Month: January 2025

January 2025 – Watching and reading and riding in a polar vortex

Watching

The Holdovers – Director Alexander Payne’s second collaboration with Paul Giamatti (the first was Sideways) about those left behind during Christmas break at a New England boarding school. Terrific.

American Primeval – A tail of blood and hate and deliverance from director Peter Berg. Mormons, the U. S. Cavalry, settlers, Shoshones, and Paiutes contest the Utah territory. Incredibly violent. Taylor Hirsch, long left in the dust after playing Tim Riggins in Berg’s Friday Night Lights, makes a stellar protagonist. Great cast, cinematography, and direction. Written by Mark L. Smith who also wrote The Revenant.

Michael McIntyre, Showman – A Netflix stand up special. Absolutely hysterical.

Rams – Disease breaks out among sheep herds in Australia. Flocks must be destroyed but one man keeps a ram and three ewes in a back room of his small house in defiance. Interesting tale staring Sam Neill (who is an actual sheep farmer in real life). We had trouble figuring out if it was meant to be a comedy.

Mat Ryder’s Tour of Aotearoa (New Zealand) – Mat’s at it again riding from the northernmost point in New Zealand all the way to the southernmost. Here’s the first five days, but the video series precedes his departure from Wales.

Football – I watched several NFL playoff games in preparation for the Super Bowl, otherwise I would not have a clue beyond Taylor Swift and such.

A nearly nightly binge of coverage of Trump’s first 100 days on MSNBC, CNN, and The Daily Show.

And the month ended with a horrific mid-air crash near National Airport. It brought back memories of a gloomy night, March 3, 1972, when a Mohawk Airlines turboprop flew over my head and, about a mile away, crashed into a house.

Reading

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. The man who brought you The Thursday Murder Club is at it again with a new series about three unlikely (Osman’s stock in trade) crime solving partners. This is my first book of 2025, having waited three months so that my wife could buy it for me for Christmas. Well worth the wait. Witty. Clever. Loads of interesting characters. Someone is killing social influencers and the blood of Amy (one of the “We”) is found at the site of each murder. Who done it?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Hadn’t read this since I was a tween. I got lost in the dialect back then. Liked it much more now but found some of the escapades went on ten pages too long. Precursor to reading James.

James by Percival Everett. A re-telling of the story in Huck Finn (mostly) from the perspective of Huck’s companion Jim. a runaway slave. I say “re-telling” because this book’s plot, especially in its second half. diverges from Twain’s narrative. James is worthy of all the praise heaped on it last year when it was published.

A Firing Offense by George Pelicanos. The first book by the much praised DC author. It’s a private eye novel set in DC in the early 1990s. Pelicanos captures the vibe in DC at the time to a t. A pretty impressive first novel. Half way through, I ordered his next two books which continue the boozy adventures of Nick Stefanos.

Nick’s Trip by George Pelicanos. The second Nick Stefano book by Pelicanos. Like the first one Nick takes on a case and solves a second for personal reasons. A literally incredible amount of alcohol is consumed by the characters who mostly remain functional and coherent despite their drinking. Still, this captures the vibe of the time and places (DC, southern Maryland).

Any Road Tour by me. I was between books so I decided to read the journal I created out of the nightly blog posts during my 2018 bike tour from Mount Vernon, Virginia to Portland, Oregon. It could use a little editing and a handful of photos are missing but it’s still not a bad read, if I do say so myself. I found that my memory had mixed up sequences and locations of events. Also, I seemed to think that I had far fewer headwinds than the entries suggest.

Riding

I managed a pretty decent month of riding despite snow and ice and the infamous polar vortex. I clocked 775 miles, riding 29 of 31 days. I rode indoors for 12 days on Big Nellie for the equivalent of 256 miles. Most of the rest was on The Mule at 398 miles. The switch to platform pedals really paid off this month. My feet are secure and I don’t have to find a way to jam them into toe clips. Also, the Catalyst pedals are proving to be well worth the money.

Carpal Diem

Well, my annual trip on the medical merri-go-round has been interesting. I went to my pprimary care doctor for a referral to a hand surgeon to fix the trigger finger on my right hand.

The hand surgeon gave me a cortisone injection at the base of my middle finger. It appeared to work as expected. Alas, the hand surgeon also asked several questions about my fingers and hand. I told him I have numbness at the tip of my middle finger which I attributed to the removal of a cyst before the pandemic.

He said that wasn’t likely and did a simple diagnostic test and said, “you have carpal tunnel syndrome.” This would explain the general numbness and aching I have been getting in my hand for the last year or so. Occasionally the pain wakes me up.

The doctor gave me a splint (looks like a roller blader’s wrist guard) to wear while sleeping. Off I went to a neurologist for an electromyography (EMG), a systematic test of nerve function. I’ve had one before and it was extremely painful. This time the test wasn’t nearly as bad, only slightly worse than getting a series a static electric charges. More annoying than painful.

The test results essentially confirmed the hand surgeon’s diagnosis. The nerves in both my hands are a little weak but test of the median nerve (the one that sends signals to most of the fingers) came back “NR”. This means “no response.” Derp.

(I asked if this meant the neurologist botched the test. The hand surgeon said that this was not likely. “She’s really good.” That’s the sense I got from the neurologist, too. Dang Doesn’t hurt to ask, I suppose.)

If I do nothing, the numbness and general weakness in my hand is likely to get worse. So I am scheduled for surgery in a couple of weeks. Barring some unforeseen problem, the surgery is likely to last about ten minutes. The doctor will be using a laproscope. This means the surgical incision will be about and inch or so wide. Using the scope, he will cut through a ligament that runs across the base of my hand. The tiny incision should greatly speed my recovery. Assuming nothing goes wrong, I should be good to return to normal activities in a few days. Of course, for me, “normal” means riding my bike. I suspect that I’ll be limited to my recumbent for a while. The doctor said the success rate is about 90 percent. That’s confirmed by all the videos I’ve been watching online.

I had hoped to do a supported, spring tour of the Natchez Trace. Two of the three tours I was looking at have already sold out. The last one is in early April. I will wait until my post-op visit with the surgeon and, with luck, sign up. Otherwise I’ll do it in the fall.

If any of you have had carpal tunnel release syndrome or know someone who did, let me know in the comments.

Well, at least it’s pretty

It finally happened. A significant snowfall came our way. According to the National Weather Service, my neck of the woods received eight inches during the main part of the storm. A few hours later we had another inch that was light and fluffy.

I can’t really use a conventional snow shovel because it would cripple me, being of compromised lower back architecture. Luckily, I have a wovel, a.k.a. a snow wolf. It looks about as weird as a recumbent bike, but like the recumbent bike it works like a charm.

The wovel has a large pan that can holds two or three times as much snow as a regular snow shovel. If you try to lift a full pan of snow you’ll be sorry.

Instead, you push down on the crossbar and use the big wheel to move the snow then thrust with your legs and push down more on the crossbar to cast the snow off to the side. Brilliant.

This series of pictures from the wovel website shows how it is done.

Step 1. Push the wovel to pick up snow.
Step 2. Push down on the crossbar to lift the snow.
Step 3: Step toward the wheel and push down to toss the snow.

Your neighbors and Facebook friends will laugh at you but ignore them. It works! It clears snow roughly two or three times as fast as a conventional shovel and about half as fast as a snow blower.

I created some long piles of snow along the side of the street and had to cast more snow over the top of the piles. Let’s just say that my tossing technique could use some work. Also, I ran out of places to put the snow so I had to walk around with a full shovel to find fresh landing spots.

I have to say that eight inches of snow is about the limit that my 69-year-old body can handle. Next time, I’ll tackle the wovelling in waves, four inches at a time.

Had I used a conventional shovel, my lower back would have been screaming at me after 20 minutes. Using the wovel, the only thing that hurt was my triceps and my upper back muscles. They both really felt like I had hit the weight room. I took some ibuprofen and rested afterwards.

The next day I was a hurtin’ unit. My upper back muscles and triceps were super sore. (My hands were achy but I have carpal tunnel syndrome so that’s to be expected.) I managed to use a conventional shovel to clear the small amount of snow from the second wave of snowfall. Afterwards I did my normal stretching routine and rode 2 1/2 hours on my recumbent in the basement.

I checked the road near my house and there are significant sheets of ice here and there. So riding outside is not going to happen for a while. I’m headed down to the basement where Big Nellie and me are going to tackle Huckleberry Finn (in advance of reading James).

Looks like 2025 is going to be wild

After taking New Year’s Day off from riding (50 mile per hour gusts just aren’t my cup of tea) I’ve been doing my best to get outside and ride. Yesterday I rode into a strong headwind to drop off some books at the Carpe Librum nonprofit bookstore in downtown DC. The ride utterly exhausted me. I always forget that riding in cold temperatures is much harder than riding in the summer. I think I get dehydrated because I tend not to drink enough water when I have a balaclava covering my mouth. Also I am wearing more layers than the kid in A Christmas Story.

During my rides I have noticed that the wildlife around here is very busy. I have seen evidence of beavers like never before. They cut down small trees and leave wee stumps that look like they’ve gone through a pencil sharpener. Today, the Friends of Dyke Marsh posted a picture of a new lodge in the marsh.

The other day The Mule and I came ripping down a hill at a bit over 30 miles per hour (did I mention that it was damned cold?) through a posh neighborhood along the GW Parkway. At the bottom there’s a chicane with a stop sign. Of course, I normally don’t look up because I routinely blow through the stop sign and swerve through the chicane. Sue me. Anyway, this one time I did look up to clear my eyes which had teared up during the descent. There to my left, high up in a mature tree in the backyard of a rather nice home, was a massive bald eagle nest. (For you locals, it’s at the corner of Park Terrace and Huntly.) When did that get there? I didn’t see any activity in the nest mostly because I was more concerned about surviving the chicane and such.

Last week I noticed that a nest near Tulane Drive on the Mount Vernon Trail in Dyke Marsh was no longer there. So I am guessing that the nest or its tree had somehow been compromised. Trees in Dyke Marsh have been succumbing to ever rising river water levels so perhaps this tree toppled. In any case, the backyard nest is approximately 200 yards west of the old Tulane nest.

This kind of nest relo happened about ten years ago a bit further north. Eagles had built a nest in a tree between the Parkway and the golf course at Belle Haven Country Club. The tree took a beating in several storms and the eagles moved about a half mile uphill into a backyard in the Belle View neighborhood. For some reason they abandoned that nest and moved to a light stanchion at the mixing bowl where Richmond Highway meets the Beltway.

Another development in local eagle real estate has happened at the nest in a tree on the trail near the intersection of Morningside Drive and the Parkway. There had long been a nest in this tree only 50 yards from the trail toward the river, but it was abandoned in recent years. The other day I was cruising north along the trail when I saw two people, one with binoculars, looking up at the tree. I craned my neck and saw the head of an eagle above the rim of the nest. Fast forward a couple of days. I was heading south along the trail and remembered to look up at the nest. To my shock, there were two nests in the tree! Multifamily housing has come to Mount Vernon. Do the authorities know?

Across the river in Oxon Hill, Maryland I recently rode past a sign warning of deer for the next 1/4 mile. I’d ridden this road scores of time but had never seen a deer. I scoffed as I followed the road 90 degrees to the right. And there, in the middle of the road, were four deer. Dang.

On the same ride, I was attacked by a dog. It was a nasty looking cur. Lucky for me it was territorial and stopped at the end of its driveway. This was one of two dog attacks in the last couple of weeks. The other was in Fort Hunt Park near home. A woman was walking her dog with her friend. They were chatting and the dog walker had dropped the leash. As I went past, the dog came after me with bad intent. I stopped and gave the dog and the walker a piece of my mind.

Back at the homestead we’ve had several interesting developments in the world of critters. Twice in two weeks, mourning doves have been evaporated on our lawn. There was nothing left but feathers. Harsh! We suspect ospreys from the nest in the light tower at the softball field down the street. Or maybe there is an owl in the woods nearby.

Raccoons come and go, often leaving their paw prints on our garbage cans.

Foxes stop by several times a week in the dead of night. They come close to the house, sometimes on our deck and make a racket. They have an eerie distinctive, deranged bark that sends shivers up your spine.

And finally we have become engaged in anti-squirrel warfare. We spend a ton of money on birdseed and other bird food. Our preferred seed is shelled and covered in red pepper. This is supposed to deter squirrels. The red pepper seed is expensive so we mix it with slightly cheaper un-peppered, shelled sunflower seeds. This mixture, and the removal of two nearby maple trees, has greatly reduced our seed loss to squirrels. Until recently.

A squirrel has figured out that if he shakes the otherwise squirrel-proof bird feeder he can loose some seeds to the ground. Our nemesis then hops down and eats his fill of the un-peppered seeds. My wife also puts out suet in a cage and some peanut butter in an artful little wooden house. The squirrel simply yanks them off the tree. The peanut butter house was recently found forty feet away. Khaaahnnnn!

I’d like to tell you more about the beasts of suburbia but I am in the process of panicking about an impending snowstorm. We had a squall the other day that featured a nasty micro burst, sideways snow, and thunder. It was good prep for the coming mayhem. We expect to get inches. INCHES! We have milk and toilet paper so no worries.

My Year on the Wheel – 2024

This was my seventh straight year of riding more than 10,000 miles, 10,394 to be more or less exact. I put more miles on two of my bikes than I did on my 2009 Honda Accord (it’s going to last forever).

The big event as usual was my bike tour but this year was the first time since 2003 that I quit early. In that year my rear tire blew out, my gears and brakes stopped working, I was sick as a dog, and it was raining. You don’t have to be a genius to know that the bike gods are not on your side. So it was in 2024 when I found myself struggling to ride up even the most moderate of hills. The final straw was a ride of less than 30 miles into Charlottesville. I felt like I was dragging both brakes the whole way. I decided to take the train home and let my body recover.

A week later I lit out from home on a bee line back to Charlottesville. It worked out okay except for nasty traffic on a narrow two-lane road just north of town. I persisted and, the next day, was back on my original route, the eastern third of the TransAmerica Trail. There were some good days after that. I hiked the Blue Ridge tunnel, stayed overnight at the Cookie Lady’s house in Afton, Virginia, rode a short, but spectacular stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and had a fabulous ride on the roads to Damascus, Virginia.

The rest of the ride was not so great. I rode past several hypdermic needles on the road outside Lexington, survived a scary thunderstorm, felt lousy when I was pedaling up hills, pushed my bike up several mountains, and was attacked by dogs over and over again. By the time I reached Hazard Kentucky, I was totally stressed out mentally and physically. When the caretaker of a bike shelter 50 miles west told me to buy bear spray, I rented a car and drove home.

The rest of the year featured my usual array of local rides: three one-way rides from the western end of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail to home, several rides on Maryland’s eastern shore, and three rides in Virginia hunt country. I also did five event rides including my 16th 50-States Ride in DC.

As usual, The Mule won the prize for most mileage: 3,912 in all. Despite nearly getting rid of the Tank in March, I ended up riding it 3,795 miles, thanks to some smart wrenching and advice from the good folks at Bikes at Vienna. Little Nellie saw very little use, if you can call 839 miles slacking. Big Nellie racked up 1,847 miles, albeit 583 miles connected to a resistance trainer in the basement during reading season.

The end of year odometer readings.

Watching 2024

It was a big year for YouTubing (is that even a word) and catching up on old movies that I missed when they first came out.

The Big Dig – video documentary about the stupefyingly expensive project to bury Boston’s infamous Central Artery. It transformed the city but traffic still sucks.

Loki Season 2 – Another dud from Marvel

Echo – Still another dud from Marvel

Armageddon (Ricky Gervais) – Stand up comedy performance. He’s funny and often crude but has some interesting insights.

The Enemy Below – Classic black-and-white WWII movie with US skipper Robert Mitchell playing cat and mouse with a German u-boat. Ripped off by many other movies and TV shows (including Star Trek)

Barbie – Let’s just say, I’m not the target audience for this one.

Two NFL Championship games and the Super Bowl (my total football watching for the year) – I’m not the target audience for this one but the nachos were good.

Chinatown – Another classic, this one I had never seen. Damned fine movie.

The Conversation – Another classic from the 70’s that I managed to miss. Gene Hackman, the character actor’s character actor, delivers a stellar performance along side a cast of even more great character actors.

Old Boy – Super creepy Korean film from 2005. Somehow this didn’t win any Academy Awards.

The Greatest Night in Pop – Documentary about the making of We Are The World. Some singers I’d dismissed come off very well. Weirdest moment: Bob Dylan had to be trained to sing like Bob Dylan by Stevie Wonder.

The Marvels – Yet another dud by Marvel.

The Two Popes – Two popes with different philosophies talk for two hours. And it works because Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Price are wonderful.

True Detective – I watched all four seasons Seasons, but seasons one and four are the keepers. Season one has Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in an acting tour de force. Season four has Jodie Foster and Fiona Shaw and that’s all you need.

My Cousin Vinnie – Still another old film I missed when it came out. Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for a speech about muscle cars of the 1960s.

The Academy Awards – Because it’s a must

Dunkirk – Christopher Nolan’s film about the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Forces trapped on the beach at Dunkirk.

The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) – Okay, now I get it.

The Acolyte – A Star Wars dud. Good costumes, though.

Sherlock – Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson with Andrew Scott (the Hot Priest) playing Moriarty in a BBC series set in modern times. Starts out strong but gets somewhat formulaic after about five episodes.

More Olympics than I ever want to see again – Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky. For hours and hours.

Hit Man – A vehicle for Glen Powell. Yeah, he’s handsome but his performance didn’t float my boat.

Monsieur Spade – Sam Spade retires to a village in France. So obviously a crime needs to be solved. Clive Owen plays Spade. I had a hard time buying into his casting. Entertaining though.

From Russia with Lev – A documentary from Rachel Maddow about a Ukrainian grifter who became a key player in Trump 1.0’s shenanigans in Kyiv. How he got within 200 miles of the president tells you all you need to know about Trump’s competence.

The Rick Rubin Interview with Rick Beato -YouTube video about the hip hop music fan who started Def Jam records from his NYU dorm room. He produced dozens of great albums by artists ranging from Run DMC to Johnny Cash.

A ton of baseball games including several at Nationals Park – The Nats were interesting until the All Star break. After that they folded like a fitted sheet.

Mat Ryder’s Trans Am Bike Tour videos on YouTube – Inspiring day-by-day account of a Welshman’s trek across the US. Coffee, beer, and Sour Patch Kids can get you a long way.

Sheelagh Daly‘s YouTube channel – Sheelagh’s first bike tour was from Scotland to Croatia. I can’t even.

Endurance – National Geographic documentary about the finding of Ernest Shackleton’s ship that was crushed by ice on a 1910s expedition to Antarctica. I’ve read two books about the failed expedition but still found this fascinating.

Mat Ryder’ Great Divide Mountain Bike tour videos on YouTube – Ryder did this before his TransAm (and after hiking the Appalachian Trail). A bit less polished than the TransAm video but entertaining nonetheless.

Beatles ’64 – Rehash of their first trip to the US using mostly film from an old documentary. Padded by outtakes from the documentary. Other than cleaned-up live performances (thanks to Peter Jackson and Giles Martin) this is not worth the time.

Aftersun – Paul Mescal blew me away in Normal People and he delivers another great performance as a clinically depressed dad on holiday with his tween daughter. Very slow paced and artsy.

Walking from Boston to New York City on the Old Post Road – A YouTube video of a man who walks the walk. Pretty interesting since I have either lived or visited much of the route. Lots of gorgeous old New England clapboard houses, stone walls, and graveyards. Also, traffic and scuzzy businesses.

The Kennedy Center Honors – My wife is a Deadhead so this was must see TV for her. I was more interested in Bonnie Raitt who deserves all the accolades they can throw her way.

All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain: A one-man tour de force in which Patrick Page takes us through the progression of villains in Shakespeare’s plays. I’ve seen Page as Iago and King Lear and was blown away by those performances. This event exceeded my already high expectations.

Conclave – A terrific movie for grown ups. Ralph Fiennes leads a splendid cast as the cardinal who runs the election of a new pope. Cardinals are not birds; they’re snakes. A very, very good movie.

Books of 2024

I didn’t read a whole bunch in 2024 but mostly the books were worth the time.

Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnaski – Just the think to read when Spring Training seems like it will never get here.

Prequel by Rachel Maddow – The story of the German infiltration of the US Congress and the mass movement to side with Germany in the years approaching WWII.

Blood Memory by David Duncan and Ken Burns – An account of the near elimination of the American bison, known more familiarly as the buffalo. Depressing as hell but worth the time.

Eat, Poop, and Die – How Animals Make Our World by Joe Roman – The circle of life involves pooping. Lots of pooping. Surprisingly interesting science for the masses.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens – I never read this before. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the life of David as he struggles to advance from nothing to prosperity in the structured society of nineteenth century England. You gotta love a book with a creepy character named Uriah Heep.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver – A reworking of Copperfield set in 1990s southwestern Virginia. Very impressive and an interesting prequel to my summer bike tour down thataway.

200 Hard New York Crosswords – The first 50 were pretty easy. By the end I was utterly defeated.

Blowout by Rachel Maddow – An account of how oil and gas interests became intertwined with geo-politics and the 2016 election.

Drift by Rachel Maddow – How Congress has ceded the authority to wage war to the White House. It touches the same themes as Michael Beschloss’s Presidents at War which I read a couple of years ago.

Over the Hills by David Lamb – A re-read of an account of a cross country bike trek by a middle aged, booze drinking, cig smoking, foreign correspondent in need of a break from his career.

How I Became Red Bike Guy by Joe Flood – My friend Joe had his 15 minutes of fame when he mocked some brown shirts on the national mall. This book covers related events and their kooky participants after their fearless leader lost the 2020 election.

Chip Wars by Chris Miller – Everything you wanted to know about the world of computer memory. It is mind boggling how everything we do, as people and as nations, is touched by incredibly sophisticated silicon chips.

Table for Two by Amor Towles – Short stories and a novella by one of my favorite authors. Just read all four of his books.

American Ramble by Neil King, Jr. – King hikes the back roads from DC to Manhattan and takes us along on a fascinating trek. Sadly, he died a few months ago.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann – Apparently white folks in Oklahoma and nearby Kansas were murderous scum who systematically killed Osage Indians for their oil rights. Astounding and true.

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane – A murder drama based in Boston during the dawn of school desegregation in the 1970s.

North Woods by Daniel Mason – This novel follows events on a plot of land in western Massachusetts from the 17th century to present day. It sounds tedious but it’s a great book.

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton – The last survivors of a world wide catclysm race to solve a murder before they are subsumed by a lethal fog. I found the plot contrived and manipulative.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney – A nice comeback from Rooney. She still has an incredible facility with intimate dialogue.

The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto – The mostly forgotten history of New Netherland, long forgotten when the British took control of America.

The Hunter by Tana French – The follow up to French’s The Searcher, A fish out of water story of a retired Chicago cop in rural northwestern Ireland. Grifters, crosses and double crosses, and murder.

Call for the Dead by John Le Carre – Le Carre’s first book and the introduction of secret agent George Smiley. It turns out that spies in the late 1950s were frumpy middle-aged divorced men. Not an Aston-Martin in sight.

In the Woods by Tana French. Who brutally killed the little girl who lived near the woods? Does the crime have anything to do with the disappearance of two other kids 20 years before? Twists and turns and red herrings galore, a fine debut by French.

The Likeness by Tana French. The follow-up to In the Woods. Another entertaining murder mystery by French but the plot is based on an utterly implausible premise.

Bike Tripping by Tom Cuthbertson. A re-read of a book published in 1972. My how bicycling has changed in my adult lifetime!

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. A novella about a man who is encounters the evil of the Magdalen laundry in his small Irish town at Christmas time. Wonderful.

On Bicycles: A 200 Year History of Cycling in New York City by Evan Friss. This book tells the story of the wheel from the first short-lived velocipedes in 1819 to the boom in bike infrastructure and the Citibike bikeshare system in the 2010s and 2020s. A good primer for newbie bike advocates and a breezy and informative read.

December 2024

Riding

Once I hit 10,000 miles on December 14, I tapered my riding. Mostly I was focussed on getting used to the new Catalyst platform pedals on The Mule. They work great. I did develop some left hip pain at the end of the month so I need to tweak my saddle position some more.

I rode 28 days out of 31. My long ride of the month came on the 30th when I rode 47 miles (in shorts!) to Bikes at Vienna and back to drop off some bicycling books. (They have a mini-free library.) I totalled 771 miles with 171 miles indoors on my Tour Easy recumbent. The Mule, and all that pedal testing, kicked in 418 miles.

Maybe my best move of the month came off the bike when I discovered a few new stretches for my upper back. These greatly reduce the discomfort from the pinched nerve in my upper back and allow me to hold my head up instead of hunched over like a mad texter.

Watching

After Sun. Paul Mescal plays a divorced dad on vacation with his 11-year old daughter (Frankie Corso) on the Turkish coast. A coming-of-age character study of the girl; a portrait of clinical depression of the father. Mescal was nominated for best actor.

Walking from Boston to New York City on the Old Post Road – A YouTube video of a man who (nearly) goes the distance. I lived in Boston and Providence and have visited many places along his route. The old New England clapboard houses, stone walls, and graveyards made me realize how I didn’t appreciate my time there. The traffic and scuzzy businesses not so much.

All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain: A one-man tour de force in which Patrick Page takes us through the progression of villains in Shakespeare’s plays. Just incredibly good.

Conclave – Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini and a host of others in a suspenseful story about the election of a Pope. Dang them Cardinals are nasty. Excellent.

Reading

Call for the Dead by John Le Carre. Le Carre’s first book and the introduction of George Smiley. My mother was a big Le Carre fan but this is the first time I’ve read one of his books. Le Carre describes secret agent Smiley as “Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” Hardly James Bond. It seems odd that Smiley is played by Alex Guiness and Gary Oldham in movies.

In the Woods by Tana French. French’s debut novel is a police procedural about Dublin detectives working to solve the murder of a tween-aged girl. The contemporary crime is complicated by the disappearance of two similarly aged kids 20 years before. An entertaining who-dun-it.

The Likeness by Tana French. The follow-up to In the Woods. It’s a good read but the story is based on an utterly unbelievable premise; an undercover cop assumes the identity of a murder victim (who was using the name of the cop’s previous undercover identity). The victim’s housemates, thinking the victim survived the attack, completely believe the undercover cop is their roommate. Give me a break. Aside from this, it was an entertaining book.

Bike Tripping by Tom Cuthbertson. My friend Beth posted a picture of this book, published in 1972, on her social media. I knew I had a copy, purchased in 1979 during my summer in the Bay Area. I decided to re-read it and found it very interesting from an historical perspective. In my adult lifetime, bicycles, bicycling, and bicycle gear have changed markedly. Today’s bikes are orders of magnitude better than 50 year ago. Components and lights are vastly improved. And, thankfully, bicycle infrastructure is also more widespread and better designed (for the most part).

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. My first Christmas gift book of 2024. A novella about a man who is encounters the evil of the Magdalen laundry in his small Irish town at Christmas time. Wonderful.

On Bicycles: A 200 Year History of Cycling in New York City by Evan Friss. Another Christmas gift. This book tells the story of the wheel from the first short-lived velocipedes in 1819 to the boom in bike infrastructure and the Citibike bikeshare system in the 2010s and 2020s. I wasn’t expecting much (oh how I hate New York City parochialism) but this was a very well written and informative history.