Hot Mess Part Twenty-Six: Lives of Their Own

Two Dozen Handblown Glass Ornaments on One Tree

30 January 2022

Once class is over, the pieces I've made get to have their own lives, away from the scrutiny of my peers.

My end-of-semester ritual is to clear out as much glass as possible. Whatever isn't going into one of the cabinets, into the yard, or above my desk at work, has to leave the house one way or another.

Several pieces made their way around the country, and I was glad for photos of their new homes.

One of the two jellyfish is now in Upstate New York, serving as a reminder of jellyfish-infested Ironman waters.

For that, I had to write "Bwa-ha-ha!" in tape on the bottom.

A vase welcomed an old friend relocating to northern New Jersey:

An early feathering attempt flew across the pond to suburban London:

Another feathered vase is living a lot closer to home, one town over.

I'd shipped a big box of rejects to a crafty and creative friend in western Massachusetts. What she did with them does not disappoint:

With the pieces I like tucked away on glass shelves, I needed a way to remind myself to spend some time looking at them. All the shelves have lights, so I put them on a timer. In the evening, the lights go on, and I try to make a point to notice them.

Each piece is an adventure I want to remember for the next time.

Each ornament I made from scrap threads turned out heavy, so I put them all outside, where the morning sun hits them just right.

Meanwhile, some old glass pieces had to make way for new ones. I set about drilling holes in preparation for sculptures that either I or my friend in Massachusetts would make.

I hung the bowls from a line of plastic-coated wire. 

Eventually I moved them from the corner to a more visible part of the porch window screen.

A few days later, I shortened the distance between the bowls. 

Four orbs now live next to where the dead tree was.

Another orb mysteriously shattered after almost a year in the yard. I wasn't upset. Its loss means there's room for something else here.

The porch windows are full for now. I did sell a few giant ornaments, but there were already some waiting to fill the space.

When I decorated the Christmas tree, I used almost all of the ornaments I'd kept in the cabinet and in clear glass bowls. Having them out like this let me reorganize them by color. It also suggested I really don't need to be making more of these for myself.

Our first snowstorm put hats on all the outside ornaments.

Our next-door neighbors are heavily Catholic. They have plaster saints in their back yard. Me, I have a statue of the many-headed Saint Vitreous.

Plain Jim offered, "St Vitreous: Patron saint of those who find fault with their own work, even though others enjoy it immensely. Usually pictured frowning, with the shards of his cast-off, despised creations at his feet. Miracles attributed to St Vitreous often include the grudging admission of the artist or craftsman that, "yeah, I guess that one was really OK..."

To which I responded, "Each head says, "The next one will be better."

I have a second bottle tree, much taller and thinner, where I stuffed the early-semester practice vases that I hadn't thrown back into the melt bucket.

As the ground froze, the tree tilted more and more to one side. I ended up removing the top branches and straightening the center post.

The giant ornaments are proving to be winter-tolerant.

Winter is also the only time we get direct sunlight in the kitchen. It lights up the window sill glass.

At work, a colleague looked at the threaded vases above my desk and said, "They're so pretty. It's so relaxing to look at."

I laughed and said, "It's not relaxing to make!"

Why am I doing this again?

Never mind that. Class has begun again. On the first day we cleaned the room, as we always do, moving everything into the courtyard first.

 

On the second day we did our warmup exercise, the dreaded one-gather-one-reheat challenge. I sent three to the floor, but I did make five that succeeded. I didn't keep them, though. I knocked them off the punty straight into the melt bucket. I have enough crap at home already.

Then I set about making a practice vase. As I cradled the bottom in wet newspaper, rolling the pipe on the rail as I filled the piece with air, I remembered why I'm doing this.

Frozen Slugs on the LHT: My Ride of Wrong Turns

 

Delaware and Raritan Canal at Province Line Road, Lawrence Township

25 January 2022

I'm late with this one for two reasons: one, I wasn't sure what to write, and two, I'm working on a wiki for the lab, which, it turns out, is a lot like blogging.

So anyway, Sunday wasn't as cold as Saturday. It was still cold though, 28 degrees when I left the house on Fozzie. I'd heard there was a detour of the bike path through the construction at the Lenox site, so I turned in there to find it. Knowing things would be messed up, I didn't bother to map the route on my GPS.

I didn't find it. I found myself at the edge of what will soon be condos at the edge of an office park and next to an historic property that no thin line of trees is going to mask. 

I doubled back and headed to the historic Brearley house by using the road. When I arrived at the lot, Tom was just coming back from seeking the trail from this end. "It's completely gone," he said.

The eight of us made our way around the potholes on the dirt road leading away from the house. Luis called out to me that I'd ridden right past the detour path stuck halfway up the dirt road. We turned around and took it. The surface was hastily smoothed dirt and gravel. It sucked. 

Four of us (me, Rickety, Martin, and Frederic) were on gravel bikes. Tom, Luis, and Heddy had mountain bikes. And Ming was on her road bike, which has wide tires, but I was still worried that the mushy surfaces we'd encounter would send her sideways. 

It's been a year since I've been on the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail. There's still construction at the Lawrenceville School, and all the LHT guide signs are AWOL. Luis and Frederic knew how to find the one open gate leading out of the place on the Route 206 side. 

Then I rode straight past the turn onto Craven Lane. I realized after the trail became less groomed that we were on the Johnson Trolley Line path. No matter. I liked it. When we reached Lawrenceville-Pennington Road, we turned north. The trolley line would dead end at the highway, so there was no point in staying on it. There's talk -- there's been talk for decades, but it's getting louder -- of putting a pedestrian overpass over the highway to connect the two ends of the trolley line trail. With that, we could go all the way to Ewing in the woods. 

Turning on Bergen, I led us back to Village Park. When we reached the Pole Farm, I got to ride on the new pavement for the first time. This used to be a long, slow, gravel grind up a gradual hill leading out of the Delaware and into the Raritan watershed. It would always be against the wind and feel much more difficult than it had any reason to be. That was then. Now, we all have gravel bikes and we're gliding across the blacktop. Ming, seeing pavement, did her Ming thing and took off like the rocket she is. The folks on mountain bikes still had to grind; riding a mountain bike on blacktop is like riding through glue.

We encountered a big patch of ice in the woods, gray ice, ice that's on its way to melting. I signaled everyone to walk across. Tom came along and rode straight over it. We all held our breaths as he made it to the other side.

I nearly missed a turn at Rosedale Park; I'd heard someone wanted a bathroom and rode up to the building by the lake. I was about to continue around the lake when Heddy asked if we weren't going across the bridge. Whoops. I doubled back, only to see another path curving down from where we'd been.

In Pennington, I stopped to zoom in on the eagle nest across the field. It was empty.

When we got to Wargo Road, some people took the path and some stayed on the street. Behind me, Luis and Frederic were speaking French. 

The route still goes through the little neighborhood on the other side of Wargo. Once again, the trail signs were missing. I wasn't sure which turns the trail took, because I ride through here enough that I know several ways to get to the other side. Luis knew, so I followed him. 

Up past the Mount Rose distillery, where the path goes into the woods towards Carter Road, we encountered more ice. Nobody rode across this one.

At Carter, the route is on the road all the way to Cleveland Road. Luis said there were paths through the NJ Bio campus, so I let him lead.

When we crossed Carter Road, I thought Tom was with us. He wasn't. We were down in the parking lot, but, through the trees, I could see him on the other side of Carter Road. Rickety turned back to wave him over.

The paths Luis took us on led us to a disused service road that took us straight back to Carter. I was hoping we'd get dumped onto Cleveland. Oh well. At least we avoided three quarters of the Carter Road traffic. On the official trail map, there's a dotted line keyed as "future," that would go through this site and come out on Cleveland. 

We had to climb a couple of hills on Cleveland and again on the other side of the Stony Brook after the pedestrian bridge on Province Line. 

I rode right past the entrance to Carson Road Woods; Tom called me back.

"Are you gonna take the canal?" he asked.

"Nah," I said, figuring we'd stick to Princeton Pike's bike lane.

When we reached Province Line, I changed my mind. We got separated at the light on Princeton Pike. Frederic and I rode ahead to the canal entrance instead of waiting. The road is too narrow and the traffic too heavy for us to stop and wait anywhere else.

As we stood there, a little boy came riding up from the south. Frederic immediately started speaking to him in French, which was confusing for half a second until I figured out that this was the son he'd been talking about. By now, the rest of the group had caught up. There was some discussion and confusion about Frederic and Luis leaving the ride here and continuing on Quaker Road, which made no sense to me because the towpath was right here.

I took pictures while they worked it out.

I've never seen this side when it hasn't been flooded:

This section of towpath is always a mess. There are often large puddles and washouts, and, if not that, the surface is mushy and muddy. We rode along it anyway. I was behind Ming, hoping her rear tire wouldn't slide out from under her.

There's a grassy berm next to the path. More often than not, we ride on the berm, which, while bumpy, is dry. After a few minutes of squishing through the mud, I'd had enough, and aimed Fozzie up the berm.

Fozzie is not a mountain bike. Fozzie is a gravel bike. Fozzie does not move like a mountain bike. Where Grover would have been nimble enough to carry the front wheel over the lip of the berm, Fozzie was not. I slowly toppled over instead. It wasn't much of a fall, being that I had been pretty much up against the ground anyway. I dusted myself off as the rest of the group passed below me. I was going to have a few bruises, one on my hiney. 

I pedaled into the parking lot second to last; Tom had gone up on the berm too, behind me. I thought I was the last one. I'd lost him twice today. It's his bike. With its beefy build and shock fork, it's meant for singletrack trails, stuff I can't even ride on. When the path is mucky or icy, he kicks our butts; we have to walk.

The last time I was on the LHT, I had my mountain bike. Tom and I were dead last, struggling to keep up with the gravel bike crowd. I wonder if there's a gravel bike in his future. I'm sure glad I swapped Grover for Fozzie.

Frozen Slugs on the Towpath

 

Delaware River from Scudder Falls Bridge

16 January 2022

Early last week, Tom, Jim, and I went back and forth about this weekend's ride-leading plans. Jim asked me if I was out of my mind. I told him I was born out of my mind. In the end, the consensus was, "yeah, no."

Hearing a whole lot of nothing by late in the week, Pete G put out a feeler. "I hear the call of a loon!" I responded, and from there, a ride was born:

The Hill Slugs will be studying the Venn diagram of crazy and stupid on Sunday morning on the towpath. We will start from Washington Crossing, NJ, cross the new Scudder Falls bridge, ride up the PA side to New Hope, and return on the NJ side. The route is approximately 20 miles. Wear all the winter clothes you own.

Rickety, Pete G, and Tom signed up, and then Ken G. I know Ken is that special kind of crazy, and he lives nearby, so I asked him if he was planning to ride in from home. It would be ten very cold road miles. I'd do it if he'd do it. Neither of us did. At 8:30 my outdoor thermometer was reading 9 degrees without the wind chill mixed in. Seeing these temperatures, Tom bailed. 

My car's thermometer was reading 18 degrees an hour and a half later as I pulled into the Washington Crossing lot.

Another PFW ride, led by either Ron or Ken W or Chris, was also ready to go. Their plan, as it had been listed, was to go south to the Calhoun Street Bridge and then north to New Hope.

They left before we did, our start delayed because Jack H and Dorothy were in the parking lot too. They were about to hike up the hill and over to Baldpate Mountain. I zipped my jacket all the way up to my chin. The zipper got stuck there; Dorothy helped un-stick it.

Ron's group was a little ahead of us. They turned up the Scudder Falls path. We followed and caught up with them at the bump-out in the middle of the bridge. Ken W was taking pictures with his phone.

"I thought you guys were going down to Calhoun Street," I said.

Ken gave the thumbs-down.

"Ah," I said, "A bridge too far."  (ba-dum tsssss!)

I had the camera advantage, being able to work it through my lobster-claw gloves. There was a thin layer of ice on the water, some of it moving with the current.

I took one last shot through the railing.

Ken G had never been over the bridge before. Last time, it was Jim and Ricky's first trip. But it's Martin's name that's tied to this crossing. He's in a Strava competition with some guy who claims the towpath as his kingdom. Martin is skiing somewhere now. I guess that means the other guy won.

We turned north on the Pennsylvania side, separating from the Ron-Ken-Chris group still on the bridge.

Pete and I got into a discussion about winter clothing. My entire outer layer dated back to the early 2000s, the shoes and booties newer than that by only a few years. What works, works.

"I've got toe warmers on the tops and bottoms of wool socks. A toe-warmer sandwich."

"Technically," Pete said, "It's a toe sandwich."

"Right," I said. "Toeducken."

For once, my feet were warmer than my hands (glove liners under lobster-claws), which were also plenty warm.

The trick is not to stop.

Unless you have to pee. Then there's the maintenance barn a little south of New Hope. "Someone needs to open a coffee shop here," Pete said.

I wonder how many people have ducked behind this place. 

Right after I took this picture of Pete, Ken G, and Rickety, we heard a loud crack coming from the canal.

It was the ice doing whatever it is that ice does when it's taking over a canal.

To the south, the sky was clouding over.

I hadn't tried to drink from my Camelbak yet. The tube was empty, but whatever little water had been in the bite valve had completely frozen. "Yeah, mine too," Pete said. "Forget it." I shoved the end into my jacket with the hope it might warm up.

As we were about to leave, the other guys crunched by. We rode as one group for a mile or so, but got ahead of them as we approached New Hope. We stuck to the road there, the main street through town. 

New Hope is the sort of place I'd need to visit around noon, without breakfast or coffee, because I'm pretty sure I could eat my way south to north, filling myself with sugar and caffeine before reaching the bridge.

We didn't stop, though. We walked our bikes across to the Jersey side. Somehow, we reached Titusville in what felt like five minutes. We took the road along the river. We like looking at the houses and the water.

The Camelbak's bite valve was still frozen.

The storm that's going to dump a lot of rain on us tonight was making its way in, and even though the temperature was now a balmy 28 degrees, I didn't feel any warmer than I had two hours ago.

I walked across the grass to take some pictures of the river. Ricky followed with his real camera. He's challenged himself to one artistic photo per day this year. 

In the thirty seconds it took for me to open my phone and take one short video, my fingers froze.

I used my other hand to take the next one.

The worst part about a cold ride is the drive home. My toeducken feet stayed warm. The rest of me, not so much. What's worse than cooling off in the car is getting out again and having to haul the bike back inside. Next time there's a Washington Crossing start, I should just suck it up and bike over.