A Fine New Year's Day Hike

New Year's Day was beautiful.  Mary, Simone, and I went on a hike in King's Valley at Beazell Park.  We've hiked there before, and it's lovely.  The hikes are pretty short and not very challenging - good for a 5 year old (though at times it was like trying to herd a cat...).

We did a little loop which ended up crossing a stream, going through some Oak forest, a newly planted fir forest, and past a gazebo.  I believe all had a good time - we even got a little family photo.

I'll have you notice - this is probably the last photo of me wearing glasses as I had Lasik not two weeks later.

Singing into a "microphone" we found.

Nifty Bark

The gals posing for me

Family photo - I looked the same in all of them

Entering the planted forest

Tree pose in the trees

Climbing in an oak

Mary phto-bombing Simone

Playing on the bridge crossing a tiny stream

Standing in the stream

Snow In March

Not only did I get to ride in snow several times this spring, we got enough snow in Corvallis one day for Mary and Simone to build a snow-cat!

A Walk In February

Wow, I've taken nearly no pictures this year.  I just looked at my camera and found some from Thanksgiving!!!

One particularly fine day in February, Mary, Simone and I took a lovely walk through town - lunch at Sam's station if I recall correctly.  I took a few photos.

FBI and Bombs

It was just May Day, and five guys were arrested by the FBI for attempting to blow up a bridge in Ohio.

The first thing that occurred to me was that they weren't charged with terrorism - whereas the guy in Oregon who tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas celebration (same thing, no?) was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.  What's the difference in these cases???  My bet is white guys versus non-white.

The other thought I had was that this is yet another case where the FBI works for months to set up a string to get people to try to blow up bombs.  It just seems that they're putting a lot of effort into convince people to buy bombs and then (attempt to) blow them up, as opposed to actually catching people who are making/detonating bombs on their own.  The FBI claims it's preventing countless terrorist attacks ... but it just seems like entrapment for the sake of good publicity.  Let's see them actually catch someone who has a bomb that they didn't get from the FBI in the first place.  That would be saving us from terrorist attacks.

Fat

Mary and I were walking through campus a couple of weeks ago and she noticed a flyer on one of the boards for a metabolic study.  I am in the right age range (38-44) and so I sent the guy an email.

He's doing some research about the body's ability to burn fat, somehow he's doing a comparison/measurement that's never been done before.

Long story short, I showed up twice.  The first time measured my anaerobic threshold (which I happen to cross when I run 9.5mph (increasing .5mph per minute over 10 minutes)), and then today I had my body composition measured and I ran at an easy pace for 35 minutes.  All the running was done while breathing into one of those tubes.

35 minutes on a treadmill?  Yah, it wasn't so bad because he put on a documentary about Yellowstone that was really pretty and fairly interesting.

I'll get an email with all the results later when he's had time to compile everything, so right now all I know is my anaerobic threshold as well as the fact that before eating anything today, I weighed 105 kg, stood at 191cm, and my body fat percentage was 21.1%.

I'm pretty happy with the body fat percentage.  Depending on which chart you look at, it's either just above the acceptable range, or in the acceptable range (who makes these charts up?) - and I'm planning on dropping down to 100kg or less, which should put me around 13% body fat, which would be pretty nice.

Note: while a 13% body fat would have me on the border of "Athlete" and "Fit", my BMI would still have me solidly in the middle of "overweight".

Snuggle

Tonight for bedtime, Simone wanted to read the Boynton book "Snuggle Puppy", which also happens to be a song. It's rather short, so I told her I'd read it 3 times - she wanted me to sing it the last time. For some reason, as I read it, I kept thinking of Christopher Walken and how he might read/sing it. Here's his rendition of a Lady Gaga song. The surprise of the night was when I asked her what song she wanted me to sing, and instead of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" - the song I've been singing to her for at least a year now, she wanted "Snuggle Puppy".

Kickin It!

If you don't know about it, there's a web page (service) called Kickstarter, and it basically enables groups to get grass-roots funding for their projects.
Ze Frank recently had a successful Kickstarter program to fund a new show which started yesterday, and I loved the original show. So kudos to him!
And a pig farmer in Vermont who blogs about his experiences raising pigs has a Kickstarter project to finish his butcher shop. Walter (yes, we're on a first-name basis) blogs about some of the neat things he does in constructing his home and the butcher shop - there's lots to think about in terms of energy efficiency, dealing with the extreme cold in the winter, and of course lots of details about the practical side of raising pigs. Check out his Kickstarter project and maybe throw a few dollars his way.

Comparing Beaver Freezer Results

I looked back over my earlier results and compiled this table to see how I've done over the years. Until this year, I'd pretty much been slowing down...

Trey's Beaver Freezer Results:

Comparing Trey's Beaver Freezers

Stage	2005	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Swim	8:15	8:12	8:26	7:59	8:04	8:26	8:06
T1	2:37	2:22	2:39	2:33*	4:14	4:24	2:32
Bike	36:16	39:06	38:59	42:00*	42:25	42:01	36:03
T2	2:12	2:13	1:31	1:38	2:30	2:07	2:00*
Run	25:57	26:11	25:31	25:00	27:34	28:19	24:09*
Race	1:15:17	1:18:04	1:17:06	1:19:11	1:24:48	1:25:19**	1:12:51

Two years had guessed transition times, marked by *. And 2011 was a race where the swim was in Langton, which has a longer transition run from the swim to the bike, marked by **.

Beaver Freezer 2012

It's that time of year again - time for the sprint tri called the Beaver Freezer.  You can jump to the results by following this link, or you can hear my fascinating tale of mystery and intrigue.

A friend of mine from Wyoming (a 2-time Ironman finisher, who'd just run a half marathon last weekend) flew into town to race the Freezer with me.  Yay!

Daisy drove to Corvallis Friday afternoon.  She, Simone and I jumped on our bikes and rode through campus to downtown to give Daisy an overview of the course and to pick up our packets.  Simone was a trooper and did the 8.5 miles with no complaints, though we'd not dressed expecting the temperature to drop the 10 degrees it did.  She had fun, and hopped into the bath when we got home to warm up.

Simone took to Daisy like a new best friend, and Mary and I were barely on Simone's radar.  Daisy was great and enjoyed hanging with Simone (Daisy's boys are older and have grown out of the lovey-dovey stage).

Wait, a triathlon?

Yah, even though I don't like running and I hadn't been in a pool since last April for the Beaver Freezer 2011! I did make the effort to ensure my goggles still worked and I knew how to breathe - by swimming maybe 800 yards 3 days before the race.  And I've been running about once a week since January (just looked it up, 17 runs this year according to Strava).

We have pancakes for dinner (Daisy's favorite pre-race dinner) and go to bed a little after 10.  We roll out of bed in the morning - I rustle up some eggs, toast, and a banana, and off to the race we go at a little after 7am.

It's cold, about 32 degrees and frosty, but the sun is shining.  As we put our gear on the racks and I finish showing Daisy around the course, the sun totally comes out and it's actually warm.  We pose for some photos:

Daisy's heat is at 9:15, intentionally early so she can make it back to Portland for her flight out (didn't want to miss Easter with the family - an unfortunate coincidence of schedules), and mine is at 9:30.  I'm not quite sure how things will go - I've swum once in a year and am signed up for swimming the 500 in 8:30, which seems much much faster than the nearly 10 minutes my pace was a couple days earlier.

Daisy goes to do an actual warm up beforehand (she's got a coach and everything, probably a wise decision if you're regularly doing Ironman races), so I listen to some music on my Ipod and jog a little bit around the athletic field.

I run into Troy who is volunteering at the race, and later into Mel who is racing the same heat as me (dum... dum... dum... (foreshadowing)).  I'm more than a little intimidated by the two of them.  He regularly comes in the top 3 in the Cat 1 MTB races (#2 in the Mudslinger), and Mel does the same (#3 in Mudslinger) - oh, and Mel placed 6th in her age group in the Xterra world championships.  But they are about the coolest people, it's mostly just me psyching myself out.

I see Daisy briefly before she heads off to her start and I strip down and head into the pool for my heat.  That's the last I see of Daisy until we meet at her car.

I'm getting read for the swim and notice that the drawstring in my shorts has disappeared.   Gaaaah!!!  It's not a really big deal, they're pretty snug so I'm not afraid of them falling off, but I like to tie my wedding band into the shorts because it flops around a little bit on my finger while I'm swimming and I don't like that.  I shake it off and figure it'll be OK.  While swimming warm-up laps I notice the back of my shorts billow out a little bit each time I kick off the wall.  Ok... good to know.

I'm in lane 1, right by the door (yay) and 4th in my lane, meaning I don't have to worry too much about slowing anyone down.  We wish each other good luck and put our goggles on.

The time ticks down and we're off.

It turns out, we're all right about the same speed, or at least, the first guy goes just fast enough that none of us want to pass him.  I pass #3, and then am stuck behind #2, until on the 3rd to last length the old guy (#3) taps my feet.  I snarl to myself, "dude, there's nowhere to go..." and let him pass.  Since it's the last lap, at the far end I just turn and swim down the left side of the lane, which puts me at the ladder to get out - bonus, easy out and 3' less of swimming.

I run out of the pool, passing people on the mat on the way to the transition area.  I can't believe how slow people are jogging, but whatever.  I didn't know it, but I'd just swum 500 yards in 8:07, nearly a PR - not bad for not swimming for year.

I'd get to my bike, put on socks/shoes/shirt/cap/helmet and I'm off.  Thank goodness for the sun, it's a little cold because I'm pretty wet, but I feel pretty good.  I don't like to go balls out in the pool because I feel wasted after swimming, so having been paced just under what I could have done left me with a little energy for the transition and beginning of the bike.

I'm using Sam's bike because mine needs a bike's cost worth of work to be ride-able.  Thanks Sam!  I find the top-tube to be a little short for my preference (not complaining, just noticing), but the bike shifts real smooth and feels pretty good.  I start off by passing a bunch of people - probably 8 before the first turn even, and another 4 by the time we get onto Harrison.  I realize that the really fast folks probably got out of the pool before me and had faster transitions and were ahead of me, so I might be able to not be passed on the bike course.

Nope.

I hear this cheery, high-pitched voice from behind saying they were going to pass.

"Is that Mel?"
"Yup"

I decide to follow Mel and keep up as long as I can, maybe even try to out-sprint her at the finish.  I follow closely, but to the side so I'm not drafting, and we cruise out Harrison and up 53rd/Walnut.  Just after the first turnaround she throws her water bottle at me, or ... as she probably would describe it, goes to get a drink and drops her water bottle.  I deftly avoid it by staring at it in horror, hoping it'll bounce back to the curb before I strike it, which it does.  whew.

We race down 53rd back toward Harrison, getting ready to turn onto Harrison when a jogger decides he's going to pull a u-turn from the bike path onto the road (where we are). Mel and I yell out and he moves out of the way.  We turn safely onto Harrison and head to Oak Creek.

Just before Oak Creek, Mel begins to pull away, just 30 feet or so, and at the turn onto Oak Creek, a brown pickup truck decides he's going to turn too.  Of course he slows down and stops in the turn, whereupon I come parallel to him on a nearly non-existent shoulder.  I'm yelling "Go Go Go!!!!" at the top of my lungs, and eventually he moves on.  This takes me out of the game for a minute and Mel has doubled the gap to 60 feet.  We turn around and she's slowly adding more and more distance, and by the time we're on the home stretch back into campus, she's probably a quarter mile ahead of me.  She threw down the hammer and I couldn't keep up.  She finished nearly a minute ahead of me (more in actuality, but she started a little behind me b/c of her swim).  We high-fived at the finish line, she placed 3rd in women, 1st in her age group.  You go Mel!

I finished the ride feeling good, passing one last person just before the transition area.  I was happy to have only been passed by one person on the ride.  My ride time was 36:09, which is works out to a 20mph average, yay!

The 2nd transition felt pretty fast, and I began running.

I never like the beginning of the run, but my legs felt fairly smooth and, while I wouldn't say light, they didn't feel like bricks.

I passed lots of people on the run.  Crazy.

I did get passed by people, a reasonable number of people running way faster than me, but I definitely passed more than I was passed by - which was an odd feeling.  And whenever I could think of it, I told myself, "it's only 3 laps, so step it up, you can rest later." I hoofed it pretty hard around the last corner, and while I didn't get to pass anyone on the way to the finish (or even fend anyone off) I finished strong.  My run was 24:09 (assuming 2 minute T2, which didn't get recorded), which is a 7:49 mile, a PR by a long shot.

You probably notice a trend, and sure enough, I raced my fastest Freezer ever: 1:12:51.  I'll have to look it up, but I think my 2nd best effort was 1:17:.. - maybe I've done a 1:15:...  I placed 6th (out of 38) in my age group, 53rd (of 224) in the men, and 61st (of 409) overall.

Go me!

Daisy finished 2 minutes slower than me, we were pretty well matched in the breakdown - but I had about a 2 minute edge on the bike - possibly because of my great pacer.

After I finished running, I downed some water and headed back to the car to find Daisy.  She rolled down about a minute after I reached her car and we chatted as she packed her bike into the shipping case.  I wished her luck getting to the plane on time and we said our goodbyes.

Maybe I'll do this again next year, it was fun to do well and feel good doing it.  The sunny weather helped too.

And many thanks to my mom and dad and Simone for cheering me on.  Mary had a conference today and cheered my on from afar (another casualty of happenstance scheduling).

And, of course, thanks to Daisy for coming all the way from Wyoming to race with me.  I'm thinking it should be an annual event.

Mud

Well, after a great winter with very little rain, Oregon opened up with a March that had nearly double the normal rainfall.  The trails are wet, the ground saturated, and trees are falling over for very little reason.

My first MTB race was to be the Mudslinger, and the team had a pre-ride two weeks before the actual race.  Nearly 20 people showed up and we rode the course, through a little rain, snow, and even sun.  It was my first time in the Starker forest, and it was pretty.  The Starkers (a big logging family) are open to folks using it for recreation, and big props to them for that.

The Mudslinger course is two loops (a figure-8), and at the end of the first loop there's a downhill called Panama Canal.  Why do I point this out?

Turns out, I chose a really poor line on that trail, corrected late, and did a slow-motion somersault, with my bike.  Somehow I bust my lip:

 Luckily this happened pretty much at the end of the first loop, so I just rode out.  I'd car-pooled with a friend, and he took me to the ER to get stitched up.  Not an hour later, I walk out sporting 3 stitches:

Five days later, Mary removed the stitches (we were not near the hospital to get them taken out - yay Mary!)  It's all healed up now, and I had the actual Mudslinger ride on the 1st (the day after my 40th).

I chose to ride as a Clydesdale so I could do the full 22 miles (4000' elevation gain), and ride down Panama Canal two times.  Game time!!!!

I didn't hear the call for Clydesdales to start, so I got about a 30 second late start and had to catch up to the rest of the Clydesdales.  I rode the first 6 miles pretty well, passing people on the up, mostly holding my own on the easy downhills.  Just before the only singletrack uphill my chain dropped off the small chain-ring and got stuck in the bottom bracket.  I was very frustrated, and flipped my bike over and yanked on the chain for several minutes, swearing as all the people I'd passed slowly passed me.  And to make things worse, I knew I'd figured out a way to fix the problem but I couldn't remember it (even more frustrating).

I took a few breaths and finally remembered I have a Z-link and could just disassemble the chain, pull it out, and re-assemble.

Some 5-7 minutes after the chain became stuck, I flipped the bike over and began pedaling up the muddy singletrack.

I was cold and frustrated at this point.

But I continued and changed my attitude from racing to just checking out the course.  You see, I'd been racing from the back of the Cat 2/Clydesdale pack, and the chain fiasco put me right between all the slow Cat 2 climbers and the Cat 3 folks (who only do the 11 mile loop), and people were pretty spread out at this point - kinda lonely.

I finished the climb and began the descent.  About 1/3 of the way down Collarbone Alley I drop my seat way down so that I feel like I'm 10 and riding my BMX bike with my knees running up to my armpits, and that is what finally lets me feel fairly comfortable going down the crazy-muddy trail.  Then a little road, and down the single track that is Panama Canal - full of long puddles and brown mud through a mossy carpeted forest.  I get passed, but I'm cool, no crashes, no more stitches.

Before I know it, I'm done with Panama, I raise my seat, and I begin the long climb to the top of the 2nd loop.  It's real long and I pass the few people I see on the road.  One section (First Trail) has a 30' long puddle that is nearly a foot deep.  Wheee!

There's an "aid" station at the top of the climb, which consists of a tent and some people standing there handing out cups of water and Heed.  Rather disappointing - I was hoping for food.  I down a Builder's Bar, some Heed, and finish the climb and begin the scary-steep descent.

The trails that follow, Root Down and Super Tree are scary steep.  They would be fun if the trail were dry, a little hairy, but doable.  But, with the mud, they're just no fun for me, so I jog down about half of it.

At this point we're back on the first loop, climb up the single track where I lost my chain, over to Collar Bone and Panama Canal.  I drop the seat, ride a little more confidently (but just as slowly) down the singletrack - vowing to catch all the folks who just passed me on the road.  Sure enough, we get to the road and have <2 miles to go (a chunk of it up hill), and I catch a number of people.

I finish in just over 3 hours, 6th out of 7 Clydesdales, I'm all in one piece, and evidently I'm happy b/c the photo of me at the finish line shows me smiling.

I clean up, change, hose down my bike, get some food in me, and head home.

I came in only 9m30sec behind 4th place, so had the chain not broken, I might have gotten 4th.  If I'd raced in Cat 2, my time would have placed me 28th out of 33 - not exactly impressive, but easily not last.

Next year I will try for the podium (that's 15 minutes faster than 4th place this year, so not an easy task).  This was the wettest year in history, so the mud shouldn't be as bad in the future, and hopefully I'll have a little better idea how to ride mud.

One thing that came to me is that if I upgrade my bottom bracket to the new style, there won't be space for the chain to get stuck.  Hmmmm...

So, a successful first race this year.  All my goals were accomplished: finish in one piece, have fun, and not come in last in my group.

Next year: the podium.

Quote Of The Day

"Boys aren't queens" - Simone, age 5

So much to learn...

Riding In The Snow

I've had 3 rides in the snow in the past two weeks, crazy!

The first was at night, and there was just too much snow.  We just went up horse trail and back down after finding that there were nearly 6" of snow at the top.

Then, last week, I rode a ride with blue sky and sun, and just a sprinkling of snow - about an inch.    It was phenomenal - one of the prettiest days of riding I've had in months.

Today I set out in the rain with gray clouds, not quite as exciting as the sunny day.  But as soon as I started climbing up the hills in the forest the snow started collecting fast.  I ended up riding through about 3" of snow.
\

I think 3" is about the limit of snow I'll ride in.  Coming down it was OK, but going up was tough going because I spun the tires some.  Plus, the snow really started to build up in the gears and in the rear triangle.

I would have never guessed that I'd have 3 days of riding in the snow in March!

Politics, March 2012

I just posted my BranBrain Dump, and realized I had neglected my political thoughts.

First, the GOP candidates for president are just nuts (Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul).  You've got Romney, a fairly "centrist" republican who is trying to appear as "conservative" as he can be and failing - he's the candidate the GOP doesn't want.  You've got Santorum, a hard-core social conservative who basically thinks women belong in the kitchen making sandwiches.  Gingrich is obviously old school, cheated on both his wives, and says he's not a part of the establishment, even though he actually created the current back-stabbing conditions in American politics (and who was ousted from power by his own party b/c of corruption).  And then there's Ron Paul, the isolationist - who has more views I agree with than any of the GOP candidates - and more than I agree with Obama.

Needless to say, I'm not a fan of any of them.  I'm actually going to write in Scott Adams (yes, of Dilbert fame).

We're still at war in Afghanistan, and bombing several other countries via unmanned drone.  We're still imprisoning hundreds of "terrorists" (without enough evidence to even have a trial to see if they're worth holding).  We've killed an American via a targeted drone strike, and Obama's justice department justifies it by saying that "due process doesn't mean judicial process." Nobody from the Bush administration has been prosecuted for war crimes/torture, nobody from Wall Street has been charged with anything due to the financial collapse, no real reform has been made in either situation - in fact Obama has gone after whistle blowers more vigorously than all other administrations beforehand, he's expanded executive power more then W did, etc. etc. etc.

Needless to say I'm not happy.

I am happy I've found this comic strip, here's an example of their work.  It's spot-on and absolutely hilarious.

You've got the media talking about nothing but the political races, and completely ignoring actual policy debates.

For example, Iran.  Everyone from Obama to the GOP candidates are trying to sound tough on Iran, completely and whole-heartedly supporting Israel's desire to bomb Iran.  Yet when actually pressed (though nobody ever does), people in the know agree that there is no evidence that Iran is actually pursuing nuclear weapons.  Nobody talks about the fact that Iran actually had signed an agreement to give up the enrichment program - and the US decided to just go ahead with sanctions instead.

And the media just goes along with the party line - both parties in fact, and repeats the same B.S. - which is what led us into Iraq.

It's disgusting.

Brain Dump March 2012

Forced post to jump start this blog.

My LASIK has gone incredibly well.  I just had my 2 month checkup and the doctor says he has trouble seeing the edge of the corneal flap.  Plus, my left eye is spot-on - no astigmatism and perfect vision.  The right eye is slightly near-sighted and has a slight astigmatism.  The left eye is 20/15 and the right is a slightly blurry 20/20, and both together can read a couple of the letters on the 20/10 line.  woo-hoo!  Other than an odd dream where I saw the doctor b/c a flap had come unhinged, everything is going super well.

I'm still doing Weight Watchers and am coming out of a 2+ month slump.  I've basically had the same weight since December, but am currently at my lowest weight since I started: 240.4#.  I've been occasionally eating crummy food at work (someone brought baklava, and there were donuts, and pizza) and feel kinda tired when I do that.  So I'm doubling down and eating good food to see if that helps with the energy levels (and weight).

I've been riding 2 or 3 times a week in the mountains and been loving it.  We've had some rain in January and February, but even with all the "crummy" weather, I've only had to ride in the rain maybe 3 times since I started riding in the fall.  On Tuesday of this week I went out for a lovely ride in the sun and blue skies with an inch of snow all over the hills.  Amazing and beautiful!

I don't think I mentioned it on my blog (quick search... nope) - I joined a mountain bike team this year: Team Dirt.  It's got some really amazing riders on it, and I figured they could use some help rounding out the team profile (ha, round, get it? I'm overweight, i.e. round, heh heh).  The team is loosely organized, though this year it's applying to be a non-profit and the guy running it is making the team and the races he organizes his job (as in, he quit his other job -  but he's got a wife who brings in the money).  There are lots of plans for the future - building more trails, more races, changes to the team to be more inclusive (allowing people who just want to do trail work and not ride).

One of the active team members has a regular ride on Monday and Thursday nights from his house and there are 2-3 guys who consistently show up to ride.  I've joined that crew on Thursdays (after my WW meeting) and been riding with them for about a month.  They're a good group of guys who wait for me at the tops of the climbs.

What's been real fun is that a number of people on the team are using strava.com to track their rides.  What makes this site different than others (for the moment, I figure they'll have competition soon, if not already) is that  it automatically recognizes segments of rides for you, and it recognizes when other people have ridden that segment.  So, for example, the climb to Dimple Hill is a segment, and every time I ride it, the web page tracks my time and shows how I'm doing relative to everyone else.  An aside is that my personal goal is to make that climb in under 20 minutes (by the end of June).  Plus, there's a social aspect to the site where you can follow people and get updates on their activities.  So I'm seeing what other guys on the team are riding and how they're doing - which meant that I already had some rapport with the guys I ride with on Thursdays before I'd even ridden with them.  It's been surprisingly fun.  You can see my riding here.

I've got the Beaver Freezer coming up, and a friend from Wings is going to join me and race too.  I've yet to dip my foot in a pool since the last Freezer - perhaps this weekend.  And, I just found out today that my trusty old road bike needs ... $900 worth of work.  (shhhh, don't tell Mary, she doesn't know yet).  So there's some decisions to be made on that front.  (new crank/chain/cassette/bb, shifters old and worn and old enough they need to be replaced, new tires, cables/housing, front derailleur - basically everything but the brake arms, frame, headset, hubs and rims).

When Mary and I visited Victoria last fall for our anniversary I bought a pair of custom sandals from Heart And Sole Shoes - kind of on a whim (Mary was the one who was interested in the shop and sandals).  I've been wearing them regularly since then and have been enjoying them.  They're definitely unique, and I've gotten comments like "Jesus sandals" and "gladiator sandals" all the way to "are you wearing your wife's sandals?"  They were made just for my feet and have proven to wear very well so far in the 5 months since I've had them.  I do need to trim the leather strap that goes around the back of my foot (it stretched a fair amount).  I'm mostly including that note to see if I ever get around to doing it.

Mary is doing real well - she's begun her practice part-time (half a day a week, to selected patients only), she's fit as a fiddle and looking great.  Plus, she's been learning to ride a horse since last fall and loves that very much.  I don't like commenting bunches about her on my blog b/c I wouldn't want to speak for her, but I think she's pretty happy overall.

Simone, on the other hand, doesn't have a blog (that I know of), so I'm continuing to take the liberty to talk all about her.

She's loving kindergarten at the Waldorf school, and after spending the first half of the year talking mostly about a couple of kids she'd gone to preschool with, she's talking about other kids now.  One, Xavier (?), was very prominent for a week because they were "in love" - and they'd kissed (I guess Simone is very lovey with most of the kids).  You can keep your jokes about "just wait until she's a teen" to yourself.

The biggest shock to me was that we're going to keep her in kindergarten for another year.  Long story short, when the thought of next year first came up I'd assumed she'd be going onto 1st grade next year, and when that came into question I was a bit shocked.  I quickly realized it was all about my ego (as if that should matter in determining what's best for her).  The school had a meeting for parents of soon-to-be-1st-graders and talked about what they looked for developmentally and talked about the differences between kindergarten and the grades.  It became clear that Simone is still pretty dreamy and probably wouldn't adapt to the requirements of 1st grade without a bit of a struggle.  She's been reading lots, spelling words, writing letters/cards/stories - so she's ready academically, but honestly, I don't think she could really handle sitting for 2 hours out of the day.  She does that on her own schedule all the time, but it's never when she's "told to" (like when I'm working from home and Mary is out for some reason).  Plus, part of the reason we chose this school was for the personal attention and their emphasis on social growth - and if the teacher is suggesting she stay in kindergarten - it'd be foolish to ignore her advice.  Ultimately, there's no reason to rush Simone off to college, let her be a kid a little longer.

Off Road!

Simone and I rode the Trail-A-Long to Avery Park this afternoon.

Right when we got there I asked her if she wanted to take the dirt path that goes around the park.  She was very excited and we rode it all the way from the Mary's River crossing to Lion's Kitchen.  And then we rode it back the other direction.

Lots of "whee!" interspersed with "boing" as we went over rockier portions of the trail.

Hopefully the first of many off-road adventures.

Running

I started running again - with the intention of seeing whether or not my body would be agreeable to do it for another Beaver Freezer.  A friend from Life Works (that seminar I just finished) told me she'd come and race with me if I did it (she has a goal of competing in a race of some kind in each of the 50 states).

So, I'm spending January figuring it out.

My body isn't crazy about running, but I think it will be ok with me doing the Freezer.

Yesterday's run was in the mist, and the streams were flowing high.  I took a couple of crummy photos with my iPhone.

At the end, my knees complained a little bit (I resorted to more walking than running), but was happy to be outdoors.

Self-Made Coloring Book Pages

Just the other day, Simone decided to draw some pages to color in.  We've had a couple of different coloring books, and she likes them well enough.  Lately she's paid a fair amount of attention to coloring in the lines and choosing very specific colors.  I've always preferred her free-hand drawings, but some of the colorings have been very pretty.

This, however, was a new twist.  She drew two pictures with black pen and we colored one in together.  I had artistic reign over the fairies (well, one had to be a rainbow fairy, oh, and they needed blue eyes and gold hair, but I did the coloring), and I colored in the brown roof, the chimney, and the tree.  But I just love her drawing, with the wings and the tu-tu.

And then she drew another page, which we didn't get to color.  It's a drawing of Jade (the larger one) and Juptier.

Simone Book

Simone loves creating things.  Last fall (Sept 2011) she wrote a book.  Well, she wrote many books, but one in particular stood apart.  I just scanned the images in, and here it is.

Of course it has a title page, which is her name:

Mary got some watercolor pencils, which are way cool.  You draw with the pencils, using whatever colors you want, and then you come back with a water brush and apply the water and you get a water color painting.

Simone loves using them.  She draws with a pen for the outline, and then colors it in.

I can't remember if the next drawing was a boat, or just the clay birdhouse we have in the back yard.  Ah, that's probably it, the birdhouse was sitting in one of the clay pots that have soil.

I knew I should have kept notes, I'm pretty sure this is a picture of Hazel.  She was really missing Hazel last fall.

 Flowers are a big part of her drawing.  Though this one actually reminds me of a duck.  This one is a black-eyed susan.

 I believe the next one is a self portrait, note the blue eyes and blonde hair.  She is wearing her Hawaii dress.

Rainbows were probably the first concrete thing Simone started drawing, and they make frequent appearances.  Edit: Simone informed me this is a sunset - which makes sense, there's no green.

From another picture she drew about the same time, I think this is a picture of the horse named "Red."

After creating all the pages, Simone ripped them out of the notebook and stapled them together.  She's made a number of books, some are full-blown stories, and some are more abstract.  This is certainly one of my favorites.

Edit: This morning I showed Simone the pictures and she read the file names and corrected me on several accounts.  So, she recognizes the words rainbow, clifford (I'd incorrectly named the in the filename).

Three Weeks In

We're in the new year, and what's happened?

I had LASIK (at PCLI) and it went really well, though I'm itching to get back to mountain biking (I took a week off as a precaution, then had other things get in the way - including the flooding of Corvallis which has closed down the forest b/c of landslides).

I finished up the Life Works seminar, which was  a great experience.

The last weekend of LW, Simone caught a bit of a stomach flu and was puking all weekend, I returned from my weekend away to help out as Mary got winged by it, and then I took a day off because it laid me low for a day.  I think it's our first illness that got all three of us.

Simone is drawing lots (I really want to scan them in... maybe that'll be tonight's project), and speaking more and more complicated - I wonder where my little girl has gone.

This weekend is a papa weekend as Mary is at a conference.  Simone and I played outside in the brief patch of  sun, we made mustard and kimchi, we read lots of books, and then more books, and we've been eating lots - including rice pudding for dessert.

Mary hung up some paper lamps in the bedrooms, and the fairies turn them on and off for us.  The three in our bedroom are remote-controlled, so the mystery might still be holding there.  It's hard to tell if Simone is just playing along or if she still believes.

Tonight I read "A Fairy Went A-Marketing" to Simone while she took a bath.  Cute book, great illustrations.  How geeky of me was it that when the fairy gave a coat to a frog my first thought was, "That's not right!  Frogs are cold-blooded!  What is this book teaching?!"

The year has started off well - looking forward to the remaining 49 weeks!

New Year

Well, it's a new year.

The highlights so far - a lovely 3+ hour walk with Mary through the woods (Lewisburg Saddle to the top of Dimple Hill, down Dan's and back) while Simone was at school, then lunch at Vietnamese food, then a 2 hour mountain bike ride up to the top of McCulloch Peak (taking nearly 3 minutes off my PR, yay!), and coming home to see Mary and Simone, both happy to see me.

The lowlights so far: Spending nearly 8 hours re-installing all the software on my laptop from scratch (yes, I could buy a new one, but facing 8 hours versus $1K, I went with the time I had).

It's Good

Simone woke up early this morning and called out for me.  When I came into her room she wanted help blowing her nose and then asked if I could snuggle.  As I snuggled in next to her she said, "It's good to snuggle in the morning."

It certainly is.

Breakfast

So we're at the beach for Thanksgiving.  Mary, Simone and I drove through Astoria because 101 is flooded just south of Seaside.  The road is flooded because there was a crazy storm happening, winds up to 60mph (seemed like 80, but what do I know).

We woke up (I use that term loosely, I slept in until 8:30) and then decided to have some breakfast.  Oatmeal porridge was on the menu, but for some reason Mary pulled down a package of marshmallows, and she said the word "marshmallow."

Of course Simone heard this and came into the kitchen asking about them, face very bright and excited.  There were two bags.  One of the ridiculously over-sized large marshmallows - large enough that you need a graham cracker the size of a piece of sandwich bread to match.  The other bag was the regular size marshmallow.  Simone told us how the big ones make her sick and she'll "never eat those again" ("never" and "always" are popular terms right now, everything is absolute).  However, she did want one of the regular-sized ones.

She had 3 marshmallows, very excited about each one - I should have gotten it on video.

We did actually eat oatmeal after than, and then I high-tailed it to McMennemin's to put in half a day of work, leaving Mary to hang out with Simone hopped up on sugar.

good-luck!

Riding With Simone To School

Simone and I rode to school today.

Yup, she's in kindergarten at the big Waldorf school, it's her second full week.

We woke up this morning, had breakfast (hens in pens), dressed up nice and warm, hopped on our bike and road the 6 miles or so to school. It was super foggy in parts - I meant to take a photo of some trees in the fog, but I wanted to be to sure to get to school on time.

We got there in plenty of time, being the second kid in the class to walk in.

Simone peeled off her many layers, kissed me goodbye and she was off.

It felt great to ride her to school, and I hope to do it a few more times before the rain sets in.

I took a slightly longer way home, riding along Walnut/53rd, and I did take the time to snap a photo of the sun shining through the oak trees. I was on a bit of a hill here, and was just barely out of the fog, about 2 minutes later I was back in the thick of things.

I do love the fall weather - let's hope it sticks around for a while longer.

If Only "The Onion" Reported Real News...

I didn't read/follow much of the 9/11 navel-gazing that happened, but I saw that The Onion wrote a piece and thought I'd check it out. It's worth a read (it's really more sad/ironic than funny).

U.S. Commemorates 9/11 By Toasting Stable Afghan Government From Top Of Freedom Tower | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

NEW YORK—In a moving and beautiful ceremony held atop Lower Manhattan's gleaming, 120-story-tall Freedom Tower, the nation commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by raising a glass to the stable democracy of Afghanistan and to a decade of unprecedented peace and prosperity across the globe.

A sobering/depressing read

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

"If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power."

He heaps a lot of blame on the Republicans and (more or less) discounts the Democrats as incompetent. I think I'd disagree with that statement about the Democrats - I think they're basically in cahoots with the Republicans. This isn't Gilligan's Island, the Dems are professional politicians - they know what they're doing, they know who butters their bread - it's the same as who butters the GOP's bread - large corporate interests...

I do have half a mind to take Mary up on her occasional, "we should move to another country..." thought.

Wouldn't that shock people.

Farm to Farm - a ride for me

Mary noticed a bike ride coming up, the Farm to Farm.  It totally has my name written all over it.  A ride through the countryside, with 4 stops along the way at farms with fresh food, ending with a meal made from the ingredients from the farms.  Woo-hoo!

I'm in.  Anyone else?

Studying Obesity

(From the archives, a post started in January 2011 but never finished)

Today I saw two articles. The first was in our Friday paper: "OSU wins $5 million grant for rural childhood obesity research", and the second was a blog post "The American Fast Food Syndrome". Oh, and I heard a story on the radio last night, "Overburdened Food Banks Can't Say No To Junk."

It got me to thinking about obesity again, and wondering how much money will we throw at studying this problem and how much time (lives) will we waste?

The OSU research has a goal of "improv[ing] the fitness level and reduce the body mass index of rural children, ages 5 to 8." That's a great goal, and you do need specific goals in order to win research money. Which are you more likely to give money to, a study with the goal, "make people happier" or one whose goal is "decrease incidence of days of depression in 20-25 year olds"?

We, in the U.S., seem to like to research the hell out of things and not do anything about it. How many diet/lifestyle studies do we need to do?

It's clear that if we feed ourselves too much food, and crummy food at that, we're going to get fat.  The government heavily subsidizes corn/soy/wheat/sugar and that gets turned into cheap junk food.

Biking and a Hike

We found a trail-a-bike (tag-a-long) on Craig's List yesterday and I picked it up today.  We should have gotten one in the beginning of the summer...  oh well.

We hooked it up and Simone and I went riding off into the summer day.  She had a blast, and so did I.  Simone  felt very confident on the bike (after the initial 30 seconds of "I'm tired"), and about half way into our ride she was pedaling enough that I could feel the help.  I'd occasionally stop pedaling (on request) so she could be the one to make us go, and I'd do all the steering.

We went through Avery park, to Noah's house (he wasn't there), and then on to Bohdie's (he was, we chatted for a few minutes), and then we came back through Avery park to see the big train engine there.  All in all, we covered nearly 8 miles, and Simone would have easily gone another 4 (she was asking to go further).

Instead we came home to connect with Mary, who was hanging out at home recovering from her first half-marathon.  Yay Mary!  She did it with Tracy (Bohdie's mother), so the papas and the kids rolled down a little later to catch the mamas as they crossed the finish line.  Tracy finished 49th out of the 1000 - running way fast (about 1h45m).  Simone and I walked them back to their car and made it back to the finish line a few minutes before Mary crossed - so we cheered her on.

Anyway, we came home from the bike ride to tell Mary all about it, and then headed out to Alsea Falls for a little hike and to cool our feed in the water.  We rarely go out there, and I don't know why - it's lovely.  We crossed over the creek and headed down the trail to where it got a little slippery.  But we made it down to the water and hung out in the bottom of the gorge on big rocks, wading in the water, feeling as though we had the entire forest to ourselves.

A wonderful labor day to finish a great weekend.

It Begins

Today was my first meeting at Weight Watchers.  I weighed in at 263.8 pounds (socks, shorts, t-shirt), and I've got my goals set.

The leader (Sandy) is energetic and pretty entertaining (though she reminds me a little bit of my mom...)

Here's to reaching some new goals and staying there.  The medium-term goal is 235 pounds, but first I've gotta lose 5 pounds (you get a gold star! - it's just like kindergarten)...

An Adventure

We woke up this morning and figured we'd try something new, and adventure perhaps. So, after a rousing game of bananagrams,

Mary made one of our favorite breakfasts, sunny-side-up eggs over a bed of wilted spinach. yum! We then piled into the car

and headed off for a little hike just outside of Lincoln City called Drift Creek Falls. We'd never been there before and it sounded neat. The last 10 miles of the drive there were through a narrow, winding road, and it seemed as though we were going into the middle of nowhere. But, when we arrived, there was a huge paved parking area with space for 20 cars, most of which were filled. We parked, hopped out, and headed down the path. The trail is very gentle, mostly following a ridge down to a little creek at the bottom. You walk through a variety of sunny forest with lots of vegetation, and darker forest along a steeper portion of the hill.

After getting to the bottom, we had a snack next to the stream:

Drift Creek from Trey Jackson on Vimeo.

We crossed the stream, walked through some nice old growth forest

and then came to a neat suspension bridge over a surprisingly large gorge (very little water seemed to flow through it)

We then hiked down to the bottom to dip our feet in (Simone came fully prepared with water wings)

The hike back out was almost as nice - a little busier, and uphill of course. Simone did find one little fairy chair to sit in on the way out.

After the nice hike, we drove into Lincoln City and found lunch at a wonderful cafe named Blackfish Cafe. The fish and chips was awesome, Mary's fish tacos were delicious - almost as good as her glass of wine. And the hostess said dinner was even better (reservations recommended). The fog rolled in, and Mary and Simone started to fall asleep, so I pulled into Agate Beach (a childhood favorite of Mary's) and we played in the sand there for an hour. There are sand dunes all over the beach, ranging from 2 feet tall to nearly 6 feet. Much fun for climbing, sliding, jumping and the occasional tackle.

We finished the day with a light dinner at Mo's, some ice cream (and brownie!!!) for dessert and then headed home.

A very good day indeed.