well you know november has come when it's gone away

[ursamajor]

I've been busy the last little while! November update first.

Kicked off November with another jam-packed Northeastern trip, beginning with 36 hours in Manhattan on a beautiful late fall day. Our hotel was way the hell out on 11th Ave in Hell's Kitchen, but the walk into Midtown was manageable and laden with beautiful golden foliage I thought I'd be way too late in the season for. A quick hop on the 1 down into the West Village led me to brunch on the patio at Via Carota in the form of an artichoke heart omelet on the patio, olive oil and orange panna cotta as a secondi. Picked up a package of my most favorite non-chocolate cookies ever (the spicy pineapple linzer cookies from Té Company), then wandered aimlessly for awhile through the narrow, human-scale streets of Lower Manhattan.

In my meanderings, I serendipitously stumbled across the Brompton bike store, and finally got to test ride one! Good lord, New Yorkers, you ride fast, I was getting passed by almost everyone. (Predominantly by modded ebikes at Class 3 or above speeds; the bike I was trying out was acoustic.) A golden hour snack of chocolate orange gelato at Venchi fueled my continued peregrination crosstown towards the Lower East Side; nasi lemak for dinner at Kopitiam topped it off.

The only thing I planned the entire day was to attend C. Pam Zhang's reading that evening at the New Design High School, hosted by immigrant-focused Yu and Me Books. Being in a room with mostly Asian American authors discussing their highly relatable experiences is such a luxury; I'm grateful my highly circumscribed time in town overlapped with theirs. (Several other new to me authors were on the panel: Ligaya Mishan, Sabrina Imbler, and Claire Luchette.)

After the reading wrapped up, I still had enough of a second wind to do something I had somehow never done in 27 years of visiting New York regularly: went up the Empire State Building for the very first time! It was chilly up there, the sun having gone down hours before, but god, I love a good city lightscape, mostly amber lights twinkling all the way out to the horizon, demarcated by the outlines of bridges and buildings.

The next morning, I would oversleep, barely have time to run by Murray's to pick up a dozen bagels for noghri and fam before we caught the train up to Boston. Caught up to bitty on the Red Line, navigated to Arlington and arfur and Chris; dropped our stuff off and went to go catch up with mrieser over dinner. Finally got to see his new place and give his cat Oskar scritches, though I still think he needs to get his upstairs neighbors on the same page re the potential for a 12 foot dragon skeleton in the yard :) We ate and drank all the things at Bow Market, chillier than New York the night before but thankfully some heat in the courtyard. crschmidt picked us up, dropped Micha home, got me set up with the same RadCity bike I'd borrowed the last time (thanks Camberville EBike Lending Library!), and then I biked back to Bitty and Arthur's while he drove the non-biking Hyoun back.

The next morning, I got to do what I'd missed by THIRTY-EIGHT HOURS the previous trip: ride the entire length of the Somerville Community Path Extension all the way down to Paul Revere Park, still north of the Charles but technically in the city of Boston. It's hilly enough I was grateful to have e-assist, and skinny enough in some places that I'm concerned about capacity, let alone the ability to ride socially side by side, or even pass slower bikers. But it's finally, finally open. And I want to pick up a GoPro or similar by the next time I go out, just to be able to film my rides Streetsfilm or Bicycle Dutch style. hyounpark, meanwhile, went north, last long run before the half marathon a week later, jogging up the familiar Minuteman Bikeway; even ran into our fellow college choirister Sheryl on his run. (So many Amherst people ended up in Arlington!)

By the time I got back, it was time for us to head to Steve and Cris's for games, hanging out, and of course, the all-important bagel delivery; there may be a picture of him cradling his best beloveds :D. We played some kind of Star Trek cooperative game, bargained for candy with A, and got to hug a whole passle of dearly missed friends.

Sunday morning was "eat all the desserts" - leftover donuts Arthur and Chris had picked up from Masshole Donuts, a maple kouign amann and a chocolate croissant I'd picked up from Cafe Beatrice on my Saturday bike ride, flans from Buenas from Friday night in Bow Market. After that, we headed up the street and had an early tea with Aaron and Liane in their yard, and then Ingrid picked me up and we took a nice long walk through Somerville and caught up on the last four years. Gawked at all the changes in Davis even since the last time I was there five months earlier, marveled at how our own lives had turned out and that our friendship still remained despite all of the twists and turns life has thrown at us. (She, marveling, "You're *still* in touch with most of your exes?" We had very different dating styles, ahahaha; it still amuses me that I was the first in our friends group to date someone off the internet, and she's the one who eventually married someone she met on Match.com after expressing concerns about me meeting and dating people from online a mere five years earlier :D Me, bike life; her, Jeep life. Me, urbanist; her, fully embedded in suburban mom life. But the strength of a long-term friendship underlying all of that.) And then coming back to Blue Ribbon BBQ with Bitty and Arthur and Chris and Jane, freshly home from Mexico City, bearing delicious candies.

Monday, it was my turn to head north; I rode the Minuteman all the way out to Bedford, finding more fall foliage and a random food hall across the way from Hanscom; ate a burger while watching the planes take off. Returned the bike to the library, caught up with jpallan, waved at danamae and L running to pick up M as I headed towards Inman. One final dinner with Steve and Cris and A at the Thirsty Scholar; ice cream at Christina's afterwards, all of the hugs for everyone, never enough time.

Tuesday was a very long day. Up at 5 am eastern to catch our flight; home just long enough to drop off the suitcases and eat an early dinner, and then straight into tech week for our Stravinsky concert with rehearsal ending at 10 pm Pacific. Home by 10:45 and we fell asleep almost instantly. Same long rehearsal Wednesday and Thursday; thankfully the performance Friday went well! There's a reason the 3rd movement of the Symphony of Psalms showed up in the top five songs of my Spotify Wrapped this year, though, heh.

And things wouldn't slow down just yet - the morning after our concert, we hopped into the car and drove down to Monterey so hyounpark could run the Monterey Half Marathon, as he's done in years past! We stayed further up Alvarado Street this time, the event hotel being more than double the price of anything else, but still walkable to the start/finish line. Pre-race carb up dinner on the patio at Rosine's, then an early night for good sleep. I ate avocado toast in the back yard at Alta Bakery Sunday morning while Hyoun ran his 13+ miles, then popped over to Carmel for the afternoon. Tomato soup and melty cheese toast for lunch at Carmel Belle; replaced my aging bike helmet at Mad Dogs and Englishmen with a fancy one with lights; bought myself an early birthday treat of a fountain pen (a Lamy Al-Star) and gorgeous teal ink (Pilot Iroshizuku Syo-Ro) at The Pleasure of Writing; stumbled across the last bookstore in Carmel (Pilgrims' Way). Crab dinner at the Sandbar and Grill, and a walk along the coast listening to the seals barking and the waves crashing onto the shore. Monday, I'd drag Hyoun back to Alta for an early healthy lunch of salads (fig and labneh for me, beets for him). We spent our afternoon at the Aquarium as always, watching sea otters and turtles and penguins and jellyfish and sardines and numerous other sea creatures all doing their thing. Stopped by Elroy's on our way out of town where I found PANDAN-FLAVORED CEREAL :D, and then the long drive home.

And amid all this sleep-deprived timezone confused chaos, I may have gotten into overenthusiastic bikesplaining mode with a friend of a friend on Facebook re bike infrastructure, and only realized after the fact that said person was somebody I'd gone out on a couple of dates with back in the day (🔒). ROFLMAO. Hyoun cracked up listening to me come to this realization in realtime. Me: "What, you'd been reading my LJ for three years by the time we got together and you knew me for years before that, you knew what you were getting into!" H, smiling fondly: "Sure did." Some things have changed, but clearly some things remain the same. :D

I *thought* this was going to cover November, but we're already past the 1500 word mark and I'm only up to November 13; Thanksgiving next time, I guess!