Whenever I'm Ready

 

Countdown 

20 March 2026

Dave S came up to me at the 2024 PFW fall picnic. He patted me on the shoulder and asked, "So, when are you going to retire?"

"Huh?"

That was before the Hallucinating Chatbot In Chief and his Ketamine Minions set fire to the NIH budget. 

That was before my boss asked what my long-term plans were. That was before I had an answer.

I've worked full-time since the week before I graduated from college. I worked as a TA and research assistant and outside the lab part-time during graduate school, then left to work full-time again as a lab tech while I finished my PhD, and after. 

In one way or another, I've been a lab grunt in academia for 40 years. 

In January 2025, when the walls started closing in, I sent an email to the university HR folks. I knew that one would qualify for retirement benefits when one's age plus years of service equaled 75. My start date at this university was October 18, 2010. My birthday is in May. Did the university count by years or months, I asked. "Days," they replied. "You qualify on February 2, 2026."

Wait, what? That was 54 weeks away.

That changed things.

Our institute is a big glass box full of nerds. Our office walls and doors are glass. There are dry-erase equations Beautiful-Minding everywhere.  When there was one year to go, I slid my office door closed and, on the inside, began writing a column of numbers: 52, 51, 50... By the time I got down to 1, the ink had nearly run out.

Every Monday morning, I'd slide the door closed and erase the top number. 

When the 50s became the 30s, I had no more idea of if or when I'd bow out, much less what I'd do with the great expanse of free time burning white-hot at the end of it.

"You need a plan," Plain Jim warned. 

"You need structure," Jack cautioned.

"There's always the nap," Rickety said. "Ah, yes, the nap," Pete chimed in.

I don't do downtime. I work. I work out. I lead bike rides. I go on bike rides. I blow glass. I serve on wonky environmental committees. I make jewelry. I do chores. I take pictures of spiders. I blog.

"That's not enough," Jack said. "You'll go nuts in two days."

He wasn't wrong.

I started a list. Where could I volunteer? Should I learn American Sign Language? Photography? Visit every parcel of open space in central New Jersey?

"When I look at the list, I get the heebie-jeebies," I told Plain Jim. "There's not enough there."

I sent it to him. Much to my surprise, and to my great relief, he was impressed by its contents. I felt better.

But still.

I wasn't ready.

I wasn't ready when February 2 rolled around and I erased the 1.

In its place, I left myself another message: "whenever I'm ready."

Then the first university-wide email came: For us peons, a 1% raise for the 2026 fiscal year starting in July. Inflation was something around 3% that day. We were the lucky ones; the exalted ones would get no raise at all.

When the second email arrived to announce impending benefit cuts, I wrote to HR to ask what that would mean for me. All they could tell me was that my unused vacation day payout would drop from 30 days to 20 days if I were to retire after July 1.

I should mention here that there is no retirement pay package at this gold-plated institution. There is dirt-cheap health insurance: I get to continue the plan I'm on until I qualify for Medicare. But that's it. There's no equivalent of a severance package. Not when you're paid by grants, anyway. Health care benefits continue until the end of the month one retires in, but for money, the vacation days are it. I'd been banking mine. I had 37 when I found out about the cut.

The university forced my hand. I decided to retire on June 1. I'd already planned to be on vacation that week anyway.

It wasn't until I picked the date that the other half fell into place. I peppered HR with more questions.

On February 25, I had a chat with my boss. "Remember a year ago when you asked if I had a plan and I didn't?"

"Yeah?"

 "Well, now I do."

"Oh?" He looked somewhat concerned.

"I want to retire," I said, "But I want to stay on part-time after that."

That worked for him. He'd keep me on indefinitely if he could, he said.

HR rules will limit my hours to half-time. I get to jettison the tasks that take up time without being rewarding (think of it as flipping brains instead of burgers for half the department), and peel away my mouse pimp duties to all the people in the lab who actually use the animals. 

I can do the fun work for the big project our lab is starting, earn a little cash*, and then go out and play with all my retired friends.

The morning after I made the decision, Heddy texted me to ask how I felt about it. "Surprisingly unremorseful," I wrote back.

I've felt strangely light ever since. I should ask Dave S about that.

(*There's a part of me that hates the idea that I'll be a part-time gold-digger, slumming it while Jack still works. But with my bird-bones and all, I don't want to spend the rest of my mobile life standing at a lab bench.)

January Sunrise March Sunset

 

8 March 2026

Sure, I live in suburban hell, in what one Free Wheeler unashamedly called "low-end housing" right to my face decades ago. But I do get good sunrises in January.

And this evening, thanks to Heddy texting "colorful sunset tonight," I ran outside in my slippers to catch it.

Almost Spring

 

Mount Airy

8 March 2026

Last Sunday I did a solo ride in the late afternoon with my GoPro mounted on Janice's handlebar. Of the 30 miles I recorded, 22 became a Rouvy route that, if you're a subscriber, you can find here.

In order to submit a clean ride, I need to be by myself or out in front. Nobody wants their butt to be part of a permanent Rouvy video. I had mounted the camera for the ride I planned to lead yesterday, but, given the size of the group and the murky skies, I removed it before I headed out.

I'd promised a mellow ride with what I thought was an accurate measurment elevation gain. We got the former, not so much the latter. I have a route from Pennington to Lambertville that I like so much I'd already used it twice before yesterday.

The usual cadre of fast climbers was absent, and a few others hadn't been out in months. That left me in the front of the pack for almost the entire ride. I regretted not having the camera, cloud cover be damned. This means, of course, that I'll be wanting to do this route again, under blue skies, either by myself or with people who are willing to stay behind me or be so far ahead that they'll be out of camera range.

Almost all of the snow was gone. The roads were damp from overnight rain. The temperature was in the mid 40s, which felt balmy compared to the February deep freeze. 

There was a slight wind out of the south. I think that helped us climb.

We did the usual stuff: Stony Brook to the ridge, then over to Rocktown to cross at Route 31. There were traffic-counting tubes on both sides of Rocktown. Either a giant development is coming in (not likely), or some sort of traffic calming measure is planned (please please please). Plain Jim took the safe route down the shoulder of 31 to cross at Rocktown Hill Road. The rest of us waited forever for a break in the traffic. 

We did stop briefly for the Mount Airy cows. "If you search my hard drive for 'Mount Airy cows,' I said, "you'll get hundreds." I'm doing a search now, which only has photos since I bought this laptop in 2021. I am very wrong. It's only 27, plus these 5.

If I had brought my camera, I'd have recorded the jack-knifed tractor-trailer that had wedged its rear wheels into the dirt between Mount Airy Village Road and the sharp incline leading to the Mount Airy cows. We were able to ride around it and the cop car to get to Queen Road.

We got spread out on Alexauken Creek Road. A lot of us like to dally there. It's one of my favorite roads.

Union ("Onion," as Pete calls it) Coffee was crowded and well worth the short wait.

We climbed out of town on Rocktown, as usual, where there was some discussion of whether Garmin would call this one hill or two. At the top, the consensus was two. Dinosaur Hill was the third of the four remaining. 

At Rock Road, I went west instead of the usual east, and when we learned that Dave H had never been into Wheelfine, we took a quick detour. With 7 of us in there, we filled the place. 

Woodens Lane from top to bottom is a scenic way to get back towards Pennington. We skirted the hell that is (Un)Pleasant Valley by cutting off at Pleasant Valley-Harbourton, which is also pretty.

Route 579 now officially sucks. We weren't on it for long. It was a straight shot back towards Route 31 from there. 

I put new lenses in my sunglasses last week. I'd found a cheap pack on Amazon. The one I popped in is polarized. When I look through the glasses into my rear-view mirror, car windows look green or purple. So did Dave H's helmet, and I wondered how he'd managed to find a dichroic helmet. One side was purple, the other green, with a center orange stripe. When we stopped at the intersection of Tree Farm Road and Route 31, I asked him about it. "It's black," he said, confused. And indeed it was, when I looked at it straight on. Back in the Twin Pines parking lot, I held his helmet behind me and saw a shimmer of green. Cool! I can trip while I'm riding!

Tom's Snow Ride

 

Janice at Village Park, Cranbury

1 March 2026

Much of Monday's snow dump has melted, enough that Tom invited a few of us to ride the sunnier roads between West Windsor and Plainsboro.

I rode to Mercer County Park from home. The shoulders were still half-covered in snow. That wasn't a problem. Riding through the shadier sections of Mercer County Park's main road was almost a problem. Melting snow had frozen overnight into fingers of ice reaching out from the side of the road. The ice was melting as I weaved around it.

I wanted to get a picture of the Assunpink from the wooden bridge. I decided not to take the paved path through the park to get to it, and I'm glad I didn't, because the section between the bridge and the East Picnic Area parking lot was still covered in snow.

Tom led me, Rickety, Blob, and Our Jeff to the Caspersen Rowing Center on the north side of Mercer Lake, solely to look at the ice and take pictures.

From there we went north and east. There's a new crop of potholes for the 2026 season. There was still so much salt on the busier roads that I could taste it when I breathed through my mouth.

Roadwork in the middle of Cranbury diverted us towards Village Park, so we stopped there for a quick outhouse and snack break. 

The forecast high for the day was the low 50s. I had that combination of cold and sweat when I got home. It's tricky to dress for a day that goes from 32 to 48 degrees in the space of 49 miles.

Today it's back to crummy weather, a wintry mix that should clear out by mid-afternoon.