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Always fun to park beside a carbon copy of the vehicle you’re driving.

Ok, so it’s from NY and close inspection revealed it was an automatic, and a much messier owner! On this occasion we found ourselves in the parking lot of a buy buy baby store (in dreaded Paramus off route 17 – you can’t understand it until we take you there). Never heard of buy buy baby? Neither had I until now. Take a Bed Bath and Beyond (triple Bs, get it?) – its parent company – and instead of pots and pans, fill the store with diapers and strollers, and you’ve got a buy buy baby. Adrienne was doing some shopping for a baby shower. I never knew how much stuff one needs to have a baby! How did parents of yesteryear get by?! 🙂 Anyway, while Adrienne searched high and low for items on the registry, I amused myself with the 6-program electronic rocker, featuring emulations of car rides, kangaroo rides and riding in a boat, amongst others. And the stroller aisle looked like a used car lot to me – and this was only half of them!

Sheesh. These ‘burbs wear me out at times, maybe I should go back to the city!

As per tradition (does one time before count as tradition?), Adrienne and I ran the Ashenfelter 8K Classic Thanksgiving Day morning in Glen Ridge, the next town over. With more than 2000 runners, there was a good amount of Thanksgiving cheer! I don’t think either of us were quite as prepared (training-wise) as last year. But we ended up just a bit more than a minute slower. And I really think we could have done a good bit better, had Adrienne let me push her more (yes, we mostly ran together or at least within sight as I kind of paced Adrienne).

Another cool note: to register you just send in your check and form and the night before you pick up your packet with your number, etc. Adrienne ended up with badge number 1747 and I got 1748. After the race we checked the race results and what place did I finish? 1748! Adrienne actually crossed the finish line before me, but the time (and thus place) are (correctly) calculated from the time you cross the starting line, so I ended up being a couple seconds faster. Adrienne placed 1749.

Not a bad way to start off Turkey Day, even if it’s not quite a Turkey Trot.

And yeah, we’re too cheap to actually purchase the photos, so you get the screengrab with the watermark.

A few days before Halloween Adrienne and I went over to Montclair (two towns over) and checked out their ‘Garden Aglow’, with jack-o-lanterns lighting up the Iris Gardens. Actually, the jack-o-lanterns didn’t do too much in terms of lighting up, because they had huge security-type lights that took away any sort of atmosphere and proper lighting. Oh well. Some of the carved pumpkins were still kinda cool.

The cooler weather means the furballs are sometimes wanting more warmth:

And just last night Adrienne and I finally got around to having somewhat of a Housewarming party. More like a one-year anniversary (in the house)  party at this point. Fourteen friends and neighbors stopped by to enjoy good food and conversation. As we prepped Saturday morning, I asked Adrienne if she was planning any sort of special decoration. She said no. Then an hour or two later our doorbell rang and a florist delivered a beautiful centerpiece, thanks to Mom and Dad!

Happy Weekend!

And I’m not talking about Charlie…

Adrienne and I walked the couple blocks to the Oakside Cultural Center here in Bloomfield to check out a Mandolin Orchestra concert this afternoon. (The Bloomfield Mandolin Orchestra has been around for 70 years now, and is one of the many community music groups that operate in Bloomfield–pretty cool even if the quality isn’t quite top notch, or even middle at times…) The concert featured Italian and Neapolitan songs, and pretty much ended up being a sing-along for the crowd of mostly older Italian types. It was still enjoyable enough, and a nice little diversion from the many chores on our weekend list!

On the way home, we again saw more wild turkeys just hanging out in front yards. An odd site for what I consider to be quite urban suburbs, but still kinda cool! Gobble gobble.

The post named so because I was thinking we went to the apple orchard and bought some shoes (no, we didn’t buy shoes at the apple orchard), which made me think of Dad’s ‘apple-kicker’ shoes.

Anyhoo, Adrienne and I went up to the apple orchard we’d been too a couple times before, and while they didn’t have any Honeycrisps, we managed to leave with two other varieties (Fortunes and Crispins) as well as some fresh doughnuts, cider and fudge. Then we went to quite possibly the largest outlet mall I’ve been to, to purchase some Rockport dress shoes to replace my Rockport dress shoes I purchased more than 8 years ago at a Rockport outlet store somewhere in Iowa on the way to Wichita.(wow that was a really bad sentence but it’s late so I’m not editing.) I’d say I got my money’s worth.

I only took a couple photos of the day, and they’re both from the orchard. First up, Adrienne was so happy about snagging fresh-out-of-the-fryer doughnuts that she had to close her eyes lest they pop out in excitement! Or maybe she was just blinking.

(And yes, thank you for noticing, Adrienne did recently get a hair cut. We call it a little longer than Drew Barrymore-length.)

And here we are enjoying the treats at a table in the beautiful fall weather:

Call me in about 8 years and ask me how the shoes have done.

——-

Edit: here’s a photo of the old shoes, now disposed of:

It was great to have Derek and Heidi in town, if even for a short time. We crammed a bunch in, including walking 11 miles on Friday (and seeing lots of the City…), some good home-cooked meals and a bout of mini putt! Adrienne totaled the scores (David helped just a bit), and announced that Heidi came in 4th, David third and Adrienne and Derek tied for first. The next day after Derek and Heidi left we recounted – and have new results! Heidi fourth, Adrienne third, David second and Derek in first place!

Saturday Adrienne and I biked up to Smashburger (imagine Chipotle but a burger place)  to enjoy, you guessed it, a couple burgers, in (on-going) celebration of our Anniversary (hey, how about some more parenths, and commas!?). Every Smashburger location (there are some in Chicago and Wichita, but nothing in the Pacific NW yet) has a locally-influenced burger. So while I had a classic, Adrienne enjoyed the New Jersey Smashburger, with bacon and blue cheese and what they called grilled onions but what sure looked like fried onions to me. They also had sweet potato fries. Then we biked another town over to try a new gelato place. It was good, but I think I prefer real ice cream or custard. Adrienne says Smashburger is just as good as a Red Robin burger, but more manageable. I guess I’d mostly agree.

(sorry for the crappy cell-phone pics…)

Sunday night Adrienne decided to spice up salmon with a thai-influenced bed of spinach with coconut milk and spices. David grilled the salmon and corn, and also made the raspberry ice cream for dessert!

(kinda looks like frozen Pepto-Bismal, eh?)

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Vacation is wrapping up… David heads back East early tomorrow (Wednesday), while Adrienne gets on a plane down to San Jose for work; she’ll fly back home Friday. We closed out the vacation how we started – with a stop at Burgerville. We’ve stayed at the house of one of Adrienne’s college friends, who is currently teaching in Malaysia, these last few days in Portland. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a Burgerville down the road and we needed dessert to go with Jon Stewart.

Today was actually our only full day in Portland, but we managed to explore two extinct volcanic cinder cones, both within the city limits. Also did some street-food exploring downtown, and some local music exploring at a park near where we’re staying. Also had some good Thai food the previous night, and David got Adrienne to go on a run with him, though she darn-near broke her ankle in doing so (watch out for pears on the sidewalk, is the lesson learned). We also celebrated Adrienne’s Mom’s birthday with family and lunch at a cool elementary school-turned-restaurant/hotel/movie theater. A good vacation, but it’s always nice to get and be home.

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Actually, that’s how we listen to music together.

This vacation narrative begins a few days before the vacation… Monday night I noticed our ice cream in the freezer was soft, and our sorbet was all liquid. I guessed the door may have been left ajar due to a towel around the handle, and made sure the door was closed before going to bed. Tuesday morning things still didn’t seem cool enough, and quickly enough I deduced the refrigerator was not working. I put in a call to Sears Service (for our Kenmore fridge), and was told the first appointment available was 8 days out! Did some research and learned the overload relay on the compressor often fails, so I pulled the fridge apart and sure enough, the relay exhibits the symptoms. Made some calls to learn no one stocks this part (which again, the internets seems to think fails often on these models). So I ordered the part for next day shipping, and bought a whole bunch of ice and a cooler…

Part comes next day (Wednesday), only to find the connectors are not the same, sheesh. Have to do some light electrical work, and get the thing running. It’s Wednesday night and I’m not convinced this thing is running properly (other possibility is the compressor could be giving up the ghost). We had planned on leaving Thursday morning, but all preparations got derailed due to the fridge. I’m still not convinced it’s working (temp hasn’t fallen quickly enough to my thinking), but we leave the house about noon.

With just a stop for lunch at Panera at a town that I don’t recall at the moment, we made it up to the cabin in West Addison, VT by about 6:30pm. The countryside is just beautiful. Full of farms (and their smells…), but drive a couple more minutes and there’s Lake Champlain. Grabbed some dinner and breakfast fixings at nearby Vergennes, a town heavily influenced by its French heritage. Spent the next day and a half just relaxing, checking out the area, a little kayaking (we’re terrible), etc. Spent some time in Middlebury, a very quintessential Vermont town. Left a couple bucks at the Bixby Free Library in Vergennes, but walked out with a couple used books. The Library is in a bit of a budget crunch – they’re $58,000 behind on their yearly budget of just $178,000. Yikes!

We could only secure 2 nights at the cabin, so Saturday morning we packed up and made our way to Burlington, figuring we’d spend the day and night exploring, then head back home Sunday. Despite a very nice farmer’s market, Burlington didn’t seem to grab us (“too many hippies” according to Adrienne!), so we decided to drive north to the Champlain Islands to hopefully find a place to stay the night and explore. After a little trouble finding something, we secured a room at an Inn in North Hero, complete with small beach and cool places to bike. These island towns have a personality all their own, resort-like in a way but far more relaxed. Hung out by the water, did some biking, got some rest, watched part of the very-crappy Scary Movie 4. After breakfast Sunday we took the ferry across to New York, and decided to explore a little into the Adirondacks. Eventually made our way to Lake Placid, where David was able to show Adrienne some of the things he remembered from his earlier visit long long ago.

Our last goal was to get a hike in before making our way home. We found on a map a medium-difficulty 2.2 mile hike that we thought would suit us, ensuring we didn’t get home too late. But it didn’t find us, who knows where it was. We spotted another trailhead as we were driving, so I pulled a U-ee and checked it out. 5.2 miles round trip, rated difficult. Goes to the summit of Hurricane Mountain, a 2000 ft ascent. Adrienne says sure, let’s do it. Just as we’re starting a father-son duo exit the trail, we ask them how long it took them. An hour and 45 minutes to go up, they say. For 2.6 miles, yikes!

There’s an immediate ascent that has us pretty quickly questioning ourselves. It’s in the low 80s or cooler in the shade, but we’re already feeling hot and tired. Having no scale of how much we’d gone up (absolutely no distance markers, just the dang red dots on trees marking the way), we ask a solo hiker on his way down if there’s much more climbing ahead. He says, well, yes…We push on. David brought his small Canon camera. Adrienne’s got 20oz of water. We’re wearing tennis shoes. We stop often and question each other if we should go on. The few other hikers we pass (all coming down) look far more prepared – good hiking boots, fannie packs, some even have a real hiking pole in each hand. Feeling exhausted but trying not to show it, we come across another hiker and ask if we’re getting close. His reply? Less than an hour to the top…

By this point we’re probably halfway up the second ascent. You look up, and there’s just more up. It’s more rock climbing than hiking. Adrienne says it’s the hardest hike she’s ever done. David grew up among corn fields, what does he know? We’re pretty much out of water when it starts to rain. Heh, go figure. It feels good, shirts are soaked with sweat. We keep asking if we should just give up, but the answer is always, “we’ve come this far…”

And so we push on to the top. David was hoping to beat the father-son time, and I think we may have just barely. Bugs are bothersome at the top, but the view is beautiful. There’s a reason they put a fire watchtower up here, though it’s no longer used. Rain continues lightly, and soon enough we decide we better start on our way down. David finds going down to be more taxing on his quads (or is it just because they’re already so tired?), Adrienne thinks it’s more work for the calf muscles. It feels like slow going, especially with wet rocks that we’re extra-careful on.

We eventually make it down, still very warm and very thirsty. I guess all I can say is I’m glad to have done it and be able to tell you, without having any sprained ankles or worse!

It’s past 6pm, and we still have many hours of driving ahead of us, so we hit the road. We stop briefly to take a photo of where we went. Here’s the zoomed in view, note the fire watchtower for reference; and here’s the view from the car window.  There are actually still two vacation traditions left unfilled – Pizza Hut and fudge. We stop at Glens Falls, NY and cross off the Pizza Hut stop. Why is it a tradition? Who knows – it always seemed like Pizza Hut on family vacations was a treat when growing up, since it was an upgrade from the normal Saturday-night Little Caesars. We get a thin crust with sausage, peppers and olives, and bring the remainder of the 2-liter Dr. Pepper (just $4 more, with breadsticks!) in the car for the way home.

We eventually get home a bit past midnight, a bit late due to some map reading that should have happened but didn’t. Cest la vie. Nice to be home, nice to see the furballs. And still two vacation days before going back to work Wednesday! Better get working on that Fudge!

So now, enjoy the photos:

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