cold

Well now, that was a challenge.

Eight o’clock in the morning. I’ve done my work at home, I need to get to my office. I look at my thermometer. Twenty-two, and that’s on the balcony, where things tend to feel warmer than down on the ground.

That’s a thirty degree drop from yesterday. Brrrr.

I should retire the bike for the winter. And yet... Ah, the challenge.


The cap, the pea coat – not enough. The wind is brutal when it hits you in the face. I reach for my scarf and pull it over my mouth and cheeks. So now my chest feels cold.

Brrrr.

I look at the lake. What is that? Steam? Surely it’s not freezing over. No, I’m freezing over.





But, I'm on the bike, I'm on my way to work – there’s no turning back. And I don’t want to turn back. Indeed, inexplicably, I take the longer route. It’s lovely now, in the early, deeply cold morning.






Then there’s the work part. Classes, many classes, students in the office, work emails, more students, and then, suddenly, the sun has nearly disappeared. It’s time to go home.

And what a surprise – the puddles on the lake shore path that were frozen in the morning, remain frozen now.

The sun fades, the band is out there playing On Wisconsin and I pedal with all my energy, just to keep warm.





Brrr.

days

If you used your bike to get to work today, you were either happy (it was warm), or supremely pissed (it rained hard and at unexpected times).

I managed to stay with the happy.

I missed the morning rains by an inch...





...and even though my pack got the mud splash from the lake shore path, I thought it was a fine day to ride...

...until the weather turned even more strange. Warm. Windy. Wildly beautiful. Then just plain wild.





So many things that appear threatening turn out tame, and so many innocent ideas grow to be ferocious before you know it. You just need to take heed.

I pedaled home as the winds picked up and the light faded.





Tomorrow promises to be much much cooler. These days, I take them as they come.

Sunday

In contrast to yesterday, today was indoor focused. I cleaned, I helped someone hang pictures in her office, I shopped, I cooked, I baked, I tidied things afterward.

And there are no photos for you from any of it. Even as it was one of my more detailed dinners in a long time. With a goat cheese soufflé and a pear pie and a spicy pot of shrimp. (The soufflé was airy and perfect, the pear pie could be improved upon, the spicy pot of shrimp was fine.)

Sometimes, you don’t want to offer detailed explanations. A wee break in the monologue of a life.

See you tomorrow.

the push

I think you can’t get yourself too comfortable. If I take this hard earned, much longed for free day and do nothing with it, I’ll feel disappointed.

I ask Ed -- so what have you been up to, back at the farmette?
Arranging metals. In the garage. Scrap metals, so that I can make use of them when I need them.





It's a huge job. I'm thinking, he needs a break, I need a break...
Do you want to do a longer ride today? I ask. Hiking will have to wait until the deer hunting season (which starts today) is over. Either that or we buy blaze orange. But a ride – it seems doable still.

Even though it’s very very cold. Low thirties when we set out toward our starting point (Cottage Grove). With a whipping wind.

It’s 2:30. There’s a bit of sun left, but there are plenty of clouds so that the warming effect seems lost on me.

You sure you want to do this? Ed knows how I feel about the cold, particularly when biking. Can’t get too comfortable, can’t get too comfortable... Still, I’m wishing I had worn tights under the pants. And a warmer jacket. And wooly socks.

It’s a twenty-six mile loop and we’ve done it several times in the past, though never quite this late in the season. The hills are moderate – fewer and gentler than those to the west of Madison.





Two miles into the ride Ed asks again if I want to reconsider.
No, I do not. In fact, pedaling hard keeps me reasonably comfortable. Sure, the toes and nose suffer a bit and toward the end of the ride, my fingers join the frozen club, but honestly, I’m okay.





And of course, it’s always lovely to be out on the country roads in south central Wisconsin. (Though I notice that the smaller pools of water are starting to freeze over now.)





On this particular circuit, you’re never without company. Cows, sure, we’re known for that.





Ponies and horses too.





Wild turkeys, in large flocks.





Flying off at the sight of me.






And farmed turkeys too. Most likely in their last week of life. Sigh. Maybe we should have a tofu Thanksgiving...





Oh, and llamas. Wooly, curious, a tad jerky when you touch their neck.





And, because we are in Wisconsin and it is the time of the big hunt, we see hunters. Many, many specks of blaze orange in the woods and fields.





You get used to this of course, and I can’t be one who fusses about hunting. I eat meat after all. (I'm thinking back to the duck breast I had for dinner last night...) And still, it’s jarring to see the success, strapped to the roof of a car or SUV. Even as I congratulate the awfully proud guys who brought in not one but two in the course of the afternoon.





I tell myself that it’s a better way to go than most any butchering that we do with our cattle or other barn-to-table animals. I wave and pedal on.

Of course, stops for a photo, or to admire a particularly stellar snippet of landscape adds minutes to our ride. Ed pedals ahead a number of times and I work hard to catch up.


 


I’m not surprised when he tells me that we’re running out of daylight. I have a head light, he does not. There’s a faint moon that’s just starting its own ascent, but even though it looks mighty round and full, it’s not throwing the light that some moonlit nights offer.





I watch the geese formation and listen to their distinctive late Fall squawk.





But not for long. I’m cold now. Each time I stop, I cool down even more and it’s hard now to get the speed you need to stay flushed.

Another song, another pause. The heron’s voices are always so pronounced. They're the tuba in the symphony of bird song here. I see them, hiding in the pond. They watch carefully, waiting to see if I come too close. I do not.





And now we’re in the final stretch. I notice the ponds have thin crusts of ice already. I know it’s well below freezing. My fingers can vouch for it.





Ah, to feel warm again! Back in Cottage Grove now. We mount our bikes onto Ed's Geo and head to his sheepshed. He wants to fix my broken food processor, I want to warm up with a cup of tea. And I’ll grant his cat, Isis this much – he’s got a warm body. For once I let him stay on my lap for a long long time, claws and all.

new routines

So what’s it like to have a breather? A day without deadlines and issues  pounding at you?

I clean the messes I let fester on days when I couldn’t be bothered.





The air is biting when I pedal to work. Just a little above freezing. I listen to a faculty discussion, of this, of that, I meet with students, and then it’s time for me to go home.

Almost evening. Late enough for the band to be out again.





I’ve gotten to like these guys. They know their music and they keep in step, and if anyone wavers -- it all falls apart and their leader (the peppy Professor Leckrone) is not one to like it when it all falls apart.





They appear not to notice or mind when I drop the bike and walk over to their marching field to watch, time and again. Weird woman with the bike helmet over a cap is here again. Ho hum.

The day is closing, the band marches, more perfectly now than back in September when I first saw them on my late rides home. Or, is it that I know they should be better and so they appear thus?


I want to not go out again today, but I have a dinner meeting off the Square, at the cooler than cool Underground Kitchen.

The moon’s out, sort of.





The Kitchen’s warm. I think about how my condo was built around the idea of the kitchen being warm and central. In my grandparents’ village home in Poland, back in the 1950s and 60s, most everything happened in the kitchen. It was not until electricity dispersed everyone, and a TV was put into one of the other rooms, that we lost our family meeting ground. By then it didn’t matter. The cohesiveness of family was lost, for reasons having little to do with food preparation.

In Madison’s Kitchen restaurant, the crowd is surely half my age. I take it all in appreciatively. The food is comforting but not ordinary or banal. There's always a twist to it, a sizing, a mixing of flavors that is very personal.





After dinner, I run to catch the bus home. A quiet ride. I take out my neglected New Yorkers and huddle in my warm space, nearly missing my stop.

And the band played on...

Today, I allowed the last of my energy reserve to leave  hold,  in search of a better life...

And now I'm at home, work is done, life reels forward...





...and the band plays on and on, no matter you or I may do.

Wednesday

It seemed as if this day could have no good elements in it. No that it would have bad ones, necessarily, but no upbeat notes either. A monotony of grayness.

It was still dark when I picked up the papers again and that gloom never quite left the sky – even after the sun had, they tell me, pushed its way up over the horizon.

I read that there would be no rain, but when I took the bike out, I felt a drizzle. The kind that left spots on my coat.

If you arrive on campus between class periods, the walkways are a swarm of moving bodies. Up the hill, down the hill, on to class and the next one, and the next one.





I left my office late. It was dark and my tail light wasn’t working. I had to stop by one of the science buildings, where, twice a month, I have my CSA deliver spinach. Odd, isn’t it? Spinach in the refrigerator of a science building on Henry Mall.

The building was purportedly closed, but I found the doors open. I walked down to an empty basement. A student was having a private conversation and I tried hard not to hear her words. I picked up a pound of spinach and left, pedaling hard, barely making out the road in the dark night.

early

Again I have to start the day early. I watch for the first signs of light outside as I flip through pages of papers. There are strands of mist in the hills to the south of my windows. And it looks cold. And wet.

Most often I don’t leave until just before my first morning class, but today I decide to get to campus with an hour to spare.

I’m on the bike, still feeling the wetness of the receding mist. The street looks like it’s been hosed down with water. It’s cold, but on these morning rides I’m rarely cold. I’m not tired yet. It makes a difference.

Of course, this early, the light is exceptionally enchanting. I take the longer path – the one that makes its way past Eagle Heights, past the woods leading up to Picnic Point.





Picnic Point. There’s an idea. I have time.

I detour even more and take the path to the tip of the peninsula.





To me, Picnic Point has always felt just a little too city park-like. The garbage cans that line the path. The clearings with log benches. The chain fence a long a good stretch of it. But on this morning, all I can see it its simple loveliness! And I can look at the morning lake from this very different perspective.





It’s very satisfying to take a morning detour. It puts you in a good place – ready to face the relentless string of classes, student requests, papers to grade. (And to face the plummeting stock market – of special interest to me now that I own stocks. At least I think I own stocks. See previous post.)





I’ve come to understand, too, how really wonderful it is to live in a place with four seasons. I know, our fall this year has been in the category of “best ever.” Still, I watch the last of the gold on the few trees that haven’t quite let go of it and I think (I'm back on the lake shore path now) – cool! but I'm also okay with the bare limbs.





In fact, I am extremely enthusiastic about the snows that are about to come. And the ice on the lake. And then the thaw. And then -- ferns, flowers, daffodils. Yes, it’s good to be in Madison and to have a bike with a fresh tire that I’m hoping will keep on spinning.

stocks, loons and yellow flowers

I think it astonishes Ed how much I do not get the American way of making money. I tell him that I am not exactly economics-challenged -- indeed, I was, for nearly three years, an econometrics major at the University of Warsaw before I moved (as it turned out) permanently to the States. He’ll shake his head and attribute my ignorance to learning economics over there, under that regime. People raised under communism are without entrepreneurial grit and savvy.

Today, I made (yet again) one of those errors in dealing with my accounts that shows how I just haven't yet grasped the details.  [In case you’re curious, I thought that merely having a brokerage account meant that I was riding the stock market -- with its downs, sure, but also primed to make a killing in the months ahead. That is, insofar as a $1000 investment - that's all that is at stake in this story - can make any kind of a killing. I thought it might. I didn't know you had to buy something with it first. Like stocks or funds. Such a complicated system you have going here...]

Ed’s reaction? He looks at me, stunned, then offers the gentle comment – your grasp of capitalism is rather modest.

So now I know. And I quickly purchase stuff -- stocks, I think, but who can really tell what it all means, and, with great excitement, I monitor my modest account for the rest of the day.

It sustains a loss. What a surprise.


In other news – I’m still biking to and from work. I have no interest in taking the bus. How can you not bike when, on the ride back, you witness sights like this -- a loon, doing a water walk?





Otherwise, please know that it is a supremely busy work week for me. I take note of small pleasures. The lake shore bike path, always that...





...and, at home, looking up from my work, I appreciate what's in front of me: flowers, in harmony with the the surroundings.





Small pleasures.

Sunday

I can’t mess too much with a Sunday line up. Morning spent on cleaning, a few hours given over to work, a few to the great outdoors if the weather obliges. Then it’s a race: pick up the groceries, fix the Great Sunday Meal, tidy up, write the post and finish whatever work remains for the day,

That’s the goal.

If one thing takes a tad longer than expected, the castle crumbles.

Today, I am off to a good start: the house is scrubbed and ready for the week ahead before noon. Even seizing the great outdoors takes a reasonable handful of hours: Ed and I set out for a lovely mid November hike along an old segment of the Ice Age Trail (it’s close – just due south of here, near Belleville)...





...and the weather turns. From brisk but dry, to brisk and wet. The kind of tingly wet that makes you realize that you're just a degree or two away from snow.

I have to say, it takes a while before we admit that it's too wet to continue. Because even in mid November, it can be quite magnificent out there, along the mildly hilly landscape of south central Wisconsin.






The hardwood forests are bare, sure, but the berry canes haven’t quite shaken off this year's growth and the grasses range from pale gold to vibrant copper. With a shake of chili pepper over it all.





We pull up our jacket collars and persevere (just a couple of miles, before one of us, I wont say who, suggests that we turn back).

Looking around, I think how we’re working with a different palate now than, say, in spring or summer. But different does not mean lacking. Even when the naked trees seem disturbingly close in color to the darkening gray skies around us.





And the fragrance! A damp, spent forest in November, wet prairie grasses -- oh, it's hard to make yourself turn around and head home. Indeed, we run into a foursome that has no intention of calling it quits (well, the older duo does seem to be trailing...)





But, when your jacket is starting to feel waterlogged, and wisps of hair are sticking to your face, you know it's time to reconsider.

I note that there are two other cars at the place where the trail crosses the county road. Hunters. They're out for birds today. Not much luck, one tells me. But as his setter shakes off the wetness, I think -- luck is relative.


 


After the hike, I cook. Daughters come, with friends again, and it’s impossible not to let yourself get carried along with their youthful energy even as you know that when the last dish gets scraped and loaded into the washer, you have absolutely no oomph left.


Sure, an Ocean post gets a tad delayed then. But consider the up side:  house is clean, work is nearly done, lungs are cleared, stomach’s full – really, could anyone have a more satisfying Sunday?

a walk along Lake Mendota Drive

Drizzly, cold. The way November typically presents itself. Mostly somber and without color. Mostly.





I go for a walk with my younger girl and it’s supposed to be a quick walk and it’s not supposed to rain, but I seem to be wrong on both counts and by the time we emerge from it all it is quite dark.





And wet. And actually sort of beautiful.

flat

Surely this is the end of the biking season for me. Once the ground freezes, I lose interest in speeding to work along the lake path. It's slated to freeze soon.

And so it is unfortunate that after leaving PT, I feel the drag that comes from a flat tire.

Threadbare – the man at the bike shop tells me (how lovely that I should go flat just a quarter of a mile from a bike place). Your tires. You need new ones.

He’s right. I've ridden on these tires for nearly five years now. But who installs new tires just before wheeling the machine to its winter resting place in the garage?

And yes, tomorrow we’re getting that favorite stuff that comes in transitional months here – a seasonal mix. They don’t mean of music and spices. They mean of snow and rain.

So what: it's been a grand ride! The poor weather comes in on November 13th... My tire explodes at the end of it all, during an unhurried and inconsequential ride back home after the PT... Who can complain??

... and so I spin (after the tire change) -- through Owen Woods, just for a little pick me up before hitting the books and papers waiting at home.

a patch

At two o’clock in the morning, I down one, two, three ibuprofens. No effect. I’m up pacing. I’m reminded of labor. Or a gall bladder attack. Times when pain pushes thoughts of any better world aside.

Ed suggests we search the Internet for some late night distraction. I don’t know. Maybe with an ice pack on my shoulder? He rolls forward an episode of Two and a Half Men. I smile. We watch another. I find that if I don’t move at all, the ice does the job. A few hours later, just before daybreak, I doze off again. For a few minutes. Classes start early today.


I admit it -- I am tired. Three classes to teach and I can’t quite write on the blackboard yet. Too much motion with the troubled arm.

But the pain’s receding and the day’s progressing and I actually dare bike to and from work, even as one hand is hardly functional and the wind is ripping at me right through the threadbare fleece of both jacket sleeves. (I should have taken the warmer coat.)


And now, in the evening I’m sitting with a friend over a glass of rosé, reflecting about all that lends itself to an evening of reflection, and I’m thinking – wow, it’s as if the Night of Pain never happened.

A tiny patch of blue sky! Yes, thank you,  I’ll take it.