Christmas in Tyringham

Some photos from our stay in Tyringham to see my dad and Joanie over Christmas.  We arrived on Sunday, the day before Christmas eve. Cold but not too bad by Tyringham standards, no snow to speak of. Rivers and streams are all ridiculously full (lots of rain the previous week).

The house:

Dad and Joanie relaxing in the living room:

Reed reading Roz Chast:

The dog loitering in the living room, trying to figure out where to stand so as to maximize the inconvenience level for the collected humans:

On Christmas Eve the longstanding tradition in Joanie's family is to cook "Seven Fishes": some sort of menu that involves seven distinct kinds of seafood or fish. This time around the dishes were five hors d'oeuvres: her ever-popular smoked trout spread, salmon mousse, smoked eels, a lovely curried shrimp thing, and a pie made from caramelized onions topped with bits of anchovy. All delicious! For the main meal she prepared broiled branzino and baked monkfish (also very tasty).

Photos:

Drinks before dinner:

There was quite a bit of music-playing as always:

Rustin was working furiously in his shop, this time around putting together a cool set of cutting boards made with a striped effect from different kind of wood. The shop:

Opening presents:

Bingo finally found someone who would give him some "lap time". I should add that when this photo was taking he was snoring loudly (I could hear him across the room):

On Christmas day Joanie let us cook brunch, so we made the traditional family Christmas morning meal (the one started by Paul and Frances): smoked salmon, dill, capers, cream cheese, scramble eggs, bacon, oranges+grapefruit, and (in our variant) fresh cinnamon rolls:

For dinner Joanie decided to cook a "Turducken" -- a huge undertaking, with complicated construction and a very long baking time. It turned out wonderfully this time, fabulously moist and very flavorful.

It was a nice visit -- no skiing or skating to be had unfortunately, but plenty of long walks and lots of "internet free" time.

Motorcycling

This past fall I decided to take the plunge and enter into the world of motorcycling... to the surprise of many friends and family members (who somehow hadn't thought of me in a "motorcycle way").

My foray started with (of course) a training class, since I had never ridden before up to this point. Around here in MA you can do a crash 2-day course that includes classroom instruction, a written test, road instruction, and a road test all within the space of a weekend, so that's what I did (Amy gave me the class for my birthday). Here I am during the training in July, learning how to ride an incredibly beat up old Honda:

I did pass the test and successfully wrested my license from the folks at the Mass RMV. After that it was off to Craig's List, to see if I could find a machine to buy.

Crazy as it sounds, I've found over the years that buying and selling used vehicles (and bicycles I should add) is actually a really interesting experience-- you wind up meeting people that you would be very unlikely to bump into in your "regular" life.  I've had any number of memorable encounters this way, and in fact motorcycle shopping was no exception.

After a fair amount of searching I found just the bike that I wanted, a Suzuki V-Strom DL650, a recent model with fuel injection and anti-lock brakes, offered for sale by a guy up in Salem NH.  I drove up to take a look and meet the owner; he turned out to be a nice guy (maybe ten years older than me?) who had been motorcycling for a long time (he had all sorts of advice to offer). He'd been riding the bike to work and back every day (down into MA, so a fair ways). In addition to the bike itself he was nice enough to offer me his motorcycling jacket (we were about the same size), along with various extra bits and pieces. The bike:

New Hampshire is not Southern California, of course-- it does get cold every now and then, so he had accumulated all sorts of extra kit to try to keep the bike ridable in colder weather. There are hand-protectors on each handgrip to keep the wind off your fingers, then there are electrically heated grips of all things (didn't even know they existed), and finally an electrically heated insert you wear under your jacket and plug into the machine (yikes-- haven't actually tried that yet).

Buying a motorcycle is very impractical in all sorts of ways, but it's especially impractical for us given that we don't really have much space in the garage-- it's already full of bikes, gardening stuff, not to mention my car.  Amazingly, I was able to figure out how to cram in motorcycle as well, down at the end. Photo:

You can see that the bike itself is resting on a sort of wheeled dolly thing; you roll the bike up onto it and then you can move it around on a flat surface.  I hung a couple of tennis balls from the ceiling to provide a sort of marker so that I can pull the car in just far enough to be able to close the door, but not far enough that I run into the motorcycle.

More photos-- getting ready for a ride:



So far I've enjoyed riding, in spite of the cold weather (it's easy to keep your body warm, but not easy to keep your fingers warm!), and I don't seem to have crashed, run over any old ladies or puppies, or had any other accidents. Fingers crossed... you definitely have to pay attention (although when I look around on the highway while riding, it seems that about half the drivers have their cell phones out and are texting, so maybe being on a cell-phone-free motorcycle will put me at an advantage).

Thanksgiving in Cleveland

We had a nice visit to Cleveland this Thanksgiving to see Amy's mom; thought I would post some photos. [ NB:  this is my first blog post in almost a year -- I hadn't intended to take so much time off, but somehow I just never managed to find the time to post.  I will try make it more of a regular event... ]

We flew United through Chicago on the way there (Wednesday), which made me a wee bit nervous (O'Hare has a reputation) but the travel gods were smiling and benevolent this time around -- no delays or issues. Photo of the sunrise from inside the terminal at Logan:

Frances picked us up at the airport and we had an uneventful drive back, yay. For dinner Frances made her fabulous ribs recipe (especially favored by the kids), yum. A good start mealwise...

For Thanksgiving this time around it was partially a "guest chef" arrangement: Frances bought all of the ingredients, and then everyone teamed up to do the cooking. For the main meal Frances prepared and cooked the turkey, Reed did the stuffing (with cornbread and things from Frances), I made an apple pie, Amy made a chocolate pecan pie, Reed made twice-baked sweet potatoes, and various people contributed to cook the green beans, cranberry sauce, and gravy.  For me the standouts were the pecan pie (a truly awesome recipe) and the sweet potatoes -- Frances had noticed the recipe in an Ina Garten cookbook (we used brie instead of taleggio)... very yummy.

Reed made the sweet potatoes Wednesday night, and I did the crusts for the pies. On Thursday morning we did pie assembly and baking, and the kids started in on a very tricky 1000-piece puzzle, a painted picture of a Paris street scene.

I went for a run in the afternoon on the Cleveland/Bradley County Greenway ; the city recently added a new spur, accessibly maybe a third of a mile from where Frances lives.  This route goes past the city dog park, which is set up in an interesting way: there are two separate sections, partitioned by dog size (makes sense, fewer small dogs flattened by larger rough-housing playmates).

We didn't do much after the meal, everyone was tired from the cooking and traveling and eating.

Friday morning we went for a hike in the Cherokee National Forest out near Parksville -- we did an out-and-back on Clemmer bike trail, which we've been to before. We tried for the Clemmer Spur Trail, but about a half mile up the trail it crossed over a creek that was so full we weren't able to get over it (just sneakers, no waterproof boots).  The bike trail was fine, though-- nice views.

Some mistletoe that I found on the trail:

Looking south from the trail:

We also did a visit that same day to the family cemetery to visit Paul's grave, New Friendship Cemetery.  Frances had been telling Ethan in the car about her childhood and her parents, so she showed us their gravestones and those of a few other family folks.

In the afternoon Amy and the kids and I headed off to the local bowling alley where we met up with EB and Karen; we bowled a couple of games and had a good time chatting. Karen actually knows something about bowling, and taught us a few new terms (ex: Brooklyn ).

 



Everyone had very distinct and different bowling styles: Ethan's delivery was ultra-smooth, Reed more short and compact, Karen very direct but with a quick finish.

We had dinner that night at Tony and Jeannette's, along with Karen, EB, Brant + Susan and their family. Very nice get-together; good to see everyone and get caught up.

On Saturday we took it easy; I watched a soccer game on the tube, the kids went to the movies, and they finally finished the puzzle they had been working on all this time. Completed puzzle:

We had an early dinner, then headed off to the airport. Alas, the travel gods were no longer in a good mood... one of our flights was canceled, leaving us having to spend Sat night in a hotel, but we did eventually make it back around lunchtime to Boston, yay.

Bingo was very glad to see us when we picked him up that afternoon :-).