Close Encounter of the Bear Kind

It's been a busy few weeks full of adventures!

Apologies to my 37 followers and (hopefully) other readers for disappearing -- have been caught in a whirlwind of work and fun, pretty much in that order.

After a sudden trip to Atlantic City for work (I won ZERO money at the blackjack table), it was off to upstate NY for a trip to check out my nephew's summer camp, and then back for another rapid-fire week of work, and then back up to upstate NY for a weekend at our friend's beautiful Catskills cabin.

Sandwiched in between there have been bike rides aplenty, and one scary bout of food poisoning that almost had me back in the hospital (luckily I rebounded and the ER doc decided to send me home).

I was healthy enough this weekend to travel to beautiful Fleischmann's in the Catskills. I had perused several hiking books in advance and was really excited to try a 4-mile hike to an old farm way up in the mountains. Driving out there M and I both commented on the area's extreme remoteness....

We should have paid heed to our instincts, because not 30 minutes into our hike, who did we meet? Momma Bear and her two cubs.


These are not the bruins we met (I grabbed this pic from TripAdvisor) but the cubs were just about this size. We had been moving silently up the trail when we heard a sudden rush of movement about 30 feet to our left -- it was Momma Bear sending her cubs up a tree to escape us. We were obviously a dire threat to them, in her mind.

It. Was. Scary. O..M...G. She stared us down and growled about three times -- short, panting, angry blasts. M started to run up the hill but I grabbed him and said, sotto voce, "Do. Not. Move."

Thank the Ursula Goddesses, she decided we were harmless and looked away. We chose that moment to melt backwards down the trail. If she had charged at us, we would have been goners. There was a stream about 10 feet behind us, and I whispered to M that if she ran at us, we would sprint to the stream and try to pelt her with rocks.

After viewing this, I realize we would never have made it to the stream -- those bears can move.


It only took this one encounter with the wilder side of Mother Nature to send us mewling back to our fancy cabin, complete with hot tub. We stayed there for the rest of the weekend!

All is well otherwise, health is good. Check in with you all soon.

Zen and the Art of Bicycling

Long bike rides are the best therapy in the world (sore bum excluded, of course). Today I took a long one after work, all the way up to the George Washington Bridge that crosses the Hudson into NJ.

There's a pedestrian path to go over the bridge, and from there you can bike up the highway to upstate NY. I have a friend who goes as far as Nyack. I can't do it though -- I have too much vertigo to make it across that span on foot.

Here it is, in the distance, and as I approach up Riverside Park and into Washington Heights.




Got there at last! Phew. Quite a ride. I tried to just be zen, not stress about work, and enjoy the moment. I came home and wiped out the rest of the cashew nut butter. Thank goodness it's gone, and thank goodness I was at least self-aware enough to buy a very small jar -- I knew, deep down inside, it was going to cause me problems. Now it's gone, and it's going to be a very long time before I get more.

I'm still on my upped protein intake and, funnily enough, I think it's helping me lose weight. !

Even M said to me this morning, as I was bending over to pick up something the cat knocked over (that is NOT my most flattering angle), "You look like you've lost some more weight."

For now, if eating more protein (in smaller but more frequent meals during the day) is working for my body, I'll keep rocking it. The more weight I lose, the faster I can be at the "Dodge the Boss" game I play at work everyday!