January

A year ago today we were in Big Bend, seeing a part of Texas we hadn’t seen before. The next day, New Year’s Day, we drove up to Fort Davis and went for a hike in the Davis Mountains. Then we visited the McDonald Observatory, which was unfortunately closed for New Year’s. But I still got to go into one of the big telescopes, because, well, it wasn’t locked. No lights though, and I didn’t want to start flipping switches. Before leaving West Texas we also visited Marathon, another quirky little old town. We had coffee in a little shop that had stacks of the Santa Barbara Independent (!) to read. Another surprise that day, I ran into my old friend Quinton at a gas station near Abilene!

We also made a quick trip to Orlando for Ed’s birthday, right in the middle of grapefruit season. Yum! And we saw manatees!

I attended a fascinating class taught by Edward Tufte.

February

After our wonderful trip to Taos last year, we decided to try skiing there this year. On the drive there, we got to see the Cadillac Ranch covered with snow, and a herd of mystery animals which I later found out were pronghorns (Texans call them antelopes, but they aren’t really). We saw another herd of these later – they really are beautiful.

This time we rented a house on the Rim Road. A great house in a good location for skiing, but the roads were snowy and Rim Road is called that for a reason. Did you know I have a phobia about going over a cliff in a car? We did not die though.

The skiing was fantastic, not crowded. We also snowshoed one day. While we were having lunch in the lodge one day, our neighbor texting me a photo of our house with snow falling furiously. It snowed 13 inches in Dallas! I was sorry to miss that even though we were enjoying even better snow in New Mexico. When we got home, every other house in Dallas had a snowman in front.

We saw John Prine in concert over at SMU; he was very good (and funny, as we knew he would be).

March

One of our favorite restaurants burned down.

I took Mia to Dallas’ St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is pretty raucous and fun.

April

Ed and I took a Saturday morning bike ride over to the lake, had a great 22-mile ride, but on the way back as he signaled a left turn, he hit a reflector in the road and went over the handlebars, fracturing his collarbone pretty badly. It required surgery, and still bothers him. Quite a setback, as he was trying to get back into shape.

But, I got an iPad!

May

Mom and Dad visited for the world premiere of Moby Dick at the Dallas Opera, and I think they would say it was worth the trip. How the heck can you make a stage set about a whaling ship? Well they did it, and it was spectacular.

June

So hot. It got up into the 100’s early this year. I was going to try riding my bike every day again this summer like I did in 2008, but gave up.

July

Ed, frustrated by not being able to exercise and continuing to gain weight, decided to go on a diet. I, who had gained weight in sympathy, agreed to join him. We cut out alcohol and most of the usual things you don’t eat on a diet, and lost weight rather easily. Who knew?

August

Still hot, so I went to California! It was great to see the Steeles. I arrived during Fiesta, which was something I hadn’t seen before. There were cascarones (confetti eggs) smashed everywhere. In Texas you only see those on Easter. We attended several dance performances and ate some great food. I also went kayaking one day at Campus Point (with Kevin), went to the Botanical Garden (with Aidan), biked down Gibraltar Road and at Ealings Park (with Nico), went on a few hikes (with Linda), saw the movie Inception and went climbing (poorly).

September

By this time it should be obvious that we really like Taos. We went back yet again for two weeks. This time we rented two houses for two different experiences. The first week we stayed in town, which was nice because we could walk to restaurants and into town. The second week we stayed at an isolated house up a private road in the foothills near the ski mountain. This house was phenomenal, we liked every detail. It had a little writer’s cottage out back, and we tied our camping hammock out there. One night we slept outside on the second-story deck under the stars. In the mornings we could see the hot air balloons rise and then dip into the Rio Grande canyon. The only downside of the house was it was a one-mile drive down a very rutted dirt road just to get to the road to town, which was another six miles or so. The road was not bikeable (up anyway).

So this trip we went on several hikes and one backpacking trip. It was cold backpacking, but we were well-prepared. We even brought our iPads and watched a movie in the tent (just to say we did it). We went biking one day, Ed’s first time on the bike since his accident. He had a tough time; it was windy and he didn’t feel stable on the bike. We tried to bike another day, but after driving about 45 minutes, we got out to start riding and he felt it was too windy for him, so we drove back and I rode by myself up to the ski area, which is now an annual tradition for me. We also both bought new climbing shoes, and went bouldering. I feel better about my limited climbing skills now; it had just been so many years since I had climbed anything.

Yesterday one of my friends on Facebook posted “When was the last time you did something for the first time”? Well one thing I did for the first time this trip was fly fishing. Ed has wanted to do this for a long time. I thought I would be bored to tears, but I actually loved it. It’s nothing like regular fishing. You don’t stand in one place for long, you have to be smart and use strategy and skill, and the scenery is beautiful. And, I caught a fish!

Last year I was successful in my attempt to get cheap tickets for this year’s Austin City Limits Festival. They give out a few hundred for $50 (regularly $185), and I snagged two by watching Twitter and refreshing the page constantly. The festival was fun, we saw Black Keys, Spoon, Beach House, Broken Bells, Phish, Flaming Lips, Mountain Goats, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Sonic Youth, Gogol Bordello, Pete Yorn, Lucero, Black Lips, Manchester Orchestra, Temper Trap, Deadmau5, M.I.A., Devendra Banhart, Portugal, the Man, Trombone Shorty, Robert Earl Keen, White Rabbits, Blind Pilot and Lance Herbstrong.

October

The two big October events here are the State Fair of Texas and Halloween, and we participated in both. The Phantom of the Opera was back on Swiss Avenue:

We were invited to Ed’s cousin Nicole’s wedding in Buffalo, so we combined that trip with a visit with Mom and Dad. I flew up ahead of time and spent some time with them, and then drove their jeep up to Buffalo and picked Ed up at the airport there. We stayed at the Roycroft Inn in East Aurora, something Ed has wanted to do for a long time. The inn was built by the Roycrofters, and Arts and Crafts guild. Ed’s sister Colleen stayed there also since we were. She didn’t know anything about it, thought it would be a regular hotel. The funny thing is that it turned out she used to work across the street from the place and didn’t know what it was.

The wedding was nice and it was nice to see all of Ed’s aunts and uncles and cousins again. I hadn’t been to Buffalo for a long time. We also went to see the Darwin Martin house, a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The main house is still being renovated, but we got to go into two of the other houses on the property. House house houses.

November

We went back to Austin to visit our friends Mike and Carla, and we had a relaxing traditional Thanksgiving with just the three of us. Last year it was just Ed and me, and we decided to do South American food instead of turkey with the fixings, but I missed it, so this year it was back to the old standbys.

For Erica’s birthday we took her and four of her friends out to dinner here in Dallas, which was fun.

December

It was a good year (fractured clavicles notwithstanding) up until the first of December, when Ed’s stepdad passed away. We made another trip to Orlando for the funeral. We were glad we have been going there more often lately, and Ed will always treasure the trip he took to Ireland with Bud et al three years ago.

Unexpected travel in early December means a rather frantic holiday preparation season (at least for me, who procrastinates until December). But I (kind of) got everything done by Christmas, and we had another relaxing day. We had to laugh at all the winter gear we got each other as gifts. We had lobster pot pie instead of fondue for Christmas Eve dinner, and prime rib for Christmas. Yum.

I think that’s it. I’ll try to do better next year.

Anyway, what a fun weekend! Mike and Carla are fun, their house is great, and their area is building up so there are wonderful restaurants and hiking trails just like in town.

Friday night we ate a wonderful home-cooked meal and then hung out on their back deck and then used the hot tub. Saturday we went for a hike and then the game. The game was pretty exciting. Texas is not doing well this year, but this week against an admittedly lesser team, they did well, and we got to see a genuine successful Hail Mary pass with four seconds left in the first half. And the only downer (a player getting hit hard at the start of the game, not moving his twisted body for 20 minutes or so, and then being carried off in a stretcher) turned out okay. Apparently he was knocked out and not paralyzed, and was able to fly home with his team.

That night we went to a new restaurant, Steiner Ranch Steakhouse. Great food (I had scallops though), great view, and firepit and a singer with a guitar outside, and a pianist inside (it is Austin after all, there is music everywhere). Afterwards we had a fire on Mike and Carla’s back porch. Mike and Ed stayed up until almost three. Carla and I did not.

Sunday we went to Trattoria Lisina at the Duchman Family Winery in Driftwood for lunch. Great Italian restaurant, somehow connected to Damian Mandola (there is drama here, but we couldn’t get to the bottom of it) of Houston. Erica drove in on fumes to meet us. Afterward, we took a look at the wine-making facilities and then played a little bocce at the court by the restaurant. Ed and I have decided we like bocce, and could probably make a court in the unused part of our driveway.

We stopped in Wimberley, TX next. We had been there before years ago. It’s a quaint little Texas town that attracts artists, people wanting a second home in the Hill Country, and tourists. There we met the Boot Whisperer, a German woman who has a shop that stocks hundreds of second-hand cowboy boots. She takes one look at your socked foot, looks you over and picks the perfect boots for you. Mike tried it out, and she pegged his boots on the first try. He wasn’t actually in the market for boots though, so no sale. She was fascinating to talk to though.

Ed is very proud that he was able to identify a tree in  Mike and Carla’s backyard that nobody recognized. He only spent about 4 hours on Google, but now we know, it’s a Chinese tallow tree. He would be upset if I didn’t mention that.

We had a great time with visitors and in Austin. Ed’s brother Jim came a week early and spent time in Dallas visiting historical sites and museums, reading and sailing. He  drove Ed’s car down to Austin last Thursday so he could go floating on the Guadalupe River with Erica and her friends. His sister Colleen was supposed to arrive in Dallas that night, but her plane was delayed so late that she switched her flight to take her directly to Austin Friday morning. Ed and I drove my car down and got there just in time to pick her up and get everybody together to go to the graduation ceremony.

The ceremony was nice, typical processionals, speeches, marches across the stage, pictures after, etc. The speaker was Berkeley Breathed, the Bloom County and Opus cartoonist. He was funny.

We had a wonderful graduation dinner at the Belmont, with Ed, Jim, Colleen, Erica’s mother and stepfather, her maternal grandmother, her sister Rachelle and Rachelle’s two little girls, our friends Mike and Carla who now live in Austin (they are the ones that used to have the house in Galveston), and two of Erica’s friends.

The next day Ed, Jim, Colleen, Erica, Rachelle and I had lunch at Curra’s, our favorite Mexican place in Austin, and then did the shopping for Erica’s graduation party. The party was to be at 6:30pm on a boat on Lake Travis. Unfortunately, as the afternoon wore on, the skies got darker and darker. Eventually it began to pour. We decided to head out to the lake anyway. Traffic slowed and we realized there was standing water on the highway. Cars were pulling off the road. In the middle of the torrential rain, thunder and lightning, Ed announced that he was guaranteeing we would have a sunset. My reaction was “Oh, come on!”. I wasn’t sure they would even let us out on the lake. By the time we got there, it was lightening up a bit. And what do you know, we did see the sunset.

The kids (and adults) had fun, although most people elected not to swim because the rain had cooled things down.

Sunday we had a nice breakfast at Austin Java, then split up to do errands and drive home. Colleen and I drove my car up first to get the house ready for visitors, Erica and Rachelle and the two girls came in her car, and Ed and Jim followed behind after tying up all the loose ends from the party. We had a nice lobster risotto here. Everybody (except Erica) has left now, so we have a quiet house once again. It was nice having a houseful though.

This year’s MS150 was very, very hard-fought, but thankfully, hard-won!

As we watched the forecast last week, we were delighted to see that mild temperatures and dry weather were predicted for the route. Unfortunately, we soon learned that high winds from the north and northwest were also on the way! And the winds were indeed brutal. It’s pretty tough to keep yourself going for hours into a headwind. A lot of people didn’t even finish the first day, and among those that did, many chose not to ride the second, including a few on our team. And to add insult to injury, temperatures dropped into the forties overnight, which made the dawn start very uncomfortable. After waiting an hour in shiver-inducing cold, we started down several long hills, making the wind chill almost unbearable. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, and it was hard to handle the brakes and shifters, my hands were so cold.

But did I have fun? Yes!!! Despite the weather challenges, there were several improvements over last year, along with the same satisfaction gained from doing the ride. One great thing this year was that Caprock hired two massage therapists to give free massages in our tent after the first day’s ride. This was wonderful, and really helped with the recovery.

This year Ed (yes, he rode this year) and I, along with one other woman from our team, took the “Challenge Route” on Day 2. This route goes through Buescher and Bastrop state parks. It is much more scenic than the “Express Route” that I took last year, but has some very challenging hills that scare a lot of people off. Living in Dallas now, Ed and I have been able to practice hills more than our Houston flatlander teammates, so we didn’t find this to be a problem at all. And the parks were beautiful to ride through.

I see I didn’t write about this last year, but one fun thing about the ride is the rural people that park at the end of their ranch roads and entertain the riders. There is one guy who plays fiddle all day on the back of a trailer, and there is a steel drum band out in the middle of Texas farm land (!), as well as lots of people with bells and noisemakers who sit in lawn chairs and yell and wave. This year with the alternate route I got to see another institution, the bagpiper in Buescher State Park. This made me tear up a little, though, as he played “Amazing Grace” as we rode up a hill and it reminded me of Kelly’s funeral. Still, it was a great touch.

So how did Ed like it, you ask? Well, despite being impatient, not liking crowds, the unknown, getting up early or roughing it, I think he was glad he did it. He won’t come out and say he liked it because he spent months saying he didn’t want to do it, but since we finished he has been talking about next year. There is something about this type of event that is a little addictive, and I saw it in other first-time riders on our team as they crossed the finish line, fists in the air, yelling “I did it!”. They’ll be back.

I have not been riding as much this year as last because we are far away from the structure of organized rides that has built in in Houston around this. Also, we are not yet familiar with all the good places to ride here. I still feel ready, though, and don’t think it will be a problem. More of an issue is the logistics of getting to Houston, getting back to Houston from Austin, and getting back to Dallas. Ironically, Dallas has an MS150, but it is much smaller and really just goes from the suburbs to Ft. Worth. Doesn’t seem as grand as riding with 13,000 from Houston to Austin.

DeVotchKa is four piece band. The lead singer has a beautiful voice, a beautiful whistle, and also plays acoustic and electric guitar. Oh, and bouzouki.

Next is a violinist, playing sometimes in a classical style, but often in an Eastern European folk music style. When he wasn’t playing accordian.

Then there was the woman on double bass. Who sometimes played sousaphone.

The drummer played, well, drums. Until the one song when he came out and played mariachi-style trumpet.

Oh, and how could I forget the theremin! There was a theramin!

And somehow, the effect was wonderful. The punk kids were jumping around in the heat, and so were the twirler hippie chicks. The audience didn’t try to sneak out early to get to the next show. Fun!
Listen to music on their website, or check out (not necessarily high-quality) videos on YouTube.

We were invited to start Saturday at an alternative spot with a few other teams (Xerox, Weatherford, etc.) at 6:00am, a full hour before the official start. This meant we were out in front of the pack of 13,000, which is a huge advantage for riding comfort and safety. What we didn’t anticipate was the pea soup fog, fog thicker than any I’ve ever driven in, let alone biked in. Add this to about 50 minutes of riding in the dark, and it was a surreal experience. We were escorted by police and pace cars, so the traffic dangers were negligible, but it was difficult to see the road and we quickly became soaked. I still found it exciting, and as dawn broke, a scissor-tailed flycatcher flew above my head. We were in the Katy Prairie, the only flat part of the ride.

The ride to La Grange was beautiful, through rolling country, and the wildflowers were spectacular in spots. I usually skip the first two rest stops on long rides so I can shake off some of the pack. This time, though, I didn’t notice that we had passed one rest stop in the dark, since it wasn’t open yet. This meant that the first stop I took turned out to be lunch in Bellville. We (me and the former president of my company, who became my riding partner for both days), arrived at lunch at 8:30am.

After “lunch”, some of our teammates (as well as a guy riding in a chicken suit) having caught up with us, we continued to make good time due in part to the favorable winds. We were riding above 20mph much of the way, although the hills did slow us down some (going up, that is, going down was fast and fun). My favorite part was the ride through Fayetteville, a town of about 250 folks, every one of whom had turned up in the quaint downtown with about four out-of-town friends apiece, all brandishing cowbells and sleighbells. Riding through the turns of downtown Fayetteville with bells ringing and people cheering, I could imagine we were riding through some Alsatian town in the Tour de France. I still get shivers thinking about it.

Day 1 was 90 miles, with the last bit into the wind and uphill; we got into La Grange around 12:30 and so beat the legendary lines for the showers. For future reference, this is a good thing.

To digress for a few sentences, I have realized recently that my experience backpacking through Europe for a whole summer in college serves me well when participating in events such as this. Although I rode with a work-sponsored team, none of my close work friends were riding, and I only knew one team member well at all. I had no idea what to expect for accommodations, other than there was “a tent”. Bathrooms, showers, food, weather, etc., were all unknowns. I don’t mind this at all, I’ve slogged through mud and rain and run out of money (temporarily) and arrived in a foreign town with no place to stay, and it was fun. I think this is where Ed and I differ the most; he would not (and did not) take part in any event that held any potential surprises. I, on the other hand, knew that whatever the circumstances were, I could deal with them and would even enjoy them. And I did. A lot.

Anyway. Our tent was on the edge of the Fayette County fairgrounds, where the throngs of riders stay overnight. There was a midway with rides, stages for bands, temporary bike shops, and it would have been a wild party if everyone wasn’t so tired. We just hung out, had a few beers, an early dinner, and went over every once in awhile to see the late finishers come in. The late finishers are far more inspirational than the early finishers; they include the old, the young, and especially the multiple sclerosis patients, some of whom do ride.

By nine o’clock, everyone was ready for bed. We decided we would get up at 4:30am for the start lineup, as the experienced MS150 riders knew that there was no sleeping past then anyway. We also decided not to put the sides on the tent, which turned out to be one of those big party type tents with no floor. That made for nice camping, few bugs, some cricket noise, but we all had earplugs anyway and I slept like a rock.

I was one of the first up; our support team had coffee brewing, and it was actually GOOD coffee, welcome at that hour to be sure. We ate quickly and got our jerseys and shorts on, and I suddenly noticed I had a flat tire to change. My only flat the whole trip, and it happened overnight. Good luck!

Then the only annoying part of the whole endeavor. The riders are not allowed to leave until 7am on Sunday, but being in front is always best. We decided to get in line at 5:30, which believe it or not put us just forward of the middle of the pack. That hour and a half standing in bike shoes holding our bikes was not fun, but then again, it wasn’t so bad, and I did learn some awful jokes.

Eventually we did get to start of course, and as we left La Grange the third signature visual memory of the ride was made (first was the flycatcher in the fog, second was the bell ringers in Fayetteville). We came out of the chute as a group of about fifteen CapRock riders, and I dropped to the back of the group. We formed a pace line as we came down the entrance ramp to highway 77, and looking at the fourteen yellow jerseys in front of me, all moving forward in perfect unison, I really felt like I was on a world class cycling team.

The second day ride was effortless. I really didn’t feel as if I had ridden the day before; even with a less than perfect night’s sleep, I had fully recovered from the 90-mile ride. We had elected as a team to take the less hilly route to Austin so we could cross the finish line more or less as a group. I’ve decided next year I will take the other route which is more scenic, but this year I wanted to finish with the team. We collected at the last rest stop, not the full team but at least twelve of us. Then it was a nicely placed ride into Austin. We came in through the UT campus, then a few blocks to the finish. We rode in formation as a team, four abreast. There were a lot of spectators screaming, and we were all grinning ear to ear.

She did really well, especially the first two days. She was in 12th place overall yesterday (out of 88), and struggled a bit today at the end for a final place of 20th, but she showed she is back in the hunt after her back injury, and also had 10 birdies in the tournament, which may have been the highest of all participants. She has not played in a tournament for a long time, so it was great to see her do well.

I’ve posted some golf photos.