After a week of working, adventuring, and eating our way around Lake Placid, we woke up on Saturday morning ready to head back to the anklebiters – but we had one more adventure planned on the way home: a stop at Mt. Van Hoevenberg for mountain biking (me), walking (Steve), and hopefully riding the mountain coaster (both).
Mt. Van Hoevenberg is right outside of Lake Placid, and housed the sliding sports at the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Winter Games. I’d been wanting to check it out for ages. The complex now boasts a network of trails for cross-country skiing (in winter) and mountain biking (in summer); the trailhead for Mt. Van Hoevenberg itself (part of the LP 9’er hiking challenge); a bobsled experience; and a mountain coaster. On my agenda: exploring the trails via my mountain bike, and – hopefully – riding the mountain coaster. I’d tried to buy advance tickets earlier in the week, but they were sold out. Still, I thought there was no harm in at least asking if there was a chance, and the desk attendant explained that they under-sell advance spots and reserve room for walk-ins depending on track conditions. She was expecting the track report in about half an hour, if we could wait? We could. Steve and I wandered around the facility, checking out the old bobsled and other Olympic paraphernalia, until we got the good news – track conditions looked good, and there were two spaces for us on the mountain coaster. Hurray!
But first things first! Adventure Annie was raring to hit the trails.
One of the complex employees, seeing me wheeling my mountain bike in the direction of the trail network, helpfully pointed out the sites. “If you’re not back by sunset, we’ll send out a search party,” he told me gravely, “and you should know that the search party is a big black bear.” I laughed and assured him I’d only be an hour, as I now had mountain coaster (!!!) tickets.
To the trails! This bike is way too clean.
This is the face of someone who has been enjoying some truly epic single track:
After tooling around looking for the best trails, I barely felt like I was getting my wheels under me when it was time to head back to the main facility and meet up with Steve for the mountain coaster ride. I was bummed that my mountain biking had flown by so quickly, but seriously stoked for the next adrenaline rush.
I quickly locked Adventure Annie back on the car, then met up with Steve by the main lodge.
We checked out the scenery – including the historic bobsled track; so cool! – while we waited for our turn on the mountain coaster.
Ready to fly!
Each rider had his or her own car, styled like an Olympic bobsled. Steve was Team Canada, and I was Team Austria. Each repping (part of) our own family heritage!
Snapped one last picture on the initial incline, then tucked my phone away so it didn’t fly out of my hands on the descent. What a ride! It was totally exhilarating, and I could have flown around the mountain all day – but we had to get back to Albany and the kiddos. As we headed for the car, grinning broadly, we had one last surprise – I heard my name shouted, and turned around to see our mutual friend Jeff and his daughter Lucy waiting in line for the mountain coaster. Small world! We chatted to Jeff for a few minutes, then left them to enjoy their Adirondack weekend and headed back to our own rugrats – refreshed and pleasantly exhausted from a week of adventuring.
This ends Adirondack recaps (for now; we’ll always be back!) but not travel recaps. Next week I’ve got the first of a series of posts to share with you about Shenandoah National Park. Stay tuned!
Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby. I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book. Here are my reads for October, 2021.
The Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot #2), by Agatha Christie – At this point I think I’ve probably read half or more of Agatha Christie’s prolific output, but this was one I’d not yet tried out. I enjoyed the second installment of Poirot and Hastings, in which the friends travel to France after they are summoned by a desperate letter, only to find they have arrived too late to prevent a murder. But the murder itself is not quite what it seems – fortunately Poirot is on the scene to unravel the knotty threads. I listened to this on Audible, and it was such fun.
O, the Brave Music, by Dorothy Evelyn Smith – The new British Library Women Writers series has been on my radar since it was announced, and I am trying to stay current on releases (I am getting in near the ground floor, which helps – by the time I started buying BL Crime Classics there were too many to stay up-to-date on). O, the Brave Music was a good place to start in both buying and reading: the coming-of-age story of Ruan, an ugly duckling who suffers great losses but is sustained by friendships. I adored it.
The Stubborn Light of Things: A Nature Diary, by Melissa Harrison – I’ve been a fan of Melissa Harrison’s seasonal anthologies (read on) and have been gradually reading them all year. The Stubborn Light of Things is a collection of Harrison’s Nature Notes for The Times, and is a restful and rejuvenating read.
Longbourn, by Jo Baker – Although I normally don’t enjoy Jane Austen adaptations, I’d heard such good things about Longbourn that I decided to give it a try – and it did live up to the hype. “Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the servants” is the most common descriptor, and that’s technically correct, but there’s much more to it than that. Longbourn housemaid Sarah is the primary character, and she has a story and romance all her own; her life and interests definitely do not revolve around who the Miss Bennets will marry. I loved the different perspective and the new take on one of my very favorite books.
Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archeological Memoir, by Agatha Christie Mallowan – After divorcing her first husband, Archie Christie, Dame Agatha found love again with Sir Max Mallowan, a renowned archaeologist. Come, Tell Me How You Live is her fascinating memoir of the months she spent traveling in Syria and Iraq with Max, accompanying him on his lengthy archaeological digs. It was both hilarious – I literally LOLed many times – and fascinating.
Frenchman’s Creek, by Daphne du Maurier – Daphne du Maurier is best known for her suspense novels, so I figured Frenchman’s Creek, which I’d not yet read, would make a good chilling choice for the lead-up to Halloween. Joke’s on me, because the action took place over a sultry midsummer; it’s a classic example of hot weather making people behave badly. Bored, restless Lady Dona St. Columb flees her wine- and mischief-soaked life in Restoration London, taking her two children and their nanny to her husband’s country seat in Cornwall. There, Dona is titillated by her stuffy neighbors’ stories of French pirates ravaging the coastline. Soon enough, she finds herself face to face with the pirates’ swashbuckling captain – and obviously, she is immediately and deeply attracted. Dona falls head-over-heels in love with the Frenchman, but when the local gentry mounts a determined effort to capture him, she will have to choose between her desire for a footloose life of romance and adventure, and her equally deep attachment to her young children. I loved this, and will revisit it over and over again – but next time, in summer.
Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places, by Robert MacFarlane, Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards – As a fan of Robert MacFarlane’s poetry, I am always looking out for his work and I picked this up in Old Town Books this month. The title seemed appropriately eerie for Halloween, and it was that indeed. Ghostways includes two short pieces: Ness, about a weapons-testing wasteland, and Holloway, about a hidden half-underground world. I loved Holloway, but was underwhelmed by Ness. (Also, note that Ness includes two completely unnecessary swears. Demerits were issued.)
Autumn: An Anthology for the Changing Seasons, ed. Melissa Harrison – It’s a Melissa Harrison month! I enjoyed the last of her seasonal anthologies I’d not yet read, Autumn, very much – although I think Winter is still my favorite.
The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant #5), by Josephine Tey – Here’s one I’d been meaning to get to for ages, and it didn’t disappoint. The Daughter of Time finds Inspector Alan Grant laid up in hospital, recovering from a leg injury sustained while in hot pursuit of a criminal. Faced with weeks of endless boredom, Inspector Grant is unexpectedly captivated by a portrait of Richard III, one of England’s most notorious kings (he supposedly murdered, or commissioned the murder of, his two young nephews – the Princes in the Tower – to secure his claim to the throne). Inspector Grant finds it hard to believe that Richard III, with a face more suited to the bench than the dock, could be a murderer – or at least that he could have been responsible for this particular murder. He enlists the help of a young researcher and applies his formidable brain to answering the questions: was Richard III responsible for the Princes’ murder? And if not, whodunit? I was glued to every page and my only complaint was that it was all over too soon; I’d have wandered through the sixteenth century with Inspector Grant for hundreds more pages.
The Story of the Country House, by Clive Aslet – A book I unashamedly bought for the cover alone (look how gorgeous!), The Story of the Country House was a fun and fascinating read. Exploring the architectural history of English country houses from the Roman villa to the suburban sprawl of present day, Aslet goes into detail about building materials, architectural trends, and the like. I was expecting a little more diversified subject matter: there was some upstairs-downstairs, some food, some entertaining, etc., but not as much as I thought there’d be. So if you read this, don’t go into it expecting Downton Abbey. But it was incredibly interesting and a beautifully produced book – definitely one to keep on the shelves and refer back to time and again.
The Manningtree Witches, by A. K. Blakemore – I preordered The Manningtree Witches after hearing about it on the Slightly Foxed podcast; the author, A. K. Blakemore, is a celebrated poet so I figured the writing would be gorgeous, and it was. Plus, I can’t get enough historical witch material; you know me. Of course, it gave me nightmares. But as Halloween reading – perfect. (And I did finish it on Halloween.)
Pumpkinheads, by Rainbow Rowell – My annual tradition for three years running now has been to pull out Pumpkinheads as soon as I turn off my lights, blow out the jack-o-lanterns, and bring in the candy. I love this sweet story of friendship, succotash, and hayrides – and the art is the perfect accompaniment. If you’re looking for a Halloween read for next year and you can’t handle anything too scary (connection!) put this on your list.
Whew! Busy bookish October, indeed. My summer reading slump-ish thing is definitely over – even with a weeklong business trip to Seattle (during which I was too busy to read much at all) I managed to knock back twelve books, and enjoyed them thoroughly. The du Maurier and the Tey were definitely my highlights of the month, and any month that includes Melissa Harrison is good with me. I’m looking forward to long cozy nights with my book and my candle into November, too – it’s reading season, friends.
Happy Monday, y’all! And November. Shut the front door. How was your Halloween? Are you a trick-or-treater, or more of a door-opener, or do you turn off the lights and hide? By inclination, I am more of a door-opener, but we get exactly zero trick-or-treaters (it’s my curse in life) and I have two to walk around, so we were out roaming the streets. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Halloween aside, it was a low-key weekend. Soccer was cancelled because of weather (we had torrential rainstorms on Friday, which caused soggy messy fields and the league cancelled both Friday practices and Saturday games) and swimming was also off the calendar because it was the fifth weekend in a month, so the swim school was closed. With all that extra time on our hands, we barely knew what to do with ourselves. So we spent Saturday bumming around the house – we were all a little tired, I think. I know I was; it was an especially hectic week at work with two depositions, a mediation, and a big urgent project (a classic “your lack of planning has now become my emergency” situation). I was out of sorts all of Saturday, made worse by a political campaign volunteer (we’re in the middle of a hotly contested gubernatorial election – kill me now) ringing my doorbell to pitch his candidate. I wordlessly pointed to my “No Soliciting” sign, and he then tried to argue with me about whether the sign applied to him. As I told Steve later, I would have been annoyed at being bothered no matter whose campaign the volunteer was from, but I was much more annoyed because the kid who disregarded my sign, dragged me away from my book, and then tried to argue with me was… there on behalf of the candidate I am very much not supporting. Anyway, that minor irritation knocked me out of sorts way more than it should have.
On Sunday, we all needed a break from the lazy Saturday; one day of bumming around the house and we were legit climbing the walls. So we hit our favorite county park for a morning hike (no avian excitement this time, but lots of pretty leaves), and then the kids and I banged out a couple of jack-o-lanterns in the afternoon, before the veterinarian and baseball player headed out to gather up their loot. They did very well, and dragged their heavy bags home in the gathering dusk; a successful Halloween indeed.
Reading. Quite a reading week! I don’t get all in on the Halloween reading the way I sometimes do with Christmas, but I had some spooky reading planned for the weekend, anyway. First up: finishing The Daughter of Time, which I absolutely loved – definitely a highlight of the year. Then I spent the rest of the workweek over The Story of the Country House, a new release that I’m not ashamed to admit I bought entirely because of the cover. (I mean. Look at it.) Really enjoyed it, although it was more focused on the architecture of the different periods in country house history; there was less upstairs-downstairs, food, sporting, and suchlike than I expected. Still great though! As the weekend rolled around I turned my attention to Halloween reading: first up, I scared the pants off myself with The Manningtree Witches (literally, I had nightmares). On Halloween evening itself I curled up with my traditional (for the last few years, anyway) cozy read – Pumpkinheads, by Rainbow Rowell, which is utterly charming. And then for good measure I started Paper Girls, a comic by Brian K. Vaughn that begins on the day after Halloween, so it seemed like a good choice. Plus I’ve been meaning to try it out for ages.
Watching. The usual! Lots of Monty Don, Miranda Mills, and the latest Bake-Off episode. We also watched Black Panther with Nugget, and it was just as wonderful as I remembered. He loved it.
Listening. I’m still on a bookish podcast kick; multiple episodes of Shedunnit – my fave – and Tea or Books. I’m on a kick of taking long rambles around the neighborhood with my earbuds; it’s keeping me going.
Making. I finished my lace infinity scarf – haven’t blocked it yet, though – and started in on my Christmas knitting; hoping I can keep this streak going and have some handmade gifts for my favorite ladies. Also made a few fresh, healthy dinners – as usual – and because ’tis the season, a batch of roasted pumpkin seeds.
Moving. Sigh. I was hoping to tell you that I had finished my virtual MCM 10K, but I just… didn’t do it. There’s still a week to go, though, so I’ll get it done this week.
Blogging. October reading round-up coming atcha on Wednesday, and the last Adirondack recap post on Friday. Check in with me then!
Loving. My extended disco birthday continues – this weekend I opened a slightly belated gift from my BFF, Rebecca – a sampler of August Uncommon teas. She says she likes them better than Mariage Freres, which is high praise indeed. I can’t wait to try! And I am so blessed to have these people in my life, who send me tea and love for another trip around the sun.
covered in flour 