Souvenir Remembered

 

Ziggy Ella Hitchhiker Souvenir

22 October 2026

This year's Smudge Award goes to Ziggy Ella Hitchhiker Souvenir, for being a spider known beyond the confines of iNaturalist.

Last month, I posted about a Zygiella atrica who hitched a ride from Bar Harbor to Central Jersey. This species doesn't live down here. At first, we'd assumed it was an immature male, which was fortunate, because he'd never find a mate in Mercer County. 

I named him Hitchhiker, but also Ziggy and Souvenir. 

I kept an eye on his palps. On a mature male, they look like maracas. Getting closeups wasn't easy. Hitchhiker's retreat was behind the passenger rearview mirror. The trick was to go out at night with my camera and not bang the car with my lantern.

If I'd been a proper, astute observer, I'd have suspected that the little black dot on Hitchhiker's underside wasn't pigment but the spider's lady parts, the epigyne. I figured things out later, when the palps didn't change, her front legs didn't lengthen, and I got another good look at her underside.

Hitchhiker kept to a schedule. By day, she rested at the edge of the mirror, one leg on the signal thread that connected her retreat to her web. At dusk, she'd pop down into the hub of her orb web.

When I first found her, in mid-September, her red sides were very red, and her yellows very yellow.

I figured out how to get her and her reflection mostly in focus. She liked to keep her back to the mirror.

Sometimes I could catch her web-building and get her from the back.

If I could sneak up on her during the day, I could photograph her poking out of her retreat.

Hitchhiker was predictable. I would say that she learned what it meant when I opened the driver's side door and started the engine, but the truth is that spiders live in a world of vibrations. Some mean food. Some mean get behind the mirror because we're about to go somewhere fast.

I noticed that when I parked the car in the driveway, she'd be back at her signal thread within minutes. 

Several times, I was away from home, waiting in the car for Jack at dusk. As soon as the sun went down, she popped into the center of her web. This amused me, because I knew she'd do it. I'd watched baby Zygiella on the railings of my balcony at the Bar Harbor Inn. I'd watched them zip back into their retreats at sunrise too.

Young Zygiella don't build their webs with the characteristic missing sector. Hitchhiker didn't either, for the first week on my car. Then she did. It was a milestone.

from "Spider Biology" by Rainer Foelix

(and, yes, I have this book)

I checked on her every day, taking pictures, because I had no idea how long she'd be around. I showed her to my biking buddies and my glassblowing buddies. 

"Is that spider still on your car?"

"Yep!"

It was now early October. My car needed washing. I couldn't. Not as long as Hitchhiker was living in the mirror.

It was mid-October when things began to change. Her reds dulled.

She got rounder, perhaps gravid, but unfertilized.

She would usually rebuild her web every few days. Now she got around to that later in the night than before. I would find her dangling, which finally gave me a chance to photograph her face.

Then she built a larger web than usual, with the missing sector at the bottom this time, the signal thread eminating straight back from the hub to the mirror. 

I didn't see her for a couple of days. I thought she might have died, but there she was at night again.

Then two more days passed. The web had deteriorated. Nights were getting colder, almost freezing. I figured she was dead.

Then, on October 18, after a bike ride where I deliberately left the car in a sunny spot, then drove home, there she was, out on what was left of her web, in the middle of the day.

I was happy to see her, of course, but I knew the end was near. First, she was out during the day; second, she hadn't fixed her web; and third, Zygiella don't overwinter.

She didn't come out that night, nor the next. On Monday afternoon, I was about to drive to East Falls to blow glass. I checked on her and saw a bit of her tucked into the mirror. I tried to get a picture with my phone, but it didn't work. At 7:30, as I dragged my tools back to the car, I spotted her and got a blurry photo.

I thought she might do her usual thing when I got home. I parked, took some of my stuff inside, then came back out. She wasn't at the mirror. I took the rest of my tools in and went out again later. Nothing.

Nothing Tuesday. Nothing Wednesday. Nothing this morning.

This afternoon I got the car washed.

Autumn Starts to Happen

 

Maidenhead Meadows with gloves on

18 October 2026

Fozzie is seeing a lot of the outdoors these days. I'm on Mike V's towpath rides almost every week. 

I still thought it was August in September. We had one jacket-worthy day in there somewhere.

One of the towpath rides crossed over the Bulls Island bridge after our rest stop at the Lumberville General Store.

On a free day the following week, I asked around about a road ride. Only Pete was available. I came up with a thoroughly stupid route with lots of dumb little loops onto side roads. The sky over Twin Pines was clear blue that day. We don't get many like this around here. 

When we reached Boro Bean, I dived in to fill my pockets with muffins and Pete went home. The weather was so pleasant that I took a circuitous route back to my house.

For a ride that Saturday, Tom had suggested a flat route from Mercer County Park. I said I wanted to lead some more rides. He had no problem handing the responsibility for his route to me, so that's what we did. When I looked at the map, I had only vague memories of most of the roads north of Cranbury. I had a recollection of traffic.

The ride filled up within a day. I warned everyone that I was unfamiliar with a lot of the roads, and that there might be traffic. There was traffic. Lots of traffic. More than what Tom had experienced on this route before. Shelve this route until the zombie apocalypse. There's gotta be a better way to get to James Brew, a worthy coffee house around the corner from Thompson Park. 

We did ride into Davidson's Mill Pond Park, which I always enjoy.

Pete and I had both ridden in from home. I'd caught him at the Route 1 light at Franklin Corner on the way in. As we headed back together, I followed him towards his house far enough so that I could wind up with a metric, my first, and probably only, for the year. I used to do so many metrics that I didn't keep track. These days, the folks I run with are into shorter, more vertical adventures. I miss the long rides. I don't miss the backaches.

One Wednesday, Pete and Bob proposed a ride. When Tom and Martin said they could go, I rearranged my work schedule to join them. The plan was to start from Pete's house and meet Bob at Boro Bean. I misread the 9:00 start as being from Pete's house. Nope. He wanted us ready to depart at 8:20 a.m. Yikes! 

It was in the mid-40s when we started. Bob had left his house at 7:00 a.m., in the 30s. By the time we reached the top of the Sourland Mountain, my pockets were full of stripped clothing.

As we were riding across Mountain Church, Martin's chain flew apart. Fortunately, Tom was carrying a multi-tool with a chain tool on it, and Bob has been volunteering as a mechanic at the New Brunswick Bike Exchange. My job was to dig through my various bags to find my quick-link. I didn't find it, and remembered that it had been a casualty of too many encounters with rain in Janice's old top tube pack. Martin's job was to take pictures, "for Strava," he said.

My photo only has the shadow of Bob's bike wheel leaning against a post.

Bob got the chain back on. A few hundred yards up the road, it exploded again. Martin picked it up off the road as if it were a dead snake. "That chain looks really clean," I said.

"Yeah," Tom said. "Because all the grease is on Bob's hands."

We had to leave Martin at the top of the mountain. Bob offered to leave the ride when we got close to his house so that he could take Martin back to Pete's. 

The three of us stopped at a deli on Route 206 at Dutchtown Road. The bathroom there rivals the one at the Clarksburg Deli.

With Saturday plans that precluded my attending the PFW Fall Picnic, I went on another Mike V towpath ride on Friday. This one started at Canal Park in Solebury. To get onto the path from the lot, one needs to climb and descend a stairway on a bridge that crosses the canal. There's a rail to fit a bike into, which helps a lot.

Heddy, texting from Spain, had just send a photo with a funicular in the background. I sent this back to her as our version.

We went south and crossed over at Washington Crossing, where we ran into some of the the Glow Riders group on their own unofficial ride. Our rest stop was in Stockton. I hadn't been into the gourmet market; the last time I was in that space was many years ago, when it was more of a farmers market. Now there's high-end coffee. I got my go-to towpath snack: a mocha latte.

I had enough time on Saturday morning for a short ride. I dusted off Beaker and we did our usual penance route. Beaker, not having been outside since July, and this being only her third ride of the year, did not miss a beat.

On Sunday, it poured. Heddy, home from her trip, inquired about the status of my backyard lake. It was worse than when we'd had the nor'easter the week before.

When things dried out the next day, I checked on Hitchhiker, the souvenir spider who made a home on my passenger side mirror while we were in Maine. Yep, still there.

This past Thursday's towpath ride took us into Trenton, where I had to stop to photograph the orange house. I like this house. I would claim that third floor round room as mine.

Friday I was wearing shorts. Friday night, a cold front swept in. The rain cleared out in time for my ride on the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail. The wind was gusting in the 30 mph range. The air temperature was in the high 40s at start time. I was wearing booties. For the first time, it really felt like autumn. I rode in from home, straight into the wind.

Eight people signed up for this ride. I stopped for a picture in the woods between Province Line and Rosedale Road.

And again at Mount Rose:

I didn't remember what Pete had told me about the flooding in Rosedale Park until we reached the sign that said the trail was closed for repair. Pfft! I rode right past it. Everyone followed me to the spot where the trail, normally on a small berm above the pond, was thoroughly under water.

"There's another path around the other side," Luis offered. We doubled back. The path was grass. Most of the group waitied for us to figure things out. 

"It's flooded all the way around," a man standing by the water said. I took a picture before we turned around.

We took the Maidenhead Trail towards Blackwell Road. The surface was not maintained for bikes. We rumbled over ruts and found ourselves in a field with a mowed path in either direction. We could see Blackwell Road on the other side. "This way," Luis said, turning left.

The grass disappeared in a short, very steep decline that ended in a stone rut I dismounted to walk across. This felt like mountain biking. On the other side of the dip was the driveway to the Hunt House, which put us back on course.

In Lawrenceville, we detoured to the Gingered Peach. The line was out the door and moving fast. Or so we thought, until we had to wait a surprisingly long time for our specialty coffee drinks. The space inside being meager, we huddled by the door, making sure to be part of the waiting-for-drinks line while not blocking the salon entrance in the same vestibule.

Four of the guys decided to head back while we were still waiting. There were only three miles left anyway.

I pass the Brearley Oak on my way to and from work. We stopped to read the plaque next to the fence. This tree is estimated to be "anywhere from 255 to 410 years old." 

Today, Our Jeff led a ride from Mansfield Park, passing through Arney's Mount Park on the way to Old World Bakery. I ordered a mocha latte there, too, and for the second day in a row had to wait far too long for a group ride rest stop. It's the perfect drink for a not-too-strenuous ride, but the time it takes to make one can be problematic. 

The weather was cool but dry and sunny. The sky was clear blue. There wasn't much wind either. Today was only the third time this year I've taken Kermit out for a spin. Kermit takes more work than Janice to keep moving, but we managed.

Local Sunsets

 

Needle Creek Farm Brewery

26 September 2026

I was writing the previous blog post when I looked out the window at a pink sky. I slid into my slippers and went outside to photograph the sunset from the middle of the street while Jack and I chatted with our neighbor. She's retiring next week. They're everywhere!

Yesterday our lab had an outing to the Needle Creek Farm Brewery. It was the sort of thing that would have taken more effort than it was worth to avoid, given that the plan was for everyone to get together at noon to clean the lab first. I've been there the longest. I know what's in the junk drawers. Even though we didn't get through much, it was satisfying to haul out a trash bag full of cables that predate my time in the lab. I've been quietly getting rid of old solutions and expired kits for a few weeks now. There are 75 boxes of plasmids and primers from a zombie project that might truly be dead now. If we get rid of those, there will be much less of my handwriting left in the lab. I'm a month away from hitting the six month mark of part-time work. That's the halfway point to my disappearing for good. I feel almost invisible now as it is. But they say they need me still.

We settled onto a picnic table at the outer edge of the lawn. Needle Creek doesn't make a sour beer, but they do sell giant, Bavarian style pretzels with beer cheese. My boss picked up the tab for all the beer and food people ordered.

There were chickens running around, and a dog with "do not feed me" on his collar.

In the middle of a conversation, I saw the former building manager for the department we'd been in before neuroscience was its own thing. "Mike!" I called out, and to the lab folks, said, "He retired" as I stood up. They laughed.

He recognized me and gave me a big hug. He was that person who knew everyone, knew how to fix anything, and knew he was the one we all came running to. He always had good stories. He was what I aspired to be in the lab. Maybe I was almost that person. I don't know how to fix stuff.

Most of the food had been eaten. The wind was picking up. "It must be getting on to 7:00," I said. "The sun's going down."

I waited for the first hint of orange before I stood up and began wandering around with my phone pointed at the sky. I was well aware that I was off doing my own thing and I didn't care.

There appeared to be two layers of clouds. One layer might have been the impending nor'easter.

When the sky turned purple and orange, other people started to notice.

That phase only lasts a few minutes before the grays seep in.

We walked to our cars in the last light. A cow, pursued by a small tractor, was enjoying its fleeting freedom along one end of the parking lot.

Now I know where to go for a good sunset and a $15 soft pretzel.

By 10:00 the storm had arrived. I brought two of my outdoor glass sculptures inside. I put my car (still with the hitchhiking spider) in the garage. I don't trust my neighbor's trees anymore. The wind was gusting at 40 mph by the time I went to bed. It was just me and the cats; Jack was at his nerd prom in New York City. I opened the curtains so I could watch the trees sway.