Date Night

Baleen and I combed our hair, showed the babysitter the wipes, started the meter and got on out of there, headed to 3rd and Mission for Corporate Night at the SFMOMA. It was our first night out together in 2013.

A few hundred other people had the same idea we did, as did the van Oftens, and we all congregated in the ground floor lobby with the bar and the food while the exhibits, where you couldn't take a drink, were almost empty.

That's where we stayed until we walked on over to Oola, the site of the van Oftens second date, and had the best of what the Swedish chef can find in the Dogpatch and the greater Bay Area. Then Baleen paid while I ran to the garage to pick up the car, ending one meter, to pick up Baleen and her heels and drive back home, pay the babysitter and end the second meter. That's date night 3,000 miles away from any grandparents.

Virginia

Papa and Marmee returned to Williamsburg today for the first time in a month. They stopped by Bangor, Maine on the way home, naturally, as that's where the C-117 dropped them off.

They say they miss The Dragon Boss (and us), but they're not mourning the separation. Since TDB last saw them, they drove right on through Austria to Brixen, Italy, decided they wanted to be back in Garmisch, and drove right back, getting the last hotel in town for the year.

Good thing they did, too, otherwise they never would have seen the German heartthrob, Martin Schmitt, land 131 meters from where he took off. They're the first in our family to see a World Cup Ski jump, the New Year's Eve Four-Hills-Tournament no less, and they're full of stories to tell TDB in Christmases to come, like if you don't get ski-jumping by the time you're eight, more likely six really, then it's probably too late as the fear takes hold. We definitely want TDB to be a robust, brave boy, but I think we'll be fine if he never stares down a ski jump.

Martin Schmitt, about 20 meters in, 111 to go

Downton!

I thought on Sunday night that the hard work was behind us. Gigi's arrival had been the prompt Baleen and I needed to clean our apartment, part of our New Year's resolution (Organization! the child of Preparation!), but that was nothing compared with staying up to 9pm for the first episode of Downton Abbey's third season.

We hadn't seen 9pm since back in 2012, not even with Gigi in town, but we did it, fueled by two bars of Trader Joe's chocolate and reminiscences of the Crowleys and the arched eyebrow of the Dowager Countess.

Baleen was comatose by the time Matthew and Mary returned from their honeymoon (Spoiler alert!) around 10.45pm local time and asked for me to carry her the ten yards from the living room to the bedroom. Next week's 1 hour episode should be easier on the both of us.

Hawk Hill

I forgot how much it hurts. I hadn't been on a morning raid since August, August of last year, and I didn't recognize half the guys on the hill this morning which means I didn't know which wheel to follow. It's just like it was back in youth soccer, too, when lining up against a team you haven't played before. I always looked, but you can't judge the team's best players by their shoes, just as you can't judge the best riders by the bike; all you get is either the biggest purse, or the one most willing to spend the largest amount of their income on their bike and accessories, which often isn't who you want to follow.

So I just started riding, passing Packy Bonnor on the bottom, and then hurring to get on a wheel I didn't recognize just before the False Flats. But I should have waited for another wheel because I didn't last a minute on this group of three, the new (to me) group of hummingbirds and I was stuck in no man's land on the Flats deciding whether to push thru solo or wait for another. I did what I almost always do then and almost always shouldn't, which is just put the head down and push.

By the end, I think I'd passed a few more than passed me - what you hold on to when you can't reach the podium - and most definitely passed a few people in the last hundred yards to finish in 8:23, the 28th fastest time in 33 timed attempts over the last 18 months. Small victories, that not getting passed at the end part, which is I remembered after I rode the sprint pretty well, but not well enough to lose the hummingbird I never used to see in the Presidio, St Nick, who flew on by with fifty yards to go, leaving me a view of CYTOMAX spread across his bottom, getting further and further away, then closer and closer, but not close enough.

2013

It's 2013, or TYATDBB (The Year After The Dragon Boss's Birth). We celebrated the German New Year somewhere over Colorado as that's when our bodies told us it was 2013 and we've been praying for TDB to get back on his 11-hour nightly nap routines. Night two is much better, suggesting night three might be the one.

Baleen has used the New Year's holiday to organize the first few weeks of 2013 and we now have a shared iCloud calendar with two weeks of recipes, including a Sunday night grocery list for the week to come. Organization was her New Year's resolution. Her closet's next.

Since I don't have a better one, since we're a team, and since I really like hers, it's mine, too. I'm not sure what The Dragon Boss' is. Maybe it's to figure out why all the leaves from the tree outside our apartment, the ones that he loves to pick as we wait for his ride in the morning, have turned color and are not where they normally are, but down on the driveway. It's a wonder, he thinks.

Homeward Bound

We're back home now. The jet lag, they say, is a lot easier coming West, but the winds aren't. What took us 14 hours on the way out was closer to 17 on the way back, about 7 of which The Dragon Boss spent on my chest, mostly sleeping, but also burrowing his face into my buttons and swinging it back and forth every ten or so minutes, or every time I moved the slightest bit, which couldn't have been all that restful.

Baleen slept most of the flight, thankfully, as our teamwork meant I got the plane, she got the first day back, as it's been about 36 hours since I last slept. I watched a little of the movie on the plane as that's all the space would allow.

It's going to be a quiet New Year's Eve here in the Mission suburbs. We're trying as hard as we can to stay up past 7pm and Baleen's found just the cure, Lena Dunham's Girls. Season 1 is on iTunes and rather than reflect about all the great events in 2012, recent and over 9 months old now, we're just going to watch a few 20-somethings struggling to grow up in Brooklyn.

The Alps

The Dragon Boss took his first trip to Neuschwanstein yesterday as all 9 month old children should, skipping in and out of Austria along the way to make it three countries he's visited though, thanks to Jean Monnet, his passport only shows two.

He saw Pumpkin arrive, as welcome is too strong a word, because though he came bearing gifts of pecans, chocolate and an English duck, TDB still hasn't smiled at the dark-haired man.

Papa, Uncle Margarine and I treated him a little better, though, as we got what will most likely be our final day of skiing in today, at Garmisch-Classic. We spent most of the day on the famous Kandahar run that goes from near the top of the mountain all the way into town. The 770 meter elevation drop, spread over 3km of trail, took us from heavy snow on top to rain at the very bottom, which made for some very tired legs, forcing first Papa, despite his lunch of animal lard on schwarzbrot and then the 3 of us to call it a day just before the last lift closed.

Christmas

We set up Secret Santas for Christmas, ensuring that the gifts under the tree didn't bankrupt us from their undiscounted price and for the fees we'd have to pay United to cart it all back home, but those rules didn't apply to The Dragon Boss. Everybody was to give him a gift with instructions not to scrimp on the wrapping paper, according to Marmee. Oh, the joys of the inverted pyramid, where two generations are all focused on one little offspring.

Breakfast and presents took us to just about noon - TDB doesn't yet display the urgency or ability in unwrapping Christmas presents that he'll soon develop - and we headed out to the Ski Jump for an Uncle Margarine led walk up to the Partenkirchen Gorge, rebranded as the Ski Stadion excursion when we learned the Gorge was closed due to ice.

The real gift came at dinner, deep into downtown Parternkirchen, the town where Uncle Margarine isn't welcome, he says. There was tradtional Bavarian dancing, Bavarian music, and, even more traditional, big Bavarian beers, pear schnapps, and copious amounts of pork and potatoes. Styles change slightly over time, too, with dirndl hemlines rising and falling an inch here or there, or lederhosen reaching below the knee, but what nobody was prepared for, and everybody loved, was the 6 foot, big bosomed transvestive brought in to play the Christmas bells.

Papa's Birthday

The mountains are for alpine activity. Even if you don't have own a bobsled or have access to the ski jump, there's downhill and cross-country. With the snow level rising all the way to 2,000 meters in the warm weather, that just left the Zugspitz, with its 40cm of new snow and one way up the mountain, the Zugspitzbahn, once an hour with stops at Garmisch, Kreuzeck, a few other places, and, lastly, Grainau.

For Papa's birthday, one of the last notable ones where you and I now bear the cost of his medical care, there was the annual cross-country race, but in less competitive circumstances. Papa was a little sick, Uncle Margarire was in lawyer shape, Baleen told us she'd take care of the Dragon Boss and meet us along the course, and Aunt Wizzie and Marmee weren't in danger of winning. So Shrimp Jr and I decided to be social, skiing with the group and then away from them, but finishing next to each other after doing an additional loop to Untergrainau.

Tomorrow's Christmas. Hopefully we've got another few years of TDB sleeping through the night before he's banging on our doors at 5am telling us not to shower and to, Get out here, NOW.

Munich, x2

It's been a house of 6 for the first 4 nights, just Papa and Marmee down in the dungeon, The Dragon Boss, Aunt Shrimp Jr, and Baleen and me on the second floor, but we all piled back in the Ford for the trip to Munich to pick up Uncle Margarine and Aunt Wizzie.

The weather's warmed due to some massive cold front over Russia, keeping the warm air over us, which means we'll have to travel higher for snow, maybe above 2,000 meters, eliminating Lermoos. It also means that the famous Munich Chriskindlmarkt is soggy.

It also means that Baleen, TDB and I will be taking the train home, leaving our spots for aunts, uncles and their luggage, and that we'll get to see if TBD loves the train as much as his dad does.