The Mississippi Delta Trip - Part II

Go back to Part I

Day 4 (Monday - New Orleans to Natchez):

Monday morning I wolfed down a quick breakfast so that I could be on the bus in time for our 8 AM departure for Whitney Plantation. In New Orleans we had been getting around by summoning fleets of Ubers; Monday marked the beginning of the chartered bus part of our tour.

Whitney is an old sugar plantation which, admirably, is dedicated to educating the public about the history and legacy of slavery in the south. As bad as it was working cotton, apparently sugar was worse; the life expectancy of slaves was only a few years. That's because while cotton is processed elsewhere once picked, sugar is processed on site, so in addition to field work hacking tough sugar cane, slaves manned a 24 hour processing plant in which the sugar was extracted from the cane and then concentrated down into molasses. That meant long hours stirring huge boiling cauldrons. Terrible, hot,  dangerous work on top of all the other horrors of slavery. Our guide, a very passionate woman who was happy to be leading a group "of her generation", did point out that Louisiana  was unique in that slaves were allowed to earn money in their (minimal) spare time, and if they saved up could buy their freedom. Even though she was eager to present an unvarnished version of plantation life, even she couldn't resist a little whitewashing, as we learned later that the ability of slaves to buy their freedom was pretty much stamped out in practical terms if not in statute.

Sugar kettles 

On the plantation tour

Children's Memorial at the Plantation

The plantation house. Interestingly, it was only one room deep - for ventilation in the sticky climate

Slave quarters

After the sobering plantation tour we got back on the bus, headed to Natchez. I wish I had kept my phone out to take pictures of some of the businesses we passed, like "Praise the Lard" pork shop. We ate lunch on the bus. The food, from Mulberry Market in Baton Rouge, was surprisingly good. Who would have expected decent bagels and lox in Baton Rouge, Louisiana?!

Yes, bagels and lox in the Mississippi Delta!

In Natchez we visited Temple B'nai Israel. There's no active congregation there anymore, but the building is preserved by the city and the Institute for Southern Jewish Life. Clearly it was built by a well-heeled congregation (cotton trading money), and apparently it was always oversized - sized aspirationally for a large Jewish community which never came to pass. Instead, after peaking in the 1950's, the Jewish community slowly dribbled away - the next generation moved away to larger cities, and the community and its historic businesses pretty much died out. As one of our guides said, "the Jewish history in the South is of fathers building businesses for sons who didn't want them." Hearing that as a son who didn't go into a family business which had been built over two generations, that quip smarted! Anyway, I imagine there are lots of buildings like this across the South and small-town America in general. This one is being preserved - but not all have such a lucky fate. 

B'nai Israel had a lovely pipe organ - not atypical in "classical" Reform Judaism, which modeled aspects of its religious practice after Christian church services (my childhood synagogue had an organ, as, at the time I joined, did the synagogue I belong to in Virginia). As I may have mentioned in Part I, the Jews of the South were largely German/Alsatian immigrants, less traditionally religiously observant than the Eastern European Jews who came later, and more likely to affiliate with the more assimilated Reform variant of Judaism, hence the organ and choir. Another quip: "there were Jews in the South, but not necessarily Judaism." Unfortunately, no one was around to power the organ up, so I just posed with it for pictures.

Wish I could have played this baby!

Temple B'nai Israel: Exterior

That organ again

B'nai Israel: Interior

We also visited the historic Jewish cemetery, which includes the grave of seven year old Rosalie Beekman, the only Natchez resident to die in the Union attack on the town in 1862.

We stayed overnight in downtown Natchez, which is a small city witht a lovely setting alongside the river. We went out for a walk to see what we could find in terms of food. A lot of the group chose a tamales restaurant, and others chose BBQ. That left just three of us who didn't want a meat-heavy dinner: Rabbi Stein (a vegetarian), a fellow congregant Rebecca, and I. The three of us ate at a surprisingly upscale Italian restaurant, where I had a very nice salad and flatbread pizza. Overnight was at the Hampton Inn - which was a step up from the Hampton Inn I stayed at in Vicksburg long ago in that there wasn't an armed guard in the lobby.

I will add that my fellow traveler Rebecca is originally from Texas and so Southern Jewry wasn't as much of a surprise to her as it was to some of the rest of us. Also, she was certain that her Galveston relatives must know my brother's wife's family, since there aren't many degrees of separation between most Galveston Islanders. We each texted our relatives. Indeed, they did know each other.

Day 5 (Tuesday - Natchez to Jackson, MS):

Another early morning departure. Our first stop was the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which is pretty up-front about the state's nasty history of racism, including violence directed against civil rights activists. The peak of the civil rights movement was during my toddlerhood, so I've just got a fuzzy, jumbled history in my head. There was a lot of focus at the museum on, for example, the Freedom Riders - integrated groups of activists who rode Greyhound and Trailways buses into the South to test the United States Supreme Court decision banning segregation in public interstate transportation. Needless to say, in Mississippi Freedom Riders were arrested, and in some cases jailed. Buses were bombed, people were beaten - it wasn't pretty. 

Mississippi racial history isn't pretty

Shame on you, Mr. Friedman, for contributing to this song

We also visited the home of civil right leader Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in his driveway by a member of the White Citizens' Council, a segregationist/racist group. Evers was enough of a target that he usually had police protection - strangely absent the day of his killing - some say the cops were Klan and were in on it. The house has been preserved; you can still see where a bullet from the high powered hunting rifle used by the assassin went through the front of the house, traveled through the living room and another wall into the kitchen, and dented the refrigerator. Evers was taken to a local hospital where he was initially refused admission because the hospital was whites-only. He died at the hospital, having under tragic circumstances achieved the milestone of being the first black person to be treated there.

Medgar Evers' house

Bullet hole by the toaster. Evers' wife and young children were at home at the time of his assassination

We also visited Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, which was founded in 1860. Unlike the synagogue we visited in Natchez, Beth Israel is an active congregation. Their rabbi had interned at our congregation while he was in rabbinical school; in fact, the congregant with whom he had stayed during his internship was part of our group, so he was happy to see us. 

The congregation's rabbi during the 1960's, Perry Nussbaum, was a Yankee transplant and a strong advocate for civil rights, which put him a little out of step with his congregants, not all of whom were on board with this whole black/white equality thing. Both the synagogue and Nussbaum's home were bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, but apparently he was undeterred. At Beth Israel Rabbi Nussbaum was spoken of with great veneration. It was interesting after the trip to read up on him in Wikipedia. Apparently, while he was indeed a fearless advocate for civil rights, he was also a headstrong, sometimes abrasive character, who was shocked to find how assimilated his congregants were and chided them for having Christmas trees in their homes, and he complained they had no interest in Hebrew, Zionism, or much in the way of traditional religious practice. Welcome to Mississippi, Rabbi Nussbaum!

I will say that after Beth Israel was bombed, the Greater Jackson Clergy Alliance, which Nussbaum had founded, marched in support of the synagogue. The group of 60 clergy representing 10 faiths was the first interfaith event ever to take place in Jackson!

At lunch Rabbi Stein were again the odd people out, choosing a ramen restaurant where we could get vegetarian food (the ramen was much better than one would expect in Jackson, MS - and was delivered by a robot!). The group ate dinner together at Jackson institution Hal and Mal's. The vibe of the place was a little hard to figure out - TGIFriday's kind of decor, but a more upscale menu, and a live jazz trio. I had a tasty redfish platter ("redfish" is a southern thing - but I think it's really the same fish as either what we call drum or some species of snapper).

The next day we were headed to Greenwood Mississippi.

Ramen delivery robot

Continue to Part III

The Mississippi Delta Trip - Part I

 Here are my takeaways from the Jewish History of the Mississippi Delta trip I just participated in: 

(1) People are awful

(2) People are amazingly resilient

(3) People are occasionally awesome

(4) Music is always good

The primary focus of this trip has been the history of Jews in the American South, particularly in the region known as the Mississippi Delta, but we've also touched on African-American history - slavery and the civil rights movement. So we've had ample opportunity to explore people at their worst and best. Plus, American roots music has never been far from our minds as we've traveled from New Orleans through the region known as "the birthplace of the blues", to Memphis.

This was a week-long trip organized by my synagogue and I'm not going to write a blow-by-blow account of every day, but I will document some highlights.

Day 1 (Friday - New Orleans): Our trip started in New Orleans during the second weekend of Jazzfest. The Rolling Stones had just played Jazz fest the night before, and the city was full of energy. Our first official stop was the special (sold out!) Jazzfest Shabbat service held Friday night at Touro Synagogue. We arrived without reservations, but our rabbi exchanged some rabbinic gang signs with Touro's clergy, and somehow they let us in. It was a lot of fun. I'd like to say it was super-amazing, but I've seen enough Jewish-other cultural mashups before (remember, I had hosted a Grateful Dead Passover Seder just a few weeks prior) that it wasn't totally novel. But New Orleans has tons of great musicians, so came as no surprise that the bands were great. A fun way to start off the the trip.

Jazzfest Shabbat Service at Touro Synagogue

Day 2 (Saturday - New Orleans): There's a gag in the movie Airplane where a passenger asks the flight attendant for some light reading material (Airplane was made way back when airlines provided magazines for passengers to read) and the flight attendant responds with "How about this leaflet about famous Jewish sports legends?" I think of that joke whenever I hear the name "Museum of Southern Jewish History" because, really, how much could there be to a museum on this topic? But it turns out there's more than expected. Many Americans (well, at least those of us from the cities of the Northeast) think of the normative Jewish immigrant experience as starting with a densely Jewish ghetto like the Lower East Side of Manhattan (we had a Jewish history professor from Emory University traveling with us, so I can use words like "normative"), but in fact, plenty of Jews, particularly from the early Sephardic and German/Alsatian mid-19th century wave of immigration, went where business opportunities were good, including into the cities and towns of the deep South. Jews in these communities were typically merchants, either itinerant peddlers or shopkeepers. Waves of Jewish immigrants arrived as the South was expanding, and as with many immigrant groups, they were given a typically American "you're not really our kind of people, but you're useful, so come on in!" kind of welcome. Many Jews prospered, some even became wealthy, and in the antebellum era some even raised their social status by becoming enslavers just like their Christian neighbors (yuck). So the Jewish history of the South goes back a ways; many of the congregations visited are over 100 years old. There may never have been a lot of Jews in any of these places, but it seems like every town had a little bit Jewish history, stretching back to the 19th century if not earlier.

Jewish history hiding in plain sight in Mississippi

All that is preface for saying that we started Saturday with a trip to the Museum of Southern Jewish History. I'd been there before, but it was still interesting to visit. Our professor/guide dude also led us on a Jewish history walking tour of the French Quarter, thanks to which I can now say that I tried to go with a rabbi to visit a strip club on Bourbon Street. Actually, we were looking for the former home of Judah Benjamin, U.S. Senator and Confederacy Cabinet officer and found the building occupied by the aforementioned strip club, which, BTW was closed for renovations. There's lots of other Jewish history in New Orleans, if you know where to look. For example, why does the building containing the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street have ornaments with the initials "MB"? Because the 1906 building was built to house the Maison Blanche, a Jewish-owned department store.

The group also met with the leader of Jewish Pride of New Orleans (JPNOLA) to hear about Jewish LGBTQ life in New Orleans (very open and vibrant LGBTQ community, as you might expect). Given that he and friends he had invited to participate were all Tulane or Loyola professors, our conversation also touched on the campus protests going on over the war in Gaza. Our meeting was held at a phenomenal 1840's house on Esplanade Ave. Not the JPNOLA guy's home - he was pet-sitting there for a friend. The visit would have been worth it for the house alone.

The head of JPNOLA, his two friends (they're a married couple, hence the matching outfits), and the dog he was pet sitting

Quite the house

Dinner that night was simply spectacular - a feast at Saba, an Israeli restaurant in the Garden District. In a city where it seems every dish contains pork or shellfish (two things I don't eat for religious reasons), it was wonderful to eat in a restaurant where none of that treyf stuff was on the menu. But even people without such dietary constraints found a lot to love on Saba's menu. Over dinner we met with L J Goldstein, founder of the Krewe of Jieux, the first Jewish Mardi Gras Krewe. While influential Jewish merchants were involved in the formation of some of the earliest modern Mardi Gras parades, Jews were historically excluded from participating. While I'm sure Jews had participated on the sly over the years, in the 1990's Goldstein decided to break down that historic barrier by creating an explicitly Jewish "krewe". The krewe defangs anti-Semitic stereotypes by really leaning into them to the point of ridiculousness. While other floats toss beads, the Krewe of Jieuxs tosses gold bagels. While other krewes have a king and queen, his has a King of the Jews and Jewish American Princess. Other krewes have a "Witch Doctor"; the Krewe of Jieuxs instead has a "Rich Doctor". Everyone in the parade wears horns. You get the idea. Goldstein is a character, but he is genuinely motivated to offer unaffiliated Jews a pathway to connecting to Judaism through his event, and he's also pushing back against the ingrained anti-Semitism of traditionally Catholic Louisiana. One example of that historic bias - the laws of slavery in Louisiana were codified in what was called the Code Noir (Black Code), dating to 1685 when Louisiana was still a French colony. The code contains fifty-nine Articles, fifty-eight of which have to do with slavery. But before they get to those fifty-eight, guess what Article I does? I mean, what was so important that they had to put it right up front ahead of the main content? That's right - Article I expels all Jews!

Anyway, check out a New Orleans brass band playing klezmer music at the 2017 Krewe of Jieuxs 2017 parade here, and read more here. 

Nighttime entertainment

Let me interject at this point that I was the youngest congregant in our rather superannuated tour group, and also that I was sharing a room with a guy I really didn't know that well. After dinner while everyone else went home (to bed, no doubt), I went out to see "George Porter, Jr. and a Tribute to New Orleans Funk" at the Joy Theater, just steps from our hotel. Jazzfest weekend you can go out and see late night shows all the way through until the next morning, but out of respect for my room mate Alex I didn't stay out very late. The show I went to was supposed to start at 9, but didn't get underway until 10:30 (unconscionable, IMHO) and I bailed before it got too late.

Day 3 (Sunday - New Orleans):  While on Saturday I just ran down to the local Starbucks for breakfast (the only place open at 6 AM), Sunday I joined the group at a diner next to the hotel. This wasn't an organized group meal - people from the group just kept dribbling in. This caused a great deal of consternation to the hostess, who really wanted to spread people around the different server sections of the restaurant, but people from our group kept ignoring her and joining the existing table. Fortunately I was one of the first in and first out, so I was able to stay clear of the somewhat heated clash between the increasingly pissed off hostess and the cranky old Jews of our group.

Anyway, Sunday morning we visited a few more synagogues, including the thriving Reform Temple Sinai and the decrepit, holding on by a thread Orthodox Anshe Sfard. Our synagogue tour was led by local Jewish historian Irwin Lachoff, who told us the heartbreaking story of how his dad passed away during the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and how not only couldn't he make it there to see his dad (because of travel restrictions), but of the trouble he had even giving him a proper burial because everything was disrupted by the hurricane.

Temple Israel

Temple Anshe Sfard

Southern Jewish Literature*

*I posted this picture on Facebook, to which my friend Jen commented "My friend’s grandma wrote this!"

From lunchtime on we had free time. I sought out a vegan po' boy sandwich at the French Market, where by chance I sat with a couple who it turned out were among the organizing committee for the original Bay Area Grateful Dead Passover Seder - weird coincidence! Then I hoped a bikeshare bike and pedaled over to the Garden District, where I rode through the streets looking at the stunning historic homes. Let me tell you - New Orleans has the worst paved streets. I risked internal organ damage riding a bike there.

Biking the Garden District

Window shopping

After dinner (good Vietnamese chicken phở!) on Magazine St., I hopped back on a bikeshare bike and rode up to mid-City where I caught the Stanton Moore Trio at The Broadside. While the New Orleans Funk show the night before had been just OK, both the brass band which opened and Stanton Moore were phenomenal. Plus, it was Sunday night - a lot of Jazzfest attendees had headed home - and this show was outdoors and so was totally uncrowded and mellow. Plus, the couple I met at the French Market were there (not a surprise - we had discussed our evening plans when we had met earlier), so I had someone to hang out with.

Outdoor stage at The Broadside

That's the end of the New Orleans part of this adventure - Monday morning we hit the road, headed for Mississippi.

Continue to Part II

Grateful Dead seder

What do the Grateful Dead and the Jewish ritual of a Passover seder have in common? Nothing. Except maybe that Dead shows and Passover seders seem to go on for a really long time. Also, maybe that they both feature leaders with big beards. And they both feature some kind of burning bush ... if you get my drift.

Anyway, Phil Lesh, the Dead's bass player, for a while owned a music venue in San Rafael, CA called called Terrapin Crossroads. In 2014 Ross James, a (Jewish) musician in Phil's orbit, asked Phil if they could host a Passover seder at his venue, and Phil not only concurred, he participated. The event was such a hit that they held it every year until the start of the pandemic. They even created their own Haggadah (the book is read at the seder, containing the Passover story and related explanations, along with prayers), which was surprisingly straight and unhippyish, except for the illustrations, commentary in the form of word bubbles from a little Grateful Dead terrapin dude (see the cover of the Terrapin Station album - the "terrapin" is a recurring Dead symbol), and the almost complete absence of mention of God.

The local Jewish community in DC has a disproportionate number of Jews (others have noted that this seems to be true as well throughout the Deadhead community). Many of my Jewish Deadhead friends seem much more connected to the band than to their religion (one friend having gone so far as to tell me that "The Grateful Dead is my religion"), and so I decided to create a Grateful Dead-themed Passover seder to help make this Jewish holiday more accessible to the Jewish Deadhead community. For two years I held the event at my house, which limited the number of people who I could invite. This year we went big and rented the Glen Echo community room - and got so many attendees that even with the larger capacity we wound up having to turn people away!

The gang

So, what was the seder like? I started with Lesh's Terrapin Haggadah, but trimmed it down a bit, including eliminating the whole part which would normally come after the meal (I was sure there was no way I was going to get the group to sit down for more ritual after they got to eating and schmoozing). I then sprinkled in a bunch of songs. A couple were seder text set to Grateful Dead songs, (for example, the Four Questions set to the tune of the song Ripple). Most were parody songs - clever (I hope) Passover-related lyrics for Dead and other classic rock songs. I drew on my friend Barb's Passover song parodies web site for "Hey Jews" (Hey Jude) and "Are You Ready for Passover Fare" (Scarborough Faire), grabbed Larry H's "It Must Have Been Charoses" (the Dead's It Must Have Been the Roses), plus a few of my own (like "Pharoah's Palace" for the Dead's Brokedown Palace). Valerie joined me up front, helping to keep order (she has that schoolteacher voice that people just obey) as well as adding her own brand of wackiness. Food was potluck and plentiful, and didn't even have to be kosher for Passover since the event was the night before the start of the holiday!

Leading the mayhem

I don't want to brag, but it drew comments like, "... the best seder I have ever experienced", "... so beautifully moving", and "What a special, meaningful, lively, loving, grateful, delicious seder!" So yeah, I think it was a success. We're already looking for a bigger room for next year.

And of course, I could not have made this event work without my fellow planners, Wendy (who wrangled all the attendee aspects including coordinating the pot luck), and Karen (who handled the logistics of the room, supplies, and decorating), as well as the volunteering of Woody, Jon, Carol, and so many more!

We had the ritual seder plate at every table

My Grateful Dead Haggadah

View from the "pulpit"

The organizers

A Tale of Four Jess's

 Jesse is not all that common a name, and so unlike the Toms, Davids, and Bobs of the world I don't run into much name confusion. So it was weird when recently I had a spate of Jesse confusions.

Incident 1

I once played in a band with a guitarist named Rob, who also has his own separate long-running group. I haven't talked to Rob in about five years, so I was surprised when I got a message from him saying "Are you available for a gig on any of these dates ...". Since the message didn't start with any sort of, "Hey, it's been a long time!" sort of introduction, I immediately suspected he might have texted the wrong person, and so I answered him with "Rob? Good to hear from you - it's been a while: just making sure you're messaging the right person". Rob's day job is teaching middle school, and he was trying to arrange this gig during quick breaks in his hectic day, so he somehow missed my initial response and we went back and forth a couple of times on which dates would work best. Finally, he mentioned that he had to coordinate with the rest of the band, and that the only one he'd spoken to so far was Mike. Which was weird, since I know that Mike is his keyboard player and so he didn't need a keyboard player for the gig. "Mike, your keyboard player?", I answered. And that's when it finally hit him that he was texting the wrong person. It turns out the drummer of his band is named Jesse (Jesse drummer played in a band at one point as well - like this crazy Mardi Gras gig) and he had indeed been texting with the wrong Jesse. My phone rang immediately. Apologies and some laughter followed.

Incident 2

There's a fairly tight-knit local Deadhead community in the DC area. As you might expect, most of these people are Baby Boomers, but there is a contingent of next-generation Millennial Deadheads: young adults who either absorbed the Dead from their parents or maybe picked a love of the Dead up in college, or whatever. My friend Laura is a Boomer Deadhead. Her son Jesse is a Millennial Deadhead. One night I was standing by the bar at a local live music venue. All of sudden little Sara, one of the Millennials, comes up to me and says, "Have you seen Jesse's mom? I saw her here a minute ago." Now, the "Jesse's mom" I immediately thought of had passed away in 2009 and so spotting her in 2024 at a brewpub in Virginia would have been quite surprising. I was left kind of speechless. Why was the ghost of my mother appearing to little Sara? Finally it occurred to me that Sara was referring to young Deadhead Jesse's mom Laura and I pointed her in the direction that Laura had gone.

I still think it's funny that a thirty year-old woman would refer to someone as "Jesse's mom", as if she was a little kid.

Incident 3

My Grateful Dead band recently played a gig with a guest singer named Jess. Jess is a talented singer who also plays piano. At one point in the run-up to the gig someone in the band texted, "I need to check with Jess about keys." I should mention here that musicians often refer to the keyboard instrument as "keys". I misinterpreted that text as saying that they wanted Jess to play keys at the gig - and so what was I, chopped liver? It turns out they just needed to ask her what keys she wanted to sing certain songs in, and had nothing to do with the "keys" instrument. Fortunately I hadn't sent the flaming text response which had immediately popped into my mind when I read the original message 😳.

OK, this last one isn't technically a Jesse mix-up - just a mix-up involving someone named Jess. 

You might ask why I've never been known as "Jess". I'm not sure. In my life, only two people have consistently called me Jess: my aunt Marsha, and a guy I worked for for many years. I'm not averse to it (unlike Valerie and "Val"); it's just never been me.

The strange tale of my shin splint

What exactly is a shin splint, and why does it have that weird name? Despite six months of living with one, I can't tell you. The shin part makes sense - it's an injury of the shin. But splint? I dunno. The real name is "medial tibial stress syndrome", so I guess I shouldn't worry about the nonsensical common name. 

In any case, as I have written previously, during last summer's vacation to the Southwest I was frustrated with an itinerary which kept us all too sedentary, and so the morning after we arrived home I went out for a run, and afterwards something didn't feel right. My run, in addition to relieving my frustration at not having exercised enough for two weeks, apparently injured my leg. 

I didn't think too much of it at first - by the time you're in your sixties, everything hurts at least sometimes. The pain was intermittent, and not too bad. As a precaution I did cut out running, but I didn't cut back on any other activities - in fact, when a month later I went on my annual kayak camping trip, I did a rather strenuous hike up Ampersand Mountain (though because of the pain I did use trekking poles on the hike).

In my experience, this sort of injury slowly heals on its own, but in this case the pain worsened over time. Quoting the Mayo Clinic website, "At first, the pain might stop when you stop exercising. Eventually, however, the pain can be continuous and might progress to a stress reaction or stress fracture." Yeah, it got to be continuous; it hurt event to walk. Eventually, in early October (on the same day I made an unscheduled trip to the dentist because of a broken crown, and a scheduled trip to the dermatologist to check for more skin cancer - ah, the joys of aging), I went to see an orthopedist. An X-ray showed nothing, which, because they're orthopedists, to them meant maybe I had a stress fracture in my leg too fine to be detected by an X-ray. So they put me in a surgical boot for a month - lacking a firm diagnosis, this was just sort of the default treatment option for my circumstance. I was allowed to continue doing non-weight-bearing, low impact exercise, which led to some comical situations. The folks in the car parked next to mine at the Great Pumpkin bike ride Halloween weekend were surprised when I limped out of my car, traded my surgical boot for a cycling shoe, pulled my bike out of the back of my car, and rode off.

After a month of immobilizing my leg in the surgical boot I had all sorts of new pains in my foot and ankle, but the tibia pain was a little better. Maybe. In early November I started going to physical therapy. AI once again  felt like I was getting default treatment plan since I didn't really have a diagnosis. Still, twice every week I'd go for PT, and I'd zealously do all my exercises at home. Thanksgiving weekend - between doing a lot of running around setting up for Thanksgiving dinner and a lot of walking on Black Friday (along with, ahem, trying to jog for a couple of minutes during one of my doctor-approved walks), my leg started to really hurt again, and I worried that I had reinjured myself; however, at PT the following Monday the therapist reassured me that it was just flare-up from being too active, and would settle down in a few days, which it did.

At my follow-up visit on December 13th (now four months after my initial injury) the Physician Assistant was a little concerned that the site of the injury was still tender and that I was making only slow progress toward healing, and sent me for an MRI, which revealed nothing but edema (swelling) in the area. In other words, I had a shin splint. Best of all, she lifted my restrictions and said I could start experimenting with a little running following their return-to-run protocol, but that I should run only on softer surfaces like a running track or treadmill. This was good news, since on my own I had already decided to start on the return-to-run program, mixing one minute jogs with my walks (9 minutes walking, one minute jogging). The following week I saw the doctor, who reviewed the MRI results and concurred - and also recommended OrangeTheory fitness classes, a path I haven't yet explored.

Maybe there's something to mind over matter, because after the MRI revealed that what I had was shin splints - not anything more serious (in one of my earlier visits they had even hinted at the possibility of bone cancer), my recovery accelerated. I'm still progressing methodically through the return-to-run program. On my most recent outing I did three cycles of jogging 8 minutes and walking two - and within the jogging I even threw in a couple of brief (less than a minute) intervals of all-out running. Two more increments and I'll be back to being able to do a run with no walking breaks!

So, I'm on the mend - though from what, I'm still not sure. Shin splint, I guess.

Coffeeneuring 2023

It's time for my annual Coffeeneuring post. Coffeeneuring is a fun little challenge (as I've noted before, the cycling world is full of such challenges - clearly cyclists are need extrinsic motivation in the form of gimmicky challenges). As described by the sponsors of this challenge,

"The Coffeeneuring Challenge is a time to slow your roll after the lively pace of summer. Time for some leaf-peeping and leisure. Let’s make the most of this delicious time of year with bike rides that include a stop for your favorite fall beverages, and perhaps the consumption of a pastry or two or three. By yourself or with friends, shared on social or not (remember the days when we used to do things and not post about them? I don’t), the way the Coffeeneuring Challenge unfolds is up to you. 

The short version of the Coffeeneuring Challenge is as follows:

• between October 7 through November 20, 2023,
• ride your bike to 7 places,
• at least 2 miles round trip each time,
• drink 7 total cups of coffee (or another fall-type beverage), and
• document your coffeeneuring ..."

And of course the best part is that if you complete the challenge, you get a little patch (if you pay for it, that is)! I have a stack of these patches sitting forlornly in a basket - but one lucky one made it onto my cycling bag! 

Here are my logs for Coffeeneuring 2023:

Week 1: 10/7-13

1. 10/10. Home to National Landing (nèe Crystal City). As part of the transformation of Crystal City brought about by the Amazon headquarters they're building there, the Crystal City Water Park has been being rebuilt. This park's name has always been the source of confusion, as when most people hear "Water Park" they think of water slides and lazy rivers, not a brutalist plaza with a big water feature where Pentagon contractors (including me in the early 90's) go to get some sun during lunch. When the park closed for renovations a while back there was significant outcry because Cutting Down trees! Changes to the Status Quo! Environmental Something-or-Other! Kvetching about any sort of chance is the Arlington way.

Anyway, the Water Park, which previously had been the warm weather home of Tuesdays' morning Coffee Club gathering, finally reopened: a soft opening at the beginning of October, with all the new feature - including the new food kiosks and the long overdue bathroom - in full swing the following week. Tuesday Coffee Club returned on Tuesday 10/10, and I was there (one of only three people to attend!). At the end of coffee time, I went to use the rest room, and while I was in there the other two cyclists up and left, leaving my bike unattended (not wanting to rat anyone out I won't name them - I'll just call them BleevO and Snowskephine, a.k.a Snowmorebbe). Fortunately my temporarily abandoned bike was still there when I got out of the restroom.

Distance: 17.1 miles

Coffee: Drip decaf from home

Coffee Location: Crystal City Waterpark (coffee outdoors)

Strava: https://strava.app.link/uLDfAbxgNDb

Four Mile Run at sunrise. Prettiest picture ever of a sewage treatment plant!

2. 10/13. The I66 Trail. The good folks of VDOT have added a bike trail along I66 heading west from Gallows Road. There was much hue and cry (because, of course there was) when the trail design was unveiled because it runs inside the sound wall, that is to say you get to ride your bike directly alongside eight lanes of Interstate highway traffic. The trail itself isn't bad, and it has more access points than I expected, but riding alongside traffic is nasty, in part because it's LOUD. And you breathe a lot of exhaust. I put my earbuds into my ears (not playing anything - just as earplugs) to muffle the noise a bit. This trail serves a valuable purpose in terms of bike access to areas of Fairfax County which are otherwise hard to reach by bike, but it's not a trail you'd really ride for pleasure.

I took the trail west to the point where it abruptly ends near Fairfax Circle (it looks like it will be extended further west in the future). Rather than just turning around and heading home I decided to bike through the streets up to the W&OD. This proved to be not too bad, though there were some roads - like Courthouse Road - where riding on the sidewalk rather than in the street was required.

Somewhere along the line I unexpectedly rode past what I guess was a local Chabad House - a big ol' menorah out front, and numerous American and Israeli flags flying from the front porch. Less than a week after the horrific Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, it was a heartwarming sight.

My coffee stop was at Caffé Amouri in Vienna, formerly another weekday Coffee Club meeting place. I was surprised to find they'd added a second room, doubling the size of the place. The barista said, yeah, it opened like two years ago.

Distance: 28.9 miles

Coffee: Decaf Americano

Coffee Location: Caffe Amouri, Vienna

Strava: https://strava.app.link/TwxnnYV0RD 

Coffee at Amouri

Unexpected signs of Jewish life in Fairfax

Week 2: 10/14-20

3. 10/16. Arlington Loop. One thing I haven't yet mentioned in this write-up is that I've been spending my days in a surgical boot because of a stress fracture in my tibia I got while running. I'm allowed to do non-weight-bearing exercise including cycling and swimming (I've gotten the hang of one-legged rowing machine, too). I've been trying to keep moving as much as possible, taking care not to overdo things. Today my ride was an Arlington Loop. I have the good fortune of living just a few blocks from the wonderful W&OD multi-use trail, just a mile or so west of a nice loop ride one can do by riding portions of the W&OD, Custis, and Four Mile Run trails. Given the little tail on my rides to and from the "loop", my "loop" rides look like a letter "Q" more than "O". 

Today's ride was nothing special. When I passed through Crystal City I tried to grab a free banana from the Amazon banana truck, but they were closed for the day, and the banistas (yes, that's what they're called) were busy trying to wrestle a cover onto the truck. challenged by the brisk wind. 

I stopped for coffee at Best Buns in Shirlington (wintertime home of the Wednesday morning Coffee Club), where I also picked up a baguette to have for dinner and, despite my continuous resoutions to eat less sugar, a double chocolate chip cookie. I ate half the cookie and saved the rest for later. Since I had half a double chocolate chip cookie I guess I had the equivalent of a single chocolate chip cookie, maybe?

Distance: 19.9 miles

Coffee: Decaf Coffee (and half a double chocolate chip cookie)

Coffee Location: Best Buns, Shirlington

Strava: https://strava.app.link/3Qft4uhVZDb

Coffee and cookie at Best Buns

4. 10/17. Home to Reston Town Center with the AK Gang. I used to lead rides for the Arlington 55+ cycling group, until they decided to make all the rides on Thursdays, a day which doesn't work for me because of a work conflict. While I was volunteering I made friends with a small group of the higher end riders from that group, who I continue to ride with now and again (I like riding with senior citizens - they ride at my speed!). My ride titles usually refer to them as the "AK"s, "AK" being the English transliteration of the initials of the Yiddish phrase "אַלטער קאַקער" (or "alter kakher") which means, basically, "old fart". Actor Michael Douglas knows this expression, and now you do too. 

I met John and Clare, Gordon, and Rita at the Masonic Temple alongside the W&OD in Falls Church. My riding was a little slow due to my still-ailing leg, but I generally kept up. It was one of those days that felt cold when it was cloudy and warm whenever the sun came out. 

Riding with Gordon is always a hoot, as he's Mr. Magoo on a bike. He'll ride all over the place - for example, riding in the opposing lane of the bike path so he can ride alongside you and chat - but never realizes that he's doing anything wrong and instead gets offended at the rudeness of others if they call him out (for example, he couldn't understand why a cyclist coming from the other direction while he was riding in the wrong lane yelled at him to get out of the way). But other than his obliviousness he's a super-nice guy.

Distance: 29.6 miles

Coffee: Decaf Americano (and a toasted plain bagel)

Coffee Location: Starbucks, Reston Town Center

Strava: https://strava.app.link/xo6ggmvVZDb

Bonus Coffee Ride*: I attended Friday coffee club on Friday 10/20 (my mom's birthday!) and got to see the Pride of Baltimore docked in Old town Alexandria.

Week 3: 10/21-27

5. 10/23. Herndonish. A ride by myself. Because of the stupid surgical boot I've spent too much time lately sitting around the house. I just needed to get out and hit the trail. I drove as far as Idylwood Park so I could bypass the close-to-home part of the trail I'm really bored with by now. I must be quite a sight when I stagger out of the car wearing my surgical boot, pull my bike out of the back, change into my cycling shoes and ride off. People must wonder what kind of strange injury I have which prevents me from walking but not cycling - but it's legit. As I mentioned up top, the idea is to minimize weight-bearing on the leg while it heals. My only challenge is that I typically unclip with the left (bad) leg, and so I have to be very careful not to overload that leg when I stop.

I rode out past Herndon, just far enough to make it a 30 mile round-trip. It was a ride into a fairly strong wind on the way out, but the fall colors were popping - very pretty. On the way back I decided to bypass the frou-frou coffee at Green Lizard in favor of a simple cup from 7-Eleven at Van Buren Street. Unfortunately, their coffee service has gone downhill. They didn't have any decaf available, nor was there a decaf option in their automated fancy drink machine, so I had a small cup of some slightly burned tasting regular. I don't normally drink caffeine, so I really feel it when I do; I had that "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!" caffeinated feeling all the way home.

For a time the spread of Starbucks and other higher end coffee shops throughout the land made existing coffee outlets up their game in order to avoid losing business: even McDonald's improved their previously dishwatery coffee, and quick-stop places like 7-Eleven and WaWa started serving decent brew too. Unfortunately, due to cost-cutting or lack of caring (or maybe it was the pandemic), the quality of quick-stop coffee has gone back downhill in recent times. A disappointing cup, but coffee nonetheless. 

Distance: 30.8 miles

Coffee: Regular Coffee (and a granola bar, brought from home)

Coffee Location: 7-Eleven, Van Buren St. and the W&OD Trail, Herndon

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10091556875 

Oh, Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven (and their sub-par coffee)

Week 4: 10/28-11/3

6. 10/28. The Great Pumpkin Ride. My participation in The Great Pumpkin Ride (GPR) has its own blog entry, so I won't duplicate the details here. While the GPR itself doesn't offer coffee, after the ride I pedaled over to Great Harvest Bread in downtown Warrenton where I had a cup and a snack.

Bee all that you can bee!

Coffee and a treat at Great Harvest

The swarm of bees

Distance: 25.5 miles

Coffee: Decaf Coffee and a small free sample slice of their Halloween rice crispies treat

Coffee Location: Great Harvest Bakery, Warrenton, VA

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10120298767

7. 10/31. Crystal City Coffee Club. I attended the Tuesday morning coffee club again. Technically, this wasn't the same location as Ride #1, since that ride's location was outdoors at the Water Park, and this one was indoors at Mah Ze Dahr, on account of the cooler weather. 

Distance: 17.5 miles

Coffee: Decaf Coffee (brought from home)

Coffee Location: Mah Ze Dahr, Arlington, VA

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10136179720

Week 5: 11/4-11/10

8. 11/6. Buying Lizard Lights. Every year my coffeeneuring includes one or more Arlington loops, since that's such a common ride for me (for example, see this year's ride #4). Today my loop the ride had a purpose. My poor lizard, Cooper, was feeling rather under the weather since the basking bulb (heat lamp) for his tank had blown. Being a cold-blooded critter, he really depends on external heat! There's a PetSmart at Potomac Yards just south of Four Mile Run Trail, so I planned an Arlington Loop with a little detour to pick up a pack of bulbs. There's actually a PetSmart less than a mile from my house, but that wouldn't have given me much of a bike ride - going to the far-away pet shop was a much better choice from a cycling perspective.

The bulbs were much more expensive than I remembered - but that seems to be the case with everything I buy these days. Strangely, when I looked online on the PetSmart site the bulbs were a couple of bucks cheaper there, and Petco has them for 2/3 of PetSmart's price - lesson learned!

As I continued around my loop I stopped in Shirlington and had my usual Americano at Peet's. It was a warm afternoon, and I sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine and 60+ degree temps before continuing on home.

Distance: 29.5 miles

Coffee: Decaf Americano

Coffee Location: Peet's, Shirlington, Arlington, VA

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10172836116

Week 6: 11/11-11/17

9. 11/14/23. March for Israel. The world is in a crazy place right now, and one of the crazier spots in this crazy world is the current war instigated by Hamas against Israel. I don't want my coffeeneuring to get political and so I'm not going to go into this situation in depth (hint as to my leanings: all my aunts and uncles were born in Jerusalem, as were my grandparents, and my great-grandparents, and my great-great-grandparents, ... you get the idea). 

Anyway, without question the best way to get to big rally type events in DC is via bicycle. No crush in the Metro, no delayed buses, no parking hassles. I biked downtown with my friends John and Clare (of the AK Gang - see ride #4). Three hundred thousand people attended the rally. 300K seems like a modest number (inaugurations draw 4-6 times that number), but when you figure there are only about 6 million Jews in America, it's pretty impressive. Assuming most of the attendees were Jewish, that's about 5% of all the Jews in America showing up for the rally, a pretty nice show of solidarity. What does it mean for 5% of a total population to show up? Well, if you got that kind of response for a Christian rally, that is, if you had 5% of all the Christians in America show up for a rally that would be 11 million people - equivalent to the entire populations of New York City and Chicago combined. The only reason 5% of the nation's Jewish population fits on the mall is that there are so few of us in total.

John bought this flag, but handed it off to me when they left

The scene

John and Clare left early, while I stayed on and rode around the perimeter soaking up the scene. My son was somewhere backstage in the video control room, serving as technical director for the live video feed - but I didn't see him (I hadn't really expected to). Eventually I headed home, as I had to get ready for a music gig that evening, but took time for a stop in Shirlington for coffee. Along with my coffee I ate a pack of animal crackers which some trick-or-treater had dropped on my lawn on Halloween.

Peet's coffee and found animal crackers

Distance: 29.5 miles

Coffee: Decaf Skim Latte

Coffee Location: Peet's, Shirlington, Arlington, VA (this is my use of the going to the same place twice rule)

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10219289415

10. Coffee Clubbing at SteveO & Loose Bones' place. 

So, this is the third morning Coffee Club ride I have included here (see #1 and #4), but each one involved coffee at a different location and so they all count. This one was very special - fellow Freezing Saddles alumni SteveO and Lucy superseded the usual Thursday coffee club by hosting a coffee gathering at their lovely new joint home. Since the pandemic I've gotten lazy about coffee club and make it not even quite once per week, but despite having been out late the previous two nights with music gigs I wasn't going to miss this special event. And in North Arlington, no less!

I pedaled over to their place, which is on the same street as my first apartment in the DC area (about eight blocks north). While riding along Fairfax Drive I glanced at a cyclist waiting at the light on the cross-street. She momentarily looked familiar, but I swear - all cyclists look the same to me with the helmets and the glasses. It wasn't until she caught up with me a few blocks later that I realized it was fellow coffee clubber Stacy. We rode the rest of the way together.

Chatting with Robyne at SteveO's

It was a lovely gathering, with delicious pastries. In fact, there were enough high class pastries that the mediocre Safeway mini muffins I had contributed (picked up on my way to the previous night's gig) went untouched. There were even hamentaschen. The gathering was listed as running until 8:20 AM and so at 8:20 I hit the road (never accuse me of not being literal!). I made it home in plenty of time to turn around and head to physical therapy (for my stress fracture thing). Nice way to start the day. 

Distance: 10.2 miles

Coffee: Decaf drip from home

Coffee Location: SteveO & Lucy's place

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10228714199

Weeklet 7: 11/18-20

No entries. As usual, I'm a little disappointed that coffeeneuring ends before my birthday so I can never go coffeeneuring on the big day. 

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*The rules state that you can't count more than two rides per week.