Ariel is *boring*. Okay, the characterization in Disney's 2023 telling of The Little Mermaid is marginally more interesting, with a whiff more agency. I’ve seen a lot of The Little Mermaid this year.
My daughter was in her school's performance of The Little Mermaid Jr. (she was a sailor and tentacle) this spring, so we watched Disney's 1989 animated feature (still a classic), her performance, the 2023 movie (in theaters as a family), and just this evening, another take. My son was in a 2 week camp run by Richmond's Parks Department that *also* performed The Little Mermaid Jr. over the short period. Ambitious! But also impressive what they were able to produce in such a short time with mostly elementary-age children.
Every version I saw of this contemporary retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen had something in common: Ursula is the most exciting role. Yes, the 1989 version was inspired by legendary drag performer Divine (and it’s still my favorite version, performed perfectly by Pat Carroll), but every other performance I watched references this interpretation. Melissa McCarthy was the only truly fun performance in the 2023 movie (though yes, Halle Bailey's vocals were fantastic), and the role itself—when referencing the 1989 version—lends itself well even to child performers that want to ham it up and try to get some laughs out of an audience full of parents.
Ariel always has to be the youngest child, longing for what she isn't supposed to have. Eric is constrained by his role. Triton and Sebastian are varying degrees of stern authority. Flounder is...a sounding board for Ariel. But Ursula? So much life and humor despite her darker intentions.
Anyway, this has been a nerdy dad in his 40s talking about a cartoon character. Thanks for something something my TED something.
It’s been a while, but I do—from time to time—like to write about those random words/concepts that just float through my brain, taking up space and attention until I look them up to remind myself what they mean (or confirm my memory of the definition). Today that’s "karst" - landforms created by dissolving limestone and similar types of rock. This can make for some pretty cool stuff, like Luray Caverns in the above photo.
Well it turns out there's a whole Virginia Cave and Karst Trail with *loads* of awesome places to explore, and now probably the basis for my next regional tourism checklist.
Early June this year my family travelled up to Maine for a vacation. It coincided with my friend Robert's last week up in Bangor before moving to Pennsylvania for a new job. We not only got to spend the week exploring a fine national park and a fun city (Portland), but we enjoyed the company of my best friend nearly the entire time.
Getting There and Getting Settled
We took our time driving up north and on our second travel day stopped by the Nubble Lighthouse for some lovely views.
This was a cool lighthouse by York that was just barely off shore on a small island. At low tide you could practically walk across the rocks, but there was a cable system installed beneath the power lines that allowed for shuttling supplies across the gap no matter the water level.
Robert was house-sitting for some friends who were out of state for their summer research work, so when we arrived in Bangor later that day we spent the evening relaxing over gin and tonics and a fine cookout. Perfect unwinding after so much time in the car, and ideal for planning the next several days.
First Day in Acadia
The next day we left early for Acadia to beat the June crowds. We parked at Sand Beach so Valerie and the kids could explore the beautifully scenic and relatively easy Ocean Path Trail while Robert and I went on a more challenging route. Valerie was gracious enough to let me have a "proper" hike with my friend since I'm actually fit enough for real hiking now, and it was *amazing*.
We started up from Sand Beach to the head of the Beehive mountain trail which can get busy, even early. But we branched off toward The Bowl, a lake in between peaks. It was gorgeous.
After pausing at The Bowl, we doubled back a bit and switched over to the Gorham Mountain Trail, with gorgeous, rewarding views from the top (including the view of Newport Cove above).
We hiked down from Gorham toward the old sea cave and saw fantastic rock formations along the way.
Finally, we made our way down to the Ocean Path Trail where we met back up with my family. From there we had a comfortable stroll back to the car and wrapped up our time on Mount Desert Island with some tasty lunch and poking around Bar Harbor.
I don't have any photos, but we ended the day back in Bangor with tasty food and beer at Mason's Brewing Company.
More Acadia and the Fog of Boothbay Harbor
The next day we briefly parted ways with Robert and headed back to Acadia to check out Seawall on the less busy side of Mount Desert Island. We all enjoyed scrambling over the rocky shoreline looking for aquatic life and sea birds.
Our last bit of Acadia was climbing down the hard way (before noticing the easy way after we came up—but the hard way had *way* better views!) to see Bass Harbor Head Light Station. Valerie mostly worried about the kids falling down the cliffside, but they were fine, and we were rewarded with a dramatic view of the lighthouse and the Atlantic.
On our way out of Acadia we had our obligatory lobster stop at Robert's recommendation: Thurston's Lobster Pound (okay, they changed their name to "Thurston for Lobster" which is way cheesier...) in Bernard.
We headed south for Boothbay Harbor about halfway to Portland, but the wet weather kept us from doing too much. After checking in, however, we had one of photography's best friends: fog! So naturally I got a few shots before the rain picked up.
Portland, By Way of Freeport
We picked Robert up on our way to Freeport on the third day. After some heavy shopping at the L.L. Bean mothership, we grabbed delicious lunch and beer from the Main Beer Company mothership. Then we continued south to Portland for our final two nights in Maine. If you’re one of the 3 people that has read my blog for a while, some of these stops will be familiar. We snagged some excellent late day coffee from Bard and hiked up to the Portland Observatory. It happened to be Flag Day when we arrived in town, so admission was free. The observatory essentially looks like an inland lighthouse, and climbing all the way to the top (and hitting my head on a low beam) was worth it for the scenery, like the incoming fog in the photo above.
The fog continued to roll in as we walked down to the mouth of the Fore River ahead of dinner.
Valerie let Robert and I head out while the kids hit the hotel pool, so we walked into the first place that looked right—Blyth and Burrows—where we had some *stellar* cocktails. Hard recommend.
More...tland
We had one more full day in Maine, so we started with wood-fired Montreal-style bagels from Forage and coffee from Tandem before driving to Fort Williams Park so my family could see the Portland Head Light.
We returned to town for more coffee at Speckled Ax's location by Moon Tide Park before taking the kids on a sleepy but pleasant ride on the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad.
After the train ride we meandered along the water front before our last meal in town. Lots of character and random visual goodies to be found behind the more touristy bits.
Valerie took the kids to the hotel pool again and sent me out with Robert for a last bit of fun. We headed to Bar Futo down the block at the recommendation of our bartender from the prior evening to enjoy some obsessively-dialed-in Toki highballs and yakitori snacks. It was a killer way to wrap up our time in Maine.
After some final coffee and pastries the following morning, we said our good-byes to Robert and headed south. We no longer have a friend in Maine to bring us that far north, but Valerie and the kids love it so much that we may need to find a way back in the future.
CONTENT WARNING: health, body image, food, exercise. Also, this is going to be ONE LONG POST.
A week before Christmas in 2021 I had a really bad doctor's visit.
I mean, worse than the rest in the preceding few years. When I finally listened to my wife and found a primary care physician, I immediately triggered the expected medical responses. I was morbidly obese by our healthcare system's flawed BMI metric. My blood pressure was high. Follow-ups were a given to monitor my vitals and weight, because you know America hates fat people. I’d struggled with my weight and health since my teenage years, so I wasn't surprised and just went along with it. No changes in behavior meant eventually taking a daily, prescription blood pressure medication for years.
By that late December appointment in 2021, however, my doctor told me my second, follow-up blood glucose panel was bad. Like, type-II diabetes bad.
Here's the thing - I’ve known big folks like me who ate healthy and required no medication. Folks who still managed to enjoy at least semi-active lifestyles. I wasn't that. While I believe I'm somewhat genetically predisposed to hang on to body fat, I also know I personally lived a sedentary lifestyle and ate like absolute garbage. Nothing I’d tried in 20 years worked to change my behavior over the long term, but here I was staring down a closer-than-comfortable future where my family might not have me around.
I didn't want to ruin the holidays, so I waited to tell my wife after we got back from her mom's in early January, 2022. Yeah, it sounds like a New Year's resolution, but those aren’t healthy. This was coincidental timing. At any rate, I pretty much immediately changed how I was eating, trying out various alternatives and finding the right snacks to keep me going without relying on the wrong stuff.
***
In April of the same year I had some positive feedback on my progress from the doctor, and he convinced me to add regular exercise. Surprise! Eating better meant I actually had the energy to start slow with 30 minutes per day walking around my neighborhood. My walking pace picked up. My distance and time increased. My walking and resting heart rates started decreasing. But I found after 1.5 months I had energy to spare and needed some way to burn it. So I talked to my wife about buying a used bike.
***
I have always loved riding bikes since I first learned how around 6 or 7 years old. I grew up on the Jersey Shore in the 80s when tearing up the streets on your BMX was a sign of ultimate freedom. That was disrupted by my family's move to a rural highway when I was almost 13, where riding a bike would have been suicidal (think logging trucks at 60+ MPH).
I picked it back up in college since I lived in a city, even riding to work and around town from time to time. But my wife and I spent the first 1.5 years of marriage after school living in a suburban apartment complex. I had started to fall out of shape already and didn't have a lot of safe/inviting places to ride without first having to drive somewhere. I had a few other failed attempts to get back into riding when we bought a house in the city, but I never had the right size bike and my health continued to decline.
***
That photo at the top of the post was the used bike I purchased - it fit right, and while I was apprehensive about a single speed in a hilly town, I loved how it felt to ride, and the price was right. Initially I struggled to ride more than a few miles before I was exhausted, and only rode a few times a week. But my deep love of riding was reawakened, and it also provided the necessary outlet for all this additional energy. Two rides a week became five. Two mile rides stretched out longer and longer as time and my energy (and middle aged knees) permitted. I remember riding a horrible, bike-unfriendly route out to the suburbs and back on this single speed bike, clocking over 20 mies on a hot Saturday morning. My doctor convinced me to rent a bike during my beach vacation (which I did) so I could keep up my riding.
On the morning of September 1st, 2022, I was hit by a truck while riding to a coffee shop. Most of the bike (save the front wheel and various accessories) was mostly fine and I had no serious injuries, but I worried about how long it would take to replace or fix the bike so I wouldn't be derailed. Fortunately, I was back on my new, replacement bike (paid for by the driver) five days after the accident. Ten speeds gave me the freedom to explore more of the city, further away from my home, and that was all she wrote. I had no interest in racing. I'm too worried about crashing for aggressive mountain biking (ironic, right?). But I absolutely love riding around wherever I point my wheel, for as much time as I have available.
I kept riding as the weather cooled off. I took my bike to Wisconsin over Thanksgiving so I could keep riding, even in the sub-freezing cold! At this point, my riding is mostly limited by my available time.
So last month, less than a year after getting back on a bike, I finally rode the entire Virginia Capital Trail from the Richmond end to Williamsburg (okay, technically, from my house NW of the Richmond trailhead to Jamestown Park at the other end). I tacked on some extra miles and ended up riding 70.5 miles over the course of a day. I'm hoping by my birthday in early November to ride the whole trail out and back in a day - about 110 miles from my door to Jamestown and back. I'm certain I can do it if I get the right weather. A year ago I wasn't sure I’d be able to ride more than 10 miles at a time.
***
Look, I'm not trying to brag. I'm not a super man. I got lucky finding something I love at the right time in the right context. But I *do* want to celebrate, because in the course of trying to steal some extra years on this earth with my family, I regained an activity I loved as a child, with at least as much fervor in adulthood. I can't wait to reflect on all the places I’ve ridden after another year.
I was about halfway through my lunchtime bike ride today when it started raining. It was earlier than expected, but given the forecast I’d known it was a risk. After waiting for the downpour to settle down a bit I decided to start climbing the hill from Shockoe Bottom back up toward VCU, weather be damned.
The rain varied in intensity for the back half of my ride, but you know what? Once you’re fully soaked, you might as well enjoy the ride. I couldn't get any wetter, but I could be grateful to ride my bike instead of sitting at my computer. I took my glasses off at a stop light (better visibility, ironically) and squelched my way through town until I returned home.
The weather is so fantastic today, and circumstances lined up such that I could get a morning ride in before even starting work. That meant excellent lighting, and a good excuse to bring my DSLR along for a few shots. Logged over 17 miles before my first conference call :-D
My wife and I *love* pick-your-own-fruit farms as fun, seasonal outings. Yeah, we're paying a lot per pound and *we* provide some of the harvesting labor, but it's ultimately a fun excuse to get everybody outside and a whole bunch of fruit all in one shot. This past weekend we took the kids and my mother-in-law to Mt. Olympus Farm for strawberry picking. There are a number of berry patches in the region, but this was the first where, upon stepping into the field, we were overwhelmed with the smell of strawberries. It’s pretty dang tasty fruit, with ample supply of ripe, fragrant, delicious gems.
Of course, when you find a pick-your-own farm with a large quantity of high-quality fruit, you actually don't spend a whole lot of time there. We picked way too many berries in the span of about 30 minutes! But it was still fun, and the weather was beautiful. I'm already looking forward to returning later in the summer for blueberries.
Part of what's helped me maintain healthier eating habits over the past year (in addition to being scared stiff by a frightening medical visit in late 2021) is having some go-to veggies that I can just grab out of the fridge and start eating. Lucky for me I’ve liked carrots and spinach for most of my life, raw or cooked. The raw bit is critical here, because it removes most of the resistance to me eating the healthy stuff. All I have to do is grab some out of the fridge and start putting it in my face.
So nearly every day, for over a year now, I eat a serving of carrots after lunch (even if I get take-out or go to a restaurant) and a serving of baby spinach after the kids go to bed at night. Most people eating raw carrots (sticks, chips, peeled carrots, etc.) eat them with their hands. But the spinach? Well, I just get in there like it’s a hand salad. I like a lot of veggies, but I’ve never cared for salad (nor most salad dressings), so why eat greens with a fork? My wife laughs at me most of the time while I sit on the sofa with my approximately 71 grams of raw, baby spinach, eating it by the bunch like chips out of the bag.
So I had to chuckle at myself when I visited Garnett's a few weeks ago and ordered a plate of spinach while chatting with a pal behind the bar. A huge plate of unadorned spinach arrives at the bar in front of me and I stared at it for a minute before realizing it probably wouldn't be appropriate to tuck in to my food with my hands. I settled for a fork :-P
My family is heading out of town for a few days, so I wanted to get in one more big bike ride on a day off when the weather was incredible. After meeting my wife and son for coffee at the VCU area Blanchard’s, I pointed my handlebars toward the river.
I puttered around the river and canal for a while, appreciating a quiet weekday morning.
Not quite sure what they're doing in the Kanawha Canal, but maybe it’s dredging out a lot of the scunge that’s built up over the years?
After crossing the river twice (first over the T-Pot bridge and back over the Mayo after some Manchester meandering), I headed over to the Capital Trail for a few extra miles out to Varina and back before wrapping up my ride at Journeyman's for a maintenance drop-off.
I was under the impression my bike would be at the shop for a few days, but I got the call a couple hours later that it was ready and tuned up. So my wife dropped me off and I rode it back up the hill to the Northside. Crispy shifting, and no more squeaking! All told around 26 miles on the bike, and it felt incredible.
I was procrastinating. Rather than write the technical documentation that is my ostensible job, I went to the kitchen to deal with a sink problem that’s been a pain in the butt for the past month. The solution was so stupid, and left me so mad at myself, that I can only get relief by sharing the story with the internet.
Some time in February my garbage disposal stopped working in the kitchen sink. Flipping the switch did nothing. Resetting the breaker in the basement did nothing. Pressing the reset switch on the unit under the sink did nothing. With the switch on, there wasn't even a hum, nor any vibration from the disposal itself. It’s a 1/2 horsepower motor, so I’d expect *something* if there was current running through the device. So I figured I had to call an electrician.
But that meant looking into reliable, recommended contractors. Calling said contractors. Hoping at least a couple actually answered and/or returned my calls, let alone actually showed up at a reasonably near-term appointment date and time to take a look at the situation. So I put it off. Putting it off had consequences: the sink started clogging up - not because I kept putting anything in there without a strainer, but because there was probably already stuff that was unground in the disposal that dislodged and stuck in the wastewater pipe. Now I had only the left sink, and running the dishwasher would cause gross water to bubble up from the right sink (if you didn't know, dishwashers will often feed their wastewater through a disposal) before slowly draining. This is gross, yes, but more tolerable than trying to, you know, *call* somebody.
Back to the present where I reveal a key piece of information that I left out at the top. I had read the manual for the disposal. In addition to the reset switch on the underside of the unit there is a hex-shaped nut where you can insert some key (it is literally an Allen wrench in the illustration) to rotate the grinder in order to dislodge any stuck food. Buy why would I need to try this? It’s a high-draw electrical motor! If the unit was receiving power, it would have at least hummed, right? RIGHT!?
I got down on the floor and found the right size Allen wrench to fit the hole and rotated about one full turn in each direction. It was effortless - how on earth could anything be stuck enough to prevent the disposal from starting? Just for good measure I pressed and held the reset switch for a couple of seconds (as I had last month) afterward, and stood up to give it a last ditch try. And the disposal spun to life. Immediately.
At least I don't actually have to call an electrician.
This past Friday I had the good fortune of accompanying my daughter and her Girl Scouts troop to Washington DC by train. The main event was a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall. I’d never yet made it to this museum and WOW, it’s incredible. From David Adjaye and Philip Freelon's building design to the breadth and depth of the collection and exhibits, it was nearly overwhelming. Black history IS American history, and Black culture is a critical component of American culture (whether acknowledged or ripped off), so exhibits ranging from Black innovators to educational history, from the performing arts to the world of sports, presented a rich assortment of artifacts and informative displays.
I really need to revisit when I'm not with a large group of largely elementary school girls. When half of your attention is ensuring that everybody stays together and behaves, you cannot fully appreciate all this museum has to offer. I could spend an entire day just exploring the exhibition hall for Black contributions to music, for example. Which is where I stumbled upon The Mothership:
I was also delighted to stumble upon a display all about Richmond's own Maggie Lena Walker, complete with a number of artifacts and news clippings on loan from the Maggie L. Walker Historic Site, somewhere in a hall about Black entrepreneurship and innovation (3rd floor, I believe).
The weather was otherwise kind of crummy that day, so our secondary plans to have a scavenger hunt around The Mall were scuttled. But it was a great day traveling with my kid and her troop.
In June my family and I will travel to Maine for a week. Using the Every Kid Outdoors program as a thin excuse, we're going to spend a week between Bangor, Bar Harbor, Portland, and a few places in between. Also, my best friend Robert lives up there until he moves down to PA for his new professorship, so we’ll absolutely hang out with him as much as possible.
Acadia National Park isn't exactly the most mountainous, but Robert is used to hiking all over the pace doing field work. And I suspect we’ll have more fun in Acadia and elsewhere if we're all a bit more comfortable hiking for more than a few miles on moderate terrain. I wanted to make sure that my whole family understood that visiting national parks is more enjoyable when you can venture farther from your parking spot, so I decided we should start a series of family practice hikes.
The ironic bit here, for anybody who has known me for more than a few years, is that I may previously have been the least likely to suggest hiking at all, let alone a preparatory regimen. But since I ride my bike all the time now, I'm in quite a bit better shape to wander up and down hills than I’ve ever been. And these days, it’s actually the rest of my household that doesn't regularly get much exercise (excepting Maddie, but really only on Fridays at gymnastics).
With that, we parked by the Oregon Hill overlook and walked down the hill to the North Bank Trail, part of the James River Park system. For the first half of our adventure my daughter kept pace with me while my six-year-old hung back with Valerie, constantly talking about how "skinny" the trail was, and wondering why there were no railings. But he loves nature, so he wasn't complaining that hard.
Once we reached the fork between the Texas Beach parking lot and continuing on toward the pump house, I gave the family the choice of walking up and back via neighborhoods back to Oregon Hill, or continuing on a little further and walking back the way we came. Everybody wanted to get off the trail and walk back through the neighborhoods, hoping for mostly flatter terrain.
The walk back through the Maymont area, Randolph, and Oregon Hill was pleasant in its own way, but at this point both kids dragged behind so much that I frequently had to stop in order to let everybody catch up. I'm no athlete, but I guess being regularly active gives me a bit of a speed advantage that I wasn't expecting.
We finally made it back to the car, about 3.75 miles and 2.25 hours later, and I think Valerie agreed we needed more practice hikes ahead of our summer trip! But it was a great way to spend a brisk February morning outside with the family.
At the suggestion of my friend Ross, I headed north to Pine Camp this morning to ride some really light, non-technical trails through the woods. I don't typically ride single track or any sort of mountain biking (I'm more of a party pace, chill rider), but I do enjoy pointing my wheels off road and into nature. The weather was gorgeous, and I only got ensnared by thorns once, so I call it a win!
