Married With Bikes

Day 4: Franz Josef to Fox. Short ride, not easy, walk on a glacier, and a kink in the plan.

2012-02-11T03:48:00.001-07:00

I have scheduled this post to publish the day after I wrote it, since I just published yesterdaay's post.

Day 4

First thing: great coffee at the hip coffee shop. Then we made our eggs that we bought last night poached,since we had no oil. put enough cheese on eggs and they taste good even without salt or pepper! A big helping of Birchers yogurt and we would have been good to ride 60K, but Today we only had to ride 23 km over three decent sized hills.

The weather was great. Warm and very humid, and no rain. Yay. We passed by this recent landslide, which I thought was pretty cool.

The only problem with the ride today was my Achilles tendons. On day 0, when we first got the bikes, I had the feeling that my seat was up a bit too high, but I was too lazy to adjust it. Sure enough, by the middle of the ride on day 1, my left Achilles was feeling a little sore. I lowered my seat for day 2, but by the end of day 2, both heels were hurting. I lowered my seat agin on day 3, but it still got worse. during today's ride, I felt serious pain, despite being on a regimen of ibuprofen and riding less these last couple of days. I figured an afternoon off the bike would help, but today was our half day glacier tour, where we got to go on the ice! No way was I missing that. Despite being a seriously cool experience, it was overshadowed by a dull pain in both tendons and occasional sharp pain in my right tendon. To the point of limping and then hobbling and then even a few tears. I am very worried about the next few days.

But that's my ache and pain. What I really want to post about is the amazing glacier stuff we saw today.

But first, we checked into our backpacker for the night, the Ivory Towers for $73.

And then a real meal. It took a long time to get the food, but we had a nice lunch of steak sandwich and chicken burger, plus beer, since I was feeling low and we were on vacation.

Then we were off to the glacier. I am not going to write too many facts, because 1. I can't remember them and 2 you can wikipedia that, but I did find it remarkable that the top of the Fox glacier receives 11m of precipitation, which translates to 40 to 50 m of snow each year. This huge amount is why there is a glacier in a lush forest only 20 km from the ocean.

Our guide, Bia, told us that This glacier moves about 1 m a day, which we witnessed as numerous rockfalls around us as we walked on the glacier.

So here are a few more cool pictures from the glacier. Despite my painful tendons and worry about tomorrow, I still had a great time.

After the excursion, we needed some beers and to put some ice on the tendon to lift my spirits.

It was a pretty evening and we could see more of the mountains than before because the clouds were lifting.

After that, it was cup-o-noodles and peanut butter on toast for dinner at the backpacker.

Tendons permitting, we will be traveling south tomorrow, which involves some camping and most likely fewer Internet hotspots.

Day 3: Hari Hari to Franz Josef Glacier. Mellow ride and a glacier

2012-02-11T03:16:00.001-07:00

Day three started with two breakfasts. One at the restaurant of eggs, toast, hash browns, and "bacon" or really just slightly more cured ham. Bacon as we I now it is called streaky bacon. Isn't that a cute name. we followed that with Birchers yogurt again.

We probably didn't need that many calories, since we had only 62 km to go today,but it was cool and rainy during breakfast, so we figured we should fuel up.

We made it all of 1 km before our first stop to see some aviation history; more of the guy who made the first transTasman flight.

As we pulled out onto the road after our brief stop, the rain came. It was a soft but steady rain for about an hour, but we had rain gear and I was prepared for cold rain, and this wasnt cold, so I was just fine. Soon enough, the skies cleared

and by lunch at Whataroa, we were warming and drying our toes and clothes in the sunshine.

The scenery today was lovely. Lots of lush forest, a couple of big lakes,

an occasional ocean view, and many cows and small farms interspersed along the way.

With only 62 km to travel today, we were able to check into the Chateau Franz backpacker at 2:30. Its funky decor was just to my liking, as was the fact that we had a suite with two double beds in their own bedrooms and a shared living room, kitchen, and bathroom.

Our suite mate turned out to be from a nice woman from Boulder, Colorado who had just come from a stint in Antarctica.

Drew figured we would just hang out and chill for the afternoon, but he didn't realize his geologist wife had never been to see a glacier. Sure, I had seen them while hiking in Glacier National Park, but I had never been up close. Here we were a 5km drive and a 1.5 hour hike away From the Franz Josef, and he wanted to sit in the hot tub with a beer? Nonsense. Take those panniers off the bike and put on your walking shoes, Drew. we are going to see a glacier!

I have to say, it was very beautiful. The hike through the rain forest and the waterfalls coming in from both sides of the valley from hanging valleys was almost as cool as getting up 100 m from the blue ice face. I took a hundred pictures.

It was after 5 by the time we started back. Drew was ready for a beer. But a couple more pictures to show the fabulous meltwater stream.

A couple of those and we were off to the hot tub. The hot tub looked a little on the scary side. Lord only knows how many unclean backpackers had been in there, but we were cold, tired, and sore, so we plunged in anyway. Stay tuned for news of scary rashes.

Dinner of pasta and pesto in the suite chatting with our suite mate ended the day.

I have neglected to tell about various prices for things. We are thinking now in New Zealand dollars which, is about $0.82 USD to $1 NZD. Our tent spot at the Drifting Sands Backpacker hostel on night 1 in the beach town of Hokitika was $30 plus $8 for Internet. On night 2, the very small room with no kitchen and a bathroom that we would have had to to share with 20 other cheapskates if the hostel had been full was $50 but the internet was free. Day 3's lodging at the funky backpacker semi-private place was $65. Pretty cheap accommodations after you do the conversion to USD. Hotels we are told are more like $120.

Food is a little bit more expensive. Full dinner at a middle of the road restaurant is in the $25-$30 range. Coffee and baked goods run about $4 each. But those are essentials, so who is counting. Beer, I don't even know, because you can't put a price on beer. I think a six pack of good beer in the supermarket is $16 or about the same as in Utah in USD because of the sin tax.

Day 2: Hokitika to Hari Hari. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

2012-02-09T13:19:00.001-07:00

Our first night on the road was spent at the lovely and comfortable Drifting Sands backpacker, i.e. hostel. Our sleeping pads, however, we're not lovely and comfortable. In my quest to carry only the lightest load, I opted to not bring my nice self-inflating sleeping pad and instead bought special for this trip the slimmest excuse for a sleeping pad available at Recreation Outlet, a $6 foam pad that is exactly 1/2 thick. Drew brought a foam pad he received free with some purchase years ago, which was not much thicker than mine. Needless to say, we didn't have the best nights sleep and were both up at 6:30. That's how you got such an informative blog post yesterday. But between the blogging, eating Birchers yogurt (a wonderful mush of Greek yogurt, fruit, and muesli that we mixed up the night before), sipping long whites (like a latte but no foam) and eating the fabulous cheese scones, a cinnamon roll made with scone batter, and another of their meat pies,

Stopping at the iSite to make reservations for the next two nights stay, and snapping photos at the beach,

Stopping to stock up on groceries at the last good store until Queenstown,

It was 12:30 before we got rolling. No matter, at least we missed the light rain shower.

We learned a valuable lesson about the strength of the sun yesterday. Check out the funky sunburn on my wrists and forehead.

The business

Riding on Day 2 was more casual. The road was flatter, the winds were calmer, and the traffic, while not friendly, was less frightening. The title of this post comes from the scenery. It changed from open farmland to lush rain forest and back to a mix of wet farmland fighting off the rainforest.

We stopped to rest and eat a snack at the old gold mining town of Ross.

And at the Bushmans center for a Pepsi.

Before reaching our destination of Hari Hari 5 hours after starting. Ride time 3:21, 73.3 km, average speed 22 km/hr. our average speed today was actually higher than yesterday's ride down from high elevation. Cool. We are studs.

Our lodging, the Hari Hari Moter Inn, was a pub, which is a restaurant and bar attached to a hotel. While they offered regular rooms with an on suite bath, we opted for the cheaper "backpacker" option with a shared bathroom. The room was a little cozy

And the amenities were a bit run down.

But the shower was hot and the beer was cold.

So we enjoyed our dinner of a hamburger and Huge Bowl of fries for Drew and a whitebait Sammy for me. Whitebait is the specialty in this region. It is a little spelt-like fish. They fried it up in egg and put it between two slices of bread. I wasn't overly impressed, and had a side of yummy roasted veggies to give my body some nutrition.

We had a look see around the town, er, street.

And learned a little aviation history (since the geology-heavy portion of the trip is coming up) about a famous transTasman flight gone bad in 1931.

Before retiring to our room at 8 pm to read and blog. 5minutes on the soft beds and the next thing we knew the sun was coming up! Guess we needed that sleep.

Today we press on to Franz Joseph Glacier: 62 km.

New Zealand bike tour - days 0 and 1: The adventure begins.

2012-02-08T13:13:00.001-07:00

We made it and we are on our way around Enzed, or as we would say "en zee", or just NZ.

DAY 0

getting there

The flights were uneventful, and down right pleasant if you ask me. Air New Zealand runs a good show. we left our house around 2m on Sunday, and arrived NZ at about 10 am on Tuesday because of the various time changes and date line. However, the body-clock time is only 4 hours earlier in NZ than Utah, so the jet lag isn,t too bad.

getting the bikes, Christchurch, and a real home stay!

We picked up the bikes and rode around Christchurch for a bit, picking up important items like water bottles and bug spray. Chch has and excellent bike trails, complete with sensors like we have for cars at stop lights in the US and stop lights with little bikes on them. But the times we had to ride on the streets were harrowing. It is left hand traffic here - so difficult to get used to.

We had to stop often and get our bearings. One place we stopped was this nifty "pop up mall". they love their coffee here.

That was just after a bit of geo-voyeurism surveying the damage from so many recent earthquakes.

One site we did not expect to see was an Occupy protest, but here it was in downtown Christchurch.

My cousin hooked up us with the contact of an old friend of his from North Dakota who now lives with his family in Christchurch. Justin and his wife Debbie took us into their home and fed and entertained us like they were running a top notch B&B!! They said it is the Kiwi way, but to us, it was an extraordinary act if kindness and generosity. The food was awesome and getting to know them and their three fun kids was infinitely better than pedaling around Chch looking for a reasonably priced hotel. It was so nice!

Day 1: to the top and back down.

The next morning we pedaled early to the train station.

To catch the TranzAlpine train up to Arthur's Pass at the top of the Southern Alps, the mnt range that runs the length of the South Island. Yes, I know this a self-supported bike tour. We were supporting our need to ease into things. The train traveled across the Canterbury Plains to catch our first good view of the Southern Alps.

The scenery on the train ride was awesome! We went through 15 tunnels. The train has a couple of observation decks. We would not find these decks in America; all it would take is one little kid sticking his hand out at the wrong time as we went into a tunnel and the Transzalpine would be out of business. They were not kidding when they said keep your hands and head inside the train. And everyone did. (Every time I travel my conviction that many Americans are lazy, self-absorbed, and much too eager to blame someone else for their problems or their stupidity is reinforced. Sad but true.)

But the fun ride and beautiful scenery took me back to the present.

Let the pedaling begin!

But we came here to bike tour, and it was time to start.

we pedaled a few hundred meters to a cafe for lunch first. :-)

Keas are these big parrots that apparently will rip a backpack into shreads if left unattended.

Of course, we did not leave our meat pie unattended.

Why not start at the top of the mountain!? At 924 meters (about 3000 feet for us Americans) Arthur's pass is not as high as our mountains back in Utah, but high enough to get great scenery and steep grades.

Those signs behind Drew say 16%! And percent isn't different than in America.

The ride down to the west from Arthur's Pass was a rush! I was worried my cantilever breaks were not going to be able to stop me and my 60 pound bike. There was this one really cool part of the road where we went. Under a stream.

The river valley was really impressive, from a sedimentologists point of view. That puppy can carry some load.

Pedaling is overrated.

The road eventually leveled out to rolling hills, which we were not prepared for. In planning, we thought we could make it easily the 97 km (55mi) to our destination seaside town of Hokitika, being that it was all downhill and we are Cyclists. By the time we stopped for a coke at Jackson's at 31 km, we were already tired! Time to work together against the headwind. We got into a pattern of trading turns at the front and slowly ticked of the miles. We averaged about 19 km/hr on the flats, so that's not too bad for our first day on loaded bikes. Visions of hamburgers and local beer at a seaside restaurant kept us going.

We did stop a few times, once to fix a flat

And once to explore this awesome cave walk.

It was sooooo cool, but we were really really tired by this time and so we pushed on. Some other cyclists has tipped us off to a slight shortcut, but what we really liked about it was the lack of traffic on smooth road through beautiful farming county.

Finally, our tired legs and sore bottoms made it to our destination. Rolling into Hokitika, the first place that was on my list as potential lodging said no vacancy. Uh oh. The second place was too expensive for what you got, but the third place was just right. There was one tent spot left at the Dirifting Sands hostel. We were home for the night.

Soft grass, the ocean a few hundred feet away, hot clean shower, and super friendly German travelers to rehash the day with.

We walked into town (tired of that saddle!) for a huge guilt free fish and chips for me and pasta for Drew. Ride time on Day 1 was 4 hrs 25 minutes. Travel time more like 6 hr. That made for a few kinked necks and sore butts, but overall we are in good shape so far. Nice work on Day 1!

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2012-02-05T19:51:00.001-07:00

Test #3

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Test2

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2012-02-05T19:43:00.001-07:00

Test

On our way

2012-02-05T19:30:00.001-07:00

And so we being our big adventure. As I write, we sit in the lounge at LAX watching some big game of American football but dreaming of the southern hemisphere, smooth highways, glorious glaciers, and bicycles. For the next two weeks we will be Touring around New Zealand's South Island, self-supported, without any reservations or significant plans. We have never done this kind of thing before, and let me tell you, I am excited. Hopefully we will be able to post awesome pictures on this blog as we go. Otherwise, allocating 1/15th of our self-imposed gear weight limit to the iPad will not have been a good choice.

Wish us luck.

Lucy

Test post using Blogsy

2012-02-01T23:42:00.001-07:00

We are trying out a new app for blogging called Blogsy.

This is an excuse to post pictures of my cute husband and cats.

Hot tub up and running

2012-01-25T19:00:00.001-07:00

It has been a long time since I posted anything about the house. We've done a lot and are 98% done with the home addition. Hopefully I'll get to posting pictures before the spring and summer fun starts around here. For now, here is a report about one major milestone: The Hot Tub Is Up And Running!

One part of the home addition plans called for an in-deck hot tub. We wanted to move our existing hot tub from its former life behind the old garage to a place of honor and potential frequent use set down in the deck. We couldn't do this because the place we have for it is less than 10 feet from the property line, a SLC building code (we don't know why that code exists). Well, we passed our final inspection, on 10/11/11. Once that was out of the way, we were free to do things that are not quite up to SLC building code.

First step was to cut a hole in the new deck.

which got ugly and big.

The hole is the place where the hot tub would drop into. But the ground below wasn't at the right height, so we had to pour a concrete pad.

We went to great measures to protect our new sod from the tire ruts that could be created by wheel barrels full of concrete.

Meanwhile these darn cats of ours can't keep out of anything we're doing, including running across the new pad.

Drew had to catch Marley and quickly wash the fresh concrete off her paws so they wouldn't get burned by the additives. He reported that she "didn't really like having her paws washed". Understatement!

But the pad came out just fine and was ready to accept the hot tub.

But the hot tub wasn't ready yet! Years of direct sun had weathered the composite skirt.

So Drew spent a couple of days cleaning it up and adding new stain. The new stain looks really blue in this picture, but it's not so colorful in real life.

Once the tub was ready, Drew hired three or four other strapping men to move it into place. I was away at work on the day they moved it, and Drew was up to his elbows in a certain heavy object, so we don't have any pictures. From the description of the act, there were Egyptian-esque techniques employed to move the tub across the lawn, up a temporary ramp, and down into the hole. There was a moment of drama when the heavy tub reached the tipping point to slide into the hole, but brute strength and ingenious engineering prevailed, and our hot tub is in its final resting place.

Here is how it looks from the back of the house. When the wether warms up again I'll finish the lattice deck skirt for the hot tub side, which will hide the bottom of the tub.

I will say, it is rather wonderful to have a steaming hot tub of water waiting for you on chilly nights. Especially one with your husband in it!

Snowshoe!

2012-01-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

The lack of snow in Utah this winter has somehow made even me, the one who has spent her life moving farther and farther away from cold weather, wish for the white stuff. Drew bought some new snow shoes at the end of last season and we have not had the snow to test them out. So when today dawned partly sunny after the past two days of rain and snow, we strapped them on and hiked up Millcreek Canyon.

Even though our dawn patrol started at 10:20 AM, we still had fresh tracks in Elbow Fork.

The fresh air does a couple good!

The Most Fun in January, on a bike

2012-01-24T20:17:00.002-07:00

For MLK day weekend, a bunch of mates from the Revolution/Peak Fasteners team conglomerated in Saint George, Utah for some sun and singletrack. Drew and I shared a one bedroom condo near the Green Valley trails with Stephanie and Sally, two rad mtb chicks who are relatively new to the team.

Good Times in Green Valley

Saturday morning the four of us met up with Bonnie and Jonas for a long ride on the Green Valley trails. This would be my second ride on Scotty. Scotty is my new 2-year old bike baby. He is an aluminum Scott Scale 29er with mid-range components and front suspension. I have not ridden a hardtail on dirt since about 1999. Would I like him or would he hurt me. I would soon find out.

Our first test was Bear Claw Poppy trail, a giddy trail about as close to a pump track as you can get in Utah.

Drew on Bear Claw Poppy trail

Bear Claw Poppy - much more fun than it looks.

Scotty felt to me like a BMX bike! I was launching off little whop-de-dos like never before and laughing out loud all the time. The trail was a hoot on my new hardtail. I liked him.

Next up were Stucki Springs and the Rim trails.We rode and rode and rode, stopping long minutes to talk to at least 25 other northern Utah racers that were doing the same thing we were: giggling and smiling in the 60-degree sunshine.

Bonnie and Jonas headed back after Rim, but the four of us pressed on to Barrel Roll and Sidewinder. It was at the point where Sidewinder reconnects with Barrel Roll that Stephanie and Sally headed back to the condo the long way via Santa Clara.

And then there were two. I was tired now and my back hurt from the hardtail riding, but it felt so good to actually be on dirt and the afternoon was so pretty, that I sucked it up and kept turning the cranks over.

Barrel Roll trail

Near the end of the Barrel Roll loop, Andy, Steve, Mark, and Ken caught us, and thank goodness they did because there is no way Drew and I would have found our way back to Green Valley through the redneck shooting range, deeply incised wash, and what seemed like five miles of double track.

Back at the condo we were all delirious with fatigue and happiness.

Dinner that night was at the highly recommended Bella Maria pizzeria. The pizza was indeed delicious, but a note to those of you that enjoy the occasional adult beverage, this is not the place.

The Magic Miles on Goulds-Jem-Hurricane Rim

Sunday we indulged in banana pancakes and bacon at Bear Paw cafe before heading out to Hurricane to ride the big loop. I took Sam, the full suspension bike to give my body a break from the hardtail. This time we didn't see many people, but we had an awesome time ticking off the miles and racing down the flowiness of Jem trail.

Dinner was waiting for us back at the condo in the form of turkey chili we had thrown into the crock pot that morning. Beers and a hot tub session were followed by a rousing game of charades. Yes, charades. Sally is the biggest game pusher I know, but it was a huge amount of fun trying to guess Drew's sign language for Viagra and Stephanie's impersonation of bacon.

A Zen moment

Monday before the long drive back, Sally, Drew, and I took a lap on the Zen Trail.

None of us had ridden this trail before, and we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of riding we could do on this technical trail.

Sally having a zen moment at Zen Point

Overlooking Bear Claw Poppy trail

Panorama from Zen Point

And here is a 10-second video of Sally and me riding around a cool rock, just for fun.

I think that weekend was the most fun I have had on a bike in January, ever. Great trails, perfect weather, fun friends, hot new bike. Just what January should be!

The cat is IN the bag

2012-01-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

The cats were having fun one day playing in an Ikea shopping bag.

Holidays

2012-01-08T19:12:00.001-07:00

We had an enjoyable and busy holiday season.

We went to friends Jim and Shelly's for Thanksgiving. Shelly set a beautiful table,

and made a fabulous meal.

I made some nice pies.

We ate too much but didn't party all night since Drew had to depart for work at 4:30 AM the next morning.

There was a lunar eclipse on December 10, which gave me a chance to try out my mew Christmas present to myself, the Casio Exilim H50G camera.

The eclipse pics turned out better than I thought (double click the picture to see more detail), but some of the other pictures I have not been as happy with. Time will tell.

The next important holiday is Drew's birthday.

We celebrated with a very short hike because it was freezing cold and windy.

But that burned enough calories to justify dinner and cake at the Dodo Restaurant!

Then was Christmas. Drew had to work so I went to visit my sister and her family in their beautiful new home near Castle Rock, Colorado.

Di and I got to spend some time walking around the neighborhood and catching up.

And then we feasted on a marvelous meal,

before we opened gifts. Here are Laura and Kelli with the necklaces I gave them.

And Tober is always in there to warm one's lap.

Tober likes Di's new book.

Christmas Eve was over too fast but I was not sad that Christmas morning was coming because I got a fantastic gift. I got to ride in the back of the plane that Drew was flying from Denver to Los Angeles. It's pretty cool watching the plane pull up to the gate knowing your husband is driving it.

Just like a curious kid, he took me up front and let me sit in the right seat.

He flew me to LAX, where we had a nice afternoon at the hotel

sitting by the pool in the 77 degree sunshine, chatting with family on Skype, and dining with the crew.
The next morning Drew had to work again, and I lucked out getting the very last seat on the direct flight back to SLC thanks to a uniformed flight attendant who graciously gave up her seat to take the jumpseat so I could get on the plane. She obviously had the Christmas spirit.

The last holiday is, of course, the first: New Years. Drew was working so I planned to go to a party solo. I had a goal of getting another portion of the trim in our bedroom stained and polyurethaned during my long weekend of bachelorette-dom. So when it was 8:30 PM on New Years Eve and I had already had a few beers and I looked like this

I decided to blow off the party and just finish the job. The finished product looks great, even if it did cost me some fun times.

Since the holidays have passed, we are back to work but are still finding time to do some mountain biking on the trails here in the valley. We have had near record high temps and no snow! It has been awesome to ride in knickers and a vest on January 4. So awesome in fact that I felt compelled to buy a new bike! I scored a 2009 Scott Scale 29er off the local classifieds. It is a hardtail, which will be an interesting change from my cushy full suspension. Variety is the spice of life.

This past week we had a light snow that made for a slippery but enjoyable hike.

And I've finally found some time to blog with a little help from my warm kitties.

To all of you, Drew and I wish you a happy, healthy 2012!

Moab with friends

2012-01-08T17:41:00.001-07:00

In early November, we hosted our friends in Moab for a weekend.

Temps were mild so we got a nice ride in on Friday on the Moab "brand" trails.

We had a little fun on one of the potholes.

Friday night it rained and rained on into Saturday morning, so biking was out. Drew took one for the team and attended our annual Home Owners Association meeting while the rest of us went for a fabulous 7 mile hike in the Devils Garden area in Arches National Park. It was a little cold...

But the friends and scenery were great.

We had some fun goofing off,

planking,

and playing shadow games.

The rain had filled the potholes.

The late afternoon sun angle and clear blue skies made for a memorable hike.

Sunday we had time for a quick ride on some newer trails in the Klondike Bluffs area: Baby Steps, Mega Steps, and EKG.

Mega Steps and EKG were so awesome! Really fun and technical but not too technical. Just enough to make you pay attention at all times. We had to stop every once in a while just to be able to take in the gorgeous scenery and snap a group picture.

Sure was fun!

They grow up so fast.

2011-12-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to our sweetest little kittens! Marley and Max were born sometime around Thanksgiving last year, or so the shelter told us when we got them.

They were the cutest kittens.

Being one year old, they are almost full grown now, but will probably continue to fill out. They are in their late teens in human years, and they totally act like teenagers.

This fall, Max had taken to spending lots of time in the neighbor's overgrown back yard. Isn't that so typical of a teenage boy?

Marley has a bit of a belly on her now and can't quite fit through places she used to.

We took them to Moab again recently. It takes about 45 minutes for them to settle down and shut up, but once they do, they seem content to ride in the car.

They "help" me with everything, especially Marley. She has to be in on the action all the time. Most of the pictures of our house projects on this blog that have a cat in them picture Marley.

But Max wants in on the action sometimes too. Here he is helping us put Ikea furniture together.

He does spend more time resting in the top of the cat tower though.

They strike cute cat poses all the time.

We're trying to teach them to use the cat door, but it is easier to stand at the back door and meow when they want in.

Yes, they own us

But even when they are controlling nap time,

we are getting the best end of the deal; warm kitty friends!

New Orleans vacation day 8: Go Greenwaves!

2011-12-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

On our last full day in New Orleans, we continued old home week by attending the Tulane Homecoming football game and tailgate party. While the cadets and officers at the ROTC unit did most of the heavy lifting, Drew was instrumental in getting the food and beverages lined up. By "beverages" I mean kegs, plural, in garbage cans! Even though every Homecoming game I ever attended at NSDU was accompanied by freezing temperatures and lots of layers of clothing, I felt at home here in the warm sunny temperatures and beer out of plastic cups.

The turn out ended up being pretty good for the ROTC unit. Here is a picture before the party was in full swing.

After mingling with the current students (one of which was a geology major headed to Nevada for field camp who was fun to talk to), it was about time to cheer on the Greenwaves at the....

I've never been to the Superdome, and since we don't watch pro football, I had never even seen pictures of the inside except for after hurricane Katrina. It did not look like those pictures on this day! Nope, inside was a full blown big league football game complete with my favorite part, the marching band.

And cheerleaders

The Tulane mascot is the Greenwave. What? This guy is the official mascot. Is he a green chicken?

Roaming the stands was the old and unofficial Greenwave mascot, who was basically a big Gumby doll. I really thought he was adorable. He probably thought I was drunk.

After all that excitement (not really) of the football game, it was time to eat again. We had reservations for 20 at Red Fish Grill in the French Quarter.

The food was really great, again. I had the signature dish, red fish. I don't know what kind of fish red fish really is, but it is tasty.

One last group shot of the whole gang before we all went our separate ways.

We had a great time in New Orleans. I can see why Drew enjoyed going to college there. Great food, good party spots, tight fraternity of ROTC friends.

As for me, my best memories of our week in Louisiana are from the air boat tour in the swamp with Junior telling all sorts of stories, the gorgeous evening light streaming through the 100-year old Live Oak trees at Oak Alley Plantation, the surreal drive through storm and flood damaged neighborhoods, and most of all, the food. The food wasn't just good to taste, it was meals that encapsulated the whole smell, taste, and feel of the Cajun south. Food that made you think about the traditions that built those recipes and the folks that shared them in small hot kitchens. Everything tasted like there was some magic ingredient in it that magnified individual familiar flavors and combined them with unknown root vegetables and spices to make a combination that could only happen in a small local restaurant on a dark and not altogether safe street in the French Quarter.

In comparison, Utah is a barren wasteland of food and food heritage. In fact, after we returned to Utah, I was so lonesome for the succulent pork and the blue-cheese beef cutlet and the red beans and the cornbread and the garlic-y black beans and, most of all, the beignets, that I decided food in Utah meant nothing and quickly reverted to this a couple of days after our return.

New Orleans, I will be back, and I will be hungry.

New Orleans vacation days 7: Old times

2011-11-26T20:00:00.002-07:00

Our last two days in New Orleans were all about the Tulane University ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) 20 year class reunion.

To get to the University, we traveled by street car. NOLA has a pretty nice street car (not "trolley" I was told) system that was cheap and easy to use. Clang, clang, clang ...

Ding, ding, ding...

There was a short alumni association meeting and then social hour, where I got to meet all of Drew's buddies and most of their spouses. I won't name any names here, for privacy sake, but suffice it to say each one of the classmates was a quality individual plus lot of fun to hang around.

This was Tulane Homecoming, so we went over to the Quad to hear some music and watch the pep rally.

Then, of course, we had to eat.

I'm not sure how we picked O'Henry's, but the food wasn't spectacular and we had to sit outside, which was chilly. Still, it was nice to get to know everybody more and Kevin treated us all, so yippee for O'Henry's and yay for Kevin!

To relive old times, the gang headed to Cooter Brown's again to close out the evening.

Cooter Brown's seemed like typical college bar except on two accounts. 1) they had a Huge selection of beer, including Drew's all time favorite Rouge Brewery Chocolate Stout, which we have never found in a pub (or very seldom a liquor store for that matter) outside of Oregon, and 2) these cool carved wooden celebrity caricatures around the room.

We had to retire relatively early, because, let's face it, we're not in college anymore. Plus we needed to save some steam for the next day's tailgate party.

New Orleans vacation day 6: Day 5 repeat

2011-11-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

Day 6: Digger meets Doughnuts, again!

Day 6 of our New Orleans vacation started out slow because we were still toxic from the previous night's binge on high octane wine and higher octane Cajun food.

We decided to walk to Lafayette Cemetery #1, the real cemetery #1 this time. This one is located in a much nicer area of the Garden District, among beautiful old mansions.

Lafayette Cemetery #1 is Much more well cared for than #2 & #3 that we visited on day 5. This cemetery comes complete with trees and tourists roaming about.

The graves were pretty much all intact, and we saw no headless pigeons. The graveyard was established in 1833, but the oldest grave we saw was laid in 1849.

Many of the graves had interesting iron work. I think it was wrought iron, as opposed to the later invention of cast iron.

After our relatively boring cemetery wander, we continued to stretch our legs on the way back to the hotel. Drew was hungry, so he ate at Subway. Of all places to eat in our country's good food capital!

We had a leisurely and relaxing day until it was time to meet up with John and Marie again for dinner at the Crescent City Brew Pub. We were joined by Kevin, Drew's ROTC instructor from Tulane. Continuing the adventures in eating, I had my first oysters on the half shell.

Because of our family tradition of oyster stew on Christmas Eve, I was expecting a smelly ordeal. What I got instead were slimy, nearly tasteless and odorless, soft bits loaded with horseradish cocktail sauce. Not bad at all, really, once you know what to expect.

And since we were already in the French Quarter, what would it hurt to visit Cafe du Monde again? An excellent idea.

New Orleans vacation day 5: Digger meets Doughnuts

2011-11-20T12:57:00.001-07:00

Day 5 of our New Orleans vacation started with a beautiful sunrise

before we headed down to the Lucky Ladle on Magazine Street for a great breakfast. The joint also had some modern art that I really liked on display.

Lafayette Cemetery #2 & #3, or "Creepytown"

Maybe we shouldn't have had full tummies for our next stop: the graveyard! It was creepy. I navigated us to what I thought was Lafayette Cemetery #1, but when we got there, the sign said Lafayette Cemetery #2 & #3. Oh well, a cemetery is a cemetery, right? Wrong.

The cemetery was in a bad part of town and it didn't look like anyone took care of the place. Many of the monuments were broken, like this one.

One of many broken grave markers. It is fitting that in the background of this picture is an abandoned apartment building with the windows broken out.

One of the interesting things about these cemeteries is that one grave site has multiple people, usually family members, buried in one vault. That seems strange to me, being from the West, where each person gets his or her own plot of earth. Is it because we have more space here? The other thing, of course, is that the bodies are above ground. It is just too wet to dig a 6 foot grave. Personally, I would rather be cremated than rot above ground, but perhaps that is my ethnocentric Midwestern upbringing talking.

Some of the monuments looked to have one day belonged to a wealthy family, but no one is looking after their dead relatives now. This pitched roof tomb was grand,

but the sandstone plaque containing all the writings of who was inside was now worn through. And a mini dune of sand and broken statuettes was all that was left of the words.

These "society tombs" were interesting.

A society tomb.

According to NOLAcemeteries.com, society tombs are pretty much like mausoleums but all the people buried there belong to a society or organization. We saw society tombs for firefighters, policemen, and orphanages. Again, each vault has multiple names on it because after a respectable time, the remains of a burial were pushed to the back where construction of the vault allowed the bones to fall to a receptacle below; the space was then ready for another recipient! Trees and vines were taking over many of the graves, and trash was littered about.

Drew was getting a little creeped out by this time. I don't know if it was because the place was creepy, or because I was so fascinated by all the graves. He called me "Digger" for the rest of the trip. The creepy level went way up when we saw this.

A coping grave with bonus pigeons.

Two fresh, decapitated pigeons on top of a "coping grave". Probably voodoo. Time to go! BTW, a coping grave is an above ground burial. Uncovered empty chambers are framed by stone, brick and plaster. They are filled with earth and are built up to 3 feet from the ground, which allows for burial in the soil. Bodies are entombed repeatedly in one coping.

We made our escape through the bad neighborhood again, passing this abandoned house that I couldn't drive by without taking a picture.

Check out how the vines are taking over the chimneys.

French Quarter and the best doughnut on the planet

We returned out rental car and set out on foot for the French Quarter to see the sights in daylight this time.

We listened to these street musicians for a while. Our first and really only jazz. (Listening to live jazz was the one thing I wanted to do but we never got to.)

Next stop, Cafe du Monde, or more correctly named Doughnut Heaven by me. Cafe du Monde is a New Orleans icon established in 1862. The Cafe is open 24-7 so tourists and locals can get their chicory coffee (served black or au lait) and beignets. Beignets are now on my top ten food list. They are these little fantastic fry bread/doughnut type of pastries served covered with a mound of powdered sugar. I describe them a like a rectangular doughnut but the texture is slightly denser and chewier than a doughnut, but not as tough as a fry bread. Something about the taste is really nice - not oily and fried.

Anyway, I was in heaven. Three beignets are served on a plate. We ordered two plates. Drew only got to eat two.

Got beignets?

It was a chilly, windy day, but we walked around anyway. Here we are on the levee parallel to Decatur Street with Jackson Square and the St. Louis Cathedral in the background. A statue of general Andrew Jackson on a horse is at the center of the square.

We strolled through the French Market and bought ourselves, what else, a pig figurine.

And then we just walked up and down a few of the streets, looking in shops and taking pictures of all the buildings. Contrary to what one would think, most of the buildings reflect Spanish architecture, not French as the name implies. The reason is that most of the buildings were built after two big fires in the late 1700s destroyed most of the existing structures. The area was under Spanish rule at that time, and so the ornate ironwork, bright pastel colors, and galleries (like balconies but supported from the ground) are from Spanish architects.

One of my favorite photos from the trip is this bike loaded down with beads.

It was a fun stroll.

The best food in North America

Later that night we met up with Drew's two college roommates for drinks and dinner. Todd now lives in Salt Lake City (but we hardly ever see him) and John and his wife Marie live in New Orleans.

At Oak Wine Bar. Very swanky. (I only had my cell phone with me for pictures and accidentally turned on some weird solarize effect.)

Drew, John and Todd got along like old times and got caught up on each others' lives.

But time for eatin'! On John's recommendation, we went to Jacques Imo's for Cajun food.

At Jacques Imo's Restaurant.

On our first day in NOLA, a local had also told us it was very good. "Very good" does not even come close to the absolute food extravaganza we enjoyed. On a normal night, I would have to say this place would be really excellent, but on the night we were there, we were treated to the best meal I've ever eaten, with the possible exception of the 7-course wedding meal we enjoyed in Italy last year after our friends' wedding.

I believe the treat we had that night was mostly because by total chance, we ran into Dave, a former classmate of Drew, John, and Todd's. Dave was only in the ROTC program at Tulane for a year or two with them and then moved on to other things, eventually landing as a waiter at Jacques Imo's. As we were standing at the bar waiting for our table, Dave recognized the guys, whom he had not seen for 22 years, and came over to say hi. He then took it upon himself to bring out only the restaurant's most fabulous dishes, not letting us order anything off the menu ourselves. He served it family style, so we all got to try each of the approximately 15 dishes he laid out in front of us.

There was not one of them that was anything less than great, but the alligator cheesecake, beet and Brussels sprouts sauce, garlic butter cornbread muffins, and beef with blue cheese were absolutely out of this world. How do they make cornbread muffins taste like a bite of joyful love? The only thing I didn't try was the big prawns with their heads and tails still on (never been a fan of shrimp), and the only dish that wasn't everything Drew cracked it up to be, was the crawfish etouffee (shrimpy - that explains everything).

It was such a fabulous meal, made fun by the new/old friends. I still have longings for that food, and I expect that I will use my Southwest benefits to fly to New Orleans just to eat there sometime in the next couple of years. It was that good!

New Orleans vacation day 4: destruction tour

2011-11-16T23:16:00.010-07:00

Mid October can still be pretty hot and muggy in New Orleans, we found out on Day 4. After three days of gorging, we needed some exercise, so we walked around Audobon Park in the morning before we checked in at the Navy ROTC building on the Tulane University campus. This whole vacation was planned around Drew's 20-year college reunion, and he had some logistics to discuss with the officers who would be helping put on the tailgate party. Drew had a bit of nostalgia in his voice when he told me about how the young cadets would do PT in the field house, etc. etc. I had to hand it to him, he kept the stories interesting and limited the "that wasn't there when I went to school here" bits.

We drove around in his old neighborhood and he pointed out one of the houses he had lived in. It looked a lot nicer than a place that was robbed 5 times in 1991.

We had lunch at One Restaurant because a local had told us it was his favorite place for fine dining in all of NOLA. We had a gnocchi appetizer and a BLT and smothered chicken with gravy for our entrees. The food was very good and the service was top notch, but the atmosphere was a bit stuffy for us.

The restaurant was near the Mississippi River, so we walked atop the levee a short distance to give me a feel for the mightiness.

From this elevation, I could really see how breaks in the levees or even just a lot of rain could cause massive flooding. We would get a closer look at flood destruction that afternoon as we drove through areas that had been severely damaged by the flooding as a result of levee failure after Hurricane Katrina.

Our Katrina tour started by driving the neighborhoods of West End and Lakeview, trying not to gawk rudely in disbelief. There were so many homes that were either boarded up, abandoned, or just plain missing, it was shocking. The Storm was six years ago, yet many homes were only now being gutted, raised onto pilings, or in some other state of repair. Still others had been started, but the repairs had obviously stopped.

There were nice homes mixed in with what looked like bombed out shells of someone's former life. This one brings back the creepy because there is a silhouette of a man in the left hand window.

To match our sober tour, the hot sunny weather had abruptly turned very windy, cool, and generally poor for a lakeside stroll, so we stopped only briefly on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to experience one 1000th of what this town might have felt with Katrina bearing down on it. I've never been in the path of a hurricane, but the wind was blowing that day like it wanted to send lake water right up to the top of the levee again.

We continued our tour of flooded areas through Milneburg and finally to the Lower Ninth Ward. Depending on the area, entire blocks of these neighborhoods were now just empty lots with sad concrete steps that used to lead to the front door but now lead to nowhere.

This 1 minute 20 second video gives you a better sense of the destruction and the number of ruined homes.

I think if I'd seen these areas a year after the Storm, I would likely have been moved to tears by the enormity of the destruction and how the flooding (and the reasons behind it) had wrecked those neighborhoods. But now, there are signs of progress. The houses that have been redone look to be generally well cared for. We talked with a young medical resident at a coffee shop in Lakeview and he told us how young professional couples are moving back to the area. In fact, we later found out Drew's old roommate just bought a lot a few hundred feet from where the London Canal breached and is going to build a new house there, so surely this must be a good thing for New Orleans. All the same, the neighborhoods are still fractured, and it seems to be taking a long time to rebuild.

After all that bad scene, we needed a strong drink. Down to Bourbon Street

for New Orleans' famous drink, the Hand Grenade.

It was a sickly sweet version of a fruity daiquiri served with a plastic hand grenade floating in a plastic cup that of course I wanted to take home. Drew said it took him 10 years to get rid of all the plastic cups he had accumulated from his time in NOLA. I bet I can hoard these for 15.

We hadn't researched a dinner spot and ended up going into Cafe Maspero, which was only so-so for food and atmosphere. I read in my guidebook that this building used to be a slave trading post, so how's that for some atmosphere? I had my first authentic red beans and rice here.

We retired to our cozy hotel on this blustery night, only to be zapped back into the party scene by a text message from Drew's old roommate, John, and his wife Marie at 10:30 PM. They were down at Cooter Browns and wanted us to come out and have a drink. Out came that party animal college boy (actually, since Drew was 36 and well out of college when I met him, I don't really know what party-animal Drew was like, but I have heard stories) and down we went to a college bar to close out Day 4 of our NOLA vacation.

New Orleans Vacation Day 3: The Swamp Things

2011-11-13T12:25:00.002-07:00

We began Day 3 in real vacation style, getting going just in time to make the cut off time for serving breakfast at the Trolly Stop cafe a block from our hotel. We ate here three time because it was pretty good, very close, and cheap. I discovered a new yummy food: grits! Drew has made me instant grits here at home, but they don't even come close to the flavor and texture of true homemade grits served with butter and salt. I always thought grits were close to zero on the nutritional scale, but it turns out if you eat whole grain grits they have nearly as much fiber, protein, and carbs as oatmeal. Of course the butter didn't do me a lot of good, except to make my tongue happy.

Journey Into The Swamp

We drove about an hour and a half west to the mid-sized town of Huoma. Nothing much there except as a launching point into Bayou Black.

We joined three other couples and our guide Junior (no kidding, his name was Junior and his daddy had been a swamp man, too) in this air boat. This was my first time on an air boat, and it took a while to stop cringing when we would slide over a log, thinking for sure the propeller was going to get munched. No propeller!

Air boats are loud so we got to wear these stylish earmuffs.

Right off the bat, we saw a mid-sized alligator.

Junior steered the boat through very straight channels that were quite clear of vegetation. I had noticed similar straight channels in the swamp on our descent into the New Orleans airport on our flight in.

The straightness puzzled me until we saw this sign.

Junior talked about how there are thousands of miles of pipeline buried about 4 feet deep that transport oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico inland. He said the several boats we saw at the marina were all boats hired out by the oil companies for surveillance and maintenance on the pipelines. It is a big part of the economy, as we noted driving by several small refineries on the way to the marina. The pipelines occasionally leak, but most of the pipes have leak protection devices. The swamp sure seems to me like a bad place for an oil leak.

To get into the good stuff, Junior turned us onto a twisty network of shallow channels, probably mostly made by the swamp tour boat.

Turning off the big deep channel into the encroaching swamp filled with cypress trees and ferns and who knows what kind of creatures was a bit unnerving, even in broad daylight. I was already so lost I began to think about eery things like what if the boat broke down and we were stranded out here after dark. There would be no walking or even swimming back to the marina. Or what if Junior was a bad person and decided to murder us all and dump our bodies overboard. There would be no sign of us and no way to find us, I was sure. Guess this North Dakota prairie girl was feeling a little out of place.

I needed a diversion from my thoughts, and what better to provide it than an ecological story. The story of nutria.

Nutria

I was hoping to see a nutria on this trip. Junior stopped the boat and pointed out the "South American Aquatic Rat at the base of that thar tree".

I asked if that was kinda like a nutria. He said it IS a nutria. (Swamp newbie Lucy!) I had read about nutrias a while ago - how they are a large rodents that were introduced from South America for fur farming in the 1930s but then they escaped and how now they are a major pest. They destroy vegetation, chewing through everything including irrigation systems and houses, causing erosion, and displacing native animals. The article I read was about a state or federal program to promote the control of these rodents using everything from a bounty program to a cook-off contest using recipes made with nutria. I'll take my beef please!

We didn't get a good enough look at the bugger to see his or her orange beaver teeth, which look like this

Nutria (not my picture)

I was sure our nutria friend would not mind a bit if Junior threw us overboard.

Big swamp and alligators

On to more swamp and animals. One of my favorite spots in Bayou Black was this wet clearing. It just looks so "swamp". The trees are bald-cypress (native) and the green covering on the water is duckweed (which Junior said was invasive and a problem because it shades the water and hinders those plants and animals that need more light).

We continued on to a large treeless area that Junior said was very important habitat for many ducks and other birds.

We watched this great blue heron fish for a good 15 minutes.

Once we started to motor on, we scared up a little baby alligator and Junior quickly whipped out his alligator-catching stick and brought the little guy on as a passenger.

He said this specimen was a year and half old. He was about 2 feet long, which would bring Junior $20 in the alligator hunt. The Louisiana Dept of Wildlife and Fisheries issues hunting permits to land owners or others with permission to hunt. It wasn't clear to me if the Department paid the hunters or if it was a free market (for meat and hides), but Junior said he gets about $10 per foot of alligator. Other for-profit hunting in the swamp include coyotes, feral hogs, nutria, and bull frogs. Bull frogs bring in $1.50 each or more if you skin them, but Junior said it wasn't worth the time to skin a frog. They also harvest alligator eggs and sell them to alligator farms. Apparently alligators don't like to breed in captivity.

He passed our alligator friend around to anyone who wanted to hold him, so I did. He had quit squirming by that time.

We trolled on a little farther and stopped again in time to see a bald eagle fly way. Here we sat in the middle of the hot muggy swamp while Junior told us various stories and "ways of the swamp". In this video clip he is answering one of the passengers who asked if you could walk across the areas that looked to be solid ground.

Yup, Junior was the real thing. Or else he just put on a pretty good show of being a swamp man.

We continued on through more bald-cypress. I didn't get a good picture, but all over the base of the trees and these root-like projections known as cypress knees...

were 3- to 4-inch long blobs of bright pink eggs that looked like this.

Snail egg masses. Picture from http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/invasive_species/nwrc_research.htm.

Junior said they were from an invasive snail that negatively impacts local rice agriculture and can spread disease to humans. I did a little research for this post and I think they were the Island applesnail (Pomacea insularum). I wish we could have seen an adult, because they are huge.

Apple snail. Picture from http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/invasive_species/nwrc_research.htm.

Junior was afraid we would run out of gas so he took us to his boss's "compound". My imagination started to run wild again, as this place was hidden in the middle of the swamp and had some sort of rack that looked like it could be used to string up a deer or __________ (fill in the blank).

We had a treat of satsuma oranges, which were very sweet and easy to peel. I wish we had them here in Utah.

But all too soon (it was actually about three hours worth) we headed back to the marina and solid ground.

I loved the swamp tour. It was my favorite thing we did all week. I got to see strange animals and plants and a foreign environment, all from the relative safety of an air boat and a seemingly trustworthy and knowledgeable guide. Well worth the drive and the $45 bucks. I would definitely recommend Bob's Bayou Black Swamp Tour; ask for Junior.

Pig Done Right

We drove back to New Orleans and changed out of our swamp clothes to go find some dinner. A local had recommended Cochon: Cajun Southern Cooking .

Cochon means pig (maybe in French?) and most items were pork related.

Although this was a Monday night, we should have had reservations. We were lucky to get two stools at the chef's bar, which was fine by us because we got to watch some of the magic. We tried fried alligator with chili garlic aioli, which tasted like chicken but denser and a little bit tougher. The waiter brought us a complimentary appetizer of pork pate, which tasted like fancy spam, a yummy bread basket, and a plate of pickled okra, another likable new taste for me. For my entree I had Louisiana cochon with turnips, cabbage, and cracklins, which looked like a pile of shredded pork with some little veggies in a thick sauce, but tasted like a fantastic explosion of savory sweet tangy deliciousness. The vinegary sauce set off the heaviness of the pork and the vegetables were crisp and tender. Really great. Drew had smoked beef brisket with horseradish potato salad, which was also delicious. He also had a side of home-style macaroni and cheese. For dessert Drew had Apple Pie with Sour Cream Ice Cream, which must have been so good he wouldn't share, and I had my first southern moon pie.

This was not a supermarket treat, this was a gourmet honey marshmallow sandwiched between two oatmeal and sun-dried cherry cookies, topped with Dr. Pepper ice cream. It was very, very good, and I did not share either. We practically had to roll back to our hotel we were so stuffed.

Day 3: Deep swamp and great food - how much more Louisianan can you get?

New Orleans Vacation Days 1 and 2: food, wooden boats, plantations, and daiquiris.

2011-11-11T23:38:00.001-07:00

I wanted to blog about our recent 9-day vacation to New Orleans, Louisiana in real time, nightly while we were there, but there was too much eating and digesting on which to concentrate so that I could be ready for the next meal. Seriously, the food in NOLA is supreme. I'll get to all the tasty details in the next few posts, but out of all the things we did that week, eating fabulous food with friends and going into the swamp were the greatest. But I know y'all wanna know the particulars of our trip, so here goes.

Day 1: Arrival

Very befittingly of the "week of good food", I'll start of this series of posts with our first meal. We arrived New Orleans on the afternoon of Saturday, October 15th. Checked into the Avenue Plaza Hotel on St. Charles Avenue, which is an old hotel that has been recently remodeled. It was a nice place and a good value. To stretch our legs we took a walk to Magazine Street, where we happened into Down the Hatch pub.

Here I had my first Po' boy. Being in New Orleans, I tried the catfish, which was good, but being the Po' boy newbie that I was, I must have said "no" when the waitress asked if I wanted it "dressed", so it was just a roll and fried catfish. Mayo needed. The onion rings were absolutely the best rings I have ever had. Only the first of "bests" for the week. We also tasted Abita beer, the local microbrew. Not as tasty as our Utah brews, but really quite drinkable, as I proved each day of this vacation.

On the walk back to our base of operations (hotel), we saw this cool intersection between tree and fence.

And I enjoyed the Spanish architecture so common in this area.

We caught a nice evening sunset from the sundeck on our hotel before crashing for the night in our room. How lame is that to turn in early on our first Saturday night of vacation when we were a short street car ride to the French Quarter?! Hey, give us a break, we were on vacation and we felt like sleeping, so there.

Day 2: Wooden Boats and a Mansion

Day 2, Sunday, started out with a fabulous breakfast of eggs and black beans at the super hip and funky Slim Goodies Diner on Magazine Street. I don't know how they make everything taste so good in New Orleans. I have been told it has a lot to do with butter. Whatever the case, I didn't know eggs and black beans could be such a truly satisfying experience.

With our bellies full, we drove across the 24-mile long (!) Lake Pontchartrain causeway. The causeway was built in the '50s and '60s by sinking 9500 concrete pilings into the lake. It is the world's longest bridge over water.

Lake Pontchartrain is not truly a lake, it is an estuary. The north end of the lake is almost fresh, while the side that connects to the Gulf of Mexico is about half as salty as sea water. I was surprised to know the lake is generally only 12 to 14 feet deep. Here is a crummy map to give you the layout of where we drove on Day 2.

Our destination of all this bridge driving was to go to the Madisonville Wooden Boat Festival. Being close to the lake and probably below sea level, I see why the houses are built like this.

OK, I know that picture might not seem strange to our more worldly readers, but to a girl from North Dakota, building your house on stilts is a great way to ensure you will have an indoor flood, from frozen and burst pipes of course. It is an odd thing to get used to seeing.

The Wooden Boat Festival

I wouldn't call either Drew or myself boat people (not the refugee kind nor the hobby kind), but I like outdoor festivals and when Drew mentioned it, I thought it sounded like a fun thing to do on vacation.

While we walked around with Landshark beers or fruit slushy frozen drinks (it was 85 degrees and muggy), we admired the beautiful wooden boats.

And other good festival things.

Red beans and rice, shrimp jambalaya? Who cares it's all good.

Drew was drawn to this particular festival by the promise of a homemade wooden boat parade followed by a race in those same homemade wooden boats. Teams were given something like 48 hours to build a wooden boat that was river-worthy enough to paddle in a ~1/2 mile race. There must have been some prize for funniest boat and crew, because there were some clever and outrageous boats.

Unfortunately, not all of them floated that well. Several of the entrants in the race had to be towed back to shore before the race even started. The spectacle was pretty fun to watch, and we had a good time looking around.

I even tried my first crawfish in the form of a crab cake with crawfish sauce. It was pretty yummy, and I gained courage that I knew I would need later in the week when faced with the much-loved-by-Drew crawfish etouffee.

River Road Mansion

My next new experience was in getting to Oak Alley Plantation on River Road. I thought the Lake Pontchartrain causeway was long, but this was something else. We drove on I-55 around the west side of Lake Pontchartrain, over the Manchac Swamp Bridge and two connected roads for mile after mile after mile (38, I later found out) on elevated roadway through swampland. It was very cool and a little bit scary. Sure, we were on the U.S. Interstate System, but if something had happened (earthquake?) to damage that freeway, where would one go? Down on the earth 15 feet below us was an endless expanse of water and cypress and mud and swamp things. Not really terra firma at all. In fact, the pilings on which the Manchac Swamp Bridge is built are driven down 250 feet into the muck. We didn't stop to take a better picture (frankly, I would have been kind of wigged out if we had), so this is the best I could do, but believe me, it was pretty darn cool.

I've been to the headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca State Park in Minnesota, where the River is so small you can jump over it. Now here we were almost at the very end of the mighty Mississip, where it is levied and spanned by gigantic bridges.

We crossed the river to get to the old plantations along River Road in Vacharie where we headed for Oak Alley Plantation. We were a bit too late to catch the last mansion tour, but that was just fine because we had the gorgeous grounds to ourselves while we read the tourist signs explaining that the Oak Alley Plantation was an antebellum sugar cane plantation, showing where the slave quarters were, and telling us that the amazing double row of live oak trees was planted in the early 1700s.

Of all the history there, the row of live oak trees impressed me the most. The trees are huge and scraggly and so graceful. We overheard the tour guide say that the life span of one of these trees is about 800 years, and here they are only 300 years old.

I loved how the branches come down and touch the ground.

We look puny next to this big old guy.

The mansion was built in 1837-1839, a hundred years after the trees were planted.

We stayed until we started to get hungry, and then headed back toward New Orleans.

Drew went to college at Tulane University in New Orleans. Since I've known him now for almost 7 years, I believe he has told me 77 stories of the drive-thru daiquiri stands he used to frequent while a thirsty young college student. Not that I didn't believe such places existed. I did, but I thought surely, with 20 years of passing legislation against drunk driving, the daiquiri stands would have gone the way of 18 year olds being able to drink legally. What little faith I have in non-Mormon run state legislatures! The drive-thru daiquiri stand is alive and well and I had a huge slushy orange-strawberry-pina colada flavor in a cup to prove it.
.

What I found most amazing is that after the nice lady at the drive-thru window took my order, she asked what Drew wanted. He was driving for heck's sake! So I'm all about freedom, but don't you think that is a little unsafe? To me, the paper cover on the straw they put in the cup didn't scream "legal closed alcoholic beverage suitable for transportation in your vehicle".

We kept driving back to New Orleans and because we got back to the city kind of late, we simply ate at a place Drew remembered as having ice cold beer (real ice crystals on the top of each glass, according to him). The restaurant that was attached to Madigan's Bar was GB's Patio Grill, and it was just a normal meal. Not bad, but nothing to blog about. The beer wasn't even that cold.

So our first full day of our New Orleans vacation was spent mostly out of the city and we had lots of fun.

Here is a map with links to the places we went on those first two days.

View New Orleans vacay 2011 Days 1 & 2 in a larger map

Rocks, wood, and bricks: more fall landscaping projects.

2011-11-07T22:44:00.001-07:00

We have been doing a bunch of exterior projects these past two months before the cold weather hit. On Drew's days off, he has been painting and patching on this 100-year old house. Here he is installing the Rainhandlers on the eves using a very gigantic rented extension ladder.

Meanwhile, I've been doing all the fun stuff. After we put in the sod and the flagstone path, the last part to do on the sod area was add some mulch around the edges on the outside of the lawn edger strips. Another trip for me to the rock store (joy!) where I hemmed and hawed over the selection of gravel mulch. I really liked Mexican Beach Pebble, but it was more expensive than the other little rocks, so I waited until Drew came home from work and drug him back to the stone yard to get his opinion. Drew has learned that indulging me in anything involving natural stone is an easy way to keep a happy wife, so he agreed that Mexican Beach Pebble was a good choice.

Isn't it so pretty! Well, you can't really see its earthy beauty in the pictures, but it has lots of grays and purples that I figured would be a nice contrast to all the red rock flagstone and boulders we have going on in the backyard.

So here are a few pictures of it installed around the edges of the sod.

The next step was to add deck skirting. Back when we built the outdoor room, we ripped cedar 2x4s to make strips to hold the 4x4 galvanized livestock panel material in place. We had a lot of leftover strips that were not the perfect dimension, so I decided to use them and new 2x4s to create lattice. Here is the frame all put together with construction adhesive and brads.

I love to use the nail guns. Here is one of the completed panels.

And here it is hung from the deck.

I have two more to make, but the weekend ran out and then I had to wait for the special order 10-foot cedar 2x4s to come in. Anyway, I think it looks pretty cool, and they are removable if we need to access the area under the deck.

As if that were not enough fun landscaping projects, I did this.

A few of years ago, I hastily put flagstone in this spot to store the flagstone until we needed it for the backyard. Well, in the last post , you saw that we needed all the flagstone we had plus some, so it was time to remake the trash can storage area beside our driveway. This time I did it right with a base of compacted sand and weed barrier fabric, and I made it level to boot. I used bricks that used to be the back wall of the house before last year's addition. (These are the ones everyone thinks I am crazy to be hoarding.) It was kind of a pain to chisel off the mortar, but worth it to save some $ and reuse a resource. The trash cans are so much happier now because they can be easily rolled in and out.

Finally Flagstone: Laying our Flagstone Pathway

2011-11-01T22:33:00.000-06:00

Just after Labor Day, you will recall we put in the glorious sod. What a difference it made! However, we were still walking on uneven, haphazardly placed, random-height flagstone where the eventual "professional" flagstone walkway would tie the deck stairs into the driveway.

Post sod.

So on September 19-20 I put my truck to use and picked up a few more pieces of flagstone and some mortar sand.

Low-ri-der.

I thought the project would go quickly. I always think projects will go quickly. I should not think.

Doing this the right way took two days. First, I excavated the soil to the proper level.

Then, I needed to make sure there was a compacted base of sand.

The next step was the most time consuming and most exciting: fitting the pieces into the puzzle border - I live for this stuff.

I wanted to make the surface as flat as I could and level from side to side with drainage toward the driveway. Plus, I had to make sure the top of the flagstone at the base of the stairs was 7 1/4" (+/-3/8") below the top of the last stair tread. That distance is the rise between the other treads of the deck stairs, which is apparently a very big deal to our nit-picky building inspector, who we didn't want to give reason to cite us in violation and hold up our impending final inspection on the addition.

So I got them all laid out with about 4 little pieces to spare.

Then I transferred them to the driveway in the same pattern.

And then, finally, put them in place and filled the spaces between with sand. It looks awesome and is so much safer!

To top it off, I transplanted some Scottish moss from our front yard to the interstices. I hope it will fill next year. The plants will help keep the sand in place and look way cool.

That was a fun couple of days. Now we have matching pathways in the front of the house and the back of the house. Cohesion, baby, cohesion.

Garden 2011

2011-11-01T00:39:00.001-06:00

Just a few pictures to show the bounty of our garden this year.

I didn't plant anything until June 3, after the irrigation system went in and just as the wet spring was easing into summer.

But this year was relatively mild as Utah summers go, so the veggies loved to grow!

By September, we had lots of onions, hot peppers, Roma and beef-eater tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. The only thing that didn't do well were the bell peppers, but we had enough of them too.

The four tomato plants were especially bountiful. Many a basketful did I harvest.

So many that I canned 15 pints...

... and got to use my fancy potfiller to do it.

I also dried several bags of "sun dried" tomatoes and habanero peppers in the dehydrator. We bought the smallest chest freezer imaginable and I've put up bags of shredded zucchini, crushed tomatoes, jalepeno peppers, habanero peppers that will knock your socks off, whole tomatoes, and raw tomatoes.

The Armenian cucumber was out of control. I made two big batches of pickles, one spicy and one sort of curry flavored. The spicy ones are the best.

I made strawberry-rhubarb jam that turned out pretty well.

I harvested about 40 onions, or enough to last us until next year I think.

Last week (October 26) we had our first killing frost. Later than usual, but it still found me unprepared. I was out that night at 10 PM wearing my head lamp and harvesting 30 pounds of green tomatoes and the last of the green and hot peppers.

I've made two green tomato pies (tastes like apple, with a bit of a tang) and this week I hope to make green tomato salsa.

As for Drew, he has done mostly "garden tasting" so far, but he has a green thumb that is just itching to get dirty in his own section of the garden next year.

Home addition: Flooring gone bad, flooring made good.

2011-09-23T21:56:00.002-06:00

Remember when we had the pre-finished oak flooring installed way back last November? Well, we got a good two months out of it anyway. Yup, that's right, the finish on the brand new flooring started showing wear only a couple of months after it was laid and by this spring we were down to bare wood in a few places. It was inexpensive flooring, so I didn't really expect the finish to last a lifetime, but 2 months? So we had the supplier (ProSource of Utah) come take a look at it to see if they would warranty it. You know what they said? "Adhesive." The bare spots on our floor were adhesive left from installation. What a royal line of bull! ProSource is really being quite stupid about this. We purchased this (and our more expensive master bedroom flooring) through our contractor Ryan, who has ordered about $20,000 worth of product through that store over the last several years. This is the third time ProSource has not stood by a product they have sold him. We had an estimate of $450 to fix the problem. All ProSource would have had to do is throw us a few hundred bucks and they could have kept their good name and kept Ryan as a buyer. But they chose to fabricate a reason as to why they would not warranty their product and in the process get on Ryan's and our bad sides. I'll bet they don't know that I keep a blog read by hundreds of potential customers. Well, I am here to tell you, ProSource of Utah is a bad outfit and it is not in your best interest to do business with them. If you do you will regret it.

Well OK then, after that rant about how awful ProSource is, I will come back to my usual happy positive tones, finish my story, and share some pictures of the new floors.

We had arranged for the pre-finished oak to be sanded lightly and a new, more durable finish put on it the day before we went to race the Galena Grinder. So we moved all the furniture out of the kitchen and new office area in anticipation for the arrival of Elegant Hardwood Floors, the new contractor.

Just before he started, we had a discussion about what it would look like afterward. There were quite a few pieces of flooring that had small but noticeable raised snags on the edges, the fault of the original installer, M.G.McKee Construction. (So first we purchased a faulty product and then the original contractor installed it improperly. 0 for 2 on the floors.) When we had the estimate, Elegant said those boards would be removed and replaced before the finish was redone. But on the day that the work was supposed to start, he said those replaced boards would likely be just a little higher than the surrounding boards and wouldn't look good. Our alternatives were to pay $450 to do the re-coat and still have an imperfect floor, or sand the whole finish off (for a lot more money) and get a traditional finish on the hardwood floor. Now, being the glutton for punishment that I am, right then and there, I convinced Drew that we should bag the re-coat idea (seemed like a waste of money to me) and do the whole house at one time. The living and dining room have very old oak flooring that was in sore need of refinishing. Our plan had been to get the new addition done, finish stripping the woodwork in the living and dining room, paint the walls, and then redo the floors. But having the floors sanded, sealed, and two coats of oil-based polyurethane put on is a major inconvenience that I only wanted to do once. So if we were going to do the new floors, why not tack on the rest of the wood floors too? So we set the date to have the living room, dining room, kitchen, office area, and two stair landings all redone the week after Galena Grinder.

I blogged/whined all about the inconvenience of me (Drew was off on a mancation at the Osh Kosh Air Show) having to camp out in the garage in the hottest part of the summer with the cats,

sleeping on a cot,

cooking on a camp stove, and crawling in through the spare bedroom window to use the bathroom in this post. It was a rough few days. Besides the acrobatics of using the bathroom, I only stepped foot in the house to take a few pictures during the business. Here is the floor sanded and being filled.

Even after the floors were finished, I couldn't sleep in the house because the fumes were so strong as to produce instant headaches and make you wonder how many brain cells you could really spare.

But eventually, the house was habitable again and have come to realize that doing all the floors in one shot was the right thing to do. Elegant Hardwood Floors did an excellent job and the floors look amazing! Before, the living and dining room floors had gray boards where the finish had worn off and dirt was ground into the wood. Now they are a beautiful rich warm honey color and are as smooth as a kitten's fur.

You can see in the picture above through the back door the pile of furniture with a tarp over it on our back deck. We were lucky and only had a light rain shower that week.

The new addition floor is now super smooth like a true wood floor, without the beveled edge of a pre-finished floor. It is hard to tell the difference in pictures, but if you look carefully at this picture of when the pre-finished was first installed, you can tell there is a little seam or bevel between each piece.

Now, the bevel is gone and we have silky smooth floors.

In fact, that was a month and a half ago and they still look so good that I am cleaning them regularly. You know, like how when you have something nice and new you want to keep it clean and nice and new-looking. Yeah, the floors are like that.

Glorious, happy, luxurious SOD!

2011-09-14T23:57:00.003-06:00

How happy can having a patch of soft, cool, green, lush, verdant grass in one's backyard make one? Exceptionally, exuberantly, extra happy.

Today, I am giddy. Today, I am giddy because Drew and I laid 250 square feet of wonderful, beautiful sod in our yard. I am giddy not only because grass is a beautiful thing, but because we have not had grass in the backyard since never. When Drew bought the house in 2001, he said the backyard was knee-high weeds. By the time I came into the picture in 2005, it was still pretty bleak.

We killed pretty much everything back there that summer so that we could have a "blank slate", onto which we planted some trees.

From there, our ambition for home remodeling got out of hand. A new garage and a big addition to the back of the house bulldozed any plans I had for the American patch of green grass. Before I could really focus on installing a lawn, there was an irrigation system to install the bones of last fall and finish this spring. Now, finally this summer, we got down to the business of grass.

Earlier this summer I tilled the entire future lawn space. In doing so, I broke a line in the new sprinkler system. Fixed that. Then it got hot and we turned our attention to finishing the addition. (We're almost there, and I know I have a lot of posts to get caught up on.) For the past week I have been intensively preparing for the sod. I dug holes under the only partially supported deck stair stingers

so that I could retrofit the posts with a galvanized support and concrete pillar.

Then yesterday we laid out all the landscape edging and weed-barrier fabric.

And did the final grading and loosened up the top bit of soil.

Still, there was more work to be done. Our final step, after nightfall mind you, was to move some of the leftover large boulders out of the main backyard flower bed that were left there when we pulled the boulders out from under the vinyl fence last year during the excavation work for the addition. The boulders didn't look as big and heavy in this morning's light.

After all that hard work yesterday, we were ready to pre-fertilize and go get the sod! My poor truck.

I deliberated for months about what type of grass to grow. We have native buffalo grass (cultivar=Legacy) in our front yard. It is slow to green up in the spring but is a nice soft gray-green color. It looks very natural, but not like the quintessential "lawn". We watered it about 5 times this summer and mowed about the same number of times, plus it doesn't like to get fertilized! How is that for water-wise and low maintenance? It is a good lawn for our front yard, but in the back we wanted something lush. Kentucky bluegrass is soft and fine and deep green and cool. It is the typical lawn everyone has. It is part of the American dream for goodness sake! It is also thirsty and requires regular fertilization and mowing. A better alternative to bluegrass might be tall fescue. It can use up to 25% less water then KBG, has similar color, and does better in shade but is coarser in texture. I was all set to get fescue sod, but then I read in a few different places that if you have heavy soil or soil with hardpans, tall fescue can't put down its roots as deep as it would do naturally, and therefore you don't get the water savings that a fescue offers. We have heavy clay soil and almost zero shade to contend with. In the end, I chose to purchase BioBlue from BioGrass Sod Farm, a local dealer in Sandy, Utah. BioBlue is a mix of three different KBG varieties (Nu Destiny, Moonlight, and Prosperity) that have been chosen for Utah's climate to withstand drought and use less water. I think our much-reduced-since-2005 lawn area partially justifies the old thirsty KBG standby.

With Drew and me working, actual sod laying took us only about 2 hours and was way easier than I expected. Maybe the 80-pound bags of cement I lifted last week was a good pre-sod workout. Our two hours is condensed in this little time-lapse movie into a happy 17 seconds.

I estimated that we would need 230 square feet, so I ordered 250, just to be safe. I guess I was off a bit in my estimation because this is the sod we ended up with at the end of the day. No waste here.

So now it is all in and dang it looks good!

Next project: do the flagstone path and add gravel at the lawn edges at the edge of the deck, but for a couple of day I'm just going to be elated in our happy lawn and enjoy the massage I earned.

Work trip

2011-09-11T23:31:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I make a 3-day trip out to the West Desert to check on all 10 surface water flow monitoring sites.

It has been a very wet year in Utah. There is standing water in the Sevier Desert. That's wet!

The new ramp flume we installed early this spring is working well.

One of the ranches has new goats.

Best part of the trip was camping at Baker Creek campground in Great Basin National Park. Beautiful, cool, secluded.

It was good to get out there.

Summer weekend at home

2011-08-29T11:44:00.000-06:00

I think it has been 3 years since Drew and I spent an entire summer weekend at home together with no out of town races, no going off to work on Saturday or Sunday night, and no real plans except to ride and get together with friends.

So to mark the occasion, we had a yard sale!

I had boxed up unwanted clothes, household items, tools, etc., intending to have a yard sale before we started the home addition back in APRIL 2010. With the construction last year, I never seemed to have a Saturday available. Until now. It felt good to unload our unwanted stuff on others who can use and appreciate it.

We made $149,

but better than the cash was the discovery of my set of car and house keys that had been lost since last winter! Apparently I had put them in one of the boxes of yard sale stuff. Hooray for finding them!

With that excellent accomplishment on Saturday, we felt we could indulge in a long bike ride with friends on Sunday in Park City. It was warm and sunny and we knew all the trails would be in perfect tacky condition because the rain the night before would have destroyed the dust on the trails but made no mud. I was the fearful leader

on a loop up CMG, Keystone, and Apex. Back behind Shadow Lake and climb to Scott's Pass, at which point we said good-bye to Rhandy and Mary who were going a Crest ride. We turned left on a trail new to 4 out of 5 of us, Scott's Bypass trail, which we followed to the top of Jupiter Bowl. (Great trail!) We then descended a rocky ridge

to Dead Tree trail and from there followed our tracks back down to the parking lot. We managed about 3100 feet of climbing but it was so worth it to be up on the tippy top of the Wasatch Mountains looking down at Shadow Lake

on a skinny, wildflower-encased trail

breathing pristine fresh mountain air by the gulps.

We stopped to document the scene of Shelly's crash last weekend. The rain had also washed her flesh off the stump.

Best ride of the year so far!

I've also been trying to keep up with the harvest.

I've made two batches of zucchini bread, two chocolate zucchini cakes, and a large bowl of salsa. Yum.

From Wildflowers to Cacti

2011-08-15T22:05:00.000-06:00

Did an the awesome 23 mile loop with Drew and Carl S. on Friday. We starting at 9 AM (really, me riding by 9 AM!) at PCMR, up Crescent Mine Grade to Shadow Lake to Puke Hill and Wasatch Crest then Crest Connector to Robs and Ambush to Canyons and back on the pavement. The flowers are pretty near their peak now I guess. It was grand.

Then Saturday we loaded up the cats in the Honda

and headed to Moab for a couple of nights. Had to make sure the place was still standing after a busy spring and summer rental season. We managed to get out on an evening ride last night. We dodged some serious-looking thunderstorms to ride Sovereign Singletrack and Salt Wash. Everybody else must have been scared away by the thunder and lightning, because we had then entire trail to ourselves. The light was gorgeous and the temperature was perfect. We had so much fun!

Drew has posed at this overlook so many times because I'm always trying to get the perfect shot of the outstanding jointing displayed on the Navajo Sandstone behind him. Guess he thought the picture needed something more interesting than joints in rocks.

Salt Wash is fun technical.

Like I said, the light on the red rock was breathtaking.

Drew was posing for a beer commercial in his head I think.

Time for me to clown around. You can't see it but there is a cliff to my right.

What a great trip.

Happy Belated Birthday, Mom

2011-08-13T18:01:00.000-06:00

My mother turned 80 years young in March. We celebrated by having a big shindig at a hotel in Minot in early April. It took the photographer a long time to get us the pictures, so that is my excuse for this very belated happy birthday post.

Mom looked great and was a good sport about smiling for what seemed like 4000 pictures.

Her two sisters were in attendance. Just like the old days.

My sisters rigged up some cute decorations and cake.

There were lots of family and friends in attendance including her boys

girls

nieces (Chris, left)

and great grandchildren.

The picture below is Mom, her kids, their spouses, all but 6 of her grandchildren, and all the great grandchildren. That's a big brood!

It was too quick of a trip to take Drew up to the homestead, but I had fun showing him off to my relatives that had not met him yet.

We kicked around most of the afternoon,snacking on "boughten" goodies and ones brought from home in the old suitcase!

After the party, we adjourned to the rooms for some more visiting and relaxing.

Then we hit the waterslide and pool attached to the hotel. I was having too much fun to take pictures.

It was a short trip but we had a good visit with the family. Best of all, we got to wish my dear mother happy 80th birthday properly. She deserves to have every celebration coming too her! We love you, Mom!

Race report: Pierre's Hole 50/100. Racin' in the Tetons Rocks!

2011-08-07T22:32:00.003-06:00

Way back when there was snow on the ground, our race instigator friend fired out an email to the team notifying us that registration was open for the 3rd annual Pierre's Hole 50/100 mile MTB race. Drew had just been saying he needed a big goal for 2011, so I called him up and caught him between flights. With no research into the difficulty level of this race, he said, "sign me up for the 100!" So that's how I ended up registering for the 50 mile option (because I know better than to attempt 100 miles on my mountain bike) and Drew locked himself into the 100 mile sufferfest.

We headed up on Friday to Grand Targhee Resort near Alta, Wyoming. GT is just over the mountain, east of Jackson Hole, but yet is seems a world away from that snooty and over-priced place. It is a small ski area encompassed by absolute natural beauty.

We checked into the Souix Lodge Suites.

It was a nice big room

with a balcony and a "garage" for our rides.

The only negative thing I have to say about the Souix Lodge Suites is that the pillows were so dang fluffy as to be unusable. Note for next year: bring our own pillows!

Went for a little spin and then to the racer meeting, where we met race organizers Troy and Andy.

Andy (on the left) is cousin Milissa's husband's brother. (I realize that makes him her brother-in-law, but my way is much more descriptive.) Andy is a great guy with a ton of energy for Grand Targhee special events. He also has a super nice wife named Nicki who welcomed us into her home for a pre-race feast cooked by Milissa. Christian (Milissa's husband) and his sister Nancy and niece Katie were in on the feast too.

Then it was back up the mountain to rest for Drew's 6:15 AM start.

I'd like to say that the pictures below were taken my me as I faithfully supported my husband for the start of his race, but I am not that dedicated at 6 AM. I was asleep when he and Christian and a bunch of our hardcore teammates departed on what would be a very long day in the saddle. Luckily, Milissa was there making sure they got off all right, so we have her to thank for the pics.

As I slept in, Christian and Drew were slogging along on laps 1 and 2. Melissa caught them at some of the aid stations.

They rode together for a good bit until Christian let it roll on one of the downhills. Drew was still looking fresh in this picture Milissa took at aid 4.

My start time was 10:15 AM, which is great in that I have plenty of time to prepare and warm up, but awful in that I have plenty of time to get my stomach tied in knots and over prepare. I did not feel good by the time 10:15 rolled around.

Two weeks ago, we did the Galena Grinder as a big training race weekend. I was using it to gauge how to pace myself on 45-50 mile races. At Galena, I took it pretty easy and raced my endurance pace the entire way. Not so for Pierre's Hole. It was full on race pace for me from the get go.

At the start, I lined up way in the back with some other women and the single speed freaks in cut offs and plaid shirts. (A few miles in, a group of three of them pulled off and waited for their friend. As I rode past them, I could see they were getting ready to moon their buddy! Gotta love 'em.)

I quickly moved up from the back of the pack and had a Mud Honey gal in my sights. She had raced the Grinder too, and I wanted to see if I could hold her pace. We climbed up Lightning Ridge on first a road and then nice new singletrack. We decended a screaming fast decent where I got stuck behind a pack of riders, but it was all good. Then we popped out on a gravel road in Teton Canyon and soon started up the paved road to the ski area. I hit the climb with too much ambition, trying to stay on Mud Honey's wheel. I know I should have kept my heart rate around 166 bpm, to preserve energy for the next 44 miles, but I found another racer dude that was riding a good pace and we worked together on the climb, me pushing 170 bpm. I wondered if I would pay for that later.

I zoomed through aid station 2, only grabbing a water bottle. After the ~4 mile paved climb, we entered a service road descent that kept me riding the brakes to avoid launching off the numerous water bars. Whee! At the base of this descent was a private ranch where friendly ranchers were waiting for us with more water and Hammer nutrition products at aid 3. Hammer was a full supporter of this race, which I was grateful for because I use their Sustained Energy as my endurance fuel.

I passed them by and started up the grueling ~4 mile singletrack/double track 15-25% climb. At least it was a decent temperature and the pines afforded some shade. It was here that my brake started rubbing. It got worse, and I was sure it was rubbing bad enough to cause impedance. Not what one wants with 40 miles to go!

At the top of the killer climb, we popped back out on the road headed back to the resort. I was feeling OK at this point, and went into the rocky, rooty singletrack sweetness of Rick's Basin smiling and thinking to myself, "yeah, I really like these longer distance races."

Rick's Basin is phenomenal. The wildflowers were so abundant and vibrant in their colors as to make me forget that I was racing. I wanted to just slow down and look around, but the rocks in the trail kept my attention. The descending in Rick's Basin is mostly smooth, flow-y, and fast, and the climbs are not leg killers, or at least they weren't on this first lap. I descended into the start finish area in good spirits, since I was almost 30 minutes ahead of the 3 hours I thought each lap would take me.

As I pedaled under the finish banner to head out on lap 2, I heard Drew's familiar voice cheering me on. What? Why was Drew here? I stopped at the neutral support to have nice mechanic man try to fix my break and Drew told me his IT band had sent shooting pains up to his hip at the start of his third lap.

He knew he didn't have 50 more miles in him, so he called it quits. I was disappointed for him. What kind of goal is he going to set for next year now? It could get ugly. ;-)

After refueling I started out on lap 2, still feeling pretty strong.

At this point, I didn't know where my competition was, or even how many I was racing against. The start list that morning had 18 registered women in the Open Women category. This included all the women doing the 50 mile option, from pros like Amanda Carey down to some women that didn't look like they'd ever attempted anything of this sort before. Sometimes the fact that there are few women who chose to race mountain bikes works out nicely for me, like at Galena Grinder where I won big because there was only one other woman in my category, but other times it backfires because the race organizers decide to lump us all into one big category no matter our age or ability. In truth, I was glad to be racing against the big girls to see how I would do. So were there 18 women out there? I didn't know how many of them had started. Only time would tell.

At aid station 2 Drew was there to cheer me on again.

Acting as Primary Domestique, he informed me that I had 8/10ths of a mile lead on another woman and that there was not another woman in the 6/10ths of a mile ahead of me. I figured that was about 10 to 14 minutes lead on the gal behind me, which I hoped would be enough, but this was no time to sit up and joy ride.

I kicked it in on the climbs, trying to hold about 165 bpm. When I reached the turn off from the road by the resort to head over to Rick's Basin again, Drew magically appeared with his stop watch and camera again and told me he I had only a 4 minute lead! Yikes. How could I have lost that much time when I was pushing so hard? (Turns out I can't do math very well in my head when my legs are running the show. I probably never did have a 14-minute lead.) With 7 miles to go and a couple of short climbs left, I was going to have to turn it up a notch, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it.

It became painfully obvious that I was not going to be able to turn the legs on again as I rode out of the camping area/aid 4. CRAMPS! Ouch. Weird thigh cramps on the inside and outside of my left quad. I figure this is because I have been babying my left leg for the past month to let my knee heal from injuring it at July 2nd's I-Cup race, and so left quad isn't as burly as right quad. I had to back off and spin easy up the climbs. I throttled back to about 155 bpm on the climbs, and kept looking over my shoulder every minute or two, expecting to see evil female closing in on me. At the base of the last climb, about 3 miles from the finish line, I thought I saw her and I began to resign myself to getting passed on the finish line :-(. There was not much I could do without the full cooperation from left thigh, so I just kept spinning along. At this point I was no longer saying, "yeah, I like these longer distance races." I don't remember all my thoughts that clearly, but I think there were a number of swear words bouncing around in my cranium. At the top of the climb, there was no woman in sight so I became hopeful again and just concentrated on the decent into the finish. Boy did it seem like a long descent this time, and bumpier! But soon enough I could hear the music and the cheers as I came out of the singletrack to the finish chute.

And finally the announcer calling my name as a 50-mile female finisher. I was done at 5 hours 20 minutes!

I stumbled across the finish line as Drew removed my bike while I lay with painful leg cramps and accepted a water bottle of Recoverite from a stranger.

It was a good effort. I have not raced that hard in several years, and I was eager to find out where I ended up against all the other women, but I would have to wait until the awards ceremony that evening.

We had time to medicate and clean up

and await the arrival the arrival of our friends and teammates to finish their 100 miles.

Christian did it! His first hundi! He looked cooked. He was a good-spirited zombie the rest of the evening.

As other teammates were still out on course, the Mexican post race meal, kegger, awards ceremony and raffle drawing was in full swing. It was a good time. Turns out I ended up 6th out of 12 women, just one place out of the money, but 16 minutes back from 5th. There was no way I could have caught 5th place, brake or no brake problem, so I am very happy with my performance.

This race was super well organized, excellent support stations, and a sweet S.W.A.G. (stuff we all get) bag which included all of this except the mug.

The mug was my prize for crossing that 50-mile finish line. I am putting it to good use right now with a delicious out-of-state IPA.

Drew won a beanie and a pair of pants in the raffle, so we both came out smelling of roses.

We whooped it up while an Irish rock band played.

At the end of this long day, we were not so persnickety about those big fluffy pillows. Zzzzzzzz.

Sunday we packed it up and headed for home with a short stop at Lava Hot Springs for a soak in the solidly mineralized 100+ degree healing waters.

Pierre's Hole 50 was a tough race. My Garmin track
Pierre's Hole 50 by jubebug at Garmin Connect - Details
says I covered 47 miles and almost 7400 feet of vertical. My average heart rate was 156 bpm. Compare that to the Grinder where I did 41.5 miles and 6800 feet of vertical on an average heart rate of 143, and it is obvious that Pierre's Hole is harder and that I raced it harder. The double-track climb out from the ranch was by far the hardest part, but the roots and rocks on the singletrack made staying focused absolutely necessary. The great fun of the singletrack was punctuated by welcomed paved road climb sections. As much as I liked the course, I'm certain that I would not want to do it 4 times in a row. My hats off to all those who finished the 100 mile option, including teammates Ryan, Jenelle, Shannon, Ellen, Brad, Brandon, and Gordon. For some of them, it was an almost 15-hour day in the saddle.

Grinder post-race

2011-07-31T07:30:00.002-06:00

After the race, Drew and I cleaned up and walked down to the Lodge where the after party was in full swing. There was an awesome bluegrass band, Reilly Coyote, picking for our entertainment.

The food was good and we each got one free microbrew, but lucky me I got two because Drew was abstaining. The awards went on for quite a while so we camped out with Carl and Doug's family in the shade.

I had to stick around to see if I'd won the women 40-49 age category*. I knew I was ahead of that chic I passed early in lap 1, but didn't know for sure if she was my competition. Turns out she was and she didn't make the time cut so she DNFed (Did Not Finish). I beat her fair and square and for my efforts I won a giant huge magnum of wine from a local winery, a cool bike necklace, and a couple of sweet beer glasses. Since I am lucky, I also won the most stylish bike jersey I've ever seen from Club Ride in the raffle.

* I tried to register in the Open (Pro-Expert) category, but they wouldn't let me race there because I don't have a UCI license. I would have taken last place by 8 1/2 minutes in that category.

After the awards we ate a late dinner and hung out with the folks from Broken Spoke Cycling Club by their bonfire, complete with roasted marshmallows. Then we turned in for an early and complete night's sleep under the stars.

The next day we wanted more punishment so Drew, Carl, and I did the 17 mile Fisher Creek loop which was up and over Galena Pass on hwy 75 down in the breathtaking Sawtooth Valley. It was a good post-race ride that had a long slow grind up a FS road and a thrilling, long downhill complete with be-on-your-game exposure, wildflowers gone wild, weathered granite outcrops, small stream crossings, and ripping singletrack.

Carl, being the never-off-duty bike mechanic that he is fixed my bike mid-ride and a couple of strangers' bikes too. What a guy.

It was a perfect ride to knock down our already tired legs in preparation for Pierre's Hole in two weeks.
Here is my Garmin track.
Fisher Ck / Wilson Ck loop by jubebug at Garmin Connect - Details

After the ride, we went back to this mini-store

to buy a $3.95 bag of Doritos and this $6 six pack.

You all know I am a beer connoisseur, but my choices were Bud Light or Keystone Light. Keystone Light seemed more appropriate for our next stop at Alturus Lake. What a gorgeous natural lake! It looked to me to be formed by lateral and end moraines at the juncture of two valleys. It was so clear and very cold. We didn't spend a lot of time in the water, but enjoyed watching Carl's dog Millie frolic.

As the sun was getting low, we headed back toward the camp, but stopped for dinner first at Smiley Creek. Another idyllic setting with tasty but expensive ($11 for a chicken sandwich and $6 milkshakes) fare.

We had to wait for the kids to quit playing on this carved log before Carl could snap our picture.

The Sawtooth Valley is truly gorgeous. Pictures don't do it justice.

What vacation would not be complete without large concrete animals?

But all fun days must come to an end so we drove back over the pass but stopped for one last look.

Monday we woke to find we were the only campers left, so we packed it up and headed down to Sun Valley for a short easy ride on Corral Creek trail, Corral Creek by jubebug at Garmin Connect - Details, before packing it back home.

That was one of the best race vacations ever! I would highly recommend this race for anyone looking for a longer distance but not gruesomely brutal mountain bike race. Great grass-roots feel in a fabulous setting!

Urban camping

2011-07-31T00:00:00.001-06:00

I am typing this post from the garage. I am urban camping for the third night in a row. The house is uninhabitable right now because of noxious polyurethane fumes from having the floors on the main level refinished. It is a long story that I'll highlight in a future post with pics of the floors, but for now I'll show you my urban camping setup. I'm sleeping in the garage on a cot. The cats have their own cot, but they choose to sleep on my cot with me.

It's not too bad actually. This morning I made a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs that included sauteed onions and peppers, which I picked from the garden six feet out the back door of the garage. Convenient really.

Hiking around the front of the house, ducking under a bush, shimmying up a ladder and crawling into the spare bedroom through a window to use the toilet and shower, not so convenient.

Drew is on his mancation looking at airplanes with his Dad and our friend Jim. At least I take pleasure in the fact that he is sleeping in a bunk room with a couple of other guys that snore.

Race Report: Grindin' the Grinder

2011-07-30T12:15:00.005-06:00

The Trip

At the last minute, Drew and I decided to take on the Galena Grinder Marathon. The "Grinder" is a race our friend Doug has done and talked about for years. His whole family goes up in their travel trailer to Galena Lodge, which is on Idaho Highway 75 north of Sun Valley and Ketchum on the way to Galena Pass and Stanley in the Sawtooth Mountains.

There are two races going on at this venue, the cross-country (22 mile) race and the marathon (44 miles). In preparation for our upcoming Pierre's Hole 100/50 race, we thought the Marathon would be a good prep race. It was!

I had to throw in this picture

as documentation of me working on my bike. Drew and Carl (top mechanic at the bike shop) were giving me grief for having a dirty chain. OK, OK, I cleaned it!

After an 8 AM start from the house, delayed because we were watching the first half of the penultimate stage 19 of the Tour de France (best TDF ever!), we made the 5 hour drive to Galena Lodge. We had our two smart phones going with live feeds of what was happening on the last climb up the Alpe d’Huez. Bike geeks!

We arrived and set up camp next to Carl.

I have decided that I am too old to sleep on the ground the night before a bike race, so we've invested in cots instead.* They are very comfortable, but unfortunately, we don't have a big enough tent to house them, so we improvised with our sun canopy. It doubled as a frost canopy this time.

*We were hoping that Bobke could make the trip, but we are worried about the old air-cooled engine on a hot summer drive up a mountain pass. He stayed home :-(

Our set up lacked any sort of privacy, but all the other campers had tents or trailers, so we just figured they weren't looking.

We pre-rode a portion of the race course on Friday evening, then cooked up some pasta and made a tossed salad as the temperature dropped and dropped. I went to bed in our exposed quarters with much trepidation about how I would stay warm. A few minutes after we tucked in, Doug and Susan came carrying an extra sleeping bag for me. SAVIORS! It kept one side of me warm, but I had to keep rotating to keep the other side from freezing. When we woke, our water bottle and sun shower were iced up. It must have been in the upper 20s. Brr.

The Race

The Marathon started at 9 AM. It was so chilled through when I finally got out of my semi-warm bag that I had to start the race wearing knee warmers, long-fingered gloves, arm warmers, and a vest. My Garmin says it was 42 degrees at the start. I started out slowly at the back of the pack with only Doug behind me. About a half mile in I passed one guy, then another. About 2 miles in I passed a woman that looked to be in the 40 to 49 age category with me. I knew before the race that there were only two in my category**, so I was hoping this was her and that I could stay ahead of her for the next 5 to 6 hours.

** I tried to register in the Open/Pro-Expert category, but I didn't have an UCI annual license so they wouldn't let me.

The course was pretty fun. Most of the climbs were on fire road in the back woods. There was a lot of singletrack too, with just enough exposure, log roll-overs, bridges, tight turns, and close trees to keep it interesting but not mentally draining. There was one long hike-a-bike section where the grades were up to 22%, but honestly, I welcomed the chance to get off my bike and push for a few minutes. Marathon racers do two 22 mile laps, and the lap comes back through the start/finish area 3 times before the actual finish, so it is great because you can stop at your camp and grab food or whatever and dump all those warm clothes. That is a really nice set up because, frankly, the aid stations were not very good and placed in funny places.

I took it pretty slow the first lap because I wanted to be able to finish. I did start to get worried though around 2 hours in when I was still 7 miles from the end of lap 1 and had only an hour to make the time cut. I ended up going through the lap at about 2 hours 33 minutes, so no worries.

It was on lap 2 that I began to feel good. I started to pass some guys that looked to be in a bit of hurt, my husband included. We rode together for a mile or so but he was having stomach problems and the like, so I dusted him ;-) By this time, I had drunk about 48 ounces of water, a 20 ounce serving of Hammer Sustained Energy, and ate a gel. Before the hike-a-bike, I ate a nutty Mojo bar for some long-lasting energy. That seemed to do the trick and my legs, while tired, held up to the task. My left knee, which I re-injured a few weeks ago, was still weak, and consequently, my right quad was doing a lot of the work. Poor thing would be sore to the touch for days afterward. Go legs!

5 hours, 31 minutes and 27 seconds after the start gun I finished the course dirty, tired, and smiling. Drew came in a few minutes later in the same condition. What a ride!

I would recommend this race to anyone looking to get into endurance racing. The course was technically not too hard, there was plenty of climbing but none of it was excruciating, and the event itself was a hoot. Really great grass-roots feel. I have challenged Drew to a rematch again next year.

Next up: post race activities and the rest of beautiful Idaho.

In case you are interested, here, Galena Grinder 2012 Marathon by jubebug at Garmin Connect - Details, is my Garmin track. Or you can preview it below, I think.

Race reports: USCS#2 @ Round Valley and I-Cup Snowbird @ Dutch Hollow

2011-07-16T02:52:00.001-06:00

This post is long overdue, so I will keep it short. Just a couple of race reports.

Utah State Championship Series Race #2 at Round Valley.

Although I didn't think so back in my college days, Saturday night is a great time to race mountain bikes, as I found out on June 25 at Race #2 of the new Utah State Championship Series. Some of our friends turned into race promoters and they've done a great job putting together a new race series. This was supposed to be an XC (cross country) race, but for the Expert Women category, it was really more of a mini-endurance race. We had to do 3 full laps of a 9.3 mile loop, which was the same distance as the pro men and women (who are a lot faster than me and therefore get 'er done a lot quicker). At the start there were 5 women lined up including me. I knew 3 of them to be faster than me and there was one wildcard. Well, maybe I could beat her.

To make a long race story much shorter and less painful than it was, it turned out I didn't really beat anyone. I took off in last place off the start and there I stayed. The wildcard chic was riding in front of me, but she had a mechanical and didn't finish the race. I came after in at 2 hours and 44 minutes, well behind the other three, for my first ever DFL. Guess I need to train for endurance races some more.

Icup Snowbird

With the massive snowpack of 2011, the July 2nd Mountain Bout was moved from its traditional home at snowy Snowbird ski resort to perfect, warm, dry Wasatch Mountain State Park near Heber. I wanted to try racing on these trails for fun so Drew and I went to pre-ride the course on the Wednesday before the race. Big fat thunderstorms made for a dirty pre-ride and expensive bike maintenance later on to get the grit and water out of our bikes. The rain, though, made for almost tacky trails twisting and turning through scrub oak and grasslands.

The start groups were split into two start times, which, when combined with a pretty low turn out, made for gloriously uncrowded racing. Nice!

I lined up with 5 Expert Women this time, two of which looked to be newbies. Off the gun I was in 4th place, but moved up pretty quickly to 3rd. On the first steep climb I passed the gal in 2nd because, I later found out, she had ripped off her rear derailleur. The other newbie ended up giving up her bike to the friend that had no derailleur, so no-derailleur girl was still able to finish, but I never saw her again.

I was feeling pretty good and I think I had about 3 minutes on Ellen when my drive train started to sound Horrible. It felt as though hard effort on the pedals was going to rip the derailleur off. So I ended up stopping a couple of times to see if I could find the problem and losing a lot of time on the steep climbs. Enough time that Ellen passed me and I had to chase her back down. I did get around here on the last half lap to take 2nd overall.

I rushed down to the bike shop only to be told that all my bike needed was lube on the chain. Seriously, how silly is that to have almost lost the race because my lube wore off. I am switching to synthetic lube.

Happy 4th of July

2011-07-10T08:00:00.015-06:00

Drew miraculously had a holiday off. This has not happened in at least 3 years. It was time to put aside the house projects and enjoy the day.

We celebrated our U.S.A. Independence by a 7 AM start to a great 2 hour bike ride with the team

after which Drew and I continued up the mountains for another 2+ hours.

Later, we went to a barbeque at the Hypios', for which I made this patriotic and delicious cheesecake dessert.

and I got to wear my hat and flag jewelry.

It was a good party, plus, in the name of tax revenue, the Utah legislature changed our fireworks laws this year so that we can now blow up bigger stuff. I was tickled to be able to light off some fireworks I had stored in the garage for a couple of years. They were big and went boom! I love this country.

Fireworks are grand, but they don't do good things to our air quality. Check out the spikes in the PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller) chart below (top chart) at about 10 PM each night surrounding the 4th. We could almost taste it.

Later in the week Drew and I made our first accent of Thaynes Canyon up to Shadow Lake.

There is SO much runoff water high this year but the trails are now open and in great condition. It is sweet!

Birthweek Activities

2011-07-09T00:42:00.000-06:00

Mid-June is a fabulous time to have a birthday. I used to think it was a rotten time, because all the other kids got to bring treats to school and hand them out on their birthdays, thereby getting lots of attention and well wishes. Summer birthday kids didn't get that treatment. But now I make up for it with lots of fun summer activities around my birthday, so I think June is a great time for birthweek. Now that I am officially over 40, I have earned an entire week of celebration instead of a single birth day.

I started off birthweek by playing in my backyard to my heart's content. I would not allow myself to feel guilty that I should be training for that little race coming up on August 6. I worked all day Saturday moving rocks around, fixing sprinklers (yes, the ones we just installed), weeding, and generally producing massive quantities of vitamin D.

Saturday night, Drew came home. Sunday morning I made a fabulous jalapeno potato salad, edamame succotash, and strawberry rhubarb pie

in preparation for our picnic at Red Butte Garden's summer concert series later that evening featuring Big Head Todd and the Monsters. Sunday afternoon we went for a short ride, and then cleaned up for the concert.

Even though we got to the waiting line for the concert later than I would have liked, I weaseled us down in between some large groups with big blankets, since we were only 2 bodies. We set up our lawn chairs about 8 rows back from the center of the stage - -PERFECT. To make it extra perfect, the two people directly in front of us were young boys that were (a) small, and (b) more interested in their Gameboys than the music and therefore content to sit down quietly. Plus they left early. Score. Here is our view of the stage.

What a beautiful venue. There was plenty of time before the music started to enjoy those salads, pies, and wine.

The opening act was Toots and the Maytals; they were excellent.

Really got the crowd fired up. Here is a video of one of their last songs.

Time for the main act: Big Head Todd and the Monsters. They were even better!

I had not been to a live concert in a couple of years and not to a rock concert for many more. I forgot how good and loud concerts feel. We showed our age by wearing ear plugs! Here is a little clip of the concert. Check out the wild drummer Brian Nevin. He was on fire.

Birthweek took a hiatus on Monday for me to get a dental filling and work half a day, but birthday Tuesday we were in full form starting with breakfast at Eggs in the City. I ordered the crepes as a special treat because I had never had them. They were so good and I said as much to the waiter. He said, "if you come in on your birthday they are free." Hey, what a coincidence! Free crepes for Lucy.

Breakfast was followed by a bike ride on recently snow-free Park City trails,

and then a drive in my freshly detailed truck

Later we were joined by our kitties while we enjoyed a before-dinner drink our new high deck off the master bedroom,

Birthday dinner was at a restaurant I'd been wanting to try for some time. Meditrina serves small plates, so we ordered a bunch and they came out one after the other. I tried to take a picture of each plate:

BRUSCHETTA OF THE DAY

The SCALLOPS PICATTA — sea scallops in a lemon caper butter sauce over squid-ink spaghetti, was really great but I didn't get a picture of it, because I was still laughing at this

.
which is Drew eating PICKLED BEETS

But I thought they were wonderful

We had STUFFED PIQUILLO PEPPERS — Maryland blue crab, marscapone, with a lemon-almond cream sauce.

and I think this was seared TUNA

There was BEEF TENDERLOIN CARPACCIO — with arugula, artichoke heart, red onion, and a whole grain mustard viniagrettem and
CAJUN HOT AND SOUR GREEN BEANS — sautéed with cajun spices, garlic and lemon.

BACON CRUSTED PORK TENDERLOIN — over corn, butterbean, and turnip purée with candied pecans.

and one of my favorites was PATATAS BRAVAS — grilled red potatoes with caramelized shallots, spicy tomato aioli, and chili oil, which I did not get a picture of.

Coupled with two glasses of sangria, it was all good!

We came home to devour birthday carrot cake from Carlucci's Bakery (they made our wedding cake) before turning out the lights on the pinnacle day of birthweek.

But birthweek was not over. Wednesday night my teammate Ellen hosted a get together for women on the Revolution road bike racing team and mountain bike racing team. We are the same team with almost the same sponsors, but because of the differences in training and riding requirements for the different types of racing, we hardly know each other. It was a great way to meet some of the ladies and we got to eat our sponsor Cafe Rio's chow.

Thursday night Drew and I hosted the No-Guilt Book and Dinner Club. It is a book club but you don't need to read the book (that's the no-guilt part of it). We have dinner before the discussion so the host makes the main entree and others bring sides and drinks. I chose a Mexican menu and made both chicken and spinach enchiladas. Oh, and another strawberry rhubarb pie, because that is a Mexican favorite, of course. Heather made flan. I love flan.

Friday Drew left again so that was the official end of the celebrations. It was a busy and delicious birthweek that I got to spend mostly with Drew. What a great way to end #40.

2011-07-06T21:25:00.003-06:00

First zucchini from the garden. Three days ago this guy was an inch and a half long!

Home addition: sprinklers part II

2011-06-21T11:02:00.001-06:00

Last fall we put in the guts of an automatic sprinkler system in the backyard. June 3rd we finished the job. Well, OK, not we meaning Drew and me, but we meaning Aaron Schoenberg, owner of Wasatch Sprinkler and his helper Todd. I just mostly got in the way and Drew mostly did stuff inside the house.

Anyway, before Aaron came, I had to clean up some of my mess. This is the highly organized pile of rocks we have in the outdoor room for the time being. I am a bit obsessive about moving rocks around in the backyard. Can you guess how many categories of rocks I have piled here? The answer will be at the end of this post.

We also had a tree stump ground out from the garden area. Then we were ready. The guys got to work putting in the lines for the lawn area.

Here is a bird's eye view of the network. It will have pop-up spray heads for the lawn and drip for everything else. There are two drip zones: one for the landscaped area (trees and perennials that need less water) and one for the veggie garden that needs water every day in the summer. The amount of water each plant gets is controlled by the flow rate of the individual emmitter at each plant and/or the number of emitters at each plant. I also have some soaker line for tightly spaced veggies like lettuce or onions.

So I wouldn't forget once we covered everything up, I annotated a photograph of the valve box.

It is a pretty sweet system and will save mucho time and thousands of gallons of water as compared to hand watering.

Oh, and I'm working on another project too. Through a geology connection and a trade for some bike parts I got the these granite boulders we had in the backyard drilled out for a future fountain. It'll be wicked cool.

So it has been a productive late spring in the backyard. Here is a picture from May 13 showing my affinity for junk piles and weeds.

Here is after I cleaned up somewhat and moved the wood pile and composters.

And here is after the drip system is installed and the garden is planted!!!!!!

It isn't a huge garden this year because I still have to install the pathways, but we'll get some organic veggies out of it. So things are coming along outside (at the expense of finishing the work inside!)

Answer to the quiz: Eight. Wonderstone flagstone, small angular cobble, large angular pebble, slate, junk rocks from digging, granite boulders, leftover granite countertop, and sandstone top cap we were going to use for a mantel. If you said 10 because you counted the brick and concrete paver, you're wrong because they are not rocks.

Moab wind and work

2011-06-19T13:14:00.000-06:00

It has been a very busy rental season at our place in Moab this spring. We had renters in for 24 nights in April and 30 nights in May. Last week there was an opening so we bombed down for a couple of nights to assess the damage a few months of vacationing families can do to a place.

The trip did not start out smoothly. We left the house at noon on Sunday, a truck full of bikes, tools, supplies, and cats, but on this first warm day of the year (85 degrees), before we even made it to the freeway, we discovered the AC did not work. It has been such a cold spring that I haven't needed the AC. Rough finding out it doesn't work with a packed truck on a Sunday! So after running around to 3 or 4 different Firestone stations, we found one that could work on the truck. We settled in for an hour or so to the lobby of the service station, cats in their carriers and us on vinyl seats.

Things looked good at first, but by 2:30 the technician discovered a puncture in the compressor. That is no bueno! A parts store was open and the technician agreed to stay after closing time to work on it (see, family, there are advantages to living in a big city), so we bunkered down in the waiting room and wasted away a gorgeous June afternoon. We used the time to do some computing, sewing, reading, and bike maintenance. The cats slept through it all.

Finally at 6 PM and $700 later, we were on our way. We used the AC even though we didn't need it anymore. :-(

For all the people through the condo, it was in pretty decent shape. We spent Monday patching paint and deep cleaning. The new trail we wanted to try was on the agenda for the afternoon, but vicious winds prevented any cycling activity and closed the pool to boot. Bummer!

Instead, we waited until the wind died down a bit and hiked Mill Creek Canyon, just on the edge of town. Neither of us had been up this canyon, and we get asked for hiking suggestions all the time from our renters, so we were doing necessary reconnaissance. It was a fabulous hike, even though we missed the side canyon reportedly containing a shangi-la waterfall.

The trail follows Mill Creek very closely,

and has many crossings.

The best part about the hike was observing how the course of the stream is dependent on the jointing (geo term) or cracks (non-geo term) in the Navajo Sandstone.

The stream tumbles over bedding plane ledges and follows the joints, widening them over time.

There were cool micro things to see too. These insect creations looked like mini termite mounds or nuclear reactor cooling towers.

And these rocks were cool stuck like shingles into one of the joints in the streambed.

The evening light on the sandstone and distance view of the La Sals was magnificent.

Tuesday morning we spent cleaning some more and getting a tear in the carpet fixed, but we were both itching for some pedal time, so we managed to ride UPS and LPS as a loop. Last time I did this trail was on my old Titus. I remember it being at the top of my technical ability. This time, on a 29er, was a whole different story. I can't get over how much easier technical trails are on the big wheels. Wow! It is almost cheating. Drew shot some video, but it might take a few weeks for him to find time to edit it. We'll make sure to post it when he does.

Tuesday we packed everything up and headed home really late. Not a great recipe for both of us working the next day, but that's the price ya gotta pay to play.

Memorial Day racing

2011-06-07T09:06:00.004-06:00

Being a holiday, Drew was working on Memorial Day. I chose to spend it not racing the Stan Crane Memorial MTB Race as in previous years, but volunteering as a course marshal instead. Wise choice. With all the rain we had been having and a temperature of 37 that morning, I was glad to be standing out on course with my insulated Carharrt overalls and a rain jacket instead of riding/pushing my bike in race mode. It was pretty fun to cheer on my teammates and friends instead.

My former coach Kathy Sherwin leading the slog in front of teammate Dana Harrison.

Teammate and competitor Ellen Guthrie.

Afterward, our Revolution Peak Fasteners team hosted a potluck barbeque. Too bad Drew had to miss the rhubarb crisp I brought. Yum!

Association for Women Geoscientist catch up post

2011-06-06T09:56:00.000-06:00

Well it appears summer is finally here, but before we commit spring to a distant soggy cold memory, I wanted to post a few pictures from some volunteer work I did these past few months.

Late March is when the regional science fair is held here in the Salt Lake Valley. An organization I belong to, the Salt Lake Chapter of the Association for Women Geoscientists, puts almost $400 toward cash and prizes for top projects by girls that contain a geology component. Our national foundation matches that, so together we award up to $100 each to 9 girls for a great project. To do this involves me reading through about 300 abstracts by 5th through 12th graders to pick out those projects that have some geology in them, then rounding up and coordinating five of our members to interview and judge those projects,

me, Sally, Katie

Steph, April, Leann

then meeting with the judges to get their final decisions and making up some nice award certificates for the girls. The judging involves reviewing each project board and an interview with the student.

The project floor

Students hanging out waiting to be judged.

Each student is judged on how well her project followed the scientific method (theory, experiment, reproducibility) originality, and presentation. It is pretty cool to see kids so excited about science!

The best part about this year is that the winner of our junior division last year was a winner in the senior division this year, which means that we probably have a budding earth scientist in our midst. Hopefully our cash and prize last year encouraged her to stick with the subject.

The final part of organizing this outreach project is to present our awards at the award ceremony after a genuine mad scientist wowed the crowd with weird science.

After the science fair was over, it was time to switch gears to our April 29th fundraiser, the 22nd Annual AWG-SLC Silent Auction and Wine Tasting Scholarship Benefit. I took on the big job of gathering items to put out for our silent auction. With the work of a fabulously motivated auction committee, we complied 156 items by 49 different donors ranging from original artwork by award winning local artists to gift certificates for dinners and massages and everything in between, including, my favorites, natural stone jewelry and rocks!

One of the item tables.

Guests mingling around the item tables.

Guests bidding on items.

Our venue was the Founders Room on the 18th floor of the downtown Zions Bank building (thanks Zions Bank for the free use of the space!), which comes complete with a grand sweeping view of sunset over the Great Salt Lake.

Steph, Britney and Katie working the door.

We had delicious food and went through dozens of bottles of wine. Our attendance was up this year to about 119 super generous people, which combined paid out $3271 in the silent auction! While Drew worked the bar along with a few of the other members' husbands, earning $78 in tips, I was out bidding on items. Because the hard work of gathering items was over, I let myself indulge in a bit too much wine, which is probably why we went home with a few items of jewelry and and the promise of an original caricature drawing of Drew and me by famous Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley!

Me, cartoonist Pat Bagley, and former state geologist Genevieve Atwood.

This was all in the name of raising money for scholarships, which we awarded and presented that night to four bright young geology majors.

Chapter president April Abate-Adams at the podium awarding $3750 in scholarships.

Our gross total raised including entrance donations, private donations, corporate donations, and the silent auction was $6200! Doing everything on the cheap with volunteer labor, we netted $4600, which makes it one of our best fundraisers in years thanks to the hard work of our fundraiser committee. Great work ladies!

Unexpected delay.

2011-06-05T18:31:00.001-06:00

We loaded up the cats and the bikes for a quick trip to Moab on this first hot day of the year, only to be waylaid by a bad AC before we even got out of town. At first, Firestone tried a flush and refill, but that didn't fix the hole in the condenser, so instead we settled in for an afternoon of WiFi, sewing, and bike maintenance with the cats in the waiting room. 6 hours and $700 later we are on the way with a new AC and very restless cats.

Arborkitty, Aquakitty

2011-05-28T09:00:00.006-06:00

At 6 months, the kittens are not so kitten-sized anymore. They are still extremely cute and do funny things. Marley we call ArborKitty because she loves to climb trees, fences, pergolas, etc. Drew has had to rescue her twice from up high in the trees. She seems to have learned her lesson though, and hasn't been treed for several weeks.

Marley is a cuddle bug. She cries to be held a lot, so in order to get anything done around the house, I have resorted to carrying her in my jacket papoose-style.

Max we call AquaKitty because he loves water. When we shower, he comes in too and skirts the perimeter for fun. He doesn't mind walking across the wet deck or driveway or going outside in the rain. We rarely go into the bathroom without him jumping on the counter to get a drink and have a good time. Here he is playing in the water.

One day I caught Max napping in the paper recycling bin.

So then he played a while while Marley looked on.

They are so much fun to have around.