Ice Day

5 February 2014

A flash of light from outside -- lightning? -- and then Jack's alarm goes off.  "Is Rutgers open?" I ask when I wake up again.  "Yes," Jack says. "It's raining but there's no snow on the street."

I stay in bed another 20 minutes until my alarm sounds.  I reach for my phone to check if the university is closed.  Opening at 11, which isn't really closed at all.

Time to check if all of our trees are standing.  They are, but our next-door neighbor to the east isn't so lucky.

Missed their deck by a couple of feet.  There's going to be a lot more light in our back yard this summer. I can see almost to Princeton Pike now.

I email a couple of people from work, telling them I'll be there around 9 a.m., but no sooner have I hit "send" then Jack announces that Rutgers is opening at noon and both the Hamilton and Princeton Junction train stations are closed.

I send another email that starts with "Scratch that."  No sooner have I hit "send" then Jack announces that the stations are open again but trains are whizzing straight past both of them.  We decide to wait it out and get him to Hamilton.

I write another email, this time to the whole lab, telling them that I don't know when I'll be in.  No sooner have I hit "send" then I get a message that Princeton University is closed.

Halfway through my breakfast, Jack tells his 1 p.m. class that he's canceling it because, at this point, he doesn't know if he can get to Newark in time.  Within minutes, he receives an announcement that Rutgers is closed.

I put on a pot of coffee.

The texts start pouring in:  from Dale, from AK at work, from Cheryl.  Cheryl has been without power since 6:20 a.m., is cold, and in dire need of caffeine and a hot shower.  She'll have to leave the dogs at home, but she'll head over soon. Dale, Sean, and her father are hunkering down with the lights on.  AK has a thesis committee meeting that he's trying to cancel, and also trying to figure out how to get from here to there without being turned back.  We're both checking Twitter for closed roads and downed trees; eventually everyone on his committee reports back and he can stay put.

In the back yard, our pitch pine has been bent over underneath arched bamboo since Monday's snow.  At first I thought I should leave it under there, the bamboo protecting the pine from more ice, but now I want to go out and check, having asked Chris C what he'd do.

Yeesh.  It's a cold mess out here.  The pine is under the bamboo, some of which are over, and some under, three bent arbor vitae.  I rescue the pine first, then do my best with the arbor vitae.  I don't care what happens to the bamboo.

Then I take pictures.

Here's the pitch pine:

The blue spruce (a former Christmas tree):

The black cherry:

Looking up into the corner of four yards:

What's left of the bamboo-arbor vitae tangle:

While I'm out here I might as well take a walk up to the Pike and see what's doing.

Sweet gum seed pods on the sidewalk:

Our eastern neighbors again, this time with a shredded ornamental.

Further along, frozen buds:

Along a fence:

Our driveway, like many others in the neighborhood, ends in a lake.  With so much snow piled up from the plow, the melting water can't get to the storm drain. For a minute I consider digging out the drain, but the snow is so deep I can't tell where it is.

Our back porch:

A view of the bamboo mess from our bedroom window.  I will be monitoring this all day, because that arbor vitae bottom center hasn't bounced back much:

Burnaby doesn't care.

Cheryl arrives.  I get her caffeinated and she plays with Burnaby and Mojo. Moxie is a lump under the bed covers.

While we're talking I notice that one of our dogwood branches is leaning on three lines coming into the house.  "I've gotta go fix that," I tell Cheryl.  She says she'll watch the entertainment from here.  I take a telescoping pole (meant for putting in light bulbs from a distance, but it'll do for this) and whack the ice from the branch, taking care never to touch the lines.  I manage to free the lines and get showered with ice at the same time.

Cheryl eventually warms up enough to get a shower.  "I feel like a new person," she says, and packs her things.  "Gotta get home to the girls," she says, and she's off.

After lunch is more arbor vitae rescue, then a workout.  Work-in?  After cardio (did the lights flicker or am I getting tired?), between lifting sets, I check the tree out back.  Is it moving up?  Will I have to get a rope and pull it straight?  That'll have to wait till tomorrow. Right now I have to re-set the clocks.

Upstairs, the cats have the right idea.  Mojo is out of his hidey-hole: 

Cheryl's power comes back on at 4:00.

Campus Snow

the back end of campus that nobody sees

4 February 2014

Now that we're in the new building, my walk from the western parking lot takes me through the back end of campus, next to the woods, halfway down the hill, behind the ball fields, away from everything and everyone.

When heavy snow still sticks to the trees, it makes for some good pictures.

This path goes to graduate housing:

The sapling outside my window again:

A wind-blown clump of snow on the berm reminds me of a picture my father took long before I was born.  He called it a "natural snowball."

Sunset, the ice storm coming in:

My office mate thinks we should mount a camera on the window so we never miss a sunset.

Snow Day

"What?  I'm tryna sleep here."

3 February 2014

Text to Dale, 7:01 a.m.:  "It's fucking snowing."

As of 7:00 a.m., I didn't have to show up to work, but Jack did.  I convinced him that we should shovel the driveway so that the tire tracks wouldn't freeze and make our work that much more difficult later.  There were only a few inches on the ground, but the snow was heavy.  So heavy that, when I piled it up in the street next to the driveway, it looked blue.  By the time we'd cleared the driveway, another half inch had fallen onto the front walk.

If I was going to be on the road I might as well go to the lab.  This would be the third time Princeton had closed or delayed opening because of snow.  Both times before I'd gone to work anyway.  I grabbed my backpack and followed Jack to the garage.  I had the front door open and was throwing my pack in the back seat when Jack, his eyes on his phone, said, "Wait.  Rutgers just canceled classes."

Good thing we shoveled, or Jack would have received the news somewhere north of New Brunswick.

"I'm gonna take a walk up to Princeton Pike," I said, once we were inside again.  The snow in the road was deep; I walked in half-covered tire tracks.  The Pike wasn't plowed.  Three cars made their way north, slowly.  I turned back and decided to swing past Dale's house.  She and I have the same back injury, we both do stupid things that we shouldn't do, and sometimes we pay the price. Today she was paying.  I figured Sean was already at work, and since I wasn't yet paying for shoveling wet snow, there might be something I could help her with.

"I'm the abominable snow slug!"  I called out as Sean opened the door.  He'd wisely stayed home after all.  So we hung out and talked bikes.  Macy Ruth, their yappy miniature pinscher, decided that I was dog people after all.  She jumped onto my lap and promptly dozed off, burying her long snout into my elbow the way my cats do.  This was a big deal; Macy is not a calm dog when visitors are in the house.  I credit the wool sweater.

Later she decamped to the sofa.

I guess it was almost two hours later when I finally left.  I took pictures of neighborhood trees on my way home:

Then I got some photos of our yard:

This one is from the bedroom window.  The bamboo is doubled over on top of the pitch pine.  More than likely they'll all bounce back.

I shoveled twice more, and Jack once more.  Now I'm paying for heaving plowed chunks out of the driveway.  A dose of NSAIDs and some extra PT and I'll be ready for the gym tomorrow.  Dale has convinced me that today's snow is good after all.

At the Risk of Justifying My Reputation...

Geese (Snow and Canada), Polhemustown Road

2 February 2014

I guess I wasn't brutal enough on yesterday's ride.  Everyone who finished with us yesterday was on Winter Larry's ride today.

Snow on the Sidelines

This is us.

1 February 2014

Being able to do a road ride when there's still snow on the ground is rare.

With nudging from Ed C, I tweaked today's route, in part because I didn't feel like fighting it, and in part because I knew we'd get some good pictures if we went his way.  My cue sheet had both routes, should mutiny threaten to occur.

Before the ride, there was worry about ice on the roads.  Having already checked with a FreeWheeler who lives in Lambertville, I knew we'd be fine.  In the end, the only ice we saw was at Cheryl's front door, thanks to some misbehaving gutters:

Princeton Pike has taken a beating this winter.  It's loaded with potholes. Fortunately for us, most line up with the wheels of a car.  We had room to the right to avoid the majority of them.

We descended on the Princeton Rojo's first.  I don't like espresso as much as I think I do.

Two of our number, concerned that they weren't yet up to proper condition, left the ride 12 miles in.  I was glad they were there at all; it's early in the season.

Once we got out of Princeton we got out of traffic.  Someone commented on the view of the Hopewell Valley from Crusher Road, so the three of us with cameras stopped.  The others waited patiently.

We stopped again on Stony Brook.

 

And again at Mount Airy. Of course.

And again on Alexauken Creek Road, which is at its absolute best when there's snow on the ground:

This time the group went ahead.  We pulled into the Lambertville Rojo's a minute or so behind them.  One of our number, who had been riding off the front most of the time, decided not to stop.

So, by losing riders off the front and back, I have, once again, added to my reputation of being simultaneously too slow and too fast.

There are three reasons I don't take Franklin Road out of Lambertville:

1.  It is, for the most part, not pretty;
2.  It's a narrow road with two-way traffic on a steep incline;
3.  It cuts off too many miles because it sends us in the wrong direction.

There are two reasons I took Franklin today:

1.  To get it out of  Ed's system once and for all;
2.  From Franklin, we turned onto Highland, where we saw this:

In the end we had nearly 50 miles.  We needed this ride.

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, Saturday, 1 February

30 January 2014

Yes!!!

We will repeat the Rojo's to Rojo's ride.

This is a 48-mile route, but I promise it will be mellow.  I haven't been on my road bike outdoors since December 28, 2013.

Meet at the parking area by the tennis courts on Jackie Drive (immediate right off of Woodmont Road from Franklin Corner Road in Lawrenceville).

The starting time is 9 a.m.

"Lookin' Good, NJ"

24 January 2014

...is what Dale wrote when I texted her the sunset view from the new lab just now.

The steam is from the university's cogeneration plant.