Ponca's Revenge

After an all to short night's sleep, Saturday morning I headed to Ponca State Park to shoot the mountain bike race. The weather was clear and pleasant - 70s in race time.
The field for the Beginner and Junior races was pretty small. There was only one wave to start. With that and the short (1-2 laps) races, I did nor get very many photos of that race.
Since the Revenge this year was not a marathon, the Kid's Race was run.
Pretty good turn-out for the Sport and Expert/Semi-Pro category. I found a couple spots to shoot the race. I am not pleased with the overall quality of the race photos. Some is the unfamiliarity of the race course. Other is I was just not on top form.
I am still working on the photos - when done they will be posted on my web site. (I also have the photos from my Army Reunion that need to be processed and posted).

Return to Coomera Gorge

This post is more than a little dated now, given that it's about a month since the event, but I have decided to share it anyway, largely so I can show off the pictures I took on the day. I joined up with a few friends for a hike through Lamington National Park, on the Coomera circuit, which, of course, passes the famous Coomera Gorge. I really love the way the wet season impacts on this part of the world, creating the flowing waterfalls and feeding the seemingly eternal greenery of this area. Days like this are the sort of thing you can look back on well into the future, with incredible memories.

What we carry in our PFDs

Our last post about PFDs resulted in a number of queries via Facebook and email: "So what do you carry in your PFDs?

What's inside each of our pockets: Sharon (left) and Alec (right).

As we mentioned, this is a topic we recently researched through interviews with a number of notable sea kayak coaches and expeditioners. We had begun paring down on our kit, and we wondered what other paddlers were doing.

You can read about what they told us in the Summer/Fall issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. What we carry depends considerably on where we are going and what we are doing. But here's what we nearly always carry in and on our PFDs. (We might add items in certain situations.)

• VHF radio


• waterproof camera


• whistle


• compass


• white light


• strobe


• knife


• snack


• sunscreen


• lip balm


• grease pencil


• very small first aid kit


• very small boat repair kit


• watch

And some personal things:

Alec: back-up reading glasses, hair ties.

Sharon: nose clips.

View number two, with everything spread out.

Some people carry a hydration pack, which is a convenience but adds considerable weight and bulk. That can put strain on your back and shoulders.

We were curious what our kit weighed, so we put it on a scale.

Alec's kit weighs two pounds (32 oz.), without the plate.

Our philosophy for whether something belongs in/on our PFDs or in a day hatch is this: If we are likely to need it while we're on the water, and if it isn't a burden, it's in our PFDs. But if we can reasonably expect to stop and get something from a day hatch, it can stay there.

Carrying more kit does make a PFD heavier and bulkier, which is hard on your body, diminishes flexibility, weighs you down and makes it harder to self-rescue. Those are safety considerations. But needing something you can't access is also problematic.

Like everything else, there aren't any cut-and-dried answers. It's a judgment call. But it's a good idea to reconsider what you're carrying each time you go out and adjust it for the expected situation.

So what do you carry in and on your PFD?

Skywatch - St Andrews Beach

If you can't go skiing, you might as well go to the beach - one of the advantages of living on our small island. When my husband and his friend were thwarted in their attempt to reach the ski slopes last Saturday, they set off on a mystery tour and ended up in St Andrews, on the east coast. If you head straight out across the sea in the direction of the moon you'll fetch up at the northern tip of Denmark.
I'm getting my family well trained. My husband saw these clouds and thought of me.
See other Skywatch photos at the Skywatch Friday site.

What's wrong with this picture?

Here in Chicago, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is charged, in its own words, with "protecting our water environment."

How reassuring, then, to find this sign on the north branch of the Chicago River.

"This waterway not suitable for: wading, swimming, jet skiing, water skiing/tubing, any human body contact."

Why is this river, which runs right through the heart of Chicago, so polluted? Because it's the recipient of 1.2 billion gallons of undisinfected sewage effluent from our city's wastewater treatment plants every day.

The United States Clean Water Act and the Constitution of the State of Illinois both guarantee clean water. Two years ago, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency called for disinfection as a part of the treatment of wastewater discharged into the Chicago River. Doing so would bring our city in line with the practices of other major US cities. But the MWRD is opposed to disinfection, claiming it would be too energy-intensive and too expensive.

What's being dumped into the Chicago River? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, sewage-contaminated water contains adenovirus, coxsackie A and B and hepatitis A viruses, echovirus, norovirus, rotavirus, salmonella, shigella, E. coli, campylobacter, vibrio, legionalla, mycobacterium, Giarda lamblia and cryptosporidium. These pathogens can cause respiratory illness, meningitis, encephalitis, infectious hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, Legionnaire’s disease and gastroenteritis.

No wonder this water isn't "suitable" for "any human body contact.”



If this bothers you, contact the Illinois Pollution Control Board. Let them know how you use the river and why you would prefer the water to be clean enough for "human body contact."

Send your letter to:

John Therriault, Chief Clerk

Attn: Docket R09-08

Illinois Pollution Control Board

100 W. Randolph St, suite 11-500

Chicago, IL 60601

For more information, check out what the Friends of the Chicago River have written about this problem and how you can be a part of the solution.

A SEEDY SAGA

At May Dreams Garden, Carol has posed questions about seed gardening. I read the fascinating answers, and decided to tell our story, too, even though much of our seed buying took place years ago.

In my childhood memories, certain people shared the wonder of seeds. My grandmother Anna handed me a round pod from a tall hollyhock, opening it to display the way the seeds were all nestled in a ring, telling me that we needed to plant them in late summer to grow and flower the next year. I promptly tried to plant them under an Ailanthus tree, and learned that hollyhocks need sun.
When I was in elementary school, we students were given boxes of seed packets, and after being pumped up by classroom speeches, were sent home to sell them door-to-door, thus improving the world and gaining fabulous prizes. I can’t remember if it was a result of one of these campaigns, but my mother planted a package of Four O’Clocks near the SW corner of our house. The little things that looked like pebbles became a temporary shrub, “The Marvel of Peru”, that was covered in flowers by the time school began in fall.
My dad occasionally planted a row or two of peas, and the vines produced pods that we could pop open, eating the delicious raw peas. Maybe my father had hoped to grow real crops on our acre of suburban prairie? After all, our neighbors treated their acre like a miniature farm, with a vegetable garden, dwarf fruit trees, goats and grapevines. That was possible for two mature people – but our well could barely meet the household needs of a family with 5 kids. There was enough surplus water left for keeping saplings alive and growing a few vegetables, but no mini-farm for us.
I was not yet out of my teens when I married Philo, and discovered that my husband was a born gardener! Even when we were newlyweds, living in beat-up grad student housing, he planted sunflowers, radishes, peas, and marigolds in the tiny patch of land around the house. Another graduate wife gave me a few divisions of perennials – oxalis, chrysanthemums and iris, and our plant propagation pattern began.
We had space for medium-size vegetable gardens in each of our three Illinois yards, always with tomatoes, peppers, and of course peas in the vegetable garden, and with summer annuals like zinnias and marigolds in flowerbeds.

By the time we moved to our second house, the Sugar Snap Peas were introduced, just in time for the stirfry craze to sweep the country. We experimented with other interesting vegetables from the catalogs, like delicious Kuta squashes, the new Gypsy peppers, and the very odd Asparagus peas, and we began growing fresh herbs like basil and dill. Some things were planted directly but some were started inside.
When the catalogs came, we’d look them over for weeks, finally making our decisions. Since many favorite vegetables and flowers were available at local stores like Franks, we concentrated our mail orders on the ‘special’ seeds. At that second house, I still scattered cosmos and alyssum, marigolds and zinnias, but my heart belonged to iris, clematis, peonies, lilacs, phlox and other perennials that were shared by division, rather than seed.
When we moved to house # 3, there was a somewhat larger space for a vegetable garden, and there was basement space for seed starting.
Philo built a 4’ X 2’ wooden box, with 4-inch sides, and set it on a worktable so it was at waist level. He cut a section of ½ inch hardware cloth to fit the box exactly, then wound silicone-coated heating tape back and forth, so that all parts of the box would get even heat, making sure the end of the tape with the plug hung out of the box at a corner. He’d scrounged some old wooden window blinds, and took them apart, cutting and fitting them to make a grid, which divided the box into planting squares. This framework was filled with a light potting soil – not the store-bought kind, but a mixture that he’d stirred up like an alchemist in his wheelbarrow. Now it was time to plant the seeds, with the name of each variety written on the wooden wall of each square. Once the seedlings broke ground the lights were turned on. The light fixtures were also scrounged, the old fluorescent tubes replaced with grow lights, and the lights were hung on a frame made of PVC pipe. Philo designed the frame so it could be disassembled and stored.

With this system, Philo grew interesting, hard-to-find varieties of tomatoes and peppers, and I was able to start perennials from seed, like Blackberry lilies, columbine, white coneflowers, Lychnis coronaria alba and splashy hardy Hibiscus.

Those twelve years at house & garden # 3 were the high point of our seed era, ending in 1999 when we came to Texas. We still garden here, but it’s a different kind of gardening – at the last house, the vegetables had to be protected from the deer and grown in a 5' X 12' wire enclosure!
Now in house # 5 we have a small garden area, but with no basement or attic, where could we even set up the seed box? Luckily for us, the Sunshine Community Gardens here in Austin have a sale of plant starts and plant divisions every spring. The lines are long, but Philo has been able to try all sorts of tomatoes and peppers, including heirlooms.
I’ll answer a few of Carol’s questions:
Buy seeds? Yes, we still buy some seeds, but also buy a lot of starter plants. When I am in a nursery, a big box store, gift shops belonging to parks, or even in unlikely places like the dollar stores, I’ll run my eye over the seed racks. To a casual observer, my purchases might look like impulse buying, but I keep a sort of mental wishlist, so if I see the ones I want, I grab them, wherever they show up. That’s why I have a package of heirloom 'Cupani' Sweet peas ready to plant – they turned up at Red Barn and I grabbed them.
Seed Catalogs? I’m ashamed to admit this, but since moving to Texas in 1999, we’ve become such crummy mail order customers that no one even SENDS us any catalogs! I do browse the Park Seed site, but the Plant Delights site gets more hits from my computer.
Bulk seed store? One place we frequented was Pioneer Feed and Grain back in Illinois. It’s a cool old-fashioned place, with some seeds by the scoop, as well as seed potatoes and onion sets.
Save seeds? I save the seeds from many plants, like Moonvine, Blue Pea Vine and Hyacinth Bean. I buy basil seed, alyssum, and sometimes zinnias for cutting. There are always a few seed packages in a basket in the breakfast room.
Since we moved to house # 5 in this warmer climate, some of our annuals and perennials feel quite at home here, and they volunteer all over the place. Sometimes the 'Coral Nymph' salvias, Cardinal vines, Larkspurs, Verbena bonariensis, marigolds, Cooper lilies, Purple coneflowers, Balloon flowers, Cupheas, Sunflowers, ‘Katy’ Ruellia, Pavonia/Rock roses, and cilantro choose a different place from what I had originally planned. If that place is a better choice, they can stay. If I don’t approve, they’re weeded out or relocated.

As the garden evolves, it seems less necessary to plant seeds – and more important to recognize seedlings.

Earning the raspberry cheesecake

For the past two and a half years, Morrisons in Fort William have stocked a delightful looking raspberry cheesecake, placed according to the conventions of supermarket choice architecture, right in my line of sight as I head for the milk. I can’t miss it, every time.

I love raspberry cheesecake, but as a climber who isn’t naturally light enough for the grades I want to climb, I feel that I must set limits, and something like that - an out and out treat - is the most obvious target. This is why I’m two stones (28 pounds) lighter than I was at 16 years of age and can climb many grades harder too. Don’t get me wrong, I eat plenty (and I mean plenty!) when I know I’m using the energy. 

Since I first spotted it, I’ve been tempted every time I’m in there to buy it and munch it. But I didn’t. At first I thought “when I do the Ring of Steall Project, I’ll buy that cheesecake”. I sent the project, but not the cheesecake. Then, I thought, “when I finally top out on Don’t Die, I’m having that bloody cheesecake out of Morrisons”. But I didn’t. Eventually, it was “When I do Echo Wall, this time I’m definitely eating the cheesecake”, and then “when I’ve edited the film” etc. You get the picture.

I’ve picked it up at least four times, and had it in my basket and put it back twice. What’s going on here? Nothing seems to be big enough to deserve the damn cheesecake. Today I picked it up and stared at it again, and put it back, unable to think of anything I’d done that even remotely deserved to break the previous cheesecake denial.

What the hell do I have to do to earn the cheesecake?

I’ve done this more and more over the past 8 years. When I did my first E9 in 2001, I went out with my mates from Uni, got steaming drunk, went clubbing and woke up to a brain melting hangover the next afternoon. Later, when I was repeatedly throwing myself from the last move of Rhapsody, my mate Steve Gordon speculated that the only celebration worthy of doing the world’s first E11 would be to go out and take 11 E’s. We negotiated it down so that I would settle for 11 pints and he would take the 11 E’s. But when I did it, I stayed at home for three months and learnt what HTML was and built up this website.

Richard told me if I ever managed to drag myself up a 9a, we were definitely, definitely hitting the town for a hardcore night. But there was training to be done, and good conditions and bla bla.

You may ask yourself, am I going somewhere with this? The answer I’m afraid, for the moment, is not really. This post is an open question I suppose: Just what deserves the cheesecake??? 

I’ve echoed the thoughts of many others before in stressing the importance of the process of what you do and finding enjoyment in that, rather than the result at the end. So in one sense, celebration of successes is a bit meaningless. Why celebrate when the enjoyable part (the thing you are celebrating) is over. Celebrate by finding the next thing. Obviously that only counts for certain types of things - especially very individual successes like in certain types of climbing. Where things are about people sharing or collaborating, it’s different!

So maybe I’ve got my thinking the wrong way round? Is the finding of a new hard project worthy of the cheesecake, rather than the completion of it? In the next month I am going to try a project I expect to be quite a lot harder than Echo Wall. If that proves the right thing for me to dedicate myself to, should I head for Morrisons? I might have just persuaded myself…

Full disclosure: I looked at the cheesecake today not so much for me, but as I was buying food to make Claire a nice meal on her return from a trip tomorrow. Now before you accuse me of letting my own weird and eccentric ways spill over onto those around me, I should stress that after returning the cheesecake to the shelf, I bought a packet of Rice Krispies and a big pack of no less than eight Mars Bars to make Rice Krispy squares (both our favourite).

In The Garden

Some fall photos in my overgrown garden. The morning glory took over the iron table and the hanging flower bucket, but I like it that way!

Visit to Benson State Park

Our friends Pam and Harold go with us to Benson State Park and chauffeur.

Another great sign

We stop at the Los Ebanos Ferry - the only hand drawn ferry in the US to Mexico - it used to be an old wooden barge but has been upgraded




Oh No! We missed the Ferry!If you don't have your passport you could end up in Jail

Is this what you have with Pot Brownies?Pam and Harold trying to find their way back home!We continue on to the Park and find this pretty Church - Iglesia San Miguel ArcangeloWe are greeted at the Park by a cacophony of Chacalacas!

We find a great Bird Blind on the Green Jay Trail



In addition to the Green Jays there were Altamira OriolesThere was also a Goldfronted Woodpecker

Never know what you'll find looking thru a bird blinda Creeping Pam PaparazziWe did a lot of walking

but for the long hot stretch to Hawk Tower we opted for the TramWe took the boardwalk up to the viewing platformThe view was great





Meanwhile, we keep on Trek’n

Gary & Melissa