Back to Where?

For the fifth time since I ended my teaching career school will soon be starting without me, and the feelings are mixed as this time of year rolls around annually with its Back to School advertising, marketing, and store displays that you can’t miss even if you want to avoid them.  Long ago I saw a bumper sticker that summed up work for me perfectly.  It simply read, “A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work.”  Now the most fish I’ve caught in my entire life have been a few sunnies at a lake where my girlfriend’s parents had a small summer place back in the early 70’s, but in spite of the limited fishing experience the sentiment of that quote lives on for me.  Even though I loved teaching, I love retirement even more.

 Yes, there are days when I get up and wonder what I’m going to do all day, but somehow there never seems to be a problem with finding enough to do to pass the time till Jeopardy comes on and the evening officially begins.  Even on the rainy days of which there have been a lot this summer to preclude long adventures on the scooter I don’t have much trouble amusing myself.  

Putzing on Facebook is a major pastime for me, and I get to keep in touch with hundreds of former students who keep me feeling as young as they did when they were in my charge.  The rewards of the profession go on long past my productiveness in it.

 The opportunities for having fun are endless whether they’re biggies like taking trips out of town and out of state, or simply enjoying a snack on the patio chairs on display outside the supermarket.  I figure I’m doing them a favor by modeling the comfort of the items they’re hoping to sell and showing passersby that they’re capable of supporting more than average weight.

 I have the time to really enjoy meals, especially when I treat myself to lunch at some restaurant rather than just grubbing lunch from leftovers in the fridge.  Here I am thoroughly enjoying a plastic straw while the idiots in California and elsewhere in Liberal Land are in a furious rage about how such straws are killing gazillions of sea dwelling creatures.  As if there aren’t enough genuine things to be concerned about!

I have the time to spend in doing silly things purely for my own enjoyment and to make friends and family shake their heads when they see what I’m up to.  I’ve always liked being able to make people laugh in unique ways, and when you carry a camera everywhere you go, making something funny is never an opportunity that’s too far off.

 And, of course on the sunny days, there’s plenty of scooting to do!  I don’t usually venture more than 20 or 30 miles away from home, but the valley is sufficiently interesting.  No matter where I decide to go even though I often don’t know where I’m going to end up when I head out, it’s the ride itself that provides the most good for the soul.  With lots of time for good introspection and interesting things to see, hear, and smell at every turn, being on the bike continues to fill me with absolute delight in part because it remains amazing to me that I’m getting around on such a vehicle which I’d never have predicted that someday I’d be riding.

So, next week when my former colleagues are having their opening faculty meeting and then the following Monday starting up a whole ‘nother school year, you just might see me passing by a school somewhere with an ear to ear smile lighting up my face because of the many great memories I have of a fulfilling career, and because of the enigmatic joy of knowing I don’t have to be on the other side of the big desk ever again.

Bang the Drum Slowly

When “I Love a Parade" was composed in 1931 I imagine that its title well expressed the sentiment of many folks who didn’t have cool technology to play with in the air conditioned comfort of their living rooms.  Turning out to watch and to wave at other people walking or riding in formation continues to be a thing in some municipalities, especially small ones that will use a parade to kick off some local event be it the opening of Little League season, a shindig of some sort, or the beloved tradition of many a volunteer fire station, the block party.  And, of course, there are the holiday parades in the big cities with commercial sponsors, and the patriotic varieties that continue to be a tradition in many places.

As with too many things in which the pleasure faded as I grew up parades became more of a nuisance to me as time went by.  By high school during which which I had to lug and play the Sousaphone in countless parades including a L--O--N--G one in Philadelphia in '76 on a day that was about 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade (I exaggerate slightly for effect.) I’d become jaded to whatever charm might have been in any parade when I was a little kid.  For many of my adult years parades seemed to accomplish little more than blocking off main arteries within whatever towns or podunks I'd happen to be traveling through and delaying my progress in getting to wherever I might have been heading.  They came, in my mind, to make much ado about nothing* and I lost whatever ability I might have once had to squeeze some degree of enjoyment from watching local dignitaries of much self-touted importance waving from atop the deck of convertible models of sports or luxury cars and big fire fighting equipment rolling by.

With that preface, imagine me saying, “Yes!" when other members of our local loosely knit scooter group asked if I’d like to ride my scooter in a parade along the main street in their hometown of Exeter, PA, a small borough across the Susquehanna River and a few miles north.  Because our group is small and doesn’t often host events like scooter rallies or big group rides (And I’m not criticizing, because I’m not the sort to roll up my sleeves and pronounce, "Let’s do this!") I do like to participate when we manage to find worthy opportunities to ride together, even if it’s for a parade that would certainly close off Wyoming Avenue in Exeter, a main route through the west side, for an hour or so.  The occasion of the parade was to be the start of the Exeter block party which they're hoping will become an annual tradition, I believe.

Old men with band instruments perform on a float.  If I'd kept up the tuba I might have been one of them.

We met up at the home of the family that asked if I’d join them and after a while rode in formation to the staging area for the parade where we sweated in buckets while waiting for the whistle that I imagined would start the line moving.  Thank God for the fire trucks parked nearby in the shadows of which we found some relief from the unrelenting sun that threatened to bake us.  It was a nice opportunity, though, to catch up on things that had been going on since we last got together.  Though I can’t say I felt any "excitement" at the thought of being in the parade as I did when I was a Cub Scout and we marched in one, there was a certain type of it in the air and I can safely say that I participated in it at least vicariously through the others around me who seemed to be taking delight in the chance to pass in formation before our audience already assembling on the sidewalks along the route.

I enjoyed riding in a group again with some scooter friends and even though it’s not easy to talk to other riders when we’re moving there is a unique connection and camaraderie that’s felt as we scoot along.  Admittedly I paid more attention to the high school cheerleaders directly in front of our group than to whomever lined the roadway to watch us go by because with a lot of starting and stopping, I didn’t want to achieve local notoriety by running over a kid with pom poms.  I’d been somewhat worried about the heat gauge on my bike because at slow speeds and lots of idling bikes tend to run on the hot side and it was a problem with my radiator last summer that had the Piaggio in the shop from April through August.  Thankfully the parade didn’t stress the system and the fan and radiator did their jobs nicely to keep me rolling along like the caissons in yet another parade song.

 

Lunchtime is fast approaching so here’s as good a place as any to put this post to rest.  Yes, I did, after all, find some delight in being in a parade again!  The scooter has afforded me varieties of pleasant experiences I'd not otherwise have had over the past 11 years so I'm still very grateful for having seen the word, "Scooter," used as an example in a tutorial blog tag, remembering my Uncle Andy giving me a ride on a scooter when I was about five years old, and having my brain immediately jump on the subsequent thought of, “I want a scooter!”

There I am on the right leading the scooter pack. 

 -------------------------------------------------------------------

* When I say parades came to be much ado about nothing I do not mean to imply that our beloved war heroes shouldn't be honored.  I just fail to see how marching the current members of the Armed Forces and the equipment of war through the streets gives them the rich honor they deserve.

22,000 Miles and Counting

When I left the house this afternoon I had no intention of riding the 60 some miles I still needed to put the odometer over the 22,000 mile mark, but at about 20 miles out I decided that I might as well go for it since I had nothing more pressing to do today.  I headed out on a road that I figured would put me about halfway there and then just kept going past the half, not deciding till I had about 20 miles left to hit the milestone in which direction I'd go to complete the intended mileage.

Other than watching the miles tick by I had no particular thoughts going through my head until my nose caught the scent of the deep woods along a stretch through the uninhabited forest.  It's said that smells can take us back to particular times and places more quickly and with richer memories of specific events than our other senses, and today that was certainly the case as the smell of ferns and such hit me.

I was in the back seat of my junior high girlfriend's father's car, she and I still in our bathing suits from having spent the afternoon at their lake house.  The sight of her body in her yellow bikini, the closeness of her bare thigh pressed against mine, and that look in her eyes that made me melt all came back to me as soon as that smell of the woods came to me on the scooter.  It was a fantastic memory, and I was smiling from ear to ear as I recalled that moment from my past that lives in that part of my brain where the very best of memories are stored.

We parted ways after high school, but she's still in the area on her second marriage and I confess that I sometimes ride the scooter past her house when I'm out in that direction for a ride, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.  Whether I'd have the balls to speak to her if I were going by and she was on her porch, I don't know.  The last time I saw her was many years ago at my grandmother's wake, and even then as she stood beside me near Gram's casket my mind was whirling with the many memories we'd made together, some admittedly with our clothes off.

As I'd noted in the second paragraph up there, I had no particular thoughts going through my head until my thoughts went back to her, but as I continued my ride toward a new odometer mark she kept coming back to me in snippets of pleasant memories.  Dare I say I still carry somewhat of a little torch for her?  She'll always be a special part of my life though she hasn't been in it for years.

It was hotter than hell out there today and I'm hoping I had enough of a base tan so that I won't be sunburned later.  I probably went through about three quarters of a gallon of drinks as I rode, grabbing a gulp whenever I could keep going with only one hand on the handlebars and stopping for refills as needed.  I stuck to roads where I could just keep going for miles without having to stop for signs or signals so I didn't get too hot with a constant breeze washing over me.

Without planning exactly when the 22,000 would hit and where I'd be at the time, I simply circled a neighborhood in which I knew I'd be able to put down the kickstand no matter where I'd be so I could get a few pictures.  It happened here at the intersection of Yeaver Ave. and Murray St. in Forty Fort, a small borough across the river from home and only a few miles away from home.

There's a finale to the day's story that put a huge smile on my face.  After having spent some of my ride thinking about my former girlfriend, as I headed out of the neighborhood where I'd stopped to get the pictures I lifted my head from the very satisfactory view of the odometer and out of the corner of my eye I spied a young woman in a bikini in a backyard.  With my camera still on the lanyard, I slowed enough to get a picture of her as a bonus to add to the day's celebratory nature.

All that was left was to celebrate in proper fashion, with some food!  The nearby McDonald's was a perfect stop with cheap burritos and my final drink refill before heading home to bask in the accomplishment of having ridden 22,000 miles on two wheels.

I have only 2,901 miles to go to have ridden the distance of the earth's circumference!  I sure hope I can complete that equivalent circuit on my beloved Piaggio and with my head as full of wonderful thoughts and memories as the past 22,000 miles have provided.

TODAY'S RUN

When Everything Changes But Not in a Bad Way

I’d just written four decent sized paragraphs here, but then I reread them, highlighted the whole mess, and hit the Delete key because although they were decent sized, they weren’t decent all together, and I just wasn’t satisfied with them.  Unfortunately, I’ve found that to be the case frequently since I retired from teaching.  My thoughts aren’t the same as they were when I was still teaching, but I haven’t yet figured out if that’s a good thing or not.

In the past when I wrote here it wasn’t difficult to pick a theme and more or less stick with it throughout a post.  Now, though, I’m finding that after a paragraph or two I’m heading down an entirely different path of thought from where I’d just been a sentence or two before.  To be certain, in “real life” our thoughts are generally scattered all over the place as a day goes on, but in writing I was always taught, and taught my own classes, to write thematically within a given framework of thought that was determined at the beginning.

 Retirement changes all kinds of things and I’m thinking that my wanting to run in all different directions when I’m writing now is just another manifestation of my change in lifestyle from working full time to every day being like a Saturday.  It used to be the case that when I was out riding on the scooter I used the opportunities to be alone and focused to do some introspection – to dig through the mental cobwebs and clutter and just clear my head.  Now I’m more like a little kid at an amusement park while I’m out riding, looking all around me and appreciating the sheer thrill of things, the wind in my face, the things I see and hear and smell.  Although I’m still focused on the road ahead, eyes always scanning for bumps, potholes, gravel, and jackass drivers, my thoughts aren’t focused on any one thing.

For most of my 34 years in classrooms I loved the job, the kids, the subjects I taught, the moving through a typical school year day by day, yet now that I’m away from it I can look back and see that it was too much how I defined myself.  I can’t quite put this into words, but when you’re in the workforce, no matter how much you might enjoy your actual work, there’s a seriousness about it all that is always with you even in moments of seemingly great levity and after you punch out.  Even on weekends and during holiday breaks.  Even during summer vacation.  Retirement changes all of that!

 Now that I don’t need to use my time on the scooter to clear my head, I’m a little lost in figuring out what to think about when I’m riding.  My thoughts are like the roads I take often unknown in terms of where they’re going to take me and where I’m going to end up.  And while I’m liking that, I’m still a little unsettled by it because it’s so different than what I’d grown used to.

I suppose that’s a good part of why I haven’t been writing much here too.  I don’t come back from a ride as I used to with a clear thought of what I might write about and as a result I find myself too often with a diarrhea of words but a constipation of ideas.  Nothing’s worse than wanting to write, but not having something I want to write about, and that’s why I sit down here only to find my fingers rather than my brain  moving me in all different directions and find myself working Backspace and Delete like nobody’s business.

 I rather like that one of my favorite bloggers now breaks up a single post into different topics with separate headings and while it would make a lot of sense for me to adopt that style too I feel like I’d be stealing the concept and that wouldn’t sit right with me.  So I don’t know if I should write short posts often, or write longer ones less frequently.

Oh, hell!  It’s not that it matters terribly.  It’s not like I’m getting streams of great traffic here, but I know there are the few of you who check back from time to time to see if I’ve cranked out anything worthwhile and I do like to have something worth reading sitting here when you do.  Until I figure out what I’d like to do I’ll scratch out what I can and post some pretty ride pictures when I can’t.

Now that I don't need to count days till a summer vacation life is decidedly much more free, but awkwardly different.  Hopefully I'll grow into this every day's a Saturday thing!

 Who said retirement was supposed to be easy?

Over the Hill

I took the time shortly after February rolled over into March to turn 60.  60!  The official age of “old people” as I thought when I was a kid.  60!  The age of gray and thinning hair, age spots, aches and pains, medical poking and prodding, and loads of other questionably fun things.  I still feel mentally as if I just got out of high school, but here I am in this old man’s body thinking in usual Slovak (i.e. morbid) fashion that my life is ¾ over if I live to the age my dad did. 

I remember Dad driving me to high school and then college on his way to work on many mornings.  He’d often talk about when he was in high school, and every time he did that I thought that it was SO long ago and wondered how he remembered things seemingly so easily.  Never did it occur to me that when I was 16, Dad was only 24 years out of high school himself, yet here I am now 42 years past when I wore my first mortarboard feeling like it was just a turn of my head behind me.

My family made my turning 60 something to celebrate and that made the whole crawling into another decade older overnight much easier.  When I was born, my mom and dad and I lived with my maternal grandparents and my mom’s brother who is only 12 years my senior.  He was and is more like a big brother to me than my uncle.  He lives a few streets over here in “the shoebox” as he calls this neighborhood, still the same one we all grew up in, and we’re still as close as anything.  For my birthday, he and his girlfriend made dinner and sent it over.  I was in tears so wonderful it was to have my birthday dinner made with much love.

We had the first of my three birthday cakes that evening at Mom’s house as per family tradition.  It was a chocolate cheesecake!  We were able to coax Mom, who usually avoids having her picture taken at all costs, to take a picture of me on this noteworthy occasion.  I’m blessed to have her smiling next to me all these years later.

My official birthday party was two days later on Saturday.  My kids had the great idea of having me pose for cake smash pictures.  The cake smash concept started with people putting their infants in front of their first birthday cakes and letting the little buggers go wild, digging into their cakes and smearing them all over their tiny faces with great glee.  The idea spread in time to having 30 year old women doing the same to their birthday cakes.  Well, why not a 60 year old man my daughters wondered.  My elder girl who manages a FastSigns franchise and is a free lance photographer got it all together while my younger daughter made the cake for me to have fun with.  I think it turned out rather well!

After that it was time to get cleaned up and head to the party my family hosted in my honor at a local restaurant.  My younger girl got me this shirt to wear to the party and I loved it.  I have much affection for the poop emoji!

I had a wonderful time with close family and friends.  We had a superb dinner and nobody was in a hurry to leave so I had plenty of time to visit with everybody at leisure and to share favorite memories with all of them. 

The old man with his sweet daughters.

 Young friends make turning old a lot easier.  Well, okay - younger by one or two years at least.

 I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when my sister presented me with a senior citizen box of goodies including prune treats, high fiber cereal, and other products for us old people to enjoy.

 With everybody’s generous gifts I was able to get one of the very best Plantronics Bluetooth headsets to use when I’m on the scooter.  I’m now able once again (after being without this feature for a few years when my favorite Motorola cell phones took out the auto answer option) to take calls when I’m scootering without having to take a hand off the handlebar to wriggle it under my helmet and press the answer button.  Simply by saying, “Answer,” I can take an incoming call and just as easily ignore one with a verbal command.

I love them all for making turning 60 as painless as they possibly could.  In the week that’s passed since then I’ve found myself lamenting my age just a little to myself, but all in all I can’t complain.  There’s much to live for and now that every day’s a Saturday I don’t know that I’ve ever had a better time.  Now all I need is for March to stop feeling like January and for the snow to stop falling every couple of days so I can get back on the Piaggio and ride to my heart’s content.

A Great February Ride

Ah!  The butt end of February and so far I can say I’ve had the scooter out every month this year!  It was a magnificent day for a ride with the weather service reporting that it’s currently 76 degrees here.  I spent two hours on the road and they were among the best hours of 2018, though I suspect that my sixtieth birthday party in a few weeks might trump them a little.

The rose bushes are bare as they usually are this time of year as I fire up the Piaggio’s engine and let it warm up for a few minutes.  I checked the tire pressures since it had been a month since I had the bike out last and gave her the once over to make sure everything seemed to be where it belonged.  I don’t know much about motor vehicles, but a cursory check doesn’t hurt even by a dummy who might spot something out of place if he takes a moment to look.

When I leave the house here in the Wyoming Valley the basic choices follow the north to south flow of the Susquehanna River.  East and west from here lead to the boonies for the most part with long stretches of nothing in between so for a short ride such as I take on a day like this when the morning is sunny with more clouds and eventually rain on tap, north and south are the more prudent choices.  Today I decided to head south.

I really like riding through the small towns strung together here in “da valley” with their 19^th century charm.  The British who warred with the natives to take control settled much of the valley proper in the 1700s.  Toward the end of the 1800s came in turn the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Polish, Slovaks, and Russians to work on the railroads, in the coal mines, and various industries.  Many of the homes I pass by on my rides through the small municipalities were coal miners’ homes, and but for different choices of modern siding, they look essentially the same as they did for the past 150 years or so.

I was wearing my happy face through Nanticoke where I started driving slowly up one of the streets, past the home of my junior high school girlfriend, admittedly hoping to get a glimpse of her.  If she’d been sitting on her porch enjoying the sunshine I don’t honestly know if I’d have the gumption to pull to the curb and talk with her.  It’s been many years since we last spoke, at my grandmother’s wake sometime in the early 90s, and then only briefly.  I think about her from time to time, hoping she’s happier in her second marriage than she’d been in her first, and generally just wishing that she’s having a nice life.  We shared a lot when we were kids together, but we lost touch after high school.  I’ll always carry a small torch for her and wonder now and then what life might’ve been like if we’d stuck together and married.

I ended up passing this market on the center square, still in Nanticoke, and felt just a touch of a pang of misery that I experienced there when I was maybe 7 years old.  I was sent into the market with a dollar bill in hand to get a pack of nine-volt batteries.  I was smart enough to realize that I had enough money for them before getting them to the counter, but was devastated when the guy behind the counter announced a price that included whatever the sales tax was at that time.  I remember being horrified with the embarrassment of not having enough money and having to return to my uncle’s car without them.  Of course he gave me the nickel or whatever it was to go back and get them, but the damage to my tender young psyche had already been done.  From my adult perch it was silly that I had felt totally humiliated in that instance, but what a testimony to how well we remember such things from our youth even after fifty some years have flown by in the mean time.

   

It was just past the market as I was cruising slowly through the neighborhood when my radiator fan came on and I realized that my engine seemed to be running just a little hot.  After the nightmare I had last summer when the scooter was in the shop from mid May through late August I wasn’t about to take any chances so I decided to scoot back through the valley farther north to visit the motorcycle shop.  I’d expected that my mechanic would have little business in the middle of February, but there he was all backed up with work just as much in the winter as during peak riding season.  He dropped what he was doing to check my coolant, discovering that some air burped out of the line when he opened the fill tank and then adding just a sip of water to top it off.  I was glad I made the trip because on the way back to the house the heat needle was right where it was when I parked the scooter in the fall and I felt much better about it.

 

The ride back to beat the rain was thankfully uneventful.  I managed to spy a few things that touched different emotions.

 
I always take delight whenever I see another scooter in my travels.  As with certain foods that make me feel sorry for my daughters in their not liking them, I kind of feel a degree of sadness for everybody who’s never ridden a scooter.  They just don’t know what they’re missing I think to myself!

I was able to stop fast enough to turn on the camera and work the zoom to get this decent shot of a plane taking off at the Forty Fort airport.

I felt an extraordinary amount of glee in seeing that the gates to the county park were open.  They usually clamp them shut in late November and don’t open them again till late April, but there they were, as open as they could be!  There’s really nothing beyond them that’s worth seeing, just various ball parks, but for some reason getting beyond those gates always makes me happy because it’s usually a sign that the best of the riding season is upon us.  I often enjoy a lunch or a snack back there under a pavilion that I like because I can park the bike right next to it.

I smirked today as I usually do when I’m riding up this hill.  When I had the small 50cc scooter an old lady walking briskly could have beaten me to the top and I often pulled over to let the lines of cars building up behind me pass.  Sometimes I miss that the little scooter limited my speed and forced me to ride slowly enough to smell the roses, but when I need it the power of the 250 can’t be beat.

 

 I rode past the family home of my best friend who now lives in Boston.  The house is vacant now and while my friend has no claim on nor responsibility for the property he’s still curious about it so I ride past now and then since it’s only about a mile from here to let him know if anything is going on.  It hasn’t changed, though, since his brother died last spring.  Going past it brings back such wonderful memories of all the times I spent there with my friend’s family and him while we were in high school.  Crisp fall evening, Christmases, summer parties - they all seem like they were only yesterday, but he’s been in Boston for the past 42 years.

Finally, as I dismounted back at home, I grinned when I saw that there was still a little patch of snow on the ground just ahead of the Piaggio’s front tire.  I consider it a particular triumph even if a minor one when I’m able to get out on two wheels while there’s still some snow around.  While I was riding I encountered some big piles of it pushed into mounds by plows, but it seemed a bigger deal that there was still some in my yard while I managed to go out for a ride!

There’s a wintry mix in the forecast for tomorrow.  That’s okay.  There are warmer days just around the corner!

Mid Winter Musings

It’s a cold February evening as I key this post.  I’m sitting in one of the Sunday school rooms at a church miles away from home because my traveling partner is at a board meeting and we had to use my car to get here.  It’s a little chilly here in the room but I’m not complaining because it’s MUCH colder outside though not nearly as bad as it was last month at this time when we were in a DEEP freeze for days and nights on end with temperatures in the single digits and wind chills many more degrees colder.  But, as I often remind myself when somebody else isn’t reminding me, everything is relative.  Winter is now officially half over.  The days are getting longer, and in a few weeks with the return of Daylight Saving Time they’ll be longer still.  It’s all a function of where we are and how far we can see from whatever hill on which we happen to be sitting atop.  In other words, from where I’m sitting, things are looking up despite this view of the scooter from this morning…

Housebound, I’ve been doing a lot of eating.  Well, cooking, and then eating.  While a breakfast bagel isn’t an example of anything I’ve made, it’s a very good example of something I bought on impulse a few weeks ago and dispatched not long after when I got back home.

No, the real cooking has been with an Instant Pot received as a Christmas present.  Meals unlike any I’ve made at home are as easy to make as…  I was going to say, “As easy as pie,” but pies aren’t particularly easy to make in my estimation.  Anyway, an Instant Pot is a combination cooker that does a number of different things, but the stellar feature is that it’s a pressure cooker, something I’d never used before.

 

Beef and Broccoli every bit as good as from any Chinese restaurant!

  Now I imagine the meals I’ve been making with it lately might be just as good if they were to be made in a slow cooker, but the advantage here is speed and savings of time.  MAJOR savings of time!   Fall off the bone and melt in your mouth spare ribs in 15 minutes.  Rice as a midnight snack in ten minutes.  Mongolian chicken in 12 minutes.  The thing is remarkable and the meals are equally impressive.  The best so far?  Chili that rivals my favorite - Wendy's!

 

Chili as good as Wendy's and I should know because I eat a LOT of Wendy's chili.

Okay, I'll admit that this pork loin came out looking more like an unmentionable part of an elephant that isn't usually eaten unless by one of the big cats on the plains of Africa.

And when I’m not scootering, cooking, or eating, you just might find me sampling some new craft beers somewhere.  I had to laugh yesterday when my sister told me that our favorite uncle won a basket of beer at the church Valentine’s dance on Friday evening and gave it away because he doesn’t like craft beers and only drinks Genesee.  To each his own.  I can’t judge.  As I read somewhere long ago, I don’t know what’s Art, but I know what I like.  Scootering.  Good food.  Beer.   Not necessarily in that order.