Last Two Days in Vermont

We're headed out this morning after what now feels like a long, fun roadtrip. 

On the bike path with Mount Mansfield behind us

Mount Mansfield

As promised, we climbed Mount Mansfield yesterday. Mansfield is the highest peak in Vermont, rising almost 4400 feet above sea level. We didn't start at sea level, thankfully, but this was still the hardest hike we've done in years. We wound up hiking a little more than six miles up and back, gaining almost 2600 vertical feet along the way.

The Domes at the Catskills & Other Stories: Day 2

Incredibly, the second day of our Catskills adventure was almost as surreally strange as our first day. It wasn’t bad, and indeed, a lot of it was awesome, but at every turn, we’ve been confronted by the weirdness that I suppose constitutes normalcy in rural America.

The Domes at the Catskills & Other Stories: Day 1

Yesterday proved to be an interesting day. 

We're staying at the Domes at Catskills for a couple of nights. It's a kind of high-end glamping place. They set you up in these geodesic, safari-style domes. It feels very much like the kind of place Lord and Lady Greystoke might've lived during their African adventure, right before they were slaughtered and their son taken to be raised by apes in the jungle.

Sally overlooking the view from our dome.

Pics from the Seawall

Sally and I went out for drinks at Riley's last night. We got a really nice night for it, and I think half of Stratford wound up down there with us.

We mugged a bit for selfies and then went home and grilled turkey burgers.

I also stuck these on my Instagram account if you're interested.

The view from the seawall

Chapter 1: Running Late

Sally convinced me to write a new Chapter 1 for The Return of Dr. Necropolis. Her comments made me feel like Tiffany wasn't coming across heroically enough in the book's early going, a concern I'd had in the back of my mind since before the re-write. I'd therefore been considering something like this for awhile. I just hadn't pulled the trigger until this past weekend.

I gotta say that I'm still not totally sure where to put this. But you can tell me what you think of it, either in context with the rest of the book or as a standalone piece.

Thanks in advance!

Styx Setlist

Sally and I are heading out to see Styx with Eagles' guitarist Don Felder and REO Speedwagon's Kevin Cronin early next month. 

You'll find the full set list below.

Styx performing in 2017 (via Wikipedia).

Mount Snow Weekend Round-Up: A Skiing Story

Sally and I went to Mount Snow over the weekend for what proved to be a fun, somewhat eventful weekend.

Sally and me at Mount Snow Saturday afternoon

Highlights from 2024

Happy New Year! I hope this note finds you happy and healthy heading into 2025. 

It feels like a lot happened this past year for Casa Cabeza, to the point that this is now my third attempt to put it all into some kind of context. I finally decided to publish a simple list of highlights. 

Danno & Sally Cabeza

These are presented in no particular order. 

Twenty-Two Years

 I wrote this for my Sally for Christmas.

A Few Favorite Pics from Maine

Sally and I went to Maine last week on vacation. Now that I've finally had a chance to comb through all the pictures we took, here are some of my favorites.

Thoughts on Turning 50

Well friends, I’m now fifty years old. 

I’m trying not to let it get to me. Lots of my friends are already fifty, after all, and my wife is actually fifty-five. None of it means much on balance. 

I shouldn’t let it bug me.

The Worst-Kept Secret in the World

The worst-kept secret in the world is that Sally and I have been working on a skiing training plan for her business, Headspace.Fit. 

We asked folks how much they were training now and how much they thought they ought to train for a specific event.
Consensus said 5-10 hours per week with some flexibility built into the schedule.

You may remember that we launched a little survey on Survey Monkey last week asking folks' thoughts on what a potential training plan ought to look like? 

That survey was for this project.

Swim Across the Sound (Update 2): Aerobic Threshold Mystery!

Well friends, we have reached the part of the training cycle in which I remember why I retired from competition. Which is to say that I woke up this morning tired and sore to the point that it took a real effort of will to get out of bed and go swim. Looking back on my competitive swimming career these days often feels like remembering that time I had a mental illness. I was mad about everything pretty much all the time, and I used those feelings to fuel my competitive fires. Today I’m in a much better headspace, and that’s great 99% of the time, but boy, it is sooooo much more difficult to find the right mindset when things get tough in training.

Click here to learn more about our Swim Across the Sound team.

Blog Shots: Meeker Trail & Hopkins Vineyard

As discussed on AsForFootball.Com over the weekend, Saturday's game against now #13 Wake Forest was one of the wildest, most emotional roller coaster rides I've ever experienced at Michie Stadium. The Black Knights put up nearly 600 yards of total offense and well over 400 yards rushing, and they maintained time-of-possession for almost 45 full minutes, but they still lost by 14 points -- on basically two plays. It took me a good, long while to come down. Even after sleeping on it, writing on it, and getting in a workout in the pool, I still felt like I was ready to spit fire and punish the guilty.

Sally came to my rescue, as she often does in these situations. It's her birthday later this week. As part of a multi-week celebration, we went hiking along the Meeker Trail near Lake Waramaug in the Western Connecticut Highlands, followed by a wine tasting expedition to Hopkins Vineyard.

It took some doing, but this finally get me back on something like an even keel emotionally.

Pics from the day after the jump.

Exploring Wine (Part 1)

Wine has become my latest obsession. It started when my buddy showed me the wine cellar in his new house, and seeing that cellar got me interested enough to investigate the possibilities of building one in my basement. This turned out to be a lot more involved than I thought that it would be -- more on that in a future post -- but I realized in the process of researching the idea that I didn't know nearly as much about wine as I thought that I did.

As has proven to be the case with any number of things over the years, a lot of what I thought I knew came from my folks, who weren't nearly as educated about some of this stuff as they made an effort to seem back in the day. It's to the point now where I'm considering rebranding my infamous "cook book" as something else entirely, Things That I Wish My Father Had Taught Me. 

Inclusive of wine content, I might have something like 30K words floating around in various spots on my hard drive. I just need to start getting it together and massaging into some kind of cohesive whole. Imagine a book exploring wine, grilling, and other aspects of the finer things in life but done in the style of my memoir, and you can maybe get a sense of the vibe. 

I always think of this project as a lifestyle handbook for Firsties about to commission. But we'll see.

At Chamard Vineyards in Coastal Connecticut yesterday.

In any event, this post is an attempt to start getting some of my thoughts down on paper. It's the middle of football season, so I have literally a million other things that I need to be doing right now, but friends, it's the side-hustles that keep me sane. Bear with me for a few minutes. Besides, I am really enjoying this exploration of wines.

Blog Shots: Pics from Block Island

Sally and I took a trip to Block Island earlier this month, located just off the coast of Narragansett, Rhode Island.  The weather wasn't great for much of the trip, so I wound up spending a goodly amount of my time practicing photography.  

Some of those pics are presented below.

Memoir Teaser Trailer

Blog Shots: 4th of July Hike with Sally

 Sally and I went on a little hike yesterday.  

Well.  It was supposed to be little, at any rate.  We wound up walking four and a half miles.  That took us from the Short Beach parking lot in Stratford, around the lighthouse, back down to Wayne's Walk, and then all the way up to Russian Beach and back.

Speaking personally, I thought that was a good, long walk.

Anyway, I took my camera yesterday.  Pics are past the jump.

Orchard Glen Trail (Director's Cut)

 Got to the pool this morning, only to discover the road closed for several blocks in each direction with utility crews working on what I presume was a hit pole overnight.  Needless to say, I wound up with a little more time on my hands than I expected to have this morning.

I probably should have worked on stuff for As For Football.  A company reached out to us last week about our ads rates, asking very reasonably for our current deck.  So I've got to build an ad deck this week.

But not today.

I sat down instead and edited the pics from yesterday's photo essay.  Those are after the jump.  I personally think the edits help quite a bit, though in a few cases, they also bring out the inherent flaws in the original photographs. 

Eh.  What can you do?