Our Little Blizzard

 

Saint Vitreous

23 February 2026

I led a ride last Saturday that I'm just now realizing I never got around to blogging about. I think it's because the photos I took of the eagles' nest off of Old Mill Road were blurry.

Plain Jim dutifully blogged about it, so I'll leave the details to him.

It was the first road ride I'd done since mid-January, and, for some of us, the first road ride of the year. The snow had finally melted enough, and the temperature was above freezing enough, for us to do a short ride. The Twin Pines Federal City parking lot was not so much plowed as indented. There was a new couple on the ride. At the end, Plain Jim declared that he approved and they were invited back. The sky was clear blue and there was still snow in the farm fields. 

Tom led a ride this past Saturday. We left from the Peddie School because both gates at Etra Lake Park were locked (Plain Jim has more on that). There were 11 of us and we got spread out a few times. It was a relaxed ride. More than once I found myself in the sort of conversation that one does not blog about. To me, that's a sign of good friendship, even if we don't see each other very much these days.

Last Sunday I'd tested my new GoPro again, on a solo ride. I captured 30 miles of video only to find out that I used too low of a frame rate for a Rouvy upload. I also hadn't set horizon lock on; Rouvy wants horizon lock. 

It was just as well. My right glove and the top of Janice's radar receiver were in the shot. I had used the bar mount that GoPro sells. There were times that the camera was visibly vibrating, yet the video played back without a jiggle. 

After much online hunting, because Rouvy doesn't make their requirements obvious, I figured out which settings I'd need to use. I switched to an after-market mount that sits higher and I could place closer to the center of the bars.

Tom's ride would be a test. I wasn't planning to record the entire ride. For that, I'd've needed to be out in front the whole time. Nobody wants to train indoors watching my friends' butts, and with the bar mount, that's what one gets. But the video snipped I dropped into the Rouvy Route Creator app met the requirements, so I'm good to go the next time I do a solo ride.

Which won't be for a while because we got hit with a monster storm yesterday. Jack was at a conference in Indiana and scheduled to land back in Newark at noon on Sunday. After both of us seeing how the forecast was shaping up, he managed to get himself on a flight that landed at 10:00 instead. The Air Train being out of service and NJ Transit being half out of commission due to a bridge repair and generally being NJ Transit, Jack opted for an Uber from the airport. He arrived back at the house at 11:30, when it was still only raining.

With a foot or more of heavy snow in the forecast, plus 60 mph winds, for the first time since it's installation in 2022, I took the vases off of Saint Polychromatous. The wind can be howling and this bottle tree will barely move. But with heavy snow and wind, I didn't want to take a chance. Plus, they needed a scrubbing anyway. I snapped this photo so I could remember where to put things back.

I left the other backyard glass outside. I don't care about those as much. I'd already taken the glass balloons inside before the previous storm, which was a good thing, because they'd've been half buried.

Anyway, with the vases washed and the laundry folded, I settled in by the new bow window and watched Clementine and the birds as the snow began to fall.

The township plows our street, which is good of course. However, they're very thorough. A single pass down the center of the road doesn't cut it for them. No, they have to clear every inch of blacktop. What this means for us homeowners is that we will be met with a wall of snow chunks at the feet of our driveways. 

What I do to make this easier on my back is to get out there and shovel early in an attempt to minimize the height of the eventual wall. I'll shovel past my driveway and a third of the way into the street if the snow is going to be deep.

I heard the plow go past at 9:30 p.m. I suited up and started digging out. My neigbor revved up his snow blower. He told me in December not to bother clearing the sidewalk in front of my house. "My mother never let us play in the snow," he explained. "This is me playing." 

I cleared my driveway and the walkway to the front steps. The bird feeders were coated in a thin layer of ice. I tried to clean them off a little. My neigbor went through with his snow blower. There looked to be about six inches of snow so far, and in the 40 minutes I was out there, another half inch had come down.

There's so much ambient light in our neighborhood, especially when it's snowing, that shoveling in the dark wasn't shoveling in the dark at all. My motion-sensitive floodlights are bright too, and the wind was keeping the crape myrtle branches moving.

I'd started from the back patio. I needed to dig a path from the door to the side of the garage so that I'd be able to drag my glassblowing toolkit to the car. I'd stashed the recycling bins on the patio too. Otherwise, they'd either get blown across the neighborhood or filled with snow.

By 11:00, snow was sticking to the window screens. When I woke up at 7:30 this morning, the snow was so deep I couldn't tell where the street began. 

Jack took a picture of the deck railing from our kitchen window.

It was still snowing. I came down a few minutes later and framed the shot from a distance.

The juncos were at the feeders.

When we replaced our windows, we chose frosted glass for the lower half in the bathrooms. Now, the pattern I picked, which looks like frost, could easily have been the real thing. (And no, I didn't make that ornament.)

The plow had done a single pass several inches ago and didn't seem to be returning. At 9:45 I ventured out through the back patio.

Saint Vitreous survived.

When I opened the east door, there was a drift two feet high still standing.

Fortunately, the drift was fluffy, and digging out towards the side of the garage was easy.

The blowing snow had frozen sideways onto my neighbor's privacy fence.

I took the picture as I was digging out the driveway. The problem wasn't so much the depth of the snow (more than a foot, it seemed) as where to put it. I ended up carrying shovelsfull toward the fence side because there was already so much snow stacked up on the house side of the walkway that whatever else I added fell right back down. After I figured that out, I settled into a pattern of carrying or heaving depending on where I was. 

Several things pass through my mind as I shovel. One is that I need to be very careful about my back. Another is that it's a good thing I'm not a fall risk (right, bird bones?). A third is that I'm glad I lift weights and do endurance training. A fourth is that I should get a snow blower already.

My neighbor was starting his up at the top of his driveway when I was halfway through digging out the sidewalk. First I had to find the sidewalk, because there was scant evidence that it had been cleared last night. A slight indentation was the only clue. 

I was faster with the shovel than he was with his toy. The snow was wet and starting to melt. Nevertheless, I let him have the last few feet. 

When I was finished, I checked the time. I'd been at this for two hours and fifteen minutes. I'd replaced Rockefeller's Teeth with the White Cliffs of Dover.

Saint Cullet survived.

I went inside, fetched a yardstick (it came with the house when we moved in back in 1999). In the back yard, the snow reached almost fourteen inches.

In the front, it was fourteen.

The snow on the deck railing had fallen off, except in one spot.

I was sweaty. After a shower and a big bowl of oatmeal, I looked out the window to see my neighbor snow-blowing our sidewalk again. The plow had been by and had undone the morning's work.

I suited up again. The plow had taken my streetside piles and distributed them evenly across the edge of my driveway. My neighbor was already going at it with the snow blower. It wasn't as bad as last time, when I had to use a steel shovel to heave chunks of ice out of the way. I cleared the mess relatively quickly. 

My neighbor said, "I was standing in my driveway when the plow came by. He was gonna call the cops."

"For real?"

"It's okay. I set a Sicilian curse on him. He won't be siring any more children."

My neighbors across the street were extracting their plow wall as well. I went over to help them, because I was now powered by a big bowl of oatmeal. My snow blower neighbor took his toy across the street too. 

Another neighbor, part of a big family that moved in to the house diagonally across from mine a few years ago, appeared with her shovel to find her sidewalk. After all this time, I finally got to meet her. With the help of a couple of neigborhood kids, we unearthed her street-parked minivan from its plow wall. We stacked the snow between the car and her neighbor's driveway. That pile is gonna be here til Arpil. 

Now my back hurts, because duh. 

Walking in Snowstorms

 

Turtleback Park, Lawrence Townsip

18 January 2026

I had my first Reclast infusion on Friday morning.

(record scratch)

Yeah, so, it turns out that when you starve yourself as a teenager and everyone on your father's side of the family ends up looking like a candy cane, it really doesn't matter how much of an exercise addict you are, because your DEXA scan is going to flip over to osteoporosis early.

I was loaded up on acetaminophen because some folks have flu-like symptoms after their infusions. I did feel a bit loopy in the afternoon, but by the time I went to pick up Kermit from his spa day at Hart's, I was feeling fine.

Until I got home, went to the back of the car in the dark, leaned in as I opened the hatch to take the bike out, and scraped my head on the hatch hook. "That's gonna leave a mark," I thought, and pulled Kermit out. That's when I felt the first drop on my face. By the time I got inside, there was blood on my coat, on my glove, and on my glasses. I'd gashed my forehead good, an inch-long gaping wound near my hairline. 

I cleaned it up, put pressure on it, covered it with a band-aid, and went about my usual routine. Jack and I went food shopping, had dinner, and watched some TV. I got a shower, taking care to keep the cut dry, and changed into my pajamas. I checked the cut a few times. It was still bleeding.

I don't know if this happens to you guys, but if there's something wrong with my body at bedtime, I'll fixate on it all night. "It's just a cut," I told myself. But my heart was racing. 

At 10:00, Jack and I were in the car on the way to the Penn Medicine ER in Plainsboro. I brought a backpack with 2 books, water, and my phone charger in it. I figured we'd be in for a long night. I worried that not sleeping would be the worst thing to do on infusion day. As we sat in the waiting area in chairs that did not allow for any sort of sleeping position, I kept telling Jack, "This is stupid. We should go home." 

"We're here," he kept saying. "You have to go through with it."

"Take an Uber home then."

"No!"

"If they don't see me by 1:00 I'm going home." It was nearing midnight. I was cold. I buttoned my thick sweater, put on my coat, and positioned my backpack against the window for a makeshift pillow. I leaned back to try to sleep.

A voice in the distance called my name. We were led into a long hallway with reclining chairs. I got in the one they sent me to and reclined. Jack sat in a straight-backed chair at my feet. "Just so you know," he said, tapping his watch, "When you said 1:00? It's 12:59." I closed my eyes and maybe fell asleep.

A nurse practitioner came by eventually, and by 1:30 my head was glued back together. At 2:00 we were discharged. By 2:35, we were in bed.

Despite my best efforts to get at least 7 hours of sleep, I woke up at 8:30, looking and feeling like a zombie. The glue on my forehead was purple. Like grape candy purple. I covered it with a band-aid to keep myself from inadvertently brushing against it.

There was snow in the forecast for this Saturday morning. I'd been told not to shower "until tonight," and we had plans for dinner in Philadelphia in the evening. So a sweaty workout was not in the cards. I could lift weights though, so I did. 

The snow was light at first, just a dusting. There were sparrows and juncos and the occasional downy woodpecker at the feeders.

While I was mucking about with the TRX bands, the snow started coming down in earnest. 

I really wanted to go outside and walk in it.

So I did.

There's a small patch of woods along the Little Shabakunk Creek around the corner from my house. It's called Turtleback Park. There's a bronze turtle at the entrance.

The snow was wet and heavy, and squeaked under my boots.

The path leads to a power line right-of-way. In the middle is the creek, with a little bridge over it.

I went past the power line and into the woods on the other side, following someone else's tracks in the snow.

The path ends abruptly, and the footprints turned around. I did too. A pair of mallards swam past, the male with a dollop of snow on his back.

I guess "like water off a duck" does not apply to snow.

I walked uphill at the power line to reach Princeton Pike, which was a slushy mess.

When I got back home, I trudged through the yard to take pictures of snow on the branches and on the saints.

Saint Orbitus

Saint Miscellaneous

Saint Polychromatous

rear gears

Saint Vitreous

Saint Cullet

When the snow stopped, I shoveled. It was only a few inches and easy to push out of the way. The street wasn't plowed.

Later, we got a FedEx delivery. "How are the roads," I asked the driver. He shook his head. "Stay home."

We bailed on our night in Philly. Now that I didn't have to stay clean, I could do a sweaty workout after all. By this point, I was feeling loopy again, whether from the infusion or lack of sleep or both. I kept the sweat session short. I finished at 7:00, officially night, so I showered.

As I was drying off, I got too close to the purple line with the towel. One more inch and I'd've had to go back for more glue. I covered the line with a band-aid.

Meanwhile, another winter weather advisory had been issued, with a second storm coming our way between 6:00 AM and 8:00 PM.

There were two things going on at once on Sunday: my friend's 70th birthday party, during which she was planning to do a piano performance; and an afternoon hike starting from Rosedale Park. My friend knows that classical music performances bore the piss out of me, so she gave me permission to show up after the recital. Jack, being a musician, would Uber over while I stomped around in the woods.

Then Low Key texted me. She'd reserved a bench at East Falls for herself and Iron Maiden for Sunday between 10:00 and 2:00. Iron Maiden, living way the hell out in Perkasie, wisely bailed because of the impending storm. Low Key tried to cancel, but now it was less than 24 hours before her bench time, and R told her rules is rules. So Low Key asked me if I wanted to fill in. She lives in East Windsor. "Be at my house at 8:30," I told her, and canceled my hike registration. We agreed that if the snow were bad in the morning, we'd ditch the hour-long drive and she'd have to forfeit the bench fee.

Exhausted, I prepped food and water for the glassblowing session and tried to get enough sleep. 

I woke up at 6:00 and wandered over to a front window. There was no snow yet. I went back to sleep until my alarm went off at 7:00. I went to the window again. It was snowing. I texted Low Key and suggested we cancel. She got in touch with the studio by 7:30. R had a change of heart and, because it was weather-related, relented on charging Low Key for the bench.

I went back to bed but I was already too awake. Next came texts from my birthday friend. "Can you make tomorrow instead?" Tomorrow is MLK Day, so yes. She asked all of her invitees, rearranged the food pickup, and let us all know her party would be on Monday.

So next, I emailed Dorothy to find out if her hike was still going to happen. I had been checking the PFW calendar, and the hike was still on. I told her I was thinking of signing up again if the hike was a go. She wrote back that she figured the roads would be driven on by 1:00 and she wasn't canceling.

I texted Heddy and convinced her to go too.

But before that, I'd have to dig out. There was a lull in the storm. The snow wasn't as deep as yesterday, but it was wetter. 

Around noon, the storm picked up again. The roads were merely wet though. There was a good showing at Rosedale Park. 

I brought the Canon PowerShot with me so that I could take pictures with my gloves on.

It really was this dark out. I decided not to try to adjust any of the pictures I took. The gloomth was real.

We started the hike on a berm. To our left were hordes of kids on plastic sleds. To our right was Rosedale Lake, with two anantomically correct snowmen at the bottom of the hill.

It was snowing the whole time.

I'm terrible at orienting myself in this park complex. Rosedale Park is only a piece of it. Below that is Mercer Meadows, which was called the Pole Farm back in the day. There are old dirt roads and small trails that criscross the parks. The Lawrence-Hopewell trail cuts through too.

Dorothy knew where to turn; we made lots of turns. We went from Rosedale to Mercer Meadows.

We found the remaining pole, off in the distance.

Then we looped north again to get back to Rosedale. 

The berm was now worn smooth from all the sleds being dragged over it. At the bottom of the hill, a group of kids were rolling a giant snowball.

We finished the 6-mile hike around 3:30. The snow was coming down faster now. It was sticking to the streets. After I put the car in the garage, I shoveled again because I figured the tire tracks and my footprints would turn to ice and be difficult to remove in the morning. 

The snow didn't stop until well after dark. What had landed on After the Party had partially melted, then changed its mind.

It's a wonder this thing is still standing. 

Anyway, despite all the chaos, I got two weight-bearing snow-trudges in this weekend. That'll be good for the ol' bird bones.