Mimi and I now live in that painfully cute town of Lambertville, New Jersey, full of art galleries, antique shops, glass shops, and coffee houses. These venues are nearly completely patroned by well funded baby boomers. They have grey hair, wear fully sponsored spandex leotards, and lean $3,000 ten speeds on the front window of whatever shop they are currently browsing. Inside, they walk awkwardly clacking clacking clacking around in their clipless bicycle shoes. Instead of riding their carbon fiber chariots over the 15-mile-an-hour bridge to the equally cute town of New Hope, Pennsylvania, the cycling enthusiasts gather in the sidewalk at one end of the bridge until their great pack reaches a critical mass. Then they start clacking across, pushing their bikes one-handed, never by the handlebars, but by the saddle thereby displaying a copious degree of balance. The other hand usually holds a formidable water bottle. I have yet to see one of these packs actually riding through the streets. Somehow, this town is not the town for riding my Shogun. It currently sits in our downstairs hallway, unused.

Mimi and I just got back from a trip to Maine, visiting my father and brother. It is January.

We stayed in Camden, which would give Lambertville a painfully cute run for its money in the summer. But in January, the place is somewhat desolate. We stayed at the Lord Camden Inn, eating free continental breakfasts every morning in the minimally ornate breakfast room, fully staffed by a chef wearing a tall puffy white hat - likely yearning to boil a lobster, and a plucky waitress who stood poised at the doorway with hands neatly folded in front, her head neatly turned away from us, but her attention focused entirely on us. And it turns out we were the only guests in this facility of 75 rooms. Each room had its own balcony, some overlooking the bookshops of Main Street, which were fully stocked with books written by local authors. Our room, however, overlooked a fast-running canal, greatly padded with soft snow, packed with inns and restaurants climbing on stilts from the water's edge. At night I left the curtains open, not fearing anybody would see us in our glory, me picking my ear. Ours was the only lighted window.