… and I’m pretty sure you don’t care about this at all, but …
… after 34 miles today, I am now feeling pretty confident that I will be able to get in enough miles to set a new annual mileage record.
The only important question is by how much.
By whatever your little legs can handle.
OK, then, the other question is how I should break it up over the next two days.
Two days? Two rides, of course. Or maybe three. But definitely go big tomorrow, just to be sure.
Fine, I’ll get close to my record tomorrow, allowing me to break this personal mark early in my ride on the 31st. So we’re just down to the philosophical questions. Should I count this up at all?
Dude. You have a spreadsheet. “Should” left you long ago.”
Good point. OK, last one. Does it matter? Is it impressive enough to matter?
Having looked at the small numbers on your spreadsheet, not in the slightest.
There’s always next year.
adventures / food / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on On our first full day in Pennsylvania we went to … Delaware 22 Dec 22
Delaware is a fine state, and it’s just across the border. Indeed, the last time I was in this part of Pennsylvania we jogged across the state line. That was just to be able to say I’d done it. (One of several state lines I’ve ran or rode a bike across.) But today, we did it for a more sensible reason: to save on sales tax.
So, yes, a few more Christmas presents, then. And then some stocking stuffers. Someone who occasionally reads this site was on today’s list, so I’ll say no more.
Also … if you’re the sort who can’t wait to spell out on social media the Christmas presents you got for anyone older than 10, don’t do that.
With that done, we sought out lunch. We settled on the same place we had dinner last night. California Tortilla, a fast casual Mexican-adjacent style restaurant. (We ordered different things today, of course.) Have you been to a Moe’s or a Qdoba or Chipotle? You’ve had a lesser, but similar version of this place. On a wall where you order there’s an enlarged photo advertising their catering. (They do weddings!) The photo has a bride holding the familiar overstuffed burrito. She’s about to bite into the center of it. Her adoring new husband looks on and we’re left to wonder if she really bit it, right there, in her dress, or that was just a careful pose.
If you eat a burrito like an ear of corn salsa is going everywhere.
On the opposite wall is this sign.
And below it … this seems unsanitary, somehow.
How many of those bottles, do you suppose, should be refrigerated? To say nothing of the many hands making germy work.
We were discussing the ranking of these sorts of restaurants, and I only share this in case you are confronted with unknown opportunities, and to point out that The Yankee is mistaken. The official order of this genre goes like this.
She thinks California Tortilla is in the top spot, but she was hungry when she said that, so it could be a blood sugar thing.
The Yankee’s god-sister and god-husband-in-law took us to White Dog Cafe — five locations in the greater Philadelphia area — for dinner. I had the farmer’s pie.
It’s a shepherd’s pie, but with better mashed potatoes, proper zesty mushrooms and some serious carrots. I’d get that again. Later, more cards with the kids. Because, sure, I can get beaten up around a kitchen table two nights in a row.
After today there’s just a half-day or so left in my work year. And, a few short minutes after that, we’ll be undertaking the great traveling adventure. This realization, this countdown, is oddly conflicting. On one hand, “The holiday break is almost here, and I don’t know that I deserve all of this time off.” On the other hand, “It’s here, already?”
Now, clearly, there’s something wrong, woefully wrong, with that first hand. Deserving it is a silly notion. This is a western and, frankly, dumb concept. Time off is part of my deal. I can take it or lose it, and no one is interested in giving it back. What’s more, I’ve earned it, having carefully accumulated days for just such a traveling adventure as this. I think it’s the mentality of accumulating and hoarding those days off for a year that builds that frame of mind.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about as I did a little Christmas shopping this evening. Because, ya know, it seemed like the appropriate time. I went to one store Monday and was uninspired. I tried another place yesterday and was interrupted — all for the best, I am sure. But, this evening I knew I would have some success: I started seeing things I wanted.
And so if you don’t want to chip in, or purchase outright, a new bicycle for me, I found stuff for me. And also for others. Things I didn’t buy. This, which looks cool.
We have a five-foot vinyl tunnel and one of the cats absolutely loves it. Sleeps in it. Ambushes you in it. Takes rides in it. That one is a bit more involved and a bit more expensive; it stayed in the store.
So did this. A few weeks ago I found Zoltar. This evening I saw the keyboard Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia played in Big.
I’m holding out for the full-sized piano, and the ability to do this.
There aren’t many movie scenes more charming than that. That’s really what I’m holding out for on my own dancing piano.
Anyway, some shopping done. Laundry done. Packing and holiday travel to follow.
We return to the Re-Listening Project, where I am forever trying to keep up with what is in my car’s CD player. What’s in my car’s CD player is the entirety of my CD collection. Well, not all at once, that’d be a spectacular device. We’re surely decades away from having the technology to put hundred and hundreds and a few more hundred CDs on one simple machine.
But I can load several at a time in my car, and what I’m currently doing is listening to all of these old circles of plastic, in order. It’s a fun thing to do. And some of it is fun to write about. These aren’t reviews, but fun of memories, and a few good licks.
And this is the first record that, on this go around of the Re-Listening Project, that I’ve listened to twice. It got dismissed as mediocre at the time, but “Friction, Baby” has aged well as Better Than Ezra’s sophomore effort.
I listen to Tom Drummond’s bass line as much as anything.
But, first, Kevin Griffin’s post-alternative lyrics. This is 1996. I was 19 and, true to pop form, there’s a little something in there for most everyone or most any mood.
But that rhythm section, man, that still demands your attention a quarter century later.
I worked with someone during high school and college and the album title became a salutation and a closing because we both liked the record. She was from Vestavia, and, yes, this album is that suburban. I don’t know if I ever asked her what her favorite song on this was.
Do you ever wonder when the last time someone listened to something was? And how, after a long time away from it, if their impression had gone in some different way than your own? Perceptions are funny, inconsistent and perfectly valid that way. Anyway, there’s a nice mandolin on here, too. As I said, a little something for every mood.
Perhaps, in the long reach of life, you wonder why you did a thing, or spent so much time around a person or people. Maybe that’s why she’s unfriended me. (A fate worse than meh!) Maybe that’s why you stopped listening to a record you used to enjoy. That and other albums and other priorities. But it’s nice to go back and see what still works, and what you hear differently. Somewhere in all of that you get to decide what to lean into, and what deserves a cringe.
Anyway, we used this track on my college radio morning show. (Speaking of cringe!) Open mics, talking to the post and signing off for the day.
Top of the world, I guess.
I’m certain that I picked up this next album as a station giveaway. Probably it was the cover art that intrigued me. If anything, I’d heard one song on the thing. Probably something we played at the campus station. I don’t remember this getting a lot of commercial airplay, but as another sophomore album it got a lot of play from me in late 1996 and definitely 1997.
It’s Melissa Ferrick’s “Willing to Wait.” Ferrick is still touring. Still making music, and also teaching the craft, these days at Northeastern University. And while this is Ferrick’s second record, consider this. This is a career that started as a 21-year-old woman, opening for Morrisey. That’s ridiculous, but none too big for the Cracker Jack Kid. It’s honest, simple, complex, ragged, truthful, vulnerable, aggressive, and not at all a radio-friendly record. Which is probably how I came to see it on the giveaway table. But critics, and Ferrick’s fans, liked it. If any of those adjectives appeal to you, there’s something for you here.
This is the “Cracker Jack Kid” song, for the reference above.
I had this idea, listening to this record this time: what would this song, and it’s specific themes, feel like if a male did it?
Oh, and we didn’t cover this, but this album is full of intriguing instrumentation.
And some yodeling, or at least a fun little run of scat.
There was a girl — I was in college, so of course there was a girl — and this isn’t the song that I attached to that breakup, but this record was in heavy rotation at the time, and there’s this lyric here, about remembering the color of a doorknob, it sticks with you.
I lived in a two-floor apartment during the time I was listening to this a lot and also feeling that particular breakup. (I was the wrong religion, basically.) The downstairs was a cinderblock building. But the upstairs was simply two sheets of wood paneling. I could hear when my neighbor signed on to AOL. I could hear when she had mail. And, perhaps worse, when she didn’t.
Only now, thinking of how I sat on my stairs and learned one of the louder songs on this CD, have I thought about what music my neighbor heard for three years on her side of the wall.
Oh, look! A live version of one of the songs!
Someone played the stripped down version of their work is always so interesting.
And, just for perspective, that girl? The cheerleader grew into a woman who became a teacher, pretty perfect for her, I think. Her oldest kid is older, today, than we were back then. The last song on Ferrick’s record is titled “Time Flies.”
