cabinet...........the funeral director could only fit half of the ashes in the teapot, and told the fiuneral director to dispose of what did not fit........so friends of the deceased turned up with yet another teapot (one that the deceased had admired) , and presumably the deceased is now literally...in two places at once.........as the friends are not sharing their half of the ashes with the family...........whooooo.......one of the daughters of the deceased alledgedly accused one of the friends of stealing the deceased's mink coat, which is laughable, as the friends outweighed the deceased by at least 100 pounds and could not have fit her arm in the coat........so the friends did not come to the lavish wake at our resaurant, and are instead, mourning in private.......and then there is the story the funeral director told about the booking of our restaurant in the first place.......one of the daughter-in-law's had called us, at the suggestion of the mother of the deceased.....and ordered an extensive array of food......then the church holding the memorial let it be known that they had already taken care of booking a buffet at another downtown caterer's dining room......so a daughter called back to cancel......until she saw the room....... then she called us back to reinstate the previous buffet order.....ouch........the mother of the deceased left several large flower arrangements in our lobby....asking us to make use of them somehow........while we were talking to the funeral director, a latecomer breezed in the lobby, grabbed up one of the arrangements, then walked back out.....it was quite bizarre........and then there is the story the friends tell about the mother of the deceased, who, within hours of the actual death, was seen in the deceased's yard attempting to pull down her wrought iron fencing.......'because she would have wanted me to have it' the mother said when questioned about the taking of the fence.......she ended up calling in workman to do the deed....... presumably before the deceased's children arrived in town...........posession IS 95% of the law, is it not?

ok, so my guys rode about 80 miles yesterday, along the mckenzie river. they phoned last night from a phone booth in front of their 'log cabin', part of a rustic 'motel'.....you used to see those places, with clusters of tiny cabins that didn't look big enough to have bathrooms.....i forgot to ask if my assumption was correct.......today they ride over mckenzie pass, their first big climb.......they have to take an alternative route that is longer but with a gentler rise is elevation....as their original choice is snowed in.......they seem in good spirits.........scw was most concerned that i remember to water his bonzai...............

ok, so mm will come clean with the sanitized gossip........last night, at a graduation dinner for an unnamed dhs senior, mm was hugged more than once by someone she believes now to have had her breasts 'done' ......mm has never before been so certain of something so unexpected as this.........and she is further convinced thatr it is pure stupidity for women to have their breasts 'done' if they feel like that in a hugging situation.........further irony......mm plans to have her breasts 'reduced' whenever her ship comes in.......why women desire bigger breasts is beyond me......fir at least 1 week a month, you cannot sleep comfortably on your stomach..........blouses gap annoyingly.......why would anyone in their right mind desire this misery? clearly, this woman did.......i hope they will not burst on her any time soon........

ok, so we have clear signs of the coming of the apocalypse.......mm has spent the morning cleaning........not just picking up...i mean the cleaning the baseboards beneath the supper table and scrubbing out the showers kind of cleaning.........i am soaking the little pans that go under the stove burners as we speak.......because i was born without a cleaning gene, this behavior is frightening, even as i discover that the tub and tile spray removes the water stains on the dish drainer.............maybe this is just guilt from having skipped church................regardless, i am on my 3rd load of wash and will soon begin to recover the deck-table bench cushions...........

ok, so mm has added another m....for miserable........mm has either a summer cold or a sinus infection...either way, she may just go back to bed rather than to church.......having just peeked in on the l.o.'s new format, i guess that if jesus is coming soon, i had better rest up............