Hunkering down was a waste of time.

Lansing, about a 2 hour drive east of here, got 8.8 inches of snow yesterday. Battle Creek, about a 1.5 hour drive to our south-east, got 5.5 inches of snow, and Kalamazoo, an hour south of here, got 3.5 inches. This is what it looked like here today. (Sunny and low 40's.) Not a single flake.

A couple of days ago I said something along the lines of "now the season can be over."  Faithful commenter BDE asked this question.  " I noticed you said "now the season can be over." That does not mean it will be over. Or have you packed up your biking gear?"  Well, very astute question.  She was quite correct.  "Can be over" is not "over" -- it just meant that I'd accomplished everything that was kind of a big deal to me.  Mostly avoiding the lanterne rouge position in my own parade, if that makes any sense.  Today was an extremely nice day for the end of November, and I swear that I could even feel some heat from the low lying sun.  One of those solar flares reported by TT, perhaps?  Anyway, I got in a nice ride on Ruby, among the blueberry fields, and I can't imagine a better way to end this month.  I'll continue blogging, but the daily posts will end with this one.  It looks good for a December ride or two here, at least.  So -- carry on.  You all did great.  I enjoyed the show.

Just Blogging About Blogging

Under normal circumstances, today would not have had a blog post.  We're sitting around waiting for rain and snow to arrive.  The radar indicates that it is here now, but I just came in from a walk, and there's nothing falling yet.  It is cold, gray and windy, though.  November like.

But this is the blog every day for a month month, so I took my camera with me when I took my walk.  I finally figured out that the only way to walk the beach when there is this much wind is to do a one way walk.  Otherwise the sand blasting in my face would require goggles, or something.  I went down the stairs at the north access point.  With a NNE wind, it wasn't too bad down there, at least heading south.

Here's evidence of why I like dune grass so much.  It's doing what it is supposed to do -- holding the sand, and building new dunes.  Cool, huh?

This sort of beach usually means that the lake is about to take back a bunch of sand from the beach.  First it carves it up a bit, then it washes it away.

This was a sand pattern I hadn't seen before.  It looked like it might be frozen, though I didn't think it was quite cold enough for that.


I haven't posted a video yet this month. Nablopomo wouldn't be complete without at least one. I don't have a cat, but I do have access to a beach. So here's 23 seconds of your life that you'll never get back again.

Unfinished Business

First I had to clean the Elite and lube the chain, the price for riding yesterday in a sloppy mess.  But eventually I got it all together and got out for a bike ride today.  Pretty much as expected, I rode 17.07 miles.  Not long by many standards, but plenty long enough by mine, especially when ridden in 37 degree temperatures.  17 was the magic number of miles that I was looking for.

The completion of those miles resulted in the some very satisfying statistics.  My year to date mileage is now 2,589.  One mile more than I rode in all of 2004, thereby lifting this year out of the cellar for the 10 years for which I have records.  (2,589 miles is far enough to ride from Holland to Port Charlotte and back.  I didn't do that of course, because it took 11 months to accumulate that total.  But still.)

It also put the miles on the Elite, my "old" bicycle, at 12,000.  This gives me two bicycles that each have more than 12,000 miles on them.  (The Ruby has 13,482 miles.)  That's 25,482 miles added together, or enough miles to ride completely around the earth at the equator. Though that would be hard to do on a bicycle.  What with all that water and stuff.    Okay, now the season can be over.

Quiet Sunday

I spent today reading, eating and riding my bike. It drizzled during much of the 1.5 hours I was riding, so my camera didn't come out of my pocket. I took this photo of the rose bush next to our driveway a couple of days ago. It seems too late in the year for roses to be budding out, so this must be the rose bush equivalent of the Kelsey Tree.

Why would I ride on a day when it was 40 degrees when I left, 37 when I returned, and it was drizzling? The odometer on the Elite says 11,983 miles, that's why. One more ride.

Working off some of the turkey.

When the wind blew this hard when I was living at the bay house, I'd just ride around in the beech woods, using the houses and the trees to screen out the worst of the gusts.  I could get a 10 mile ride in without crossing Ottawa Beach Road by riding up and down every street and around ever cul-de-sac.

I did something similar on today's ride, exploring all of the side streets and staying in the neighborhoods as much as possible, hiding from the wind.  I rode for an hour and a half and never got further than 5 miles from home.  Holiday decorating was in full swing -- when I first looked at the white thing on this mailbox, it looked like a dog.  I finally decided it was supposed to be a polar bear.  The house behind the reindeer also has a non-rectangular window or two.  It seems that there are quite a few of those.  Maybe more than benches.

I rode down another street -- they all blur together at this point, but it was south of James St. somewhere -- and saw this flock of turkeys.  They seemed to know Thanksgiving was over and they were safe for now.  None of them even bothered to run as I rode past them -- twice.  We still don't have any snow on the ground here, though rain mixed with snow showers is forecast for tomorrow.  December looms.

Sand Shadows

I thought I'd do something different on the blog today. My original plan was to ride my bike to the marina and take some photos of the acres of empty dock slips and the big shrink wrapped sailboats sitting in dry dock. That part of the plan worked fine, but when I took out my camera -- "NO MEMORY CARD" was displayed on its screen. So here is plan B.

Turkey Day

The girl COTU, eating leftover chocolate cake from TJ's birthday. She's not a fan of pumpkin pie or apple crisp. We cooked, we ate, we cleared things up, then we took a walk around the neighborhood.

OSLO brought the pumpkin pie (from Russ'), the green bean casserole, rolls and chocolate cake.  She went home with as much food as she brought, I believe.  It was all good.  Here she's enjoying a piece of Opal's apple crisp.  Very good, as usual.  Someone thank Opal for me, please?  It is a very popular dessert here.

Totally Jammin' ate more mashed potatoes than seemed physically possible.  He needed his own gravy dish.  (We had three gravy dishes on the table.  It's just easier that way.)

Brad's niece Reggie traded places with Dalton for the weekend, and joined us to make a total of 9.  She's a nice addition to the group.  The three teenagers enjoy hanging out together.  Ryan brought an excellent baked shrimp dish -- he's a pretty good cook.  He and Mallory had to pace themselves -- they were going to his grandparents' house for another dinner this evening. 

Mallory has been here often enough that she seems to be getting comfortable with us.  A good thing.

JB and Brad missed out on the picture taking session -- napping and football took precedence over eating dessert and taking a walk.  (JB just napped and Brad did both.  The Lions lost.)  OSLO and her crew were also double dipping today -- they were heading over to the COTU's other grandmother's house for second dessert.    Happy Thanksgiving, family.  I hope your day was as nice as mine.

Thanksgiving Eve

I rode for an hour both yesterday and today. These short rides mess up my average ride length stats, but get me outside and exercising for the required length of time. Yesterday was cold and windy -- and once again I was ridiculously slow. I did see a few early season decorations in people's yards. This one was along Quincy.

Today was warmer and I was determined to pick up my average speed a little bit -- apparently just waiting for it to come back up isn't a good strategy.  The extra effort helped -- I was still slow by my usual summer standards, but at least it was comfortably in double digits.  It felt like harder work than I've done for a while, and I felt a little nappy before supper, but rallied eventually. On a slightly related note I checked the odometer on the Elite when I got home and it currently reads 11,934.  It seems unlikely that there are more than a couple of bike rides left here this year, so I'll have to wait until Spring to report that I have two bikes with more than 12,000 miles on them.  Something to look forward to.

Lynne stopped by briefly on her way to her daughter's in Kalamazoo for the weekend, and said to wish the Minnesota members of team Santini e Fratelli a happy Thanksgiving from her.  Done.

I'm doing a little pre-holiday prep work.  The wild rice is cooked (I make the stuffing in the big blue bowl), the jello-cranberry-apple-orange-pineapple-celery salad is supposed to chill overnight, so it's done, as well.  I think that all I have left to do tonight is to make some apple crisp.

Holiday Prep

There is a recipe here for cranberry bread.  It smells great.  I will also be making Opal's apple crisp.  OSLO is bringing the pumpkin pie. 

The current count for Thanksgiving dinner here has risen to 9. 

Men Working

My current mantra is "there is nothing more important than exercise." I don't really mean that, of course. But "there are only a handful of things that are more important than exercise" is a bit awkward, as mantras go. Apparently my other mantra is "conserve energy, especially my own." It's this second mantra that explains what I'm doing today, which is watching men work.

Today Dave and his crew (also known as Beaver Creek Landscaping) did their final fall clean up of the yard at the beach.  They did a nice job -- not a leaf or a loose twig in sight.

They'll be back next week to mow the grass one more time.  Both the front and the back look good, I think.  I like Dave.  He also plows our snow.  He saves me a bunch of work.

Off topic -- as long as I was outside with my camera on a sunny day (!) I took a picture of the beach. The big winds of last week shifted some sand around, and some of it is currently hanging out in front of our place.  JB's new weather station is also pictured -- he loves the wind speed function on it.

 My other big task for today, besides admiring Dave's crew's work, was to supervise Chris.  That's his car in our driveway.  (Isn't the light great today?) Chris is the new guy who cleans my house.  He hasn't been at this house before, and he laughed out loud when he saw the elevator.  And immediately found a use for it, transporting all of his cleaning supplies upstairs.  He plans to offer a discount to all of his clients with two story houses that have an elevator.

It occurs to me that some might think that I'm not conserving my energy -- that in reality I'm a lazy a** bum.  Well, perhaps.  I am actively planning Thanksgiving dinner, however.  It will be here at the beach, something we've never done before.  Though we've had lots of big meals here, including once where I had to call JB and have him bring over an extra plate because there were more people eating than I had plates for.  (That's no longer an issue.  More plates have arrived.)  There will be 'just' 8 of us, I believe.  OSLO is bringing a couple of dishes, as is Mallory.  More energy savings.  I'm getting pretty good at this.

Numbers

I'll start with the temperature. It was 41 degrees when I rode my bike out of my driveway today. I consider that warm enough to ride, by a few degrees. It is also the exact temperature at which my nose runs more or less constantly. (Blogging hits a new low.) I rode north on Lakeshore until my bicycle computer said 9 miles, then turned around and enjoyed the tailwind on the way home. I took my camera, but took no pictures. I saw two other bikers while I was out, if memory serves.  So it seems the season here isn't quite over yet.

About 10 days ago I reported having ridden 2,400 miles this year.  Another 100 miles have rolled on by since then, so today I'll report passing the 2,500 mile mark.  It is a bit of a dilemma.  It seems like this year should be the worst mileage year ever -- and for a long time that seemed likely.  In 2004 my log says I rode 2,588 miles.  That is 87 more miles.  At first glance that seems like an impossible number to attain before the streets here turn white and icy.  But.... there's a shoulder season coming up.  Florida miles.  Last year I rode 102 miles in December, all of it in Florida (I think.)  A little bit of suspense emerges.  This could go down to the wire.  It doesn't look like I'll have any chances to ride this week until at least Friday -- seasonal busy-ness.  At this point there's no snow in the forecast by then, but things can change quickly this time of year.  Stay tuned.

Fall Deepens

The wind advisory was cancelled last night and by lunchtime today, the winds had calmed down some.  It was still windy enough that I wanted to ride out into the wind and return with a tailwind.  A strong south wind always makes that plan difficult -- in order to go very far south from here I have to cross the bridge on River and go into the 'city.'

On the way to the bridge I took a little detour through the Stu Visser Trails along Pine Creek.  No bicycles allowed.  But there are lots of benches.  I saw no one else on the trail between Lakewood and Ottawa Beach Rd. until I got to the end, where I met a guy walking his dog along the path.  No dogs are allowed, either.  So the only people I know of that used the trails today, used them illegally. 

Dunton Park, on the north side of Lake Macatawa, offers benches with a view of the lake, as well as the pickle factory.  There was no hint of the smell of vinegar.

Apparently I had lost track of how far it is to the bridge.  By the time I got to the fake windmill just on the other side of the bridge, and thus technically in the 'city,' I had already ridden over 8 miles.  That's further than I thought.  I called it 'far enough' and circled back -- and headed straight into the wind which had now shifted and was coming out of the west.  I hate it when that happens.

Living at the beach has its benefits, to be sure.  I do, however, miss riding through the beech woods in the fall.  One of its many charms is that the trees form a pretty effective wind break from almost any direction it may be blowing.  Today's ride took me to a few places where I don't very often go -- I generally prefer country roads to urban streets.  There may still be another couple of days when riding will be possible this month. There isn't any significant snow in the forecast until after Thanksgiving.  At some point somebody needs to call this season over.  Anyone?

November 18th

Not even in Auckland would I ride on a day like today. 40 mph winds? Gusting higher? If you look really closely you will see 3 people walking the beach.  I don't much like sand blowing in my face, so I went down the stairs, took the photo, and retreated back inside the house.

By about noon it warmed up enough to make walking something I was willing to consider. Once down the hill, with the dune between me and the lake providing a barrier to the wind, it wasn't too bad.

It was about a 2.4 mile loop, including the stop at the end of the tunnel to discover that yes, the wind was still blowing sand in the face on anyone who got anywhere near the beach.  I had other things to do, anyway.  It has been reported elsewhere on the intertubes that the sweet little boy in the photo below is now officially a teen-ager.  It doesn't seem remotely possible.

JB and I bought him a new flat screen TV as part of a room make-over that his Mom was doing for him for his birthday.  Out with the cute little boy bedding, and in with the new, cool teenager appropriate stuff.  We headed north to deliver it and to take the COTU out for supper.

We let him pick the restaurant, and he picked Russ'.  This is really kind of funny, and so is the fact that his second choice was the bowling alley.  (The bowling alley has excellent Mexican waffle fries, however.)  He had his usual -- a bowl of chicken rice soup, mashed potatoes and gravy, and chicken fingers.  Plus he snagged a couple of his sister's onion rings.  (Russ' is well known locally for their onion rings, just slightly more famous than their pigs.  Yes, those pigs.)

There was a big family party planned for this evening, but we're eccentric and are allowed to skip it, once we've visited with the birthday boy and his sister.  Everyone knows we don't tolerate loud noises well, and crowds sort of freak us out.  It will be wall to wall Friedgens and Beils at OSLO's tonight.  I predict he will have a great time, eat lots of cake, get several gift cards for i-tunes, and possibly a gag gift from his other Grandma.  It is just possible that he may even receive a spare brain.  Happy birthday, Totally Jammin'.  You make us proud.

It is a Soup Kind of Day

I find a lot of good recipes on The Pioneer Woman Cooks blog. Her recipes tend to be too high in fat (and cream) for my tastes, but I consider a recipe to be a guideline, or a road map, not a set of rules.  So today, with the wind howling and the snow flakes falling, I made some carrot soup for JB and myself for lunch.  I haven't made soup since TT and UH were here in September -- and in fact they were the primary soup makers then -- and it is time to kick up my veggie intake a bit.  Or a lot.  With the eating season about to begin, I need a little help from my friends.  (In case you've forgotten that whole series of "Veggies are my friends" recipes from last fall.)

The recipe calls for 3 pounds of carrots, I had a one pound bag of carrots in my refrigerator.  It made about 4 bowls of soup, so just right for us.  I used a half box of the veggie stock, and about a cup or so of water.  Just throw it all in a pot with some salt, pepper and a little bit of thyme (1/8 teaspoon) and bring it to a boil.  Then turn down the heat and let it simmer for 45 minutes or so until the carrots are fork tender.  No need to cover the pot, even.

Don't drain it -- the liquid is part of the soup.  I used my immersion blender to get it to this consistency.  I added about a half cup of skim milk and about a tablespoon of honey, plus a little bit of butter to the pot.

All of my previous experiences with orange colored soup led me to expect this to taste like pumpkin, or maybe squash.  It tasted like carrots.  My expectations faded, and I added more soup to my bowl to make it come out even with my left over half of a turkey reuben sandwich from supper last night.  There's a second version of it on the same website that is spiced differently.  Garlic, ginger and lemon, I think.  I might experiment with spices a little bit next time I make it.  It was good enough to eat.  And so simple.

Making Good on my Comment (And Benches)

This morning, influenced by caffeine and not having been outside, I commented to BDE on yesterday's post that I was going to take both a walk and a bike ride today. (Note to self: Don't do that.) This was not a nice day to spend outside. Cold, wind -- you know, mid November. I did the walk shortly after breakfast -- the minimum one mile lap around the neighborhood, stopping only to photograph a bench for the blog.   I know it is familiar to most/all of you, but it was the best I could think of in the circumstances to document the  fact that I did indeed take that walk.  (South access stairs.)

After lunch I put on (not quite enough) cold weather gear and headed out on the Elite.  My plan was to ride to the state park, photograph another bench, get in a dozen miles, and go home.  I love it when a plan works out, by the way.  I believe I've mentioned that before.  But before I get to the other bench, I want you to take a look at this photo of the Lake Mac end of the channel out to the big lake.  Does it make anyone else sea sick?  Or just me?  Lake Mac flows into Lake Michigan, except when there's a strong west wind, when the water gets pushed backwards into Lake Mac, causing (erp) swells.

Moving on.  The boardwalk along the edge of Lake Mac near the entrance to the state park is now open.  That was my intended destination -- I've been there before and I knew there were benches with a view.

Of course you can't see what that view is, because I wanted to get all arty and frame the benches with Big Red in the background.  Waves were crashing over the pier head and sand was blowing at gale force, so I turned tail and rode inland after I got my picture, and eventually home. Again, the minimum ride of about an hour.  Objectives satisfied, a walk and a bike ride.   So.... cold, windy.  Hard.  Slow.  Here's my axiom for the month.  There are no easy November miles.

Some Favorite Flickr Photos

Inspired by Emily's post yesterday, I looked through my old albums on Flickr, and found a few photos that I thought were worth re-visiting.  Most of these -- probably all of them -- are from 2006, so not so very long ago. I love the matching bike jerseys on this one.  GZ and Emmy.

Dad and daughter, a photo by san.tini on Flickr.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as I often refer to them on the blog, on the deck at sunset.  Soulful.

G and B, a photo by san.tini on Flickr.

The wave patterns on this one make it interesting to me.  That's my brother TT providing scale and contrast.

water patterns, a photo by san.tini on Flickr.

I like this photo of TT on the deck, too.  The sun is still setting in the northwest in this one.  A clue to the time of year it was taken.  Before the equinox.

good pic, a photo by san.tini on Flickr.

That was fun.  Thanks, Emily.
Biking broke out here this afternoon, and I rode east, altering my usual ride habits to avoid being mistaken for a deer by hunters out and about in the woods on the first day of firearm deer season.  It appears to have worked, and I returned home unscathed.  There aren't many leaves left on the trees here, though some -- perhaps non-native -- trees are still hanging on to their leaves.  I thought these were pretty, but I don't know what kind of tree it is.

Today I got the results back from the bone density scan I got last week. I appear to have the bones of a 25 year old woman. Very low risk of fracture. "Keep doing what you're doing" was the official medical advice. I'm pretty happy about that.