caught in the snows of march

The weather prediction was iffy, I'd promised a date to The Excellent Wife (TEW), and I'd misread the open hours on the website of the Princeton University Art Museum for their show about the African Presence in Renaissance European Art...

... but I woke up at my usual 4:30 am, checked the Art Museum times again, and saw we could go later, so TEW suggested I get a ride in this morning (I am a LOT easier to deal with when I'm doing frequent club rides). An email from Laura OLPH indicated that she was planning a short ride anyway, so I showed up outside her door at ride-to-the-ride time (to her surprise) and off we went to Pennington to pick up the other five riders: Cheryl, Ed C, Dave H, Peter, and Ron. Laura announced she had cobbled together a route that kept us not too far away, so we could hustle back if the weather turned.

It turned out to be this route.  I liked it a lot, partly because it was nifty roads local to Princeton, and partly because Laura gave us a tour of part of the University campus (and we terrorized annoyed some of the students as we were riding through, which was an ancillary benefit). You can see part of the tour if you zoom in on the zig-zagginess between Alexander Road and Washington Road.

We broke at the Main Street Cafe in Kingston, where I like the coffee (and TEW likes the mocha lattes enough to make a special trip)... and when we came out, there was the odd snowflake. We opted for a straight, quick route back. It wasn't enough; the snow got worse, and I was covered with snow by the time I got back to Laura's. TEW has been trying to persuade me that it's a sign of how obsessed I am. I've been trying to persuade her that it was a reasonable miscalculation, but I think she's winning the argument.

As for the art show: as is true for most of the shows I've seen either at the museum or the library, it was not huge, but very good. There's a study by Rubens on a piece of written-on paper that he covered with gouache and then apparently crayoned on a man's head and turban; you can see the written lines through the drawing. The drawing just rocks. There are other neat pieces in the show, too. If you have the least little bit of interest, go check it out.