To begin, I missed the autumn season here in New England during my trip overseas. I came back earlier from Australia than planned and therefore should still have gotten a taste of fall, but the weather jumped from warm to freezing seemingly overnight. I had my requisite 3ish weeks off of the bike to constitute an off season and was very excited to be riding again. However, with the temps dipping into the teens in the morning and merely 20s and 30s during mid-day, it's cooooold! In fact, two days before Thanksgiving, I set out in the morning to wonderfully blue skies, but came home just two hours later caked in snow and ice! Thankfully, my neoprene booties, regular shoe covers, toe warmers, and wool socks kept my toes slightly above the freezing point. Plus, even though my glasses were thoroughly iced over, I wouldn't have been able to see anyway with the blizzard like conditions outside! Now that's safe.

Thankfully, the snow has since subsided and I've been able to cash in on a few really nice days of riding. Sure it's chilly, but completely managable so far.

Next adventure involves many trips to the doctors. I don't remember what I last filled you in on, so I'll just jump right into things. I know at this point that I sustained a broken tibia at the knee. Plus some strained ligaments thrown in there too, but that's all healing very nicely. Next, my ribs hurt for about 3 straight weeks. They were horrifically painful to touch, and I nearly passed out once when I sneezed and in doing so put my ribs through the ringer. Ow.

The more recent revelations involve my shoulders. They both hurt quite a bit, but have been feeling better as the days and weeks tick by. I'm trying hard to not be a hypocondriac, so I would just explain how my knee was doing during my doctor's visits, but then at home I'd complain to everyone else about these other aches and pains. Finally I told the doc that I have shoulder problems, which resulted in some physical tests and an MRI. Diagnosis: torn cartilage and a fractured humerus! (...the upper bone in the arm.) I know you're all experienced radiologists, so you can clearly see the white "explosion" at the top of the bone on the right. Yup, fracture. The good news is that it's now about six weeks post crash so it's healing well and there's not much to be done anyway. I still need to baby it a bit, but so far so good. Plus I've been doing some PT with therabands and the fine people of Access Rehabilitation. They're wonderful and have been seeing me time and again over the years, always getting me back to full strength.

Next up, Thanksgiving! Food was of course plentiful and delicious. I made a pumpkin praline tort for dessert, which was the icing on the cake - pun intended. The company was wonderful up at my aunt and uncle's new house in Maine. Plus my second cousins (or cousins once removed or whatever it's called) came over with even more dessert, so we had something like five full dessert items for nine people. Remarkable.

During the post appetiser/pre entree period, Robbie and I played the world's longest game of Jenga. Coincidentally it also turned out to be the world's first ever draw. We played until the wooden logs darn near touched the ceiling and decided it would be wise to call it quits since a) it was time for dinner and b) we didn't feel like picking up the mess. Honestly, it was probably 4 feet high. (We've been playing lots of games lately. Robbie talks about games of Scrabble in his recent entry, and I'll point out the score is now 3 to 1, in favor of the good guy!)

Last but not least, it's a King family tradition to fetch our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. It's also a Splaine family tradition to do the same, so for the past half dozen years, we've teamed up and enjoyed this holiday tradition together. We arrived on a beautiful day, unloaded from the car, and were immediatley reprimanded for bringing a chainsaw to chop down our trees! As mentioned, this is tradition, so for the past three or four years, we've discovered that a chainsaw is the only worthwhile way to fell a tree. Alas, Robbie said something like, "We've been doing this for years" and probably something under his breath as we walked away like, "...and I'm the one holding the chainsaw here, fella!" Off we went.

The Splaines picked theirs out first, which went down in a matter of seconds thanks to the green machine. It turns out that it already has some ornaments in the form of an infestation, as seen by the sizable hole in the trunk. But they're honorable folks, so rather than ditching the tree in the surrounding forrest and picking another, they loaded it up and headed for home. (I think Decia in particular loves it!)

That's the recent news and adventures from here. I wish you a wonderful November and December...

Happy Holidays from the Kings!