One Year

In a discussion with a co-worker last week a simple question was posed to me: 'What would you do with a year off?' This question was, of course, prompted because he is taking a year off starting at the end of the month. Talk about a question that will knock you on your hinny! What a concept; he has figured out his bare minimum living expenses and has a CD maturing that can cover them for a year. What if you set that up so you could have a year off every 5 years? Or even every 10 years? Or even 6 months off every 5 years? As you can see, it has me pondering. And then I started thinking beyond the set up to the actual question. I quickly realized I needed to establish a major assumption: the bare minimum expense calculation must also include a small stipend for travel and project supplies. I'm not talking a trip to Europe or anything, but some airfare to a remote river or gas money for a road trip to a trail, etc.

 

The List (yes, I realize this is too much for one year; no harm in planning ahead):

-through hike a long trail like the AT or PCT

-move out of my apartment

-float long Alaskan rivers, especially in the north during the summer

-excessive rock climbing to compensate for this year off while my finger heals

-enhance my mountaineering skills on a few AK peaks

-long leisurely sea kayak down (or up) the AK coast

-sailing time

-plant garden as a prototype for business model

-refresh whitewater skills

-hike the Grand Canyon with Mom

-Boundary Waters canoe area explorations

-visit those last three states: Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky

-bike across the US

-road trip (or train) across Canada

-ski, ski, ski, snowboard

-trainings that are hard to pickup while working full time

-dog time, cat time, book time

-quilt and knit to my heart's content

-learn to ride a motorcycle (by driving it to South America)

-build my cabin/home improvements

-play my piano, sax, clarinet, and harmonica; learn the banjo and mandolin

-visit my family and friends

-harvest wild plants and make jam

Heat Wave

I don't want to sound ungrateful, and I do love the sunshine after the long winter, but seriously, does it really need to be over 75 degrees here? It was still too hot at 10pm last night to go for a run. I even tried eating right before bed and running this morning. But I was too hungry to run 9 miles.

Smokey took Tatonka to the park and picked spruce tips for syrup last night. They both came back hot and sticky and chewed up by the mosquitos. I opted not to go after serving drinks on the deck for several hours in the sun. How is it biologically possible to drink a gallon of water and not pee?

We snuck in one more trip to the penninsula before the chaos starts this week. Our friends had other guests, but no one minded one more guy to drink beer, two more dogs to swim in the lake and one more quilter buying fabric. Smokey is thinking about going back on opening night to take photos of the crazy humans. I tried out the camera this weekend. Now if only we could find the cable I could upload some pictures at home..... I see a trip to the evil box store in my future to replace the cable.

Where did my weekend go? I really really wanted an extra day to go biking and boating. Luckily we have some boating planned already for next weekend. While my sister is graduating and my mom is watching her, I'll be on the water celebrating in spirit.

Patience Comes....

...with age apparently. This was my contemplation at 1am this morning as I lay exhausted eating ice cream. And why? Because Smokey and I survived our last stupid long run before the marathon. There's plenty more runs scheduled, they just aren't 18 miles long. We were slated to do this run on Sunday, but I discovered I was really dehydrated and didn't think a long run was a great idea. So it got bumped to Monday. Which was the first Monday of the month, and therefore also had group dog training. More on that in a second.

We started our run after 9pm, and were grateful for the really long northern summer daylight hours. But not for the flocks of mosquitos. It was still light when we finished at 12:39. We had a bet going about the finish time. I won. Therefore I get a fantastic foot massage tonight. Do you have any idea how much faster a long run goes if you talk? It's like a time warp! Almost as good as music, which you can't listen to on this race, so we stopped training with ipods. Unfortunately after three hours I find that my talking is more senseless babblings and rambling than anything coherant. Luckily so is Smokey's. We're calling it a successful survival run. And I'm buying more flavors of gu today.

Dog training went far better than I expected. Tatonka did not get his dogpark run in beforehand as Smokey had the key for the canopy and I had to stop by his work with Tatonka in the front of my truck to pick it up. Have you ever driven a small truck with a big dog in the front with you? I got some interesting looks at stoplights. Luckily he really likes to lay down in the front. Unfortunately he really likes to lay down in my lap. He prefers my window to his.

I think I finally found the secret to his obedience work. Sometimes it really is more about training the human. Just ask J-bomb, she's been trying to train me for months now. Guess what J-bomb......Tatonka likes cookies and he looks at me when I have them. I know, revolutionary! There must have been 20 dogs there last night, but he had eyes only for me. And I took another link out of his pinch collar.

We also did simple, short runaways. In the middle of a big open parking lot. I wasn't sure what Tatonka was going to do with that. We went first. And he was stellar! Toenails scraping, he shot out of the gates, scraping again as he turned around at the subject, and a nice loud bark right in front of me. What a good dog.

And now back to that patience thing. My wonderful Bear cat loves ice cream, courtesy of my mom taking care of her for a year when I was in college. And when I say like, I mean uses her claws to detour your spoon hand to her mouth. This also applies to chips and popcorn as well. Just pay the tithe, it's less painful. Last night she used a different strategy; she sat and stared at me as I ate. And licked the bowl when I was done. This, my friends, after 16 years. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.