Your sister the rock star!

Just kidding...

Bikes, Beehives, Birthdays, Bye-byes, Band, Belly Dancers, & Booze!

Ok, so I'm FINALLY posting on this thing - it has been a long time coming, so I figured while I wait for my laundry I'd take advantage of my seemingly first free time this week! And what a week it has been - it seems likes we went from total winter hibernation to full-on busy schedules with little free time to stop and smell the (soon to be blooming) roses...Here's a brief overview of the past week's events, to be detailed momentarily:

Saturday: bike ride with Jenny, Steve, Jessie, & Javi, Beehive cafe, depart for New Haven and party hardy with Karl for his Dirty 30 Celebration

Sunday: Woke up in New Haven, bad diner food, frightening growth on my forehead, missed party Sunday night : (

Monday: Back to work, Javi's job interview in the PM

Tuesday: Mo's birthday dinner, family time with the little cuties

Wednesday: Farewell dinner with Tracy and Adrian, hanging out for the last time in Prov

Thursday: Band practice! Rock

Friday: Birthday/Mother's Day dinner at India, firepit at Ben's new place, ABSINTHE!

Saturday: Met Deeder at Nashoba Valley Winery, hiking Nashoba Ski Area! Bizarre local ice cream/petting zoo scene...

So, let's start at the beginning...

Jenny has already detailed her new biking adventures with her commute to work, but we took a ride together last Saturday for fun with Steve and her friend Jessie. It was a glorious day for a leisurely ride on the East Bay Bike Path, so we rode the 11 or so miles from Riverside to its end in Bristol. I'm sure you guys remember how crowded the path gets on weekends, so it shouldn't be too surprising that there were some near misses (and some accidents!) with other cyclists/walkers/rollerbladers/kiddies that made for exciting times. After the first mile of our journey, the 3 ladies stopped to find that the "boys" were nowhere in sight. Turns out that Javi had a near miss with one of the spandexed weekend warriors described in Jenny's previous post, which elicited swearing from said warrior and a dismounting of his bicycle by Steve, anxious to set him straight. Turns out he was a coward and sped off to continue his triathlon training...

We arrived at the Beehive Cafe without further incident, and spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how to lock all 5 bikes together around a young tree - quite the adventure!

The Beehive is super cute and has all local and organic foods, including free-range meat, much to Javi's delight. We enjoyed our awesome sandwiches (with bacon as the common ingredient in most!) out on the patio and enjoyed the down time before the journey back with full bellies.

The return trip was quite eventful - poor Jessie had a woman nearly ride into her, and so she ended up crashing, losing her glasses and getting mighty banged up - she had blood dripping down her leg and apparently still has bruises! And after Javi and I rode ahead to get home for Karl's party, Steve apparently took a tumble as well while waiting for the pedestrian crossing signal, bending his rim and dislodging his tire- what a day!

Meanwhile, Javi and I raced home to get ready to leave for Karl's Dirty 30 Birthday Extravaganza - "Karltober" or "Karlnivale." It involved spending ridiculous amounts of money, consuming copious amounds of food and alcohol, and staying up well past bedtime. Dinner at Ibiza was scrumptious and the sangria was flowing - it ended up being our most expensive dinner ever! After churros con chocolate, we wandered to Chapel Street and continued the party at the Taft bar and then finally at the Anchor, a cute dive bar that Shod exposed us to when he was at Yale. After we were repeatedly told to leave at bar closing, we meandered back to the hotel where Karl had reserved several rooms, and we continued the fun with beer and blackberry brandy straight from the bottle. Getting up in time for checkout the next morning was hard on 4 hours of sleep, but we made our way to the Athenian diner and perked up for the ride home with some coffee and bad food - Karl had a hankering for bacon that just wouldn't quit. We were supposed to go to Tracy and Adrian's going away party on Sunday night, but I noticed a strange and painful lump in the middle of my forehead that began to swell to gargantuan proportions (about the size of a quarter and protruding 1/4 inch), freaking me out and prompting us to skip the party in favor of hot compresses and antihistamine - it appears I was bit by some type of bug at the hotel and could not be seen in public!

Going to work Monday was extremely difficult, due to the combination of lack of sleep over the weekend, the Benadryl that left me in a strange state of half-sleep, and the fact that I was used to sleeping in during my vacation week (the prior week). I crashed hard after work and Javi went off to a job interview at a silkscreening company, then we had to work out when he got home at, like, 8:00. Drag! (for anyone who doesn't know, we are doing an intense 90 day workout program called P90x - I'll post the final pics when we're done at the end of June).

Tuesday we had Mo's B-day dinner which was delicious! Bryn is very talented in the kitchen. We watched some old Beta tapes that Silvia had transferred to DVD of the Merida boys as yougsters, what fun! and we realized that our new nephew Jacob Kai bears a striking resemblance to his uncle Javi as a wee tot:

2010 1977

Wednesday we made dinner for Tracy and Adrian to celebrate their big move to California this week, and had a grand old time eating, laughing, jamming, and drinking champagne while watching Flash Gordon! We will miss these kids a lot (tear....sniffle....)!

Tracy showing us their new house on Google Maps!

Oh Yeah!

Thursday was relatively uneventful besides my micro-sleeps during cafeteria duty - I actually managed to fall asleep several times while standing up and leaning against the wall, yikes! My lack of sleep had been building up and the champagne and late night the night before didn't help matters. Still, after work, had to work out and then we got to rock out at band practice, which was fun since we hadn't practiced since our show the previous Monday.

Friday brought more excitement in the way of a pre-Birthday and Mother's Day Celebration at India restaurant. We got to sit in our own little secluded spot surrounded by veils and Kama Sutra artwork, which was a tad risque for the Grandparents! Gra got a private belly dance and I really thought she was going to shove some dollar bills in her bra! Ba-Pa also seemed to appreciate her hip gyrations and appeared gleeful and in good spirits. We all got to talk to Shod and Erica and congratulate them on their recent engagement (congrats again you crazy kids!), but it was a bit chaotic due to the festivities. I also got my hand painted with henna which was fun but smelly! Also, I didn't realize it took so long to dry, and silly me, I got it on my palm, which meant I had to keep my hand guarded and open for the next 30 minutes!

After India, we were off to our friend/band mate Ben's house for a delightful firepit, where we played guitar and drank ABSINTHE! Yes, the real absinthe, the green fairy, formerly illegal in the USA but now available in 8 states, including RI! We only had a little taste, but it was pretty cool to think that we were drinking what other creative types like Toulouse Lautrec and Oscar Wilde used to frequently imbibe. Tasted like licorice and had a lovely greenish shade - the brand was actually called "Le Torment Vert," or "The Green Torment" - yikes!

So this brings me to the last day that I'm blogging about - yesterday, Saturday. We met Deeder up in Westford, MA for a pre-Birthday celebration of wine and hiking, and had a great day! First, we went to Nashoba Valley Winery, which was totally jammed, unlike the sibling trip in the Fall when we had the place to ourselves. Everyone seemed to want to consume the deliciousness on that glorious summery afternoon, which meant we were crowded up against strangers (some of whom were drunkies!) trying desperately to get our pours. I tried some new ones this time, including the Pear brandy and Peach brandy, and had some other ones that I might have had before, like Mead, Riesling, Maiden's Blush, Strawberry Rhubarb (brought a bottle of this home, yum), Peach, and Hard Cider. All were great. The winery was having a special event - a tour of their brewery/beer tasting, so we did that as well and witnessed their very small-scale operation (smallest micro-brewery in MA). Pretty cool, though I'm not a big beer person, but I did eat a hops pellet, and that was disgusting!

Remembering my childhood piggy-back rides

Looks like Deeder had too much - we're out of focus!

After the winery, we head out in search of local pie to no avail, so we drove up the highway to Nashoba Valley Ski Area, where we decided to climb the "mountain" (hee-hee) and were greeted by lots of mosquitos and one tiny patch of remaining snow, right on the spot of "The Big Hit" where I big hit my head so many years ago...

The Big Hit! So Big!

Lovely View...

Yay!

After our wee hike, we sought out refreshment using the beloved iPhone, which brought us to an amazing place unlike any I had seen before - a farm that had homemade ice cream, a fried food pavilion, a petting zoo, batting cages, golf, a country store, and many hillbilly locals! It was quite a marvel to see the hordes of people, all ages, consuming mass amounts of the frozen treats with reckless abandon and determination (the ice cream serving sizes were the biggest I had ever seen - we all ordered kiddie cones and couldn't finish them - they appeared to be about the size of a pint of Ben & Jerry's). We waited in line for what seemed like an eternity but were rewarded with HUGE scoops of icy, sugary goodness. Then we sprang for a heaping platter of hand battered (I watched) onion rings and strolled the grounds of this bizarre yet charming establishment. After we parted ways, I went into a food coma in the passenger's seat and dreamt of wine, sweets, and grease, as well as the rooster that stood like a statue on one of the goat's backs...

Javi trying to fit in with the locals...

OK, I did it! I blogged, finally! It took me forever to write and upload all these photos, so I don't know if I'll ever do it again, we'll see. My laundry is done now, so I'd best start folding so I can hit the sack and get ready for my ride into work tomorrow...xo

BICYCLES!

so...it's about time that someone else posted something on here! today was the third time that i commuted to work on my new bike. it's a specialized globe vienna 1:


i can actually ride it without going super slow and i've learned how to change gears (i know. it's pathetic that i've never been able to do that before). knowing how to change gears is super helpful on my ride to work (7.8 miles from riverside to butler) since i have a couple of steep hills. right now i'm riding with a regular backpack but it's really hard (especially on hills...i'm too scared to stand up with it on) since i have to put everything i need for work in it, so i'm thinking i might have to get a rack and some paniers or something like that. any suggestions?

my first commute was definitely the most eventful since i was yelled at two times. the first was by a really old man who apparently thought that bikers had the right to ride through red lights so i forgave him and was on my way. the second was by a guy who looked pretty much exactly like this:

he screamed "AMATEUR" as he was on his way past me, after almost hitting me...it made me a lot angrier than the old man did since you would think fellow bikers would be sympathetic. on the ride home, my water bottle fell out of the cage and i almost went over it, which was not so good, so i've invested in a water bottle that actually fits the cage. so far no problems.

last night, i dealt with 25mph gusts and some rain showers, but i made it home safely and without any nasty comments, so i felt very accomplished. i also rode in this morning and will have to deal with some pretty crazy wind on my way home, but i'm getting some pretty good exercise with all the pedaling i have to do in order to not get blown away or stuck at a standstill.

i also have a pretty sweet helmet with some little birds on it, which you can kind of see here on my 21 mile bikeride from a couple weekends ago:

or not...now that i actually uploaded it. but it's a giro skyla if you're interested in finding a better photo online.

amanda, javi, steve, my coworker jessie, and i biked to bristol and stopped at an awesome cafe, but i won't steal amanda's thunder. she's planning on posting about it on her own.

last thing: any suggestions for cyclocomputers with cadence? i wanted wireless, but i think it's too expensive.

last last thing: CONGRATULATIONS!

lookout engagement.

i haven't talked to anyone but meemaw about this, but...

dedre in the woods.

so dedre came to town recently. we tried to sight in the 22 i fixed up this winter, but we didn't have much success. we got a great mix of weather - snow, hailesque balls of snow, brilliant blinding sun. we were too excited to take photos during the sun. skeet didn't go too well with the cold. we had to heat up the thrower or get severe tennis elbow.



we went to a fire lookout with alfie. he didn't get much room in the back seat & was clearly not amused by this arrangement.



not much snow on the way to the lookout. which meant much more hiking and carrying things, much less sled hauling. poo. alfie didn't seem to mind his new boots too much, but he wasn't too interested in following us while wearing them. they probably weren't the most comfortable thing, so i eventually took them off & then he bounded all about like a maniac. he sure did look cute while he had 'em on, though.








geared up.



our first descent.



hood from the summit. mostly obscured, of course.



dedre and i debated the art of fire starting, but alfie didn't care. he just loved the woodstove.



so much so that he passed out on a rather poke-y ridge.



making dinner.



we forgot a corkscrew. dedre suggested forcing the cork in, a first for both of us. it worked, though not without some splashing.



clean up.



wake up. (and dedre called me a bed hog - look at that little man taking up a whole sleeping bag!)



it started snowing at some point & it was pretty windy.



king of the mountain.





sticky snow on the descent. we traded skis, which worked out well - helped bust up the snow collecting beneath our skis so we could glide again. i don't think dedre would have liked it too much if he'd been able to ski rather than ski/hike from the top though... might have been a little speedy.



the sun came out as we reached the trailhead. alfie couldn't get enough of it.



seriously.