This weekend (in the middle of moving) Kir and I somehow found time (ok, we planned it this way) to ride in the MS 150 City to Shore race with Kir’s dad. There are a number of rides you can do–100 mile century, 25 mile fun ride, etc.–but the main attraction is the two-day, 150 mile ride. Theoretically one is supposed to ride from just outside of Philly (the Woodcrest PATCO station in Jerz) to Ocean City on Saturday (about 75 miles) and then back on Sunday. Theoretically….
This is Kir and I crossing the finish line (Evan was about 30 yards ahead of us). But here we all are, post-ride.
Citing sore feet (Patrick), sore legs (Kir), a wussy daughter and son-in law (Evan), and a less-than-good (bad) seafood dinner (everyone), we ended up not riding back the next day. Judging by the quantity of numbered bikes we saw strapped to vehicles on the Garden State Parkway Sunday noon, we weren’t the only ones to skip the second half of the ride. I gues the MS 150 is kinda the MS 76.1. Evan claims to have done the ride to the Shore 10 times and the ride back only 3. Next year we’re just going to ride 100 miles in one day and not bother pretending to do it all over again the next day.
Still, we kicked ass all the way “down the Shore”. [Non-sequitur alert!!!] Down the Shore…. that’s what they say in Philly. This bugs me to no end. When I hear “We kicked ass all the way down the Shore,” I imagine the three of us kicking ass while moving due-south, parallel to the coastline–you know, down the shore. But what Philadelphians mean when they say they “kicked ass all the way down the Shore” is that they kicked ass all the way down TO THE Shore. I know they’re just two little words, but I guess all the cheesesteaks and hoagies and scrapple and Tastykake and soft pretzels and pork roll and Irish potatoes and stewed Met fans they eat down here render them too lazy for certain prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc. Here’s another example…
Parent: “Turn the TV off and go do your homework!”
Teen: “No ma! I’m already done it!”
Me: “You mean you’re done WITH it?”
Teen: “No. I’m doneit.”
(beat, splashing sound)
Teen: “Aww man, I just spilt sooda on my phoone.”
Parent: “And you got some on your far-head. Here, let me get you a tal…”
THESE PEOPLE THINK SOUTHERNERS HAVE FUNNY ACCENTS AND EAT UNHEALTHY FOOD.
So I am exhausted because the cats are FREAKING OUT about the move. Of course they don’t know we are moving per se but they know something is up and they do NOT like. Chairman is crying that his fat chair is gone:
Fidel is climbing on the high piles of boxes and at night they will not settle down and sleep. They ran in cirlces all night scratching Patrick and me and knocking things over. The movers come today to help Patrick load into the truck and he’ll drive it to PA tonight and then come back to Bronxville in the morning for closing. Then tomorrow night we’ll both go back to PA and on Saturday we’ll leave for our bike race to Ocean City IN THE RAIN! It’s going to be an insanely hectic weekend but hey, it’s us. What weekend isn’t?
Filed under: Moving
Oscar Mike is Marine Corps slang for O.M., meaning “on the move” (thank you, Generation Kill). This is likely to be our last entry before a truck with all of our belongings heads down to Philadelphia where it will sit in the Liu driveway until being offloaded into our house on Monday. Kir will be in NYC five days a week until her contract job is up in December. I will have a lingering presence in the City, flitting back and forth between towns when my phone rings for work. So in one sense it’s really our stuff that’s moving, not us.
So long, Worldly Possessions! Like, send me an email once you get settled cause I totally want to come down and hang.
Filed under: Friends
Nick brought me along to a Mets game Tuesday night. There has been a dark pall of late-season collapse looming in the air around the Amazin’s lately. Predictably they’ve been losing when they can least afford to and, as of last night, they were 2.5 games behind the Phils and their wild card lead on the Brewers was down to 1 game.
Did I mention we have a difficult schedule, playing the formidable Cubs (never thought I’d write that phrase) while the Phillies and Brewers are playing plump teams with double digit game defecits, long eliminated from playoff contention–the Braves (sorry Thomas) and Pirates, respectively.
We weren’t planning on having a fun evening at the ball park.
Crowds steaming of the 7 train. Mets fans are a self-hating lot. Overheard on the way into the stadium:
Nick: “40,000 people here. And they all know exactly how this is going to end.”
Guy from Queens: “Yeah, I hope Luis Castillo dies in a fire.”
This was probably my last trip to Shea due to both the move to Philly and the eminent destruction of Shea stadium to make room for parking at CitiField (seen in the background petting a moody white cat and cooing, “Good, good. All is going to plan.”)
This is how the first third of the game went. Guess if it was good.
The only laughter in the first three innings was derived from this Cub’s last name. If you can’t read and really want to know what it is, look it up. He plays right field.
Yada yada yada, the Mets tied it up and took a small lead. Nick again, dripping sarcasm: “One up with six innings to go, what could go wrong?”
Luckily the thing that went wrong was a fan charging onto the field while the Mets had the bases loaded. Everyone had a laugh and then Jose Reyes hit a triple directly up the first base line and added three. Woot!
Nick, overcome with joyous, blurry dancing–made extra joyous when the Braves beat the Phillies (many thanks to that Gas Shortage Gang) and the Pirates took a lead over the Brewers. Mets win 6-2!
On the train ride home from Flushing, Nick consults his iPhone for Milwaukee/Pittsburgh updates. By Long Island City, the Brewers have come back to win and stay a single game behind the Mets in the NL wild card.
Look at this face. This is what loving an always-a-bridesmaid team does to you.
Filed under: Cooking
Kir and I took a long overdue cooking class at ICE Saturday night. I say long overdue because Kir bought me this (or any) class as a birthday gift in something like 2005 and it seemed that we needed to use it on our last weekend in NYC.
The class was not so much a class as an invitation to cook dishes you normally wouldn’t. A menu was planned and we were split up into groups to make them. Of course Kir and I chose to be in the pasta group (I’ve long wanted to see the Kitchenaid Pasta Rollers in action).
Of course we made the best dish of the meal, which probably had more to do with the fact that it contained fresh pasta, cured ham, and butter than our abilities as cooks. Here are some of the highlights…
A delicious carpaccio with basil and parm cheese. (Although I think Tom Colicchio would dock them for not cooking anything.)
One of Kir’s favorites, sauteed mushrooms and meat over polenta.
Tuscan lamb stew tasted very much like stew.
Poached cotechino sausage with lentils which kir said was delicious and I forgot to eat.
And here’s ours–pig, onion, and butter on a pile of fresh rolled fettucine. One of the only menu items to disappear from the platter completely.
And here is Kir’s plate (with obligatory ICE logo) with all the elements assembled.
Mangia.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Glad everyone enjoyed the copious posting. After a crazy weekend of packing, it’s our anniversary tomorrow and so we are heading out the door to Blue Hill to celebrate. Expect a review shortly.
Even though the date is technically tomorrow, yesterday “felt” like our anniversary as it was a beautiful Saturday in the Northeast and we fondly remembered this:
More reminiscing to come…
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m pretty sure Patrick agrees with me that, although there are other beautiful places to live, Westchester County is nothing to scoff at. The Northeast comes packed with beautiful farms, foliage and weather (I mean we’re no SoCal but come on, who is?). One particularly lovely day we made our way to Amawalk Farm for some delicious organic produce and to pick our own raspberries.
If you’ve ever been in the grocery store and picked up some berries and thought, “Wow, these are so expensive,” there’s a reason. It’s time consuming work and the bushes are very prickly. We picked 2 pints in about an hour.
But it was all worth it to bite into a sun warmed raspberry right off the bush, as nature intended.
Filed under: Uncategorized
A year ago, when Eli, Thomas and Carter deserted us for the wilds of Atlanta, Georgia we were comforted by the fact that Eli would be telecommuting to NYC about once a month and staying with us while she was there. Every visit was a great chance to catch up and hang out and was probably more face time than we had with her than when they still lived in Brooklyn. The sad part was no Thomas and, most importantly (sorry, Thomas), no Carter. He’s just a joy of a little boy, Patrick and my first nephew, and we were around from the day he was born and looked like a skinny old man (in knit cowboy boots) until the day they moved when he was a toddler. Over the past year we’ve seen him once or twice but kids do so much growing in this time that I think we feel like we’ve missed a good chunk of his quickly growing life.
Since we will also be moving soon and thus not seeing any of the Fowlkes’ as frequently, Eli brought the little bugger to us for one final stay at our place in Bville. It was a great visit even with the daily commutes into the city to daycare and maybe 1 or 2 toddler meltdowns. While there were here we HAD TO bring Carter to our favorite place, Muscoot Farm!
He was a little afraid of the animals at first so I had to show him how sweet they were:
But he had the most fun riding on the tractor with his mama:
Why is it that all little boys love farm equipment? Does it come hardwired in their DNA? Or is it just gender-reinforced societal stereotypes? Either way, he loved it.
He also loved drinking some local milk our of a big boy cup!
Nice milk mustache, Buddy!
We don’t know when we’ll see him again but it won’t be soon enough.
Filed under: Uncategorized
In the 3 years since I’ve become an avid rider I haven’t gotten into any major accidents. Sure, I’ve been almost doored by any number of people getting out of cars and cabs in the city, nearly squished between a bus and truck, skidded out on sand and gravel and gotten stuck in my clips and just tipped over like a falling tree at a stop light but nothing terrible has happened to me and certainly nothing involving another rider. Until now.
So unless Bicycle Sundays are in effect, Patrick refuses to ride on the bike path on the weekends. The paths are pretty narrow in spots and on the weekends are overrun with bikers, walkers, runners, rollerbladers, families, dogs, geese, etc. But with the big ride just around the corner and the mornings being too dark to ride I decided to go out alone. I managed to dodge a few errant runners who couldn’t hear me say, “ON YOUR LEFT!” before I passed because of their headphones and I only yelled at one lady who uses one of the TERRIBLE extend-a-leash things with her dog. (sidenote: DO NOT use those leashes. They are incredible dangerous to bikers who, at fast speeds and with lot of other distractions can’t see the very thin line crossing from one side of the path where you are walking to 20 feet to your right or left where you dog has stretched his leash to and is hiding in the bushes. If someone runs into it, they will go flying, your dog will go flying and you may go flying and then you may get sued for the injury you caused by letting you dog run wild on a useless flexy leash thing. Rant over.)
So, the accident. I had about 3 miles left in my ride and had caught up to another cyclist. The path being so crowded and narrow I had to be content with following him and not passing him. He was riding at a good click so it wasn’t really a problem. There is a very small but steep downhill curve at a certain part of the path and in the summer, with the leaves on the bushes being in full effect, it makes it a somewhat blind curve. I was pretty close behind this guy when we started to go downhill and coming uphill was a little girl on a pink Huffy bike riding smack in the middle of the path. The guy goes around the curve, the little girl swerves to avoid him and on her swerve back she crashes right into me. We both go flying, me onto the grass, her onto the asphalt and all movement on the path comes to a halt. Luckily I didn’t break anything. The little girl was hurting but her dad came and apologized to me and got her up off the ground. She was more freaked out than anything, I think. After making sure everyone was ok I got back on the bike to finish the ride only to find that, though my wheel was straight, my handlebars were twisted about 30 degrees to the right. It made for an interesting ride home.
When I got home and got my gear off all the adrenaline that had been pumping through me from being thrown into the air hit me with full effect, as did the pain in my right forearm. On the ride home it had swelled up to the size of a lemon and was bright red. The muscle was badly bruised pretty deep down and stayed that way for over 2 weeks, never turning into a dark black bruise but my whole arm taking on a slightly greenish tinge. Overall it could have been much worse but from now on I’ll stick with Patrick on the weekends.
Filed under: Uncategorized
As many of you know, Patrick and I have grown obsessed with farms. So obsessed in fact that we are buying a 100+ year old farm house in a decidedly non-rural area just so we can be a little closer to our dream of one day having our own farm. To be a little more specific on that dream, someday we hope to own enough land for, at the very least, some goats to make cheese, 1 or 2 horses and a whole pack of dogs. That’s not asking much, is it? Oh and a tennis court. We’d like to throw that in there. Sure, sure the whole bougie idea of having a tennis court might not quite jibe with the farm dream but hey, we are a modern couple and we have eclectic needs. Tennis being one of them.
So a few weeks ago, after a year of living in Westchester, we actually had a weekend with nothing to do but explore our soon-to-be-ex county. After a quick stop at Google we found the perfect spot for a Sunday excursion, Muscoot Farm. Muscoot was bought by the county in the 60s and is the perfect place to bring your kids to get a taste of farm life. Now Patrick and I have no kids, but did that stop us? NO! We don’t need kids to justify this:
Yes, that’s a 1 month old Holstein calf trying to suckle my arm. Their tongues are a little like sandpaper (like a cat’s) and, yes, I was covered in cow spit, but getting up close and personal with an animal like that is just too cool, at least to us. The farm also houses the Westchester Mounted Police Units horses and has every other type of adorable farm animal including this insanely huge pig:
I’m not sure that you can tell from this photo but that animal is the size of a Chevy Nova. I’m not kidding. Until we leave we’ll be going to the farm as much as possible and then if I have my way someday we’ll have a little pygmy goat to live in the backyard with the dogs. Like Charlie from our wedding.
What can I say? We are farm addicts.
