So darn cold

Thursday morning

This is the state of things. So cold that, when I made a brief foray outside to see if my car would start, my face hurt. Schools have been closed most of the week, and even the court system was shut down  Monday, yesterday and today. Suspects are languishing in cells awaiting their bail hearings, and Ms. V has been sentenced to spend her days with me -- though I'll just note that I'm not the one laying down the law.

By Saturday (see above), it's supposed to be 40 degrees. A 60-degree swing in 48 hours. Maybe nice enough for a bike ride, if I'm not suffering from temperature-change vertigo.

We've been watching "Money Heist" -- a gang of thieves wearing Salvador Dali masks break into a Spanish mint and print money for themselves. They have ideals -- to enrich themselves without taking from anybody else. That's the single elevated notion sustaining 9+ hours of viewing. You could get through a quarter of "War & Peace" in that time. But, hey, we love our Netflix.

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How's your MDA? Check out JON'S MDA DRIVE.

Buying an empty bag

New bag

New bag, interior, with maps. 

This kick-butt handlebar bag was Ms. V's Christmas gift to me, by which I mean she said I could buy it. It's waterproof, light, capacious, lockable, and, uh, spendy. But, as Bruce has said of Ortlieb bags, "They're the state of the art."

My mom used to say, of my dad's boats: "Oh, yes, they cruise so nice there on the highway behind the car," which is where they got a lot of their use. This is like me taking a picture of my bike bag on the bike in the house. Sits pretty nice there in front of the filing cabinet.

Taking a look at my maps yesterday, I got a little involved and spent hours at it, lining them up in order, numbering them, trying to figure out the route on a large US map. Planning is the most fun part of any trip. But planning without going is just a form of dreaming.

Not to knock dreaming.

I'm making flight plans. First time in my whole life I've made flight plans four months early. I hope to fly to Seattle the week before Memorial Day, and start riding with Bruce May 29 or so. There's a bike store in Astoria that will take UPS shipment of your disassembled bike and put it together for a small fee. About $100 to ship it in a box, and $50 to put it together. Cheaper than checking it on a plane, even if they would allow it.

So.

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To contribute to my MDA drive, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE.

Such a pita -- get it?

We are in a state of mourning over the loss of Mykonos, our local Greek take-out joint. Just three blocks away. It satisfied the occasional adolescent craving for, well, a little bit of grease. Gyros, spanakopita, garlic potatoes and pitas pitas pitas. It even got an obit of sorts from the local paper's food writer. The family that ran it for decades felt the time was right, reportedly. Hopefully, someone will buy the place and recreate it, if only for the convenience of the Olson/Vospers.

I took a bike ride a couple days ago, a sunny afternoon in the mid-40s. It was fun for a while, till I hit the New Berlin Trail. Out there in the hinterland the pavement was strewn with patches of diabolical ice. I rolled over what I could, then walked, pushed with one leg, cursed. I was going to meet Ms. V at a movie way out in Delafield. Already a bad idea. Finally -- and get this, all you macho riders -- I called her to rescue me.

I'm not proud.

And we never did make the movie.

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Still time to be an early supporter of my MDA fund drive. Read the story and consider your finances  HERE.

A new wrinkle

Vanity in full

This is a new wrinkle on my planned bike trip. THE FUNDRAISER! The dreaded plea for money. But not for me -- for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The local office was kind enough to set up a page for me, and you can access it here.

This is kind of out of my comfort zone. But read the story and make a tax-deductible pledge -- if you feel so moved.

(Now I really HAVE to do it.)

Making plans

The big picture

The first days

The first hours

More adventuresome riders might start in Seattle and ride through Glacier National Park and over the Logan Pass, up there by the Canadian border. But, at 60, with ailments, I've tried to plot what may be an "easier" route, which I think will not be that easy. The Rockies and Tetons will stretch me, although these great maps give altitude profiles, and for the most part they try to ease you through the valleys -- not that I won't struggle.

Those more adventuresome riders often wind up in Maine, several hundred if not a thousand miles farther, and I don't feel the need to see Maine, as much as I'd like to give Susan Collins a piece of my mind.

After Astoria, the starting point, there's supposed to be a pretty good tailwind along the Columbia River, a little gift for your first day out, and I will take it.

Here's a little outline of cities along the route:

From Astoria Oregon to Clarkston WA to:

* Missoula, MT 

* Great Falls MT 

* Dickinson ND 

* Fargo ND

* Walker MN

* Stillwater MN 

* across Wisconsin to Milwaukee, where I'll spend a few days, since the lodging is free (if you don't     count the condo fee)

* ferry across to Muskegon 

* across Michigan to Detroit 

* into Ontario (remember the passport!) 

* cross the border again to New York

* Erie Canal to the Hudson 

* across the Washington Bridge to NYC.


Still aiming for a late May departure.

Hail, hail the new year, I guess.

Leif Erikson, upon discovery of the Regency Condominims.

Farewell to the old year, and best wishes for the new one. I'm old enough to view the passage of time as a frightening prospect, but I must say I won't miss the holidays. Their greatest gift is to make you appreciate your routine.

We had the kids here, staying in a nearby Airbnb, a perfect combination of proximity and distance. We love each other, of course, but living on top of each other is too much, which I'm sure they would affirm.

Ms. V is up in Appleton at yet another funeral, her parents longtime neighbor and best friend. I attended another a few days ago, a resident at my mom's place, John, who we got to know through his slow, fraught peregrinations of the halls. He was a nice man, a graduate of Ripon and the Parsons School, a former New York designer who worked for Mary Tyler Moore, among others. I never did understand the fascination of the elderly for the obituaries, but now I'm studying them, too.

I am planning a bike ride from coast to coast, to begin at the end of May. I've started lifting weights, trying to resurrect my upper body, and biking indoor at the gym.  It would be about 3 months, 3000 miles. Hopefully this will work -- hopefully I can do it. I'm exploring making it a fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy -- details to come. My old friend Bruce says he'll do the first few weeks with me. I'm looking forward to it!

Death everlasting

Where to put it?

Mom continues to haunt these parts, and it will ever be thus. I remember her mostly in her last days, which does not give a full picture and skews toward frustration more than is good for me. 

In the practical realm, we have a storage locker full of stuff she left behind. (Honestly, some of it is mine, but it's easier to blame Mom.) Photo albums, boxes of slides, bins of paper, camping gear, a collection of bibles and hymnals that only a Lutheran could love, college work by my grandparents (!), and more. I have, in fits and starts, culled a little (a very little) bit, and brought home what I thought I could handle. I even bought a bookcase to manage it. I can work at this for about one hour at a time before I get depressed.

Every inch is a storage space.

Pretty nice, I think.

Yours for the asking.

Free room and board and breakfast at the Plaza to anyone who'll help. 

That's all I have to say about that. 

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On the bicycling front, I have for years resisted getting the kind of pedal/shoe setup that allows you to clip your feet firmly to the pedals, fearing that my sloppy ankle situation and generally accident-prone nature made it a bad choice. (For all of you non-bikers out there, the pedals are called "clipless pedals," but they most certainly have clips, so I don't get the name, really.) Now I've made the plunge. I have fallen a couple times -- coming to a stop and not getting my foot out -- but I'm getting better at the little flick of the heel that frees your foot, and it is a minor revelation -- it makes you more efficient, gives you more oomph per stroke. 

Some day, maybe, I'll be able to keep up with the big boys.

This metal cleat on your shoe attaches to . . .

. . . this clamp on your pedal.