Wintry Mix

Whatchoo lookin' at?

 8 February 2025

There's a coating of ice dripping down from the deck railings as I type this. It's the second time this week.

The first time was Thursday morning. While I was waiting for the freezing rain to turn to rain, I crunched around the yard with my camera.

There was another storm forecast for tonight. Ahead of it was a cloudy day that would barely be above freezing. I'd already signed up for the PFW hike at Plainsboro Preserve when Pete started asking around for a Saturday ride out of Pennington. Around bedtime I wavered for a moment, looked at the forecast again, and fetched my hiking boots from the closet.

Heddy, Jim, and Our Jeff made the same decision. The hike was led by CAT ferry buddy David G. In all the years since the Plainsboro Preserve opened, I've only biked past it, never gone in.

We set out on a wide trail that clearly used to be a road. We were next to a large lake. Right away we spotted fresh beaver gnawings.

Opposite the lake was a stream. I walked down to the bank to see if the pile of sticks was a lodge.

It appeared, for now anyway, to be only a pile of sticks.

We took a side trail out to a peninsula. I'd thought this was where my grad school friend had hidden a geocache, but it didn't match the picture I showed to David. The only reason I knew about the cache is that it's the blown glass balloon I sent her at the end of last semester. 

The surface of the lake was mostly frozen.

We doubled back and then followed a trail up a narrow berm. Off to our left was an orderly stack of freshly cut logs.  "OCD beavers," I explained. (I didn't get a picture; it wouldn't have come out well from where we were standing.)

Woodpecker holes!

David was telling me about his brief stint as a serious birder when he spotted what he said was a downy woodpecker way up in a tree off the trail. I asked him which woodpecker shows up at birdfeeders, because I get them once in a while. The ones I see are smaller than the one we were looking at, and I got downy and hairy mixed up in my head. Figuring I could pull up my Merlin app and find a photo, I reached for my phone. 

There was a text from Rose, one of my glassblowing workshop classmates. Campus would be closed tomorrow because of the impending storm, and our first day of the spring workshop was canceled. That would probably mean an additional Sunday tacked onto the end of the semester, one more Sunday off the bike. I never did open Merlin.

We turned onto a different trail, where we found a bat house. (This is a different one; the one we found wouldn't have photographed well.)

It was far over our heads. It took us a minute to figure out where the bats would enter. There were slats in the bottom wide enough for a bat to wriggle through but too big for a squirrel.

Somebody asked, "How many fit in there?"

I said, "Depends on how well they know each other."

To Heddy, I added, "It's an Air B&B: Air Bat and Bat."

She groaned, but at least I had something for the blog.

"You know where they get their furnishings?" I asked. "Bat Bat and Beyond." (Bed Bat and Beyond would have been much better.)

"I shouldn't put this in my blog," I added.

We came upon a grove of evergreens in rows. They remind David of his time in the Pacific Northwest.

Then we were back at the parking lot. David suggested I follow one of the trails behind the visitor's center to see if I could find the spot that matched my friend's picture. I wandered through a trail designed for kids, with little activity centers spaced close together, then turned onto another trail that led towards the lake. I didn't go far; it was clear that the cache spot was somewhere other than in this park.

On my way back, I saw a flicker of blue off to my left. A bluebird had settled on a tree trunk. I managed to pull my camera out of my pocket and get three quick pictures before it flew off.

I stopped to photograph another bat house that had better lighting around it.

"Did you find it?" David asked about the cache when I got back to my car. "No," I said, forgetting to tell him about the bluebird. 

I checked the text again and realized that the cache was at "Plainsboro Pond," not Plainsboro Preserve, and that Google Maps can't find a Plainsboro Pond. I think I might know now what my friend meant, but, in case any geocachers are reading this, I'm not saying. 

Hot Mess Part Forty-Five: Thirteen More Sundays, Day 0

What day is it?

2 February 2025

I slept in today, enjoying my last lazy Sunday morning before the sping workshop kicks in.

The group text storm started at 8:25.

Murano: "Running late. On my way."

I had a moment of panic. The workshop starts February 9, doesn't it? I keep the schedule page open, watching it every day for enrollment changes. I checked again. Yes. The 9th. Today is February 2. I'm sure of it.

CP texted me separately: "Is today the first session or next Sunday?"

Me: "Next week!"

CP: "Alrighty. Thank you Laura!"

Meanwhile, on the group text:

Sometimes: "I thought it was next week."

CP: "Hey, Murano. It's CP. I'm here now and everything is locked up. Do we start next Sunday?"

Murano: "Supposed to be today I thought. According to the schedule."

CP: "Same here. Still no one here. Waiting to hear from Laura."

Me: "Next week!"

CP: "Next week guys. Confirmed by Laura."

Me: 

I was scooping the litter boxes ten minutes later when Murano called. "Doesn't class start today? I'm here and the door is locked."

"Next week."

"The 9th."

"Yeah, next week."

"Today's the 9th."

"Today's the 2nd."

Long pause. 

Around 1:00, All The Glass sent an email to me, LT2, and the building manager. Still clearing his basement of glassblowing paraphernalia, he had some tools and protective clothing to donate. "I am planning to stop by Monday night around 9:30pm (end of lab I believe)," he wrote.

"Next week," I wrote back.

Were we all part of some group hallucination?

I decided to get proactive and send a group text to my Monday evening classmates. "Hey, guys! Our session starts next week, not tomorrow." I explained the morning confusion.

Sage: "Oh well. It could have been worse. I was confused, but double-checked with Rose."

Me: "Better than last year, when the room wasn't ready on our first day."

Sage: "Don't jinx it."

Curious about whether or not the dates had changed between November and now, I scrolled back into my records, to the original class announcement. Nope. Nothing had changed. Workshop sessions begin next week.

Winter Wind

 

Stony Brook at Pennington-Hopewell Road

2 February 2025

I was bogged down at work this week. Tom jumped in before I had a chance to think about it and suggested a trail ride for today. Temperatures would be slightly above freezing and falling, with 15 mph winds and gusts above 20 mph. That sounds like towpath weather, except that all the snow we had last weekend had melted mid-week, and then we had rain on and off all day Friday. The paths would be a mess. I suggested a road ride from Pennington instead. At least we could find some trees to block the wind.

Heddy, Rickety, Martin, Jack H, and Pete were stupid brave enough to join me. 

The streets had just about dried when I left the house at 9:30 Saturday morning. I gave myself half and hour to ride 3.5 miles because I knew I'd be straight into the wind. It felt like a 3-mile hill.

Indoors, I've been trying to work on increasing my cadence. I've come to an agreement with Rouvy: I can give it power or I can give it high rpm, but not both. I'm a slow-twitch Slug. I got talking about that with Pete. He told me that he'd gone out on a ride with Martin during the week. His wife had passed them in her car. "It looked like you two were on separate rides," she told him. He said, "My legs are going like an eggbeater and Martin's are like a metronome." I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess. I'm not looking to race, just to be more efficient.

Pete had a flat halfway up the Carter Road hill (it's barely a hill, except in the winter, when it feels like a big one). 

At the end of Wargo Road, Pete's tire went soft again. He turned around; he wasn't far from home. 

At the end of Tyburn, I gave everyone a choice: We could ride up the lower part of Stony Brook and take the hill on 518 towards Hopewell, or we could go straight to Boro Bean from here. Jack H said, "I'll see you at the coffee shop," and there were no protestations. 

Boro Bean's wooden door was shut when we rolled up. The outdoor chairs were tilted against the tables. One after another, we asked, "Are they closed?"

No, just keeping the heat in. The place was bustling as usual. Heddy and I ordered cortados. If she's there, that's what I get. Rickety decided to order one too. "See what you started?" I told her. The barista made the best cortado I've had on this side of the Atlantic.

Jack H has taken up spinning classes. Heddy still spins. I took classes from 1998 until the pandemic. We were trading stories and suggestions. Training on Rowlf (my 1986 Colnago Master) permanently fixed onto my Wahoo Kickr, and being fed workouts and real-life roads by Rouvy, is a different beast. Spin bikes have flywheels. Rowlf has a freewheel. Spin bikes require the user to adust the tension. Rouvy throws 14% grade hills at me and I have to deal with them. On the other hand, even in 53/11, I can get no traction on Rouvy's steep desecents. I try to avoid courses with a lot of downhills.

We climbed the low grade westward out of the Hopewell Valley, towards Route 31. When we passed the Stony Brook and the railroad bridge, I doubled back for photos. Everyone waited for me at the next intersection. "I couldn't resist the shadows of the trees on the ice," I said.

After we turned onto Woosamonsa from Route 31, Heddy laughed at the simultaneous clicking of all of us switching to our big rings. We'd finally found a flat road shielded from the wind. And we had a tailwind on Burd.

We didn't finish with many miles, but it was enough. We hung around the parking lot, chatting, as we usually do. Heddy and Martin said they want to flood me with updates from their biking trip to Italy in May. I was invited. I declined. 

I said, "Don't make me regret it. I'm just about over the trauma from the Canada trip."

"Trauma?" Martin asked.

I've been calling it that, overstating the situation because I haven't found a better description for it. 

During a brief period of downtime at work, I'd added the trip photos to my desktop slideshow. Each photo that shows up comes with how I felt when I was taking the picture. Maybe by next year I'll have processed the trip enough to go on another one.

Meanwhile, I had 3.5 miles of tailwind to send me home. 

Deep Freeze

 

Baldpate Mountain Summit

26 January 2025

There was no snow here last winter. In December there were a few dustings, and then, from Sunday afternoon until the small hours of Monday morning, we got the real thing. It started with rain, then sleet, creating a skin of icy snow on the ground that my shovel could not remove. Our front yard and driveway get no direct sun. The skin lasted all week.

The temperature had dropped into the teens by the time I went out to shovel after the storm. I paused a few times to get pictures of whatever yard glass wasn't covered in snow. 

That this balloon thing hasn't tipped over in the wind is a testament to its weight.

Saint Polychromatous is at its best in the winter, when there's no other color around.

Left to right (in back and in front): Saint Orbitus, Saint Cullet, Saint Miscellaneous, Saint Polychromatous, and Saint Vitreous.

The top of Saint Cullet:

In the winter, when sunrise is at a reasonable hour and the sun is to the south, I can get high-cloud sunrise photos from my bedroom window. That happened on Thursday morning, when I had to get Jack to an early train to Philadelphia.

Later, he posted a picture of the iced-over Delaware River as the train was stopped on the bridge.

One isn't supposed to blog about work, but it is a strange thing when your boss asks your age and you already know what he's getting at before he's finished the question.

Being housebound and between glassblowing classes, I finally uploaded to Etsy the 10 pieces of jewelry I'd made during brief quiet periods over the past few years. Having very nearly weaned myself off of Facebook (where I will eventually link this post), I haven't bothered to advertize it there. If Jack's Facebook feed is any measure, a photo he posted of Clementine got an order of magnitute more attention on Bluesky. Which I'm not joining either. 

There's only so much doomscrolling I can do these days. I'm reading a lot more books and catching up on the pile of Science issues that show up every week. I subscribed as a grad student in the '90s and somehow managed to hang onto the student rate for years. When I was given the automatic renewal option for even less money, I took it. I read the news section. My favorite articles deal with pompous scientists who get busted for fraud or employee abuse. Having been on the receiving end of said abuse, I'm happy to see anyone pay the price.

Anyway, with my driveway as the proxy for any shaded road we might want to take our bikes on, I opted for a club hike today instead. Starting from the entrance on Pleasant Valley Road, we clomped through the snow to the top of Baldpate Mountain.

Our Jeff took us on a detour to a little hut by a frozen pond. I think he said it was a fishing hut. Debbie V and Heddy investigated before I went down for photos.

We went to the summit, above the Kuser mansion, and looked west towards Pennsylvania.

As we were hiking, the temperature went well above freezing, finally. I was even sweating a little towards the end. As we schmoozed in the parking lot, a mountain biker made his way up a side trail in the snow. A fellow on a gravel bike turned in to take a break and use the trash can. As he pedaled away, I said, "So much nope." Martin countered that he might get out on his bike this afternoon. I passed that biker and two more on my drive home. Hmph. I suppose I could have been more badass than I was today, but I've been wanting to hike more, so whatever.

When I got home, half of the driveway snow had melted. Maybe we'll get out on our bikes next weekend, if it doesn't rain.