The Spokesrider

Today’s ride will not be listed in the annals of Great Memorial Day Rides.    It was a hot day, with temperatures expected to get to 90F, but the previous two days had rain and thunderstorms.   About 3.5 miles from home I realized I didn’t have my smartphone with me, so rode home to get it.  [...]

On an afternoon ride to Convis Township in my home county of Calhoun, my first destination was the farmstead of James and Sarah Mayo.    Unfortunately, it looked like the barn has fallen into ruin, and the house a little further back looks destined to follow it. The day’s route was in part a clockwise loop.   [...]

After putting up the last post about the town square in Coldwater, I looked to see what else I had from that ride on October 22, 2005.    I saw that I had never gotten around to learning about this building from my first photo stop of the day,  at the intersection of D Drive and [...]

The Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin (which we visited week before last) is now a museum and a reminder of British oppression of Irish people.  The leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed here, though not in this courtyard. Executions by firing squad took place in this yard. This place isn’t exactly a part of [...]

While sitting at my desk and listening to the blizzard howl late last night, I went to wunderground.com as I had done several times throughout the day and was confronted with the most dreaded words on the world wide web:   “new and improved.” I was aghast that the Wunderground.com people would choose to ruin their [...]

This Hicks Cemetery is about a quarter-mile up the road from the place where I surmised that Solomon and Mercy Nichols Hicks had lived. The brown obelisk across the road, on the right, may be where Mercy’s father-in-law and mother-in-law are buried. But I should back up and explain a little better why Dave and [...]

Mercy Hicks, the wife of Solomon S. Hicks, was the youngest of six surviving children in the Warren Nichols family. The parents and three children succumbed to cholera and were buried somewhere in Athens. I’ve had no luck finding that grave site, but I also got interested in the surviving children, some of whose graves I’ve found.