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.

All the Signs

This morning I'm suffering from a little something I like to call 'all the signs of a pretty good weekend'. I took the elevator to the fourth floor of the ACME building, instead of my normal course of carrying my bike up the stairs. Oh, and there was no bike to carry either. It's taking the day off to rest. Hopefully it will get some new tires this week so I don't do as much mud spinning the next time I lose my mind and go for a little ride with J-Bomb. Not that it wasn't awesome, it just has a way of making me feel totally un-fit. In fact, I think it warps some theories of physics. How can I run 18 miles on hilly terrain but be unable to pedal my bike in the easiest gear up a hill?

I want every weekend to be like this; I can't even remember what I did Saturday morning. It was so long ago! Oh yeah, I trained Tatonka with J-Bomb, Smokey, and my friend who has not yet shown up for work this morning. Smokey went to Cooper Landing to repair a boat for our friends while I went to work. He was supposed to be back in time Sunday morning for us to do our long run before I went to work at noon.

Now here's where the story gets fun. I puttered around the apartment Sunday morning while I was waiting. I loaded the dishwasher. I washed the dishes. I fed all the furry creatures. Still no Smokey. Hmmm.....guess I will do some sewing. Uh oh, PHC is on NPR, that means there isn't enough time left before work to do a long run. Guess I'll just keep sewing. Hmmm......better take a shower if I'm going to get to work on time. I guess Smokey decided he couldn't get here before I went to work so he's off fishing. Did he take a rod with him? Can't tell if anything's missing, so.....who knows. Phone rings as I step out of the shower. It's the boss: would I be upset or excited to have an unexpected day off? "Um, okay" Hang up. YIPPEEEE!! Must decide plan of action before I call J-Bomb. Let's see: bike ride, boating, or something else? Phone rings. Uh oh, should I answer that? 'Oh hi Smokey. You're where? You did what? Uh huh. I'll be there in a little bit.' You ran out of gas? You walked 8 miles? On a major road? No one picked you up? Wow, that must have sucked.

Sunday ended with the long run. We ran so late that the trails were empty and Tatonka could run off leash. As long as we couldn't see any moose.

So of course there was a SAR callout at 3am. Luckily I just incorporated the phone ringing into my dream and didn't respond until 6am when Smokey got up to go to work. And the mission was still active and they were short on responders. So I went. They guy ended up walking out to the road. It was a classic. And I got some good info beyond what my guidebook says about the hike. Namely that you should plan on an overnight or a really long day. The concerned friends told us how experienced he was. J-Bomb guessed when I told her that he was wearing jeans. She was right. And he didn't even have any matches.

I found it very fitting that we thought we would cap off the weekend with a little bike ride since we didn't want to brave the hordes of drivers to go spend the weekend in Cooper Landing and we ended up braving the hordes at the trail parking lot. Technically that's not quite acurate. We saw the hordes and went to another parking lot. Which was ridiculously close and was empty. Of course it did require some additional uphill riding, but isn't that why you're out there in the first place, to get some exercise in the great outdoors? I will never understand humans.

AA Here I Come

I can't believe it's Thursday already and I haven't posted about last Saturday. I think all this sunshine is warping my time perceptions.

Last Saturday there was an inter-agency SAR exercsie, like the avalanche one in the winter. Originally I thought I wouldn't be able to go because Smokey and I had sailing lessons scheduled and then I thought I was going to visit his family, but none of that panned out. With this last hour change of plans, J-Bomb decided to use me as a decoy. She decided I should show up as an intoxicated searcher. To put it into context, recall that I am a closing waitress at a bar on Friday nights. And the two SAR groups I am a member of are aware of this as I frequently show up to Saturday morning trainings pretty darn exhausted and virtually useless by 2pm.

The plan for the morning was some off behaviour, but mostly smell. And I had that covered. I soaked my shirt and pants in the sink with beer while I had a short nap after work. Yummy. I showed up a little late, which largely went unnoticed due to the large number of regular searchers who showed up late. Then I stood close to people I knew. And walked away during conversations. Then I stood close to people I didn't know. Then I stood closer, like in your personal bubble. They assigned me to a field team. J-Bomb and Quakman decided I must not stink enough. So I left and got some whiskey. Not top shelf whiskey either, more like mid-shelf Canadian stuff. And I spilled it all over my shirt and rinsed my mouth with it.

Upon my return I discovered they had noticed I was gone. The IC reprimanded me for not checking out and said they had been looking for me. I told her I got tired of waiting and I got hungry so I went to get food. They assigned me to the one remaining field ready team. The team leader tried to talk to me and figure our what my deal was. Then she talked to a fellow dog group member on the team, who was new and didn't know me very well, but even she said something seemed up. The team leader got really mad and told the IC to get me off her team.

Brilliantly they set me up next to the radio communications and asked me to take backup notes. I wrote down everything wrong. When they called for all communications to standby so the IC team could look something up I talked to them. Eventually a fire department person approached me and said APD was on the way to arrest me for driving drunk to the search. And Quakman relieved me of my role and placed me on a team for real.

The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful; I went into the field, we got off the trail we thought we were on (not uncommon for this park), we met up with other search teams, we found subjects, etc. I had to run off to work and missed the debrief, but managed to get Tatonka onto a cold helicopter first. He thought it was no big deal.

You Can Have My Part of That

Smokey and I accepted an invitation to go for a bike ride last night with one of my dog friends. We changed locations to the park nearer to us as his family phone call turned into two and we realized he still had his studs on his bike. I would have honestly gone without him except that he stole my bike to ride to work and since I had already waited for him to come home (with all my tools) I figured it was rude to not wait a little longer. He still has the studs on his bike.

Neither of us have ever ridden at Kincaid, despite it's close proximity. We've walked there, run there, played with dogs there, snowshoed there, done dog trainng there, and I even had an all day SAR training there last Saturday (story for another post), but never ridden there. Somehow despite this obvious level of familiarity with this park I was somehow surprised by the number of hills. And moose. There appears to be no level surfaces at this park. I'm just not a speed demon on hills yet and have a pretty healthy fear of breaking myself. So I didn't exactly keep up on the downhills. Oh, and there's the fact that my tires are more like city slicks than nice knobby mud hogs. But I only walked down one hill. And it was really, really fun. And I think my lack of fitness was good for my friend's ego; she has a birthday coming up and she thoroughly smoked me despite having four years on me. And Smokey could barely keep up.

Soon I shall pry the new camera from his hands and have pictures for you. Soon....he has to sleep eventually!

Please Pardon My Absence....

.....but it's spring in Alaska and we have more glorious hours of daylight every day than I have waking hours!! I'm pretty sure we aren't going to get a foot of snow in May like we did last year. I've been out playing as much as possible and I'm loving the sunshine. The grass is still more brown than green and buds are just starting to show on most plants, but we had rain yesterday and more sun today, so this could very well be the day that tips the balance in favor of green.

The studs are off my bike, curtosy of Smokey before he headed south, and I have been riding to work and hitting the trails after work too. When I'm not out running or training my big black dog. And then there's the early morning swims and the working too many hours.

And my USB ports on my work computer aren't working. None of them. There are 6, it's a little pathetic. All because our IT lady tried to make the ones on the screens work for me. You know, make it easier than using the ones on my box. I've had no working USB ports for weeks now. You would think me referring all my USB needs to her would help the process along, but it hasn't. Perhaps I'll try bribery next.