Congratulations, Brett!

Today started out cool and bright, so we decided to take an early bike ride up to East Rock, anticipating that we would spend several hours in front of the television in the midafternoon, watching Green Bay play the Giants in New York. It was such a clear day we could see not only Long Island, but the bluffs and buildings on the other side of the Sound:
Naturally, you can also see New Haven's stunning shoreline, with its majestic oil tanks and abandoned wharves in the foreground. Breathtaking.

Knowing that our (well, my) beloved Packers were within the tri-state area, we felt that the loveliness of the day was an auspicious sign, and indeed we were right. The Packers beat the "Giants" 35-13, bringing Brett Favre=]-[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[8po00000000000000000000000 (Buddy wanted to say something about his hero Brett Favre, but I didn't expect it to be quite so inscrutable) the all time record for career wins as a starting quarterback. Congratulations, Brett!

The Stoop's Too Big Without You

Our friend Tracy moved away. We miss her. We're delighted that she got a job in Boston as a middle school technology teacher, though, because she has just the right combination of cleverness, sense of humor, bullshit filter, and inexplicable fondness for people under the age of 14 to be entrusted with the important and difficult role of teaching. She taught us to appreciate the front stoop, through her own habit of sitting outside grading papers, reading forest service-themed mysteries, or just drinkin a cold one in all variety of weather, day or night.

To add insult to injury, it appeared that Tracy had been replaced by someone driving a car with one of those Christian fish on the back and Texas license plates. Thank Jesus, it turns out the car belongs to Kat, graduate student from London, who moved to New Haven to complete the second half of a year-long fellowship which began at Texas A&M. She bought the car as-is on Craigslist. I don't think she knows what the Christian fish means, and I don't yet know her well enough to tell her. She assured me she doesn't have any guns though.

But back to Tracy. We really got to know her when we expressed our interest in checking out the Mohegan Sun casino in eastern Connecticut, and she proposed combining an excursion with a camping trip. Camping 'n' gambling is not unlike Tracy's many other innovations, one of which will certainly earn her her future fortune. I've never seen someone delight equally in spotting a turtle in an inland salt pond and settling in at a "Wheel of Fortune" half-cent slot machine.

So anyway, tonight when we got home from seeing Superbad (two thumbs up!) to escape the (global climate change) 90-degree September heat, we gave the stoop a post-Tracy try. We had no way to open the beers we had just bought, and it was downhill from there. We haven't given up on stoop-sitting yet, but the concrete will definitely not be nearly so cozy without T-racy.

Gorp and Other Revelations

We spent the last official weekend of summer camping in the scenic northwest corner of Connecticut. It was quite the weekend for birding, and we are not generally known for dialing B for Birder. As we set off on our first hike along Macedonia Brook, we followed a bluish-grey heron, who was close enough that we could hear his mighty wings pumping as he worked at evading us. Below is our destination, the top of Cobble Mountain, from which you can see the Catskills in New York in the far-off distance. If we would have been more Johnny-on-the-spot with the camera, this picture might include the two hawks that were riding the breezes just behind me. This is also where Johnny sampled his first gorp. I was shocked and horrified to discover that he's such an incorrigible city kid that he'd never even heard of it. He thought the name, an acronym (as everyone knows) for "good ole raisins and peanuts," was so lame he didn't believe that I hadn't simply made it up. Intent, as always, to prove him wrong, I consulted wikipedia. It turns out that gorp is an old English verb meaning "to eat greedily," and that the acronym is actually just a folk etymology (a new and delightful term for me ... a linguistic old wives' tale). So anyway, here's where we gorped our gorp: This is the view to the east of the more gently rolling Taconic Mountains in Connecticut:
This was our first camping trip with bikes (thanks to Rachie's Recycled Xmas present of a car rack), of which we took advantage to complete the arduous journey across the state line (~ two miles away). The country roads in New York were surprisingly empty, and passed by some quiet little farms:
Two people who hail from America's Dairyland and the city known as "hog butcher to the world" have no cause to be enchanted by farm animals. But New York hosts some charming cows.
We also spent some time hiking along the Appalachian Trail. We reached this hike, along the Housatonic River, by driving out a gravel road for several miles. This gravel road also happens to be part of the AT, and the through-hikers, loaded down with their backpacks, gave us the stinkeye when we passed by in our Hummer. Suckers.