Eight Years in Review

It seemed hard to think back on 2013 without bringing back some of the melancholic events of the spring and then the freight train of moving west that was the fall.  I am in a happier and less stressful place now, with thoughts of the last year quickly expanding to the last eight years living in NYC.  An act of closure, I suppose.  What follows, then, is a conglomeration of those eight years and the weaving path that eventually led me to the present day. 

Home:

• 7 months in Astoria
• 3.5 years Harlem 123rd St.
• 1 year Hamilton Heights 152nd St.
• 1 year Harlem 127th St.
• 2 years Hamilton Heights 147th St.

Work:

• 2 years as receptionist/office assistant at an Upper East Side pilates studio
• 3 months (when very first moved to town) as receptionist in icky financial district gym
• 6 months intern at the Village Voice, working under the dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer
• 3 years teaching group yoga classes
• 6 years as private yoga instructor for really great people
• 2.5 years working outdoor retail at Eastern Mountain Sports
• 1.5 years developing an actual profession as a physical therapist

Ran:

• Distances progressing from 4 mile fun runs to official 5k to half marathon, marathon, 50k, 50 mile, and eventually 100 insane miles
• Central Park in Manhattan, Astoria Park in Queens, Van Cortland Park in the Bronx
• Hill reps on Tiemann Place in Morningside Heights, Fort George Hill in Inwood, Queensboro Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge
• Circumferential around Manhattan at/below 125th St. 
• This was when I was dumb about how to run and overdid things, running the 20 miles on Easter the day after breaking up with my ex William.  I was never so happy to see the AMC Magic Johnson Theater before and nearly kissed the ground but for my inability to bend at that point.  The result was some two to three years off from running.
• The Brooklyn 1/2 Marathon, Bronx 1/2 Marathon (my favorite, and has since been turned into a 10 miler), Staten Island 1/2 Marathon
• New Year's Eve 4 miler in Central Park that starts at midnight for four years in a row.
• Through all five boroughs in the NYC Marathon.  Through Philly the year the NYC Marathon was cancelled.
• Over all major and many minor bridges in the boroughs: George Washington Bridge, Qboro, Billyburg, Triboro Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Verrazano Bridge, Madison Ave Bridge, Henry Hudson Bridge, 138th St. Bridge
• Through the woods of northern New Jersey (the Long Path, which will always be dear to me), Harriman State Park and Bear Mountain, the Hudson Highlands including Breakneck Ridge and Beacon, the hills of northern Connecticut (I surely didn't know they were there before that), Catskills and their magnificent hills, Finger Lakes including hills of Virgil and Ithaca, and small town 10 miler around a lake for the 4th of July that I somehow won in what was a comparatively very slow year.  This last year I traveled for a big race for the first time, to Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains.
• From home in Hamilton Heights to the greater New Jersey/New York border and back.

Biked:

• Averaged 80-120 miles per week during the five years I commuted by bicycle.
• Commuting, would travel Harlem to/from Queens (teach yoga), Brooklyn (climbing), Tribeca (community college pre-requisites), Soho (work), and everywhere in between.
• Holidays in town became circumferential around Manhattan, the full 35 miles.  
• NYC Century around the outside perimeter of all that is considered part of the NYC five borough area, including the southern border of Brooklyn and the eastern border of Queens.
• NYC to Montauk at the eastern end of Long Island (only 100 of the total 130 miles due to time cut-offs thanks to some less aware group members, if you recall reading that post)
• NYC to Nyack in upstate New York.  
• Across the entire state of Iowa from Sioux City to Quad Cities.

Walked

• There's a remake of Johnny Cash's song "I've Been Everywhere" by Prairie Home Companion's All Star Shoe Band, titled "I Walk Everywhere."  That basically sums it up extraordinarily well.  Worth the listen: go to the PRC website, then look for the song title under audio highlights (a column on the right side) from 12/28 show
• For me, the longest walks include Harlem to La Guardia airport, Queens; to Long Island University in downtown Brooklyn; and to Fort Lee, NJ.

Notable Places:

• St. John the Divine, episcopal church in Morningside Heights
• Women's Monument a couple miles from the NY/NJ state line along the Long Path
• Grant's Tomb and Memorial
• Toast, our local burger joint
• Kula Yoga
• Cafe Amrita, Hungarian Pastry Shop
• Spring Street Brewery in Soho, Dead Poet in the Upper West Side
• Two Boots Pizza
• Union Square farmer's market

Experiences:

• MTA transit strike for three days while I lived in Queens.
• Holding a human heart in my hands for 30 consecutive minutes.  Because its so friggin cool.
• Being at the LGBT pride parade mere days after gay marriage was approved by NY State.
• Seeing my favorite radio programs live: A Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
• Hurricane Sandy
• Boston Marathon
• Being recognized as from KC by a guy who ran out of a bar when he saw me wearing Tim's old All American Indoor Sports soccer uniform tee shirt.  This, after only meeting two other people from MO the entire time I lived in NYC.
• Curb picking a solid oak end table from 96th and Lexington.  Not wanting to wait for subway transfers due to time of night, knowing the unlikelihood of being manageable on a cross town bus, and being too cheap to pay for a cab.  So I walked it all the way home to Manhattan Ave and 123rd.  
• Shoveling and chopping snow/ice from a handball court because we wanted to play that much.  The parks dept. folks even helped us.
• Having a guy hit on me at 116th St. in Harlem, only to have him continue to follow and talk with me until I reached the school security entrance down on 25th St. in Kip's Bay.
• Seeing a crowd of cyclists standing nervously in a group to protect a cyclist already down in Central Park.  There was more than a lot of blood from his head injury.  The stain was still there three weeks later when I had a race in the park.
• Biking through East Harlem on the way home from school when a gun shot goes off about twenty feet to my right.  I didn't recognize what it was, but the kids near the street sure did.  I followed their cue and got the heck outta there. 
• The Blessing of the Bikes, where yearly St. John the Divine invites commuters and weekend warriors alike to enter the hall with their two wheeled steeds.  Those that died while on a bike are named (a much larger list than it should be), followed by blessings and holy water sprinkled over those in attendance.  
• Harlem absolutely flooded by thousands and thousands of people around the Apollo Theater when Micheal Jackson died, and around the state building on 125th when President Obama was first elected.
• Biking to school down 5th Avenue in midtown, only to find myself riding alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade.
• Earning a doctorate degree, which required two years of prerequisites and three years of graduate school.
• Getting married in our own ragtag way at Grant's Tomb, and being glad after all that we included our immediate family.
• Trekking kittehs on the subway to vet visits.  Merus got lots of rides thanks to gingivitis and two rounds of tooth extractions.  I still have the teeth from the second round.

Bad Cat's ever growing list of things she eats:

• Spinach, kale including the stalk, brussel sprout, cabbage, cilantro, alfalfa
• Carrot, potato, bell pepper, squash, jalapeno, broccoli
• Avocado, apple, pomegranate, mango, watermelon
• Beans, refried beans, hummus, nut butter
• Popcorn, potato chips, corn chips, bread, pretzels, cereal, pizza, gingerbread, pecan pie, peanut butter drop cookies, apple crisp
• Wood chips, flies, cockroaches, rubber bands, tape, glue, foam, shoe laces, tea bags
• Note: these are not given to her, they are things she has eaten because she steals them regardless of whether we stepped away or simply turned our head away for a half second.  We really do not try to poison our cats.
• The only things she will not eat: coffee, orange/citrus, raw onions (only if en masse; if mixed with other things, then she will still eat it), tomatoes (again, only if solo)
• To compare, the list of what Merus eats: beans, avocado.  

Here's a fun video from when we still lived in NYC.  Notice that Sadie is afraid of oranges, but okay with an avocado being hurled her way.  (And forgive the orientation fail of the third section.):

Happy holidays!

Nathan and I are spending the holidays sorta kinda ranch sitting.  All others from the ranch are out of town from anywhere between 3 days and over 3 weeks, depending.  One usual ranch worker is around to take care of cattle needs.  Everything else falls to Nathan and I:  four empty houses (keeping wood stoves burning, and preventing pipes from freezing), four dogs (two uber friendly, one friendly to people but basically aloof, and one nervous wreck), two cats (one gives literal hugs while cleaning your face for you, the other is a bountiful kitten), eight chickens (stinky and quick little buggers), and innumerable plants. 

Our Christmas looked something like this:

Chicken coop.  Stinky.

Chicken frenzy.

Nathan with chicken feed.

The runaway.  "They don't walk on snow, so they don't go far."  Took ten minutes of chasing it around to get it back in.  It walked all over the snow.  Oh the taste of freedom...

Playing fetch with Luna and Nina after a Christmas Eve afternoon walk.

Blue bird Christmas Eve.

Mushroom bolognese, our Christmas Eve dinner.

Bad Cat pretending to be Good Cat on Christmas morning.

Nina, eagerly awaiting anything on our stoop.

Surviving the 5 minute car trip to Lookout Mountain in town for an hour's trudge through the snow and hills.  (They did much better on the return trip once tired from chasing a dozen deer, *grumble*)

Post-run second breakfast on Christmas - huevos rancheros, made with eggs laid the day before.  They were satisfying enough that we didn't even want real dinner later one.  (I also blame all the chocolate we ate.  Mom sent the whole bag of Reese's.  You know that will get eaten all at once.)

It has to happen at some point in order to qualify as a true holiday.

Sunset on a Christmas late afternoon walk with the dog dogs.  Before this, I accidentally threw Luna's ball atop one of he sheds and had to climb up to retrieve.  Then I accidentally threw the ball into the stream bank and lost it for real.  Luckily Luna is easily distractable.

Full moon

Full moons around here bring strings of nights where you could practically read by moonlight.  After a few 8pm walks or trots around the ranch with a friend, we decided to hold dinner up at their cabin by Old Women's Creek on the official full moon evening.  The sole purpose was for the walk out of the woods.  We took two vehicles since the "road" becomes more ATV appropriate in a handful of spots, so I left my Subaru three miles away at the last known accessible fork.  We piled into the mega SUV to make our way up to the cabin.  On return, the mega SUV left with the two kids who were definitely up past their bed times.  It was past mine as well, for the third or fourth night in a row, but the full immersion was definitely worth it.

Town of Del Norte in the distance