A Caped Crusader

Here's a little known fact: When Superman was a toddler, he wore a red cape AND had a pacifier. Here are the pictures to prove it.
Actually, this is my third grandson we affectionately call Thing 3. He decided to be a caped crusader at our church picnic on Saturday. I couldn't resist snapping a few shots of his incongruous apparel. I love this kid!

A little Recat.

Re- prefix; indicating repetition of action

Catapult (kat-uh-puhlt); anancientmilitaryengineforhurling stones,arrows,etc



As structured as it is I see this blog as fairly atypical. So I'm gonna write this recat in a nononsense, nonsensicalkind of way. Don't say "get er' done" I hate that.



-I met Mark at the butt-crack of dawn for a coffee, chat and Beacon roll out.

-On to Garrison to meet a bit of THX (Team Highland Extreme) consisting of Clemson, Fredrika and Ray.

- A stop at Gypsy Donut in Nyack

-Over the George Washington bridge and into NYC that Night.

- Stayed up late with Sarah and friends

- Had coffee with Robert Olson (thanx for the book)

- Met Sadie and went to a NYC transit exhibit

- Stayed with Greg and Chloe and got a late start blabbing away about traveling with Greg.

- Took the Path train across the river and rode through Hoboken, Jersey city and out to Newark to get properly lost in the hood.

- Finally found and camped on the D&R canal path. (85 miles of urban cycling hell was well worth it for that 25 miles of dirt town path)

- Battled traffic from Trenton to Philly

- Had a great time in Philly. Fantastic to hang out with Dan, Nathalie, Willum, and the Curtises. (Jon and Sarah also came down from Beacon to hang out, some truly great buddys that were reallydifficultto say good-bye to)

- I rode north west out of Philly on the trail to Valley Forge. Also well worth putting myself back north for the niceness of avoiding the city traffic wrestle.

-Then started a fantastic lostness. A kind of directional meandering. Vague directions andinstinctual winging it. I think only years of bike touring has gotten me comfortable in doing this. Riding with no map or directions. Its funny how I yearn for a contradictory time. Where there are no roads or barbed wire fences but mountain bikes somehow exist. I know I'm not alone in this thought.

- The smallest roads I could find got me slantways across Pennsylvania into maryland. I sure don't mind sharing the route with horses and buggies.
- I'm in Maryland now butted up against the Blue Ridge Mountains. With the rolling hills and farmland out of the way. I'm doing a bit more navigation so I can crash neck-long into the less-populated and forested world without a pavemental accident.

Being Ordinary

This quote is from the book The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison. "But as all the identities I worked so hard to construct over the years begin to slough away, I feel myself reconnecting with my own quiet center. It is as if I am, at last, catching a glimpse of myself not as I might wish to be, but as I am. I see a woman who is less ambitious than she once was. Someone less self-conscious, less invested in appearances, but also less "special" than the person I always thought I was meant to be. I see my own ordinariness. And I see that to be ordinary is okay after all."
This is what I'm becoming now in my mid-fifties. I'm not completely accepting the part about being ordinary though. I don't want to be ordinary, but I know that it's an okay place to be, I guess.

Salvation

Warning: Dial-up users beware.
After crashing 284km into a double-century attempt, smashing (among other things), a camera, I had thought for a moment that the pictures taken that day were basically lost forever. It's then somewhat surprising just how robust a small, thin, memory card can be to survive such wreckage and deliver the following:







The good news is that it saves me having to spend $70 on a memory card for the new camera, despite being told by the salesman that I would have to do just that. All the little lies they tell you.

Taking a break

End of school today (and I'm not chancing even waterproof mascara for the ceremony), then one child off to France this afternoon, the other starting a holiday job next week, and I'm heading north for a week to see my Dad and to breathe the Speyside air. So I'm taking a blogging break, and when I come back I might indulge myself by enjoying other blogs for a bit rather than being on photo opportunity alert.
The Albertine rose in the shot above symbolises this time of year for me. It grew in my parents' garden, and now I have it in mine. At my primary school we would take in flowers for the teacher on the last day of school - as happens the world over. It was rather coals to Newcastle, as everyone had whopping gardens by Edinburgh standards, and no shortage of their own flowers. Still, it was the thought etc, and in those days no-one would have dreamt of BUYING anything. On the last day of Primary 2 I remember very clearly standing at the classroom door waiting to go in, holding my bunch of Albertine roses with their stems wrapped in silver foil. I remember the polished herringbone parquet of the corridor, the brown varnished wood of the classroom door, the bare grey floorboards of the classroom. The room was suddenly huge and echoing, with all our artwork taken down the day before. And I was suddenly conscious of the moment, aware of myself standing there with my bunch of roses, and aware too that I would never live this moment again.
So I'm taking a break to immerse myself in just enjoying the moment.

Short strolls

I'm posting this since we decided not to walk today - muddy fields in the rain do not appeal!

So - from a couple of wanderings yesterday -

I hope this young swan copes. On the bridge over the Welland I met two men who had just released the bird, after finding it in a field. They'd consulted a vet, who said the best thing was for them to put it in the river.

The village of Seaton(I think) is in the spotlight, seen from the track to the old quarry near Gretton.

Harden the f*ck up!

Only I would follow up a mountain climb on Saturday with two more on Sunday. My riding partner Martin and I decided to hammer a couple of climbs named Mt Tamborine and Beechmont. The fact that we did it on an Sunday meant an early start to beat the Mt Tamborine traffic that usually picks up around 9am on a Sunday morning. My legs were already complaining before we started the "warm up" 12% climb of Wongawallan, and they screamed even louder on Mt Tamborine. However, the thing about 14% gradients is that they generally don't last very long.


Further along we took the crazy descent down the "goat track" into Canungra. I actually don't mind this descent, as the switchbacks add some serious character to it. For my part, I simply took my time here, and enjoyed the views over Mt Misery and surrounds. It all reminded me that sometime I'll have to do another climb of the Darlington Range. As it was, today we had other fish to fry. We passed Sharp Park, which is significant as the destination of the overnighter that kicked off my cycle touring a little over 10 years ago, and commenced the ascent.

This can be a long and demanding ascent on a hot day. Fortunately it was unseasonally cool for late October, meaning it was merely "warm". Martin had fresher legs than I did, so he took off and I decided to coast at my own pace. This climb can also be desceptive as it climbs a spur of the Darlington Range, before switching to the higher Beechmont Range. I checked the time at the summit and was shocked to find that we were 10 minutes ahead of the schedule I had in my mind at the start of the ride. I'm still not sure how that happened.

The view switched from Canungra Valley to Numinbah Valley as we crossed the range and coasted along the top to the store at Lower Beechmont, and some vital food before the final stretch home. The 7km descent that followed passed relatively uneventfully, as did the final rolling hills through Gilston that serve no purpose save for adding a few hundred extra metres of climbing. Ultimately we finished about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Another great day in the mountains.

Mother's Day in any language

Two shops side by side on Princes Street. Take your pick as to whether you want to be Mom, or the traditional British Mum.
These photos are from last year's Mother's Day. I've been too busy this year for photos. My Mother's Day present today was our son home from university with a load of washing - and mumps. Given that both children have now had mumps, and my daughter measles bad enough to put her in hospital for a week, I'm wondering what was in the batches of MMR vaccine they were given in childhood.

Maskenthine Classic

Maskenthine Classic mountain bike (XC) race was run yesterday near Stanton, NE. Was a near perfect day for racing. Temperatures in the 70s, partly cloudy skies, a nice breeze.
My photos are posted on my race photo site - http://win-photo.photoreflect.com
Today's photo is the start of the Category 1 race at Maskenthine.

KeelEazy revisited: How did it hold up?

Two and a half months ago, we wrote about applying the new KeelEazy strip to one of our boats as well as to the Delphin, a plastic boat in the Geneva Kayak fleet. We found it was quicker and easier to apply than a traditional fiberglass keel strip, and we promised to report back later in the season.

Alec, pulling his boat up on a break wall.

We don't primarily paddle in a rocky or barnacle-encrusted environment, but we don't baby our boats, either. We land on sand and gravel beaches, pull out boats up on rocky break walls, and travel to places where we do a little rock gardening. That's why we are interested in having keel strips on our boats; they offer needed protection.

We can't completely account for the abuse that the Delphin endured over the past couple of months, but it was definitely paddled on the Yorkville whitewater course.

How did they hold up? The strip on Alec's composite boat has done pretty well. It peeled a little bit in the area that had to be cut out to accommodate the skeg, and it buckled a little bit on the rocker in the stern. (As we wrote in the original post, the weather was very warm--above 90 degrees; the ideal temperature for applying it is 70 degrees.) The areas where it peeled or buckled attracts small pebbles. But it has protected the keel and hasn't peeled at either end. It's gotten a little scratched and gouged, but it has held up admirably.

The area where the KeelEazy had to be cut around the skeg peeled a bit and attracted sand and pebbles.

Although the KeelEazy buckled near the stern, the wear on the strip was comparable to the wear on Sharon's fiberglass keel strip.

The small strip we put on the Delphin didn't do so well. (We had only a few extra feet, so we couldn't apply a full keel strip.)

We applied the extra length to the keel of a Delphin in the GKC rental fleet.

Two months later, the KeelEazy had peeled off at the end and was gouged all the way through. (The impact of whatever happened was strong enough to gouge the boat as well.)

We ran our observations by Chris Mitchell at KeelEazy, who suggested the following:

• If your boat has a tight radius on the stem (the portion of the keel where the boat curves up toward the deck), the strip may buckle. In that case, cut it and fold the flap over; you can use a drop of Super Glue if necessary to adhere it.


• Plastic boats will generally accept the KeelEazy well, provided they don't endure serious abuse. He's put strips on the bow and stern of whitewater boats to protect them, too.


• It's a good idea to use a solvent to clean any boat prior to installation; alcohol (which we used on our composite boat) or acetone (one plastic) work well. Mineral spirits will leave a residue.


• Because KeelEazy is a thermal plastic, avoid stretching it too much in the heat because it will seek to return to its previous shape when it cools.


• If you have trouble with a section -- as we did with the skeg area -- try cutting that section out and replacing it before you replace the entire strip.

So what do we think? If you aren't willing to spend the time to apply a fiberglass keel strip, which is a significantly messier process, the KeelEazy is a good option. It really takes only 15 minutes and no special tools. In the two-and-a-half months we tested it, it proved as durable as a traditional keel strip. Either can be damaged, of course. A traditional keel strip can then be repaired; the KeelEazycan be removed and replaced.

When You Can't Ride...

You hike.
We hiked for 4 hours. It was a girl hike. No boys allowed. My legs hurt more from hiking then if I'd done a 4 hour ride. We didn't think we'd be out that long.
Vans aren't good hiking shoes. Vans and mini-skirts aren't really good hiking outfits. But we all looked good.

We brought our dog with us. He's quiet, doesn't bark, doesn't eat and doesn't poop. But he's not too cuddly. Kinda ugly too.

Good hikers deserve rewards. We stopped at the corner market for ice-cream before hiking back up Joaquin Miller to the play structure for a little bit of swinging.

As we were finally making our way back to the house, Meika said what's that loud noise? Lulu passed the house first and said, oh my gosh, someone's riding rollers in their garage!

Michael McClure lives near us. His wife is a sculptor. Sculpted heads line the decks around their house. Illuminated heads in the setting sun.

And our neighborhood tree house with festive lights and their dog.

We hiked back home just before dark and got a nice picture from the front yard just as the sun was going down.

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH, CHESTER!

It has been a long, dry spell since July... while we fired our secretary, we still haven't had any luck finding a replacement, so we hired Momma again to help with this post heheh!
We got an enticingly fragrant box, brought by the brown truck man. Guess what? It was from our fun and very entertaining pal, Chester!
We started pawing at the box and out came some colorfully wrapped pressies and a card!
Wait til you see what was in THIS!!!
And Sammie started right in, working on this pressie, below!
Isn't it cuuuuute? Not to be outdone, Avalon grabbed the other gift and began tearing off chunks of wrapping...
... while Sammie pondered on negotiating the rest of the pretty purple tissue! Looks like a very pawesome newspaper woo hoo!!!
But not for long! Very soon after Sammie got the Loofa Gazette hot doggeh freed from its wrapping, she ate off one ear. Soon after, Avalon snagged it away.
So Sammie picked up the "Daily Fetch" and played with her own special newspaper!
Check out this awesomely fabulous card! Chester, you are too cool! And y'know what? We also love to play "seek toyz"! Momma hides a kong without a rope (empty) somewhere, while we're in a sit/stay. Then she returns and tells one of us to "get it"!!! Hope we get to meet you one day - maybe we could play it together!
We absolutely-tutely adore our pressies and can't thank you enough! Especially for the chicken breast yummies - ohhhhhh, they are so good. We're not surprised you had difficulty restraining yourself! We don't blame you!
Here are some photos of us enjoying your treats to the max! Slurp! Delish! Drool drool!
Here's what is left of poor Loofa Gazette! Score: Both ears, an eyebrow, the tail and a hind leg. Probably not as thorough as you, Chester, but not bad for us.
All that work made us furry, furry sleepy, as you can imagine.
We're dreaming of those super nomzers chicken goodies and hope we get some more when we wake up! Again, a zillion thanks Chester - what a wonderful treasure trove!