Back to My Favorite Puddle

15 November

My ride got rained out, so I went with Mike B. and his brother, Arty, by car up to Stanton for brunch on Saturday. Arty lives in Brooklyn, so we took the scenic route to show him where we ride.

Arty commutes to work by bike. Pedestrians drive him nuts. "First I tried a whistle. That didn't work. I got a horn. That don't work. There's only one thing that works."

"What's that?"

He raised his fist and shouted, "Outa my way, motherfucker!"

Mike said, "Are you going to put that in the blog?"

"Of course!"

It seems that neither Mike nor I can get enough of our favorite puddle, and we had to show Arty. So we drove up to Round Valley Reservoir. We parked at the boat launch and walked over the berm to a trail in the woods at the edge of the water.

We were in between storm cells. One minute the sun would almost be shining and the next the sky would be steel gray all over. The wind was picking up, too. I'd never seen waves on the reservoir before.





We think this bird might have been a cormorant. I've only ever seen them floating low in the water or standing on pilings hanging their wings out to dry.

The bird just sat there, facing the handful of fisherman on the nearby shore. Mike said, "He's waiting for them to catch a fish, then he'll swoop down."

Then the bird raised itself up a little. "Here we go," I said, thinking it was about to fly. But instead it let go a jet of urine. "It wrung one out, as they say," Mike said.



After that we drove to the Readington buffalo farm. We got lucky: the herd was grazing right next to the driveway. We drove all the way in. There's a small store back there selling buffalo burgers, buffalo sausage, buffalo jerky, t-shirts, caps, and three kinds of plush buffalo toys. I bought a $3 buffalino for Jack.

Mike asked if I ever had buffalo meat, knowing I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years. I said, "Well, there's Tofurkey. I'd try it if there were Tofuffalo."

The farm has a museum of sorts, too: a small room with a DVD on a loop, samples of horn and hide, and pictures of buffalo at glued to poster board.





I tried for one more picture as our car pulled out of the driveway. Blurry buffalo:



I'm glad we got a chance to walk around the places we usually see from the road.