Two of My Favorite Women

My mama is coming down today from Tennessee to see her new great-granddaughters. She'll be bringing fresh okra and tomatoes from her garden. She's also bringing the tomatoes she canned for Laurel and me.
Mama is a giver. I think that's her primary love language. She's not prone to giving hugs; just one when I first see her and one when I leave. But she gives in a big way of her time and energy.
When I was growing up, she made ALL of my clothes and cooked ALL of our meals from scratch plus held down a full-time job. She taught me to sew, to play piano, to clean house and cook, to garden, and many, many other life skills. She was the one who led me to Jesus in the field out behind Grandpa's barn.
The two photos of her below are in her kitchen cooking a full breakfast for us. She's an amazing woman. I love her so much that it hurts.
And here is a photo of my oldest baby with her two new baby daughters. She's also an amazing woman. Mother of six children under eight, good friend to her many girlfriends, a great listener, a contemplative, a striver of perfection, a domestic goddess, an excellent wife, and my best friend.
I'm very blessed by the women in my life and thank God that we have such close relationships. Of course Darcie, my youngest daughter, is included in this list. I just didn't write about her today because I'm always gushing about her here.

Anubis FWA

The Comb showing the line of Anubis, on the day of the ascentQuite unexpectedly, I managed to complete my long term ambition to make the first winter ascent of my own summer E8, Anubis on Ben Nevis. The number of hours to finish the lead might just be countable on one hand, and completely exhausted me for the following three days. In other words, I completely went for it.



Starting up the initial overhang Photo: Christina BellIt seems to contradict reason, but it seems clear to from my experience that there are many different states of mind which seem to work well for bringing out the best (or should it be worst?) in climbers for hard leads. ‘confident and solid’ is most consistent, but suffers often from nerves and fear of failure. ‘Invincible’ can produce moments of sickening boldness/recklessness, but always makes for a short career in climbing. ‘Angry’ is only really good for pull-ups. Climbing is too delicate for it’s unchannelled release of energy. ‘F**k it, what have I got to lose?’ was where I was at on the crux of Anubis. Life is too short for caution when you are on the right route, at the right time. So I dispensed with caution.A small gear ripping fall on the initial wall leading to the main roof helped a lot to relax the body. I had been needing that for about two or three seasons. I started again. This time climbing like I wanted to get higher.



Crossing the crux roof Photo: Christina BellSeveral hours later, with nothing left in my arms, my feet slipped off again on the final headwall, well out from the last gear. I had the eyeball bulge of a leader with three seconds to find a solution or fall. A footless speed-downclimb of about 8 moves and kung foo kick back onto the footledge under the roof saved one more chance to get to the belay. Christina burst out laughing at the sight of it. I laughed as well, after a minute or two.Next time up was my last strength, so I got there. I pulled through my 70 metre ropes, tied them together and kept going up the comb in a 140 metre pitch, before untying and continuing up the ice grooves, and eventually standing in the quiet of the summit by myself for a few minutes.Grade in winter? No idea. I’ll have a think about it. I haven’t ever tried or done anything harder in winter. I guess there are worse chores than grading your hardest route. The route started as an idea to see if it was possible today to maintain the Victorian mountaineering tradition of opening a new climb in summer conditions, and progressing to an ascent in winter. Great that it’s still every bit as possible as it was a century ago.



The highpoint of my 2nd attempt, the other week Photo: Andy Turner



Anubis in summer E8 mode Photo: Cubby Images



Postscript: Just before I posted this up I read a timely post on Ian Parnell’s blog with a full list of all the routes of grade IX and above. I can’t say it really helped that much for making a wild and disclaimer-ridden stab at a grade for Anubis. But what did stand out was the consistency of routes which are often reasonably protected HVSs working out at IX in winter. There are of course some E2s and up to about E4s that have been done as winter mixed routes, generally where the cruxes involve cracks. Anubis, although dramatically harder at E8 does have a useful short crack at the crux, but then a section of E5 6a face climbing on small crimps. Bla bla… the long and short of it is I do think it’s a significant step up from any of the routes I’ve done. The crux is not much harder than Don’t Die, but then the rest is like stringing three of the IXs on Ian’s list together. So maybe it’s XII if my other two routes are really XI. Or if The Hurting and Don’t Die are really grade X then Anubis might make it into XI. I’ll keep thinking about it...

Dog Days

This week I'm taking photos for our local library of dogs and their owners to celebrate the Dog Days of Summer. Here are a few of my favorites.

Off to the Smokies: Travel Day 1

Greetings from Fort Chiswell RV Park in Max Meadows, Virginia.  After an easy 273-mile (437 km) drive, we’re calling it a day.  Our original plan was to overnight at the Flying J located at Exit 80 on I-81 South.  That would have been OK had we arrived late in the day and all we wanted was a place to sleep.  Since it was only 4:00p, we decided to continue up the street to this campground instead.

With 273 miles (437 km) of the 463-mile (741 km) drive under our belt, we’re more than
half way to our final destination.

I’ll get back to the campground in a minute.  Let me first backtrack to the beginning of our travel day.  Initially, we thought we’d get started around noon, but when my 10:00a conference call was cancelled, we decided to head out earlier.  We left the house at 8:30a and were on the road in the Phaeton an hour later.  The comfortable 50F (10C) temp, blue skies, and sunshine made for a perfect day to get our wheels rolling.

The toad is hooked up; we’re ready to get on the road.

Securing the storage lot; I’m the designated gate keeper.

Today was a workday for me, so once we were safely on I-66 West, I fired up the company laptop and got cracking.  I gotta tell you — working as we rolled down the highway gives a whole new meaning to tele-commuting.  The wi-fi signal with our aircard/CradlePoint router/Wilson antenna set up was strong.  I managed to not only check emails, but get a VPN connection to the office network to export data for reports and send them onto my boss.  Nice; really nice — and it opens up new horizons for me should I wish to pursue them.

On this trip, we’re also testing out the Vonage VOIP home phone we set up here in the Phaeton in February (post here).   We both called our families in Turkey, and it was no different than calling from our stix & brix condo.  I love technology — especially when it works :-)

I exchange IMs and emails with my boss, and manage to get a whole lot of work done
while we’re rolling down the Interstate.

Left: I love my office on the road (Mui took the photo when we stopped at a rest area on I-81).
right: Mui takes advantage of the break at the rest stop to call his mom on the house phone.

The Phaeton fits nicely behind a semi at the rest stop.

The next two-hour segment of the drive was a comfortable one.  Traffic moved at a constant speed and wasn’t that heavy despite the number of semis with which we shared I-81.  There were a lot of RVs in the northbound lanes — the snowbird migration is well underway.  We didn’t see many RVs heading south.  In fact, the only one we saw was at the rest stop where we took our lunch break.

Speaking of the drive, Mui’s very happy with the performance of the Safe-T-Plus steering control device we recently had installed.  The Phaeton handled well to begin with, but with this device in place, he says it’s a dream to handle.  And there’s noticeably less sway when the semis whiz by us at high speeds.  More details in a future post.  (Mui’s sleeping, so I can’t bug him for information now.)

It was just too nice to be eating at home; we chose to eat at a picnic table instead.

Back on the road, we debated just pressing on to Townsend, TN.  Common sense won out in the end, and I went online to Woodalls to look for campgrounds en route.  Since Whytheville (actually, Max Meadows) was where we were going to initially stop anyway, I focused on that area.  And that brings us to where we are right now.

Fort Chiswell RV Park — Site 60 from the grassy knoll we face.

The campground is nice.  The sites are a bit tight, but it’s quite doable for an overnight stay.  Site 60 is a 50 Amp, pull-thru, FHU overlooking a grassy knoll.  We’re at the beginning of a row, and as luck would have it, several sites on our other side are empty.  It all adds up to plenty of privacy for us.  We didn’t have to unhitch the toad; a good thing for an overnight stop.

Site 60 is circled in red.
[map courtesy of the park website]

The park is not inexpensive.  The nightly rate is $33.50+tax.  Our Good Sam discount covered the taxes and saved us 50 cents to boot :-)  Cable TV is included in the rate; as is wi-fi with good speed for internet browsing, but slow for uploading photos.  And forget about streaming a video.

Site 60 from a different angle of view.

After we quickly set up, Mui washed the windshield to rid it of today’s bug casualties.  (There is a reason why I have just one photo from the road in this post.)  While he did that, I unpacked our bags, hung the clothes, and stocked the pantry with the food we brought from home.  Having fewer chores to do when we arrive at our destination campground tomorrow is a good thing :-)

Our nearest neighbors are the cows on the other side of that fenceline.

A quick dinner and a quiet evening at home — a pleasant way to end our first travel day.  We’re already fueled up, so we can get on the road without delay tomorrow morning.  But we won’t be in a hurry to check out.  After all, we have just 190 miles (304 km) to go and check-in at Tremont is not until 1:00p.

Speaking of fueling up.  We did so at the Flying J where we thought we might spend tonight.  The diesel credit price was $3.93/gallon — one of the best we saw en route — with a cash price of $3.87/gallon.  We did even better by using our Pilot/Flying J RV Plus card and got our diesel for $3.81/gallon.  Not too shabby!

Time to call it quits and get my beauty rest — mañana.

Satisfied Land + Misty Mountains

Above photo: "Satisfied Land".
After a very dry spring, moisture returns to the north woods of Minnesota. This was our first good day of rain in almost two months during a time of year that normally sees a lot of rainfall.

Above photo: "Misty Mountains".
This was about an hour before sunset; the clouds were breaking up and the hills had this beautiful fog rolling through through them. I love not only shooting but just plain being out in the woods when the conditions are like this!

Lyveden Way from Wadenhoe

With Harry. Some sun, some cloud, but fine and warm. Some mud underfoot in the woods. Just over 7 miles including Lyveden New Bield itself.

Millenium sundial at Wadenhoe church.

From Wadenhoe church we followed the path over a couple of cattle grids to the road to Aldwincle, turned left along the road, then right on a path which took us to another small road.Here we turned left through a metal gate and walked along a wide grassy track, which used to be part of the road from Thrapston to Oundle.

A shaggy inkcap fungus on the grassy track.







Just over half a mile down the track, a footpath goes to the right, heading for the woods. When we were there we noticed masses of crab-apples on the ground.



The path through the edge of the woods is quite narrow and overgrown in places, and can be muddy. In the sunlight we had it was a lovely place to walk.After another half-mile or so the path became wider, and joined a track, which we followed to the right almost through the woods. The sign for the next turn-off is slightly hidden, but if you come out of the woods on the big track, you'll need to retrace your steps for a hundred yards or so. The small track cuts through to the right, and we emerged at the edge of a field. The marker posts are clear and the path now goes behind Lyveden New Bield, with its car park and on Wed- Sun from 10.30 - 5, you should be able to get a drink and snack, even without making an official visit.

Lyveden New Bield is an uncompleted building - it was intended as a hunting lodge, or more probably as a 'summer house', and built for Sir Thomas Tresham in the early 1600s. More info about the building and the Treshams.



The mound in the picture is a 'snail mound', created when the garden was made, as Elizabethan and Tudor gardens were designed to be looked at from above.











This is one of the 'canals' constructed as part of Tresham's pleasure garden.

The orchard has been replanted using many of the original old varieties of fruit - apples, pears, and plums.





From the New Bield the path goes across a field and directly through Lilford Wood. At the other end of the wood, we crossed a small grassy field, then a footbridge, walked uphill through another field, until we reached a metalled track. This took us for a couple of miles or so back to the small road we crossed much earlier in the walk. Here we turned right, then left soon afterwards, taking a footpath alongside a hedge full of blackberries.

The path is well signed and leads into `Wadenhoe village, coming out between two houses and on to the main street.







Walk route - thanks to 20 best local walks, by Nicholas Rudd-Jones.

Highers - finished!

Relaxation all round in our house tonight. The last of our daughter's 5 Highers was today. Phew. This is part of the second paper of the two Modern Studies Higher papers. From Higher English on 13 May, through History, Italian and Music, it's been a long 3 weeks. No maths or science, you'll note. They were left behind with a sigh of relief after last year's Standard Grade and Intermediate 2 exams. As we don't have a baccalaureate system (tho daughter's school is going to be the first Scottish school to offer the International Baccalaureate alongside Scottish qualifications), there are no compulsory subjects. You might argue that this produces lop-sided students, tho plenty mix History and Physics, or Chemistry and Art. You could also argue that it lets students play to their strengths. I know it took every ounce of willpower that I had - and zero understanding - to scrape a pass in the equivalent of Standard/Intermediate 2 Maths, dyscalculic that I am. Don't ask me to explain the difference between Standard Grade and Intermediate 2, or why we have a mixed economy at this level. They're going to be replaced by the new 'Curriculum for Excellence' soon.
The exam timetable is centralised, so all over Scotland school students will have been sitting the same papers at the same time. Exams are set by the Scottish Qualifications Authority. If you're really interested, you can access the timetable here.

I'm impressed by the Modern Studies syllabus and exam. The syllabus covers contemporary social and political issues in Britain and worldwide. I would say that my daughter has a greater understanding of these issues than I do. As well as the knowledge base, the exam format really nails transferrable skills. The 'decision making task', above, involves using information from a variety of sources, including statistical data, to make a reasoned case for or against a proposal.

The earlier paper this morning took the form of 'classic' discursive essays on four topics, which in daughter's case were on voting behaviour, the interactions of health and wealth, social and economic change in China, and factors affecting development in Africa.
So now all that remains is to wait for the results in August.