• Denver Days

    Posted on by Don

    Here are a bunch of photos from our first days in Colorado…

    Our first day in town we had some time to kill, but not a whole lot so we just went for a walk around the lake at Belmar Park. There were plenty of flowers and trees starting to bloom, and an enormous number of birds.

    Egret
    Egret
    Flowers
    Blossoms (Apple?)
    Nesting Cormorants
    Blossoms
    Nesting Cormorants
    A Bird
    Striking A Pose
    Beautiful Plumage
    Turtles
    Turtles On A Log

    That was Tuesday. Wednesday was a bit rainy, so we did some shopping, grabbed some lunch and did the museum thing at the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Arts.

    Art-Deco Radio
    Some Sculpture
    Sculpture
    More Sculpture
    Cityscape

    This museum was based on Colorado artist Vance Kirkland and his work, but had a whole collection of furniture and other decorative arts objects in various styles (Arts & Crafts, Bauhaus, Art Deco etc). The place was awesome.

    Thursday was nice, so we went to Boulder and hiked the trails near the Flatirons. We started at Chautauqua Park, and hiked over to the NCAR Mesa Laboratory (where we’d hiked on our last visit). Dinner was at a brewpub in Golden, a place called Cannonball Creek. They had some really good beer, and were in the process of winning an international beer competition while we were there — it was on the TV, some guy droning out the winners of all the various styles like the most boring Academy Awards ever, but the bar was going nuts like it was the Superbowl, cheering and groaning for local favorites or rivals, and they went absolutely crazy whenever Cannonball Creek won. We sat outside, away from the noise, and got nachos from the food truck.

    The Flatirons
    Anne At The Trailhead
    Boulder (And Denver) In The Distance
    Blooming Plant
    Bluebell Road And The Flatirons
    More Blossoms
    Anne On Mesa Trail
    Walking On The Trail
    Vista
    More Slabs
    Metro Denver In The Distance
    A Pothole In The Rock
    Vista
    Looking At The Mountain
    Looking At Boulder
    Tree Trunks
    Mountain Peak Above The Pines
    A Well-Earned Pint

    We got to see Emmi and Kyle on Friday, which was awesome — we hadn’t seen them in person for more than two years. The first thing we did together was go to the plant sale at the Denver Botanical Gardens.

    Emmi & Kyle
    Flowers
    Tulips
    Flowers
    Inside The Flower
    More Tulips
    Blue Flowers And Bees
    Blue Flowers

    Yesterday Anne and I did a little exploring between meeting Emmi & Kyle for brunch and meeting them for dinner. We wanted to get a hike in, someplace that wouldn’t be too crowded even on a Saturday, so Emmi suggested Red Rock Amphitheater and away we went.

    Red Rock
    Me
    Anne
    Some Slanted Rocks
    The Stage
    Amphitheater
    Looking Down
    The Stage From The Top
    Denver In The Distance
    Vista
    Life Amidst The Slickrock
    John Denver

    And finally, here are a few photos of a robin eating berries at Belmar Lake this morning:

    Robin
    Robin Eating Berries
    Robin Eating Berries

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  • Greetings From Colorado!

    Posted on by Don

    And Happy Mother’s Day!

    We’ve been in Denver since Tuesday, but a COVID exposure scare — someone who’d been in physical proximity to us texted to say they’d got it — well, that kept us laying low until we tested negative.

    Since then our days have followed a pattern: we occupy ourselves with hikes and coffee shops in the morning, then meet Emmi & Kyle for the afternoon and for dinner. Today we all leave together for a long weekend in Colorado Springs.

    Stay tuned for more, especially pictures.


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  • Flexibility Cycling

    Posted on by Don

    Bicycling doesn’t usually do much for flexibility, but flexibility sure came in handy on the recent Road Scholar ride…

    Monday: We switched back to the pre-Ida routing for this trip, doing the Lehigh Towpath from Bethlehem to Easton, rather than the relatively unscathed portion of the D&L from Lehighton to Cove Road we used last year. (I think that the D&L has a better surface overall between Lehighton and Cove Road, and was better even before Ida trashed the towpath, but everything else about the ride — the vibe, the points of interest, and especially the scenery — are all so much better on the original Bethlehem-Easton route.)

    Posing At the Mule Barn
    At The Mule Barn
    At The Mule Barn

    These were some shots at the Mule Barn (Lock #44, Freemansburg) on Monday’s ride.

    That decision worked out pretty well, and since Genesis Bicycles (our old destination on this ride) is closed now, we didn’t bother to do the last part of the original ride — we got picked up at the Forks of the Delaware rather than do city riding through Easton.

    Tuesday: The weather forecast started looking pretty bad for later in the week, and I think everyone was thinking the same thing: let’s switch the Tuesday and Thursday rides, so if Thursday is a washout we still get to do the Lehigh Gorge ride, which is supposed to be the last ride and the highlight of the week. There are usually a lot of moving parts to the Road Scholar logistics, especially when it comes to coordinating transportation, and changes like these are sometimes hard to pull off, but there were no other programs this week that needed transportation. The transport guys managed to shift the dates, and Tuesday was a great ride down the river to Jim Thorpe, on the last beautiful day of the week.

    Lehigh Gorge Scene
    At the Waterfall
    Posing With Lock Construction
    Inside Lock 22
    At The Waterfall
    At The Trestle
    The View From Nesquehoning Trestle
    Posing At The Trestle
    The Crew At The Trestle

    Here are some photos from Tuesday’s Lehigh Gorge ride.

    Wednesday is usually a short morning road ride, to lunch in Delaware Water Gap and an afternoon of free time for the participants. But, the morning weather looked so bad, and we’d already had such good luck messing with the previous day’s schedule, that we decided to mess with this one as well — the afternoon was supposed to clear up a bit, so we started later and had our stop lunch before the ride. This also worked out well: the rain had stopped even before lunch, and though the roads were a bit wet we managed to have a pretty decent ride. (Everyone seemed to ride a bit stronger too, probably from the extra nutrition.)

    Rainy Morning at Shawnee
    At The Top Of The Hill
    The End: Loading the Bikes

    I didn’t take too many photos on Wednesday but here is one each from before, during and after.

    Finally, Thursday. The forecast was still bad, so bad that the final ride (Allamuchy) was canceled. I didn’t even go in, and Midge and Andrea came up with substitute, indoor activities, yoga, a visit from the bird rehabilitation people, etc. This worked out so well I wish we’d been able to do it last year — the year we walked around Jim Thorpe in a downpour. Again, the bosses managed to move the logistics of travel and activities around to make this work. I am not usually a flexible person, physically or mentally, but this one time: Flexibility FTW!


    📂This entry was posted in the sporting life 📎and tagged

  • Onion Snow Ride

    Posted on by Don

    I went out to Allamuchy yesterday and did the Road Scholar route. It was a beautiful day but cold, and windy, and snow squalls blew through at times. I was dressed for it though, and fairly comfortable.

    While I was out there, I also did a bit of exploring on the new section of the Lehigh-Hudson rail-trail. We’ve been using the first completed section as an alternate return path for the past few Road Scholar rides, but this new section doesn’t seem to fit anywhere into our route — it connects the older part just at our access point, but goes the opposite direction for about a mile before rejoining the main road. Maybe in a few years, when they have more of the trail completed, we can incorporate more of it, but in the meantime I at least know where it goes.

    New Bike: More Impressions

    My first impressions of the new bike were that it’s seriously comfortable, and very stable, and though it feels fast when you sit on it, the more upright position (despite the drop bars), the extra weight of the rack and fenders, the easier gearing, and the wider tires all conspire to encourage a more sedate pace — the bike can move, but does not reward attempts at hammering the way my road bike would.

    After another ride I have to say that the situation is more nuanced than that: the bike is fully capable of being cranked up to a good pace, and can hold that pace just fine, especially on flats and gently rolling terrain, and tucking into the drops is perfectly doable on the descents. Still, the bar-end shifters make rapid progressions through the gears a little difficult though, so there’s no speed-shifting through short steep rollers — most of the time you pick your gear and change it when you notice a need, and in the meantime the bike is just so comfortable anyway, that it feels great to just cruise along without pushing too hard, no race pace necessary, just enjoy the scenery…

    Today is a fasting day, and it’s cold outside — blustery, more flurries — so today is also a computer-and-cello kind of day. (Last night was cello ensemble, and tomorrow is duets with Donna.) The racket continues outside as the gas company replaces all the lines in our neighborhood, but it looks like today may be their last day on our street. Lets hope so, they like to start earlier in the morning than I do.


    📂This entry was posted in the sporting life

  • Seven Thousand Gypsies Gathered Together

    Posted on by Don

    Reading: The Dazzle of Day by Molly Glass. Emmi’s husband Kyle sent us this book, which he read recently and liked, and thought we’d like too. (He’s always spot-on in his recommendations.) I started reading it the other day.

    So far we’ve been jokingly referring to the book as “Quakers in Space,” since that’s the basic premise: the Earth is dying, and a worldwide consortium of Friends manage to establish a working ecosystem on a generation ship (think the Nauvoo/Behemoth from “The Expanse”), then leave to search for a new home planet among the stars. I’m now up to Chapter 2, where the ship is approaching its target planet, after more than a century of travel, and preliminary scans show it to be disappointingly inhospitable. I suspect that the rest of the book will center on the decision they will have to make — make a go of it on this planet, or keep looking for a better one.

    So far I’m finding the book to be an engrossing read, but it’s really personal, and intense, and weirdly sad… I can only read a few pages at a time.


    📂This entry was posted in cultural ramblings

  • Staying On The Straight And Narrow

    Posted on by Don

    So I’m starting to get ready for the next set of Road Scholar rides. I’ve done the (now deprecated) Bethlehem-Easton towpath ride over and over again, and I think I have a good feel for trail conditions in this section. I’ve also done the section from Lehighton to Cove Road, which is the replacement for the Bethlehem-Easton section, and I did the Cherry Valley ride with Anne and Julie just the other day; that leaves the Allamuchy and the Lehigh Gorge rides to do in the next week or so, and then I should have a good idea of what to expect.

    I’ve been trying to ride more and more lately, and not just recon rides — I need to bring myself up to summer fitness, and I’m also trying to lose weight (again). Anne and I have both taken up the practice of intermittent fasting, where we skip eating two days each week. We fast on Mondays and Thursdays, and we’ve been at it for maybe three weeks now. it’s both easier, especially physically, and harder (psychologically) than I expected: hunger pangs are no big deal, but that whole late-evening-check-the-fridge snacking out of boredom or nervous energy is a whole other ball game…

    Anyway, here’s the weight loss saga for 2022 in graph form:

    weight loss graph
    My fluctuating weight, winter 2022

    Yesterday was a hike with the old Chain Gang crew (Doug & Lori, Eric & Kris, Joe & Cindy, Greg & Judy) up at the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, and today I’ll be tooling around on the new bike, dialing it in.


    📂This entry was posted in day by day

  • Indian Paths Update

    Posted on by Don

    I’m still cruising along on this project: I’ve got just over 110 paths in the database (of maybe 150 total), about 130 towns or other path endpoints, and 92 motorway routes. I have added no actual paths yet, but the motor routes are starting to look like a real network.

    My current plan is to parse the book three times: once (this time around) to capture the paths, path endpoints, and motor routes; once (the final, and probably most difficult, round) to try and develop the original foot paths; and in between these rounds I will go through the paths/chapters and try to capture all the cross-references between them.

    I noticed early on that there were a lot of things like “this is an extension of that other path,” “so-and-so path also goes by this name,” “this path intersects with these others,” and such like throughout the text; the path descriptions are festooned with these kinds of cross-references.

    (I also finally picked up on the fact that paths without a path/chapter number are not actually part of the previous chapter, but are basically “chapterless,” just the next path name in alphabetical order. They act sort of as placeholders, the alternate names of other, more fully fleshed-out paths — that is, more cross-references.)

    I want to hold on to all this cross-reference information in my database, so I set up a bridge table to work something like a resource description framework, with the referring path as the subject, the referenced path as the object, and for the predicate I would use a description of the relationship type, such as “[subject path] is a continuation of [object path],” “[object path’s name] is an alternate name for [subject path],” “for more info see [object],” and so on. I now have all of this set up and ready to go, but before filling it in with information I want to have all the paths already in the database. Soon…

    Meanwhile, the details, of each path or town I add, have all been real eye-openers. I often do a little internet research on each town, or village, or Native name I come across, and each bit of info, each piece of the puzzle is another portal into that era.


    📂This entry was posted in looking back tech talk 📎and tagged

  • New Bike!

    Posted on by Don

    My writer’s block continues, but I thought I’d pop in to announce that I finally got my new bike, a Kona Sutra SE. This is a bike seriously designed for touring: fenders, a triple ring, (mechanical) disk brakes, bullet-proof tires, bar-end shifters, a Brooks saddle, and a rear rack, with frame attachments for a front rack as well — and oh yeah, steel is real, baby!

    bicycle
    My New Kona Sutra SE

    I picked it up Thursday night from Cutters Bike Shop, where it had just arrived; they knew I wanted one, and they called a week or so ago to say one was on the way, and then it was there at the shop, and so was I… I gave it a test ride with panniers, then rode it home — it doesn’t fit on the roof rack. Yesterday was its real maiden voyage, a bakery ride up to Nazareth.


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  • My That Was Quick

    Posted on by Don

    Wow, so much for one of my resolutions: I’d hoped and expected to be blogging multiple times a week, maybe daily, but definitely a lot more frequently than I have. I guess February was a pretty short month after all, eh?

    So today was a cello duets make-up day: I was down visiting my parents on Tuesday, and Donna was busy with something as well, so our usual date wouldn’t work; we would usually just let it roll over to the next week, but since they’re going on vacation for the next few weeks, we thought we’d better get some playing in…

    Meantime, my cello/bassoon ensemble met on Sunday, for the first time in probably two years. There were a few people missing, and a few new faces as well — I’m no longer the greenest cellist in the room. A milestone: our bassoonist Milt just celebrated his 93rd birthday! Anyway, it was a fun evening, and I felt I played well — all of us did, really.

    Mud season looks like it’s coming to an end — we never really had a “snow season” this year — and Doug and I got in a pretty decent towpath ride yesterday. Spring isn’t here, but it’s just around the corner.


    📂This entry was posted in day by day