900/99

Almost afraid to get on the scale, I've been eating so much (and exercising so little) lately...

 

Well, it's 9/09/09, whatever that might mean to you. Labor Day has come and gone, kids everywhere are back in school, and we leave for the RCST "Bash" tomorrow. It's been a week since my last post, and it'll probably be another (eventful) week until my next one, so here are some of last week's highlights before they fade away:

 

I got my teeth fixed  last Thursday (except for the one crown I still need: stay tuned). I am now officially on the road to better dental health, and celebrated with a burrito from Tulum -- my new dentist is in Coopersburg, so I stopped for take-out and had lunch with Anne at home. A really nice break in the daily routine, except for the Novocaine part...

 

We Don't Need No Bodhisattva Part 1: Thursday's moonlight ride was a blast. Me and Anne, Doug and Lori, Eric and Kris, and new cyclist Donna -- a group night ride with more women than men, probably the first time I've ever seen it. We cruised down to the Chain Dam, turned our lights off and checked out the light on the waterfall, and then cruised on home, chasing the trains that rolled along the other side of the river. Though we weren't pushing the pace too hard, we were also not slacking; the pace was brisk and I was a little worried for Donna, but her general runner's fitness kept her right up in the mix. What was I worried about?

 

Afterward we went over to Brew Works for a quick bite. I thought it was "late, wow maybe as late as midnight" when we left, but the kitchen clock said 1:00 AM when we got home -- ouch!

 

Friday night was First Friday in Southside Bethlehem. I was hanging with Anne and Donna, and we met up with Lori and checked out the shops. We stopped in at Clothesline Organics, then went to the Cutters grand opening, over to Home & Planet (nerve center for First Friday), and I escaped back to Clothesline Organics to share a beer with Josh while the ladies visited a shoe store  -- I was pretty estrogen'ed out, and would have paid someone to talk baseball or NASCAR at that point...

 

We also stopped in at Danielle's birthday party at the secret art space. That was very cool, but the space is non-alcoholic so we adjourned to the Tally Ho for a quick one and came back. Billy, Danielle, Fred & Lara, and Joanna, and Pete, and Pete -- a big dance party, lots of transplants from the Easton scene. (Strangely enough I saw Andrea on Thursday, and Kateryna outside Home & Planet on Friday, but they're not transplants: back in the day they were Bethlehemites visiting Easton, and Southside was and is their home turf.)

 

That was another late night, and Saturday is sort of a blur now -- we had a funeral, just a simple graveside ceremony for Sally's mom in the morning, then visited Anne's mom for a barbecue in the afternoon. The funeral was one of the strangest I've ever been to, lots of laughing and stories, and Sally's mom had lived a long and full life, but it was still a funeral and still rough, and emotionally draining, and by the end of the evening at Anne's mom's I was fighting to keep my eyes open. We were probably in bed by 9:00.

 

We Don't Need No Bodhisattva Part 2: I hooked up with another old friend on Sunday morning -- Nick got a mountain bike about a year ago, and after many false starts we finally made solid plans to go ride together at Sals. I had no idea what was going to happen, but we met for coffee at Wired, where he told me he mostly uses his bike for commuting and used to ride BMX when he was younger, so I figured he'd be OK in terms of both stamina and bike-handling.

 

Once again, I was worried about nothing: we basically rode everything there except Boulderama and the stuff near Dodson, and I kept up a fairly good pace but he was right there. (I think maybe it's time for me to get one of those T-shirts: "The older I get the faster I was.") We had a good two hours of fun, but then both our phones started ringing, and texts started coming in; the world had caught up with us and we had to bail. It was a pretty convenient situation for Nick -- his sister just had a baby and was in St Luke's, and he rode right over to visit. I called Anne, out on her own (road) ride, and we met at a very crowded Blue Sky for lunch.

 

That afternoon was a visit to my parents, and I got to see my Uncle Frank & Aunt Pat, for the first time in probably years, since they were visiting too -- they were up for cousin Claire's wedding.

 

Monday was back to Sals with a bunch of JORBA and VMB people, followed by a late lunch at the Brew Works. That was fun, but probably a mistake: we had Donna and Debbie over for dinner, and that was a total food-fest (pasta & ciabatta with nasturtium butter, plus a bunch of Puerto Rican fruits & delicacies that Debbie brought back from vacation -- we never even got to the peach crumble...), followed by another visit to BW, where we mostly just sat and groaned over our over-stuffed bellies.

 

So that was the summer's swan song; yesterday we checked out a "Pints and Policies" symposium at Brew Works ("Get your tail on the trail," basically about the local greenways), and tonight I make chili.

 

(These missives would probably be shorter if I did them more often.)

 

TEACHER: Johnny, can you spell "banana?"

JOHNNY: Yes, but I don't know when to stop: B-A-N-A-N-A-N-A-N-A-N-A...