On to 2022

I skied yesterday! For the first time in 9 months I schussed the alpine slopes, with a wonderful solo day at Hunter Mountain. I had never skied at Hunter before and they are reporting a 1" total snowfall on the season at this point, but there was plenty of terrain open and the conditions were solid; it was a beautiful sunny day with zero crowds on big, fast lifts and I rode from 1st chair to last chair for 40,408 vertical feet and a max speed of 55.3 MPH. I look forward to more of that soon! The Beatles documentary,…

Renewal

Last night, we had a movie date: dinner and "In The Heights" at the local Nitehawk Cinema. We have watched countless movies at home during the pandemic, but returning to a theater was monumental! Sharing the experience with strangers, laughing and cheering while being served delicious food and beverages, felt like a real return to the community that I love and missed over the past 15 months; I look forward to more concerts and theatre in the near future! I have shifted into summer mode, with reduced work schedule and expanded travel plans. Vaccination rates are high and COVID levels…

Vaccination Nation

On Sunday we celebrated Alaina's 40th birthday, marking not only the day of her birth, but also the one year anniversary of our lockdown quarantine when we moved to the Land with no idea about the future. We lived there for about four months then returned to our beloved Brooklyn home and have remained in partial lockdown with limited school and work. It has been a difficult situation but we have been lucky in many ways. From the beginning of this pandemic, we held great hope in the development of a vaccine that would end it; in January, we upgraded…

Biden/Harris 2020

What a glorious day! It was an absolutely gorgeous morning, 70 and sunny, so we made a family excursion to Prospect Park. We have been making almost daily journeys there for the past several months; Ivy and Miles love riding their bikes and we have a well-established route around the lake, which I have been really enjoying on my new longboard! Today was truly special and I will never forget exactly where on our loop we were the moment Alaina said to me: "They're about to call it..." and instantly the entire Nethermead erupted in euphoric hoots and joyful hollers.…

I Skied Today!

October 10 (Andrew's Birthday!) Earliest start to my season ever! It was at a mall in New Jersey, but it was with my kids and the snow was consistent and the turns felt GREAT! Big Snow American Dream has been a fantasy teased by reality for over a decade; a derelict development dead and dormant after the 2008 financial crisis. A giant metal sloped barn, rising several hundred feet above the parking lot it shares with MetLife Stadium (where the 0-5 Jets were losing to the Cardinals in front of 82,500 empty seats), chilled to 28 degrees and covered in…

Homeward Bound

We are headed home to Brooklyn in 24 hours! We packed up hastily and evacuated the city on March 14, as the virus began spinning out of control. There was very little understanding of what was happening at that time and it became clear over the next few weeks that the city was infected much more than anybody realized; peak hospitalizations and deaths would occur about a month later, which we watched in horror from seclusion in Warwick. Fortunately, the numbers have diminished steadily in the city since then, although they have risen almost everywhere else in this country as…

Maine

We have temporarily relocated quarantine to one of my favorite spots on Earth, Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park in Maine; we have spent the last few days with my parents and will visit my brother and sister and their families on this excursion, which will take us to another of the most important places in my life; Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It has been a long time since we've been able to see any of them and we've missed them dearly! Hugging my mom and dad was so comforting and felt like a taste of normalcy in this isolated…

Projects

Some activities that I used to enjoy do not currently exist and the place I usually reside is 60 miles away so I have lots more time in a different place and I have been making the most of it. Here in Warwick we have woods and finding Kevin's mountain bike, a 25-year-old Specialized Rock Hopper, has changed my life; although I ride my bike every day on the streets of Brooklyn, I have never spent any time mountain biking and I absolutely can not believe that I was not diehard dedicated to the discipline! It is skiing on wheels!…

Now

It's just now, not forever. My consolation mantra.

Quarantine

It took a week, but I finally understood what quarantine means and what it implied about the indefinite future. It was a stark reckoning.