I donate plasma at Biolife Plasma Services as often as I am able, but it can be tricky since I need to wait for my wife to get home from work to take care of Dylan while they take the life force out of my blood.  Well, they finally opened their playroom for kids so I scheduled a morning appointment and it went really well!  My little guy didn’t cry when I dropped him off and when I came to get him an hour and a half later he was receiving one on one attention from the attendant while Charlotte’s Web played on a television in the background.

We stopped by home for some lunch and saw Janelley, who was popping by after a medical appointment and on her way to work.  Did you know Janelle is pregnant?  Well she is!  She heard the whoosh whoosh whoosh of our amphibious fetus’ heartbeat for the second time today.  Nelly wants a green eyed dark complexioned girl named Julia, I’m hoping for a healthy  human being.  Maybe we’ll both get what we want.

After our lunch we packed the Daddybag and got out our bike and trailer for a jaunt to M.B. Johnson park on the far north edge of Moorhead.  There was some kind of motorcycle racing group setting up orange markers and cruising around, but I never did see any drag racing.  Dylan played on the playground while I juggled and helped him climb up the slide.  There was a platform missing on the playground equipment so there was no way he could make it up there on his own.

It started to rain so we retreated under the shelter and hung out there for a bit.  The boy ate a snack at the picnic table while I worked on my four ball skills with my hacks.  The rainfall intensified, so I got out my rain poncho and got ready to leave.

The trip back was grueling but satisfying.  There was a lot of mud on the shoulder of the road (where we were pedaling into the wind and rain) due to the dike that just got dismantled along Oakport St N.  It is wonderful to see those clay dikes disappearing all over town and to regain access to public places that have been closed such as M.B. Johnson.  Dylan was safe and warm in the trailer since the rain flap was secured, and things went fairly well except for the soaking I took across from the sugar beet plant.

A crew was spraying away residual clay with a firehose, so automobile traffic was slowing down to go through the splash hazard stretching across the road.  I slowed down, signaled my turn, and made my way to the middle of the road thinking that the boy would be high enough that he would not get splashed.  He didn’t get splashed, but I took a soaking from my left shoe up to my left knee.  Rats!  Looking back, the smart thing to do would have been to go all the way to the other side before attempting to cross.  Better luck next time!