Month: February 2026

February 2026 – Groundhogs Suck

Most of February featured temperatures that were well below normal. It was not a lot of fun but I am grateful to no longer live in Providence which was pounded by a bomb cyclone and buried under nearly three feet of snow.

Watching

Frankenstein – The Netflix movie has great set design. They had the good sense not to use the words “It’s alive.” Entertaining, if overlong. Jacob Elordi was nominated for an Academy Award for playing the monster.

The Winter Olympics – mostly boring. Annoying commentary. I did enjoy the antics and skating of Alysa Liu and the Quad God. Lyndsey Vonn is a fool.

The Super Bowl – Mostly boring. Bad Bunny was far more interesting than the game. I drank two beers, my entire alcohol consumption for the month. I am a lush.

The Walk for Peace – A group of Thai monks walked 2,300 miles from Fort Worth to DC to promote peace and mindfulness and compassion. We stood in the freezing cold for over 90 minutes a half mile from home as the monks walked by. Just utterly inspiring.

On Becket by Bill Irwin. This was a lecture and performance at DC’s Shakespeare Theatre by Irwin, an actor who revitalized clowning in the 1980s with his performance of The Regard of Flight. At the advanced age of 75 or so, he still has an amazingly elastic body, and we were pleased to learn, voice. He has performed Waiting For Godot (emphasis on the first syllable) countless times. He spent about a third of this performance discussing and acting out various parts of Godot. We could have done with less lecturing and more clowning but I’m glad I finally got to see one of my favorite performers in the flesh.

Just Pedal: A Woman, a Bike, and the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route by Katrina Hase. The tale of a woman’s mostly solo trip from Jasper, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico. I am in awe of her ability to carry so much stuff on her bike! I also watched her video about biking in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, a ride that is on my to do list.

Man on the Run – A documentary by and about Paul McCartney covering the decade after the Beatles broke up. Really only for hard core fans but its honesty surprised me. A few things get short shrift, For example, neither “Another Day” nor his collaboration with George Martin on Live and Let Die are mentioned.

Reading

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. The first person account of a woman who lives inexplicably imprisoned in a cage with 39 other, older women. In the beginning it reads like a Twilight Zone episode but it morphs into a story somewhat akin to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a short book that will resonate with the reader more than a multivolume saga. Definitely one for the re-read shelf.

Stoner by John Williams. A mid-60s novel that oddly appeared in a bunch of online lists of favorite books of 2025. It’s about the life and times of an English professor caught in a dysfunctional, loveless marriage and working in a toxic English department. It brought to mind the ruthless and childish behavior of some professors I knew in grad school. At 70 years of age, I found the long description of Stoner’s death unsettling. Very well written and engrossing none the less.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. A re-read of a 2024 Christmas gift book, one of my favorite books of the past decade. This novella is set in the mid-1980s in small town Ireland at Christmas time. A father of five girls encounters the horrors of the town’s Catholic facility for wayward girls. A wonderfully written story that packs more into fewer words than books five times as long.

Foster by Claire Keegan. Another perfect novella by Keegan about a young Irish girl who is taken to stay for a while with her childless relatives during her mother’s pregnancy. What Keegan does with few words is amazing.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. A missing-persons mystery set in the Adirondacks in the 1960s and 1970s. A very entertaining, layered tale of two siblings gone missing, 14 years apart, from a summer camp and adjacent vacation home in the woods. I’ll be on the look out for more books by Moore.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. I am hesitant to buy best sellers by authors I don’t know but I took a lark on this one and was glad I did. It’s a memoir of a Korean American woman, who performs pop music as Japanese Breakfast. The memoir centers on her relationship with her domineering Korean mother. They become close when her mother contracts colon cancer. A surprisingly good read that I would have enjoyed even more if I was into Korean food, a key source of connection between the author and her Korean heritage. When I finished reading, I checked out her music videos on You Tube. I had the impression from her book that her music was mediocre but I found it to be very polished and catchy.

Riding

I didn’t ride outside for the first 13 days of the month because of cold and snowcrete, the lasagna of snow and ice that refused to melt.Eventually I rode 11 days outside. In all I tallied 690 miles, 306 outside and 38.

On the last day of the month I rode outside in shorts with temperatures in the mid 60s F. The Mule approves of this turn of events.

So far this year I have logged 1,412 miles, 48 percent of which has been indoors.

Blanket of blood – Snow and gift taxes not so much

If you live in the mid-Atlantic you learn that weather forecasters are, how should we put this, challenged. Last week our fearless prognosticators were warning of a big snow storm today, just the news nobody around here wanted to hear. Having destroyed a couple of shovels during the previous storm, my wife made a trip to the local big boxes for a new shovel. Home Depot? Nope. Walmart? Nada. Lowes? Not gonna happen. She called the Ace Hardware in Old Town Alexandria. They had seven shovels left but “you’d better hurry.” She made it in time and now she has a nice red snow shovel. (As Bob Dylan once wrote: All I need is a red snow shovel, three inches, and the truth.) Just in time for the big event.

Last week I rode outside for the first time since the Snowcrete messed up the roads. My first ride was rather painful but just being back on The Mule and out of the basement was a treat. I managed five rides over seven days, 167 miles. And, except for some huffing and puffing on killer hills, it felt great.

Yesterday was snow-event eve. It rained all day. The red shovel stood boldly next to the front door. Avoiding the elements, I rode 20 miles in the basement on Big Nellie. Then I drove to the BloodMobile down the street. The donation went fine but I was light headed afterwards. Pro tip: don’t work out before donating blood. I managed to give a pint but I had a headache for the rest of the night.

Usually donors receive a bright t-shirt with unsubtle graphics indicating that the wearer donated. This time, as if they knew I was coming, the BloodMobile folks gave out a soft, blue blanket. When I returned home from the BloodMobile, I spent two hours after on the couch wrapped up in it.

My blood donation gift blanket

Our snowstorm was a bust, one inch that melted by noon. The red shovel will have to wait.

I had planned to spend the day shoveling so I took a guilt-free day off of riding. Instead I wrassled with an IRS gift tax form. Income tax software does not include this form so I printed out the form, took pen in hand, and did my best reading the inscrutable IRS instructions. (Abandon hope all ye…) Luckily, I took Anal Accounting 101 in college.

It took over an hour before I realized that the most important calculation of the 10-page packet of forms was on Page 6. Not Page 1 or Page 2, or Pages 3, 4, and 5 which were utterly irrelevant to my situation, but Page 6. Also, the IRS requires a Notice, written and signed by your spouse that says that your spouse is splitting the gift with you. Of course, this is redundant with the info you’ve already provided on the form itself but rules are rules.

Conveniently, the IRS don’t provide a copy of the required Notice; filers are left to wing it. (I found an example on-line.) One advantage of filing on paper is that you can attach explanations and supporting math so that, if you screw up the form itself, some poor IRS accountant presumably can set things right. (You do not have to supply photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining each one, as in Alice’s Restaurant.) And so that’s what I did. When I finished I had to repeat the process with my wife’s name on the top of a separate 10-page set of forms.

Of course, the entire exercise is just for show because under current law I won’t owe any gift tax unless I die with an estate of over $13 million. Somewhere in a cave in Kansas my gift tax form will be gathering dust just waiting for me to win the lottery and kick the bucket.

Walk for Peace

Back in 2019 I rode from Northern Indiana to California. It was a difficult ride, but a scenic one. Route 66 has all sorts of roadside attractions from its days as the pre-interstate road from Chicago to Los Angeles. Most of these things were inanimate. The weirdest one was human: near Eureka, Missouri I came upon a Chicago-bound Thai Buddhist monk wearing a straw cowboy hat. His name was Sutham Nateetong and his walk was intended to inspire world peace. (Apparently he continued on to New York City.)

I didn’t stop or take a picture of him, something I have always regretted. As slow, long-distance travelers, Cowboy Hat Monk and I are kindred spirits. Despite the hills, heat, and humidity, Cowboy Hat Monk was all smiles. I tend to bitch and moan. I’ve got some work to do on my equanimity. By the time I saw him he had walked over 1,500 miles.

Yesterday, a group of Buddhist monks continued their 2,300 mile Walk for Peace, passing a half mile from my house on their way to Washington, DC. There are something like 19 to 24 monks walking (online reports vary). They began in Fort Worth Texas in October, walking through seven states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Unlike my solo walker in Missouri, this group has a support crew and they have very much needed it. At one point one of their support vehicles was hit in a crash. One monk was severely injured and had to have his leg amputated. According to yesterday’s online posts, the leader of the group has been sick for a few days, but apparently continues to walk.

They have encountered brutal winter weather for the last month on their way through the South. A couple of days ago they walked through sub-zero wind chills with winds gusting up to 60 mile per hour. Unreal. Yesterday temperatures were in the 20s (F) and still they walked, with determination on their faces. If they were in discomfort they did a good job of hiding it. They must be proud of the fact that tens of thousands of people have come out to witness their trek.

Today they walked on the unplowed, icy Mount Vernon Trail as well as streets from Mount Vernon to Marymount University in North Arlington. Tomorrow they will walk on streets down a steep grade to the Potomac River before hiking back uphill to an event at the National Cathedral. They’ll end their day with at George Washington University. On Wednesday they will participate in several events in DC. On Thursday they’ll go to the Maryland State Capitol in Annapolis for the end of their journey.

January 2026 – Christmas Books and Snowcrete

Reading

So Far Gone by Jess Walter. This is my third 2025 Christmas gift book. It’s the story of an estranged father who becomes a hermit when he can no longer cope with his dysfunctional family, especially his menacing son-in-law who is involved in a Christian nationalist end-of-days cult. The father comes out of the woods to deal with a family crisis that touches so many bases: angsty teenage girl, annoying younger brother, Bible-twisting preacher, a drug-laden Peruvian-inspired music festival, and more. Somehow Walter makes it all work. Adding to my enjoyment, it is set in western Washington State and Idaho, an area that I rode through on my 2018 bike tour.

Holding by Graham Norton. The fourth 2025 Christmas gift book. The BBC Irish chat show host’s first novel and quite a good one. Set in a sleepy rural town in County Cork, a bored, corpulent guarda Sergeant is confronted with the discovery of a buried remains at a construction site. Then another set of remains are unearthed. Who are these poor souls? Norton does a fine job of leading us to a resolution of the mysteries.

Deadwood by Peter Cozzens. The fifth 2025 Christmas gift book. A history of the founding and early days of Deadwood, the fabled gold mining town in the Black Hills of present day South Dakota. Loads of colorful characters including Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. (Both of them were fictionized beyond recognition by dime novelists). Stinky streets, robbers, murderers, “soiled doves”, and many more colorful characters. I learned to my amazement that the U. S. Army initially chased white miners out of the area to protect the sovereignty of the Lakota people. When the economy crashed in 1873, President Grant turned on the Lakotas and forced them off their land.

Taking Manhattan by Russell Shorto. A historical account of how the English acquired Dutch holdings in North America. A companion to Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World which explained how New Amsterdam was the blueprint for pluralism and tolerance (among white people, at least) in the New World. Richard Nicholls, the English officer in charge of the invading fleet, wisely chose to negotiate a peace with Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Amsterdam. This created the blueprint for cosmopolitan cities the world over.

The Birds that Audubon Missed by Kenn Kaufman. The last of the Christmas gift books given by our friend Melissa, an avid birder. (I ran into her in Key West during my 2017 bike tour. She and her husband were going to the Dry Tortugas National Park on a birding excursion the following day.) The book describes how ornithology and bird art evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a focus on Audubon. It turns out he was quite a flawed character – (he fabricated an large eagle that he called the “Bird of Washington” to impress his English patrons. Nevertheless he was a tireless, unmatched painter of hundreds of actual birds. This is just the book for bird nerds.

Frankie by Graham Norton. The life and times of Frances Howe, from 1950 to 2024, as told to her caregiver in her old age. Frances is cast out of her miserable home in County Cork to adulthood in London and New York City. An extraordinary tale, beautifully written. Just a wonderful book.

Medical

On the 7th, I had my sixth (or maybe seventh) colonoscopy. This time with a new doctor, as my previous gastroenterologist had retired. The good news is no cancer was found. The bad news is they found 8 benign polyps which means I have to do this again in 2029.

Watching

Hamnet – We actually saw this on New Years Eve. I thought Jesse Buckley was terrific as Shakespeare’s wife. She’s in nearly every scene. Often in extreme closeups with minimal to no makeup. Oddly, she and Paul Mescal, who plays the Bard, are both Irish. The film didn’t meet my expectations (based on rave reviews) but it it held my interest for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

The Rip – Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in a buddy cop movie with more twists than a bag of Twizzlers. There’s $20 million of drug money in a house in Hialeah. Who do you trust? Implausible amounts of gun violence. Also, stars Kyle Chandler. Much better than I expected.

Miracle: The Boys of ’80. A Netflix documentary about the Miracle on Ice US Olympic hockey team. My freshman year at Boston University I lived on one of the hockey team’s floors so I knew (and got whupped at ping pong by the team captain, Mike Eruzione. He proved Leo Durocher wrong; nice guys sometimes finish first. A fun trip down memory lane.

Pro Football – In order to prep for the Super Bowl, I watched a few playoff games. I was pleased to see games played in snow. Now I have to find out who Bad Bunny is.

Riding

I managed to ride 722.5 miles, 403 of which were outside. Riding outside was out of the question for the last week or so due to the snow and ice storm. It’s not at all surprising that I rode 50 miles less than January 2025.

I spent at least ten hours digging through the snowcrete to free up our cars. My car, parked at the curb, had been plowed in. It was not a lot of fun digging it out. Thankfully we didn’t lose power (yet) and missed out on a follow-up storm that moved south of the area.

One interesting thing that took place was the fact that my banged up shoulder handled all the shoveling and chopping very well. No pain at night anymore. Also, an unexpected side effect was how my weight machine workouts became easier. Go figure.