christmas eve 2022 wigilia

 

My sister-in-law decided I needed these socks to make it official.

To my Polish in-laws, the big celebration of the season isn't Christmas Day, but Christmas Eve, Wigilia, the Christmas Vigil. We don't eat meat that day (because on that day, the animals spoke, and you don't eat entities with whom you might be in conversation), so the meal is full of fish, cheese, and other non-meat comestibles -- and that means my soon-to-be-niece-in-law, who's pescatarian, can eat without suspicion or concern (we made sure to have Goldfish Crackers, but drew the line at Swedish Fish).

This is the first one without my mother-in-law, who was undoubtedly La Grande Dame (or whatever the Polish equivalent is) of the celebrations. It fell to The Excellent Wife (TEW) and me to host (who am I kidding? She did virtually all of the work; I was merely scullery and sous-chef). 

At dinner:

After dinner, there's the singing of Christmas carols, some in English, and some in Polish. We've got a couple of books of kolendy, Polish Christmas carols. I can read music, and can hammer through the Polish pronunciation well enough to sing along (the Excellent Mother-In-Law never really believed I didn't know the words, and was SURE I knew what I was singing, despite my protestations of ignorance). And then the opening of presents, glorious chaos.

It's both a very late night for me (who's usually in bed by 9) and over too soon. TEW and I spent the late night doing the dishes and making sure there wouldn't be general rot in the kitchen by morning; this morning I've dispatched the good silver to its storage, and we're packing up the Christmas china.

We've done our presents, and we're planning a quiet day, with another good dinner courtesy of The Fresh Market or Whole Foods or somebody (sheesh, doncha think TEW did ENOUGH cooking yesterday?), and then to a few loads of laundry and putting the house back together. Domestic life is good. One doesn't need drama and excitement all the time.

tew gets cider donuts

 

The Excellent Wife (TEW) took off this week from work, and has been enjoying herself immensely, including going paddleboarding for the first time. Today, she wanted to go on the Friday Team Social Security C ride, so I agreed to go on the C+ ride and bring her to the park. 

She was more than a bit put out that Eddie L had scheduled OUR stop at Battleview Orchards, where cider donuts would be available, while her stop would have no such offering. TEW has a thing for cider donuts, which I do not share, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

We enjoy seeing the folks at the start. They're always delighted to see her, and she enjoys the attention (mostly...).

Eddie's route (which he inherited from Al P, I'm led to believe) went over roads with which I am largely unfamiliar, but they felt as minimally dangerous as is possible for such a destination; I've been to Battleview Orchards a few times, and I'm fairly sure I remember being a lot more terrified on those rides. You can see the route on the ride page. (HAH! And we actually brought it in at a C+ pace!)

 While there, I bought a half-dozen of the cider donuts, managed to get rid of three (not by eating all of them myself!), and wrapped up the other three in the plastic bag and stuffed 'em in my pocket (I was wearing a home-made jersey with really deep pockets). On my return (with the last of the C+ group; I was a slowspoke today), I found TEW among a circle of the C group and the faster C+ riders, apparently having a great time. I presented the donuts to TEW. The response, even as I am typing this several hours later, was as I'd hoped: I have a certain amount of "good husband" cred out of it.

(I was sure "cred" was going to be flagged as misspelled by the spell checker, but it's not. I'm hopelessly out-of-touch.)

One bike-y mechanic-y note: one of our number had a flat, and in replacing it, inadvertently broke the wire on his Di2 rear derailleur, and had to ride home with only the front derailleur able to shift. While this is a rare occurrence, it is not making electronic shifting more attractive to me. My cheap Sensah Empire mechanical set, however, now has well over 100 miles on it, and is behaving nicely.

first of the year

 

I didn't post this listing until late in the week, due to worries about weather and possible real-social-life conflicts. I still got fourteen (some of the faster folks went on other rides, which works out better for everybody; I want this to be a recovery ride, and a ride for people just at the edge of the "B" range).

Above, Ming's brought a cake to celebrate my retirement. She had one at the Holiday Party, to which The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I couldn't go because we were quarantined. Not to be denied; she made another and brought it today. I'm flattered! Thank you so much, Ming!

We did a modification of one of my regular routes, taking a real-estate tour in Hillsborough before proceeding down East Mountain, and then turning off 601 onto Dutchtown-Harlingen instead of proceeding down to Elm and Sunset (popular opinion appears to hold that today's change is an improvement, as not all of my changes are). From there, we took my regular roads to a stop at Thomas Sweet.

I'd been low-key worrying about crossing the canal at Griggstown all day. The Griggstown Causeway is the lowest canal crossing by far, and the rain last night might have put it under water. When we got to the Causeway, we saw it was passable, but just barely...

I felt something like Moses at the Red Sea.

When we got back, we had at the cake that Ming had brought. The next three pictures are from Luis C; the cake pic is mine.

Many thanks to Dave H, who brought back the remainder of the cake to my house, so that TEW could have some!

There were a number of discussions about my brief tenure as an employee at Sourland Cycles. It's a good shop, and the mechanics are efficient. It was just a poor fit for me. I've got some other plans for my time and energies.

Ride page.

mutiny ride

 

Well, when there are only two club rides listed on a sunny (albeit windy) Sunday, I suppose I can't be surprised that I had seventeen registrants at the start. Some were new to me, and they brought a range of abilities from "just about able to keep up" to "holy bananas, but that character is fast; what on earth are they doing here?"

Laura OLPH had contacted me about having a glass sale; she'd made a number of globes and ornaments which she was selling at holiday-sale prices, with proceeds to benefit the Trenton Bike Exchange. Like, I was really gonna say no to Laura about that?

She later contacted me ans said they'd nearly cleaned her out. Laura may not be impressed with her own glassblowing abilities, but everybody else sure seems to be. (I also gave Laura another long-sleeve jersey I'd sewn up for her.)

My plan for the ride was to try one of my regular routes, but to see if I can find an alternative to Homestead Road. Homestead has a number of annoying hills, and I wondered if we could avoid that by going up the one nasty hill on Amwell Road; today I tested the hypothesis. Results were mixed: this one didn't like the increased traffic, that one thought this hill was less miserable, the other thought that Homestead was less demanding. I was hoping for a conclusive decision; I didn't get one. Alas.

We continued along to Thomas Sweet for the stop.

I got to talking to Bolong about bike maintenance... and the next thing I know, the rest of the ride is leaving without me, because I'm taking too long! Wait, what? Whose ride is this, anyway?

I guess there's a certain amount of anarchy in the club, or something.

We caught up to the rest of the ride when they were waiting to gather at one of the turns. As large rides tend to do, we broke into a faster and slower group; I stayed with the slower folks (even though both Dave H and Ricky G were sweeping). And we got back with everybody with whom we'd left!

Ride page.