Bike Cycling

Dear Everyone,

Sorry for the lack of posts! We still do fun stuff but we haven't kept up with the blog lately. We'll try to do better since I know you all are checking in regularly.

Here's a photo from Bryan's recent 65 mile bike ride!

Bryan & Aly

Hooray, SNOW!

Last night we went to bed smiling as the Who Dat Nation celebrated the Saints' victory in Superbowl XLIV. This morning we awoke to a snow covered yard.

Really? Did hell freeze over because of a football team?!?!

Who cares? We finally have enough snow to play in! Mandy and Bryan built a snowman (Bryan's first-ever) then they had a snowball fight and built a snow fort which, fortunately, didn't see any action. I drove to work but didn't stay long; I did a perfect donut in the parking lot (right in front of the surveillance camera) and was home for lunch.

The snow came down in big, fat, heavy, wet flakes and the weather oscillated between rain and snow most of the afternoon. We took a nap and then built another snowman before suppertime. The roads are ok tonight but will probably freeze over, and Bryan and Mandy already know they're staying home again tomorrow.

Sometimes you just need to camp

It's been a long, icky sort of week, so we decided this weekend to camp at Lake Ouachita State Park. We planned to stay in the campground and go for a couple of bike rides from there. Mandy's had a bad cold, though, so the 25-mile route Bryan had planned for Saturday was scrapped in favor of just exploring the state park.



Since the park's mostly oriented toward fishing and watersports, it's very quiet in the wintertime. It was nearly deserted on Super Bowl weekend. We took the outermost walk in tent site, on a little peninsula, and had the whole place to ourselves. The water was glass-smooth and the woods were completely silent. It was almost like backpacking, but with a lot less work, and a warm bathhouse.



We call this 'Still Life with Camp Shoes and Kleenex.'



Mandy spent a pleasant, chilly evening sniffling and poking at her campfire. We had grilled brats and chips and beer and cream soda, which felt like a special treat compared to our usual fare of freeze dried backpacking dinners.



The low overnight was around freezing, and the morning didn't warm up as expected. This, combined with Mandy's persistent cold, meant that we cancelled our Sunday ride and rested after breakfast instead.



It wasn't a weekend of high adventure, but we enjoyed the quiet lake and the winter woods.

Go, Mom, Go!

All week, the weather forecast has indicated that yesterday we'd get a half inch of ice topped with up to several inches of snow. We were tremendously excited. We were all off work/school on Friday, but all we got was a very disappointing half inch of frozen rain and stupidity. Which we were determined to sled on. Before breakfast, I sanded, waxed, and resanded the runners of my old sled.



After a few test runs in our neighborhood, we drove to a nearby subdivision with a good quiet hill, complete with a good ninety degree turn at the bottom.



Here's the SleddinCam Bryan set up, because he's cool like that. And yes, it obstructed the pilot's view just as much as you'd think from this photo. But I didn't care. Check out the video from that run down the hill...



Below are some ice-covered pretties that Bryan photographed while waiting for me to walk back up, because I got waaaay farther than he did due to my superior skill at hurtling down hills. Remember, I was raised by teenaged boys. Sometimes it shows.

They fly?

Here is a photo of the type of "squirrel" we've been dealing with in our attic. This one appeared in our living room tonight without any invitation, probably due to the cold weather we're having again. It (and the others I've removed over the last few months) are apparently southern flying squirrels.

Our cat Jose chased him into the kitchen and we thought he would take care of everything. Except all he wanted to do was play with the stupid thing. I was called to the scene to dispatch the squirrel and save the women folk and in short order peace was restored to the homestead.

Unicycles on Ice

On Friday, there really wasn't enough snow to play in, but enough sleet had fallen that the streets in our neighborhood were pretty slippery. So we thought a good idea would be to see if Mandy could ride a unicycle on it. I'm hard pressed to make this sound like a responsible parenting decision.



I think that up to now she has had the impression that she rides the uni in a straight line; this afternoon's tracks in the snow prove otherwise.



And yeah, in retrospect, we probably should have had her wear a helmet today.

Be sure to note the noise made in this video by the still-falling sleet. It was a good day.

Roof vent goopy-goop

With the eight inches of rain we received in two days back at Christmas time, we became aware that the ~23 year old house had a leaking roof vent.

So we took a clear afternoon and got out the ladder, some roof vent goopy-goop, latex gloves and proceeded to smear each vent with a layer of sealer.

We're hoping the sealer does the job and when we wind up replacing the roof (original to the house) we'll replace all the vents outright.

Jellybean Storage Epiphany

I'm pleased to report that with this past weekend's hike, I've perfected my jellybean routine. Really, this is such an important point that I've removed mention of it from the actual backpacking blog entry and made it an entirely separate post. That's how important it is that you understand.

For years, Jelly Belly beans have been a sort of ritual for me. I always hike with a baggie of them, and I eat them one at a time and make a note of what flavor they are. For years I've fought ripped jellybean bags and been frustrated by floppy Ziploc and sticky beans spilled out in pack pockets and left to fuse themselves together in the damp darkness.



I recently had a Jellybean Storage Epiphany and bought this fabulous rectangular Nalgene from the Container Store. It fits perfectly in my hipbelt pocket and makes me very happy. I cut out the 'flavor guide' or whatever it's called, cut it in half, and stuck it to the sides of the bottle with packing tape.



And then I asked Bryan to take these excellent photos of my Jellybean Bottle. That's how important it is that you understand. (Thanks sweety!)

Ouachita Trail, Section 3

I wanted to start out fresh, west to east, to see if we could hike the whole 220-mile trail in a year or two. I even bought the newest edition of the Ouachita Trail guidebook, just for the occasion. We'd intended to take Martin Luther King's three day weekend to do section one. The 90% chance of rain on Saturday changed that, though, because none of us wanted to start out a January backpacking trip with a day of rain. The revised two-day hiking plan called for section three instead, starting from Queen Wilhelmina State Park.

In the parking lot there, we met a dayhiker from Texas. "How long have you been making HER do this?" he asked, gesturing toward Mandy, next to the car, fiddling with her hiking poles. I understand that most twelve year olds don't think carrying a 20-pound pack seventeen miles is a great weekend, but we assured him that Mandy was in the woods because she wanted to be.



Before long we left our dayhiker behind, doing a pencil sketch at a pretty overlook. Some time after lunch, we picked up a cache of water we'd left near the FR 516 road crossing, and pumped our bottles and platys full, too, since day two's hike will be along a 'razorback ridge' with unreliable water supplies.

We camped in the creek bottoms past the crossing. Bryan and Mandy enjoyed their Mountain House freeze-dried beef stew, and Mandy expressed great disappointment that tomorrow night we'd be off the trail, so she wouldn't be able to eat the macaroni and cheese she'd picked out. I'm glad they like this stuff, but I still can't find freeze dried food I like. I'm going to start eating oatmeal for supper, too, I guess. We dutifully hung our food and toiletries from the trees. Since we found evidence of a previous fire we built a small one, too, though it was chilly enough that it really didn't help a lot.



There are plenty of evident camp spots on this section of trail, many with fire rings. We saw one right next to an old, old stone wall mentioned in Ernst's trail guide. I can't help but wonder what story the wall could tell. Who lived here, way back when this narrow road trace was the way to school, or to the store, or to the neighbors'? How far away were those things? What was life like, in these woods, all those years ago? We run across evidence of people living here seldom enough that, when it happens, it's worth spending some daydream-time on.



Day two's hike was similarly pleasant and uneventful, except for sore feet and tired hips. The weather was nice; quite warm for January, but still pretty chilly in the wind. Bryan, with his Adventure Watch, pointed out that we were finding the mile markers exactly a half-hour apart: we were still making two mph, even on this very rocky section of the trail. Just at dusk, we arrived at the Highway 71 road-crossing. We loaded up the truck and headed back to pick up the Subaru, and some supper, and to start the long drive home in the dark.

Christmas (Observed)

Since Mandy is always out of town on the 25th, in Tulsa, we manage to drag the holiday out for several extra days. This year, because I work for the university, I had a week and a half off for Christmas. We slept late every day, and I made something yummy for breakfast, every single day.

On Christmas Eve, Bryan made a holiday meal of homemade moo goo gai pan with our favorite cheap white wine.



On Christmas day, we took extra naps and went out for a traditional Christmas Dinner at the local Chinese buffet restaurant. On the day after Christmas, I discovered that the afternoon squares of sunshine appear on the living room floor just as I get sleepy. Trust the universe.

And today, Sunday, Mandy's home, and now it's really Christmas! We went out for Chinese food again, and then we put on our pajamas, which she insists we wear while opening holiday gifts. We opened our presents and drank Bryan's eggnog and watched the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on the laptop.

True Grit?

The Coen brothers are doing a movie based on the novel "True Grit" by Charles Portis. They're looking for a girl who is "tough and tells it like it is" to play Mattie Ross. Debbie Hope, who really only knows Mandy by reputation, emailed me to say she thought of Mandy when she heard about it. I mentioned the casting call to Mandy and she decided that it was an interesting idea.

So Saturday morning, she and I went to the Peabody (along with every other young teenage girl in Arkansas) to interview for the part. I had to find a photo to take along, and Tom Riley at my office said we couldn't do much better than this year's rather practical-looking school photo.



While we waited, Mandy read the coverless paperback copy of "True Grit" that I've had for years. The casting people did group interviews, with twelve girls at a time. In Mandy's group, the casting director asked "what do you like to do with your friends?" Everyone else in Mandy's group said that they liked to go to movies and send text messages. Mandy said she liked to backpack and cave. Everybody else got sent home. They kept Mandy.

They gave her three pages of script from the movie and an appointment to come back that evening to read for the part. Once Mandy confirmed that we could do that and still have supper with our friends Britt and Debbie, she practiced her scene, in which she was supposed to tell a stable owner that he should pay her back for a horse stolen while in his care. After pasta and salad and a unicycling demonstration at the Thompson's, she and I went back to the Peabody for her audition.

The other girls were called in, one by one, and we heard murmurs behind the door as they practiced the lines once and then recorded their auditions for the camera. Mandy drew a reindeer on the back of her script.



Then Mandy was called in and the door closed. And if what they are looking for is a little blond girl with green eyes who is PISSED that her horse was stolen, then folks, that's what they found. No quiet murmurs behind the door for this one. I heard her yelling all the way in the next room. "THAT HORSE was stolen while it was under YOUR CARE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE!"

So that's how things ended. We went back to Britt and Debbie's for cupcakes and board games and then headed home. None of us thinks Mandy has any chance to get the part, since this is a multi-state thing, and just here in Little Rock they had a whole herd of girls coming back to film auditions. We'll know for sure when a month goes by and we haven't heard from them.

But it's fun to think about, and it will make the movie fun to watch when it comes out, won't it?

She's Gettin' Nuttin' for Christmas

Mandy tried out for a cute little part in the choir's Christmas program: "My favorite things" from the sound of music, I think. You know, the "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens" song. The teacher gave those parts to quiet, sweet girls with ribbons in their hair. She had our daughter sing "I broke my bat on Johnny's head, somebody snitched on me."

It's almost as if the choir teacher knew about that incident in which the classroom bully-boy got a black eye. Which was of course an accident. Or the time when Mandy accidentally stepped on Hunter's head. It was purely coincidence that he'd just said something mean to her.

The high school auditorium was packed; I'll bet there were two thousand people there. Mandy wore a hat and sang on key. We enjoyed the program and were proud of her.

Here's the solo part to Mandys Christmas concert/song... thank me later for just putting up the solo and not the whole two hour concert (complete with a song about Santa in camo... I hate Saline County sometimes).

Installing our Christmas Tree

This year we decided we'd try a time-lapse video of the tree decorating. The video is long and honestly not very interesting, so you probably shouldn't actually watch it unless you're really having a slow day. The high points include trying to trim the lower branches with a giant lopper thing without bonking somebody in the head with the hugely long orange handle, and Mandy dancing with the cat.

Several days later, the tree still looks beautiful with its mix of red balls and silvery snowflakes and sparkly icicles and family ornaments. It keeps leaning much farther toward the kitchen, though, as if it wants a sandwich.

Christmas Tree Hunting

Last year, our first family Christmas, Bryan and Mandy declared it imperative that we buy a real tree, from a real farm. We found a great place complete with healthy trees, a good selection, a brisk business, and a cheerful older couple who informed us that they were retiring.

So this year we had to start from scratch again. On the advice of an acquaintance we headed toward Sardis. Three farms later we finally found a tree big enough for our living room that wasn't overpriced and overgrown. The best part? We can go there next year too.

On One Wheel

The answer is: one week. It took her one week to learn to ride a unicycle. Bryan still can't ride more than ten feet. I barely even get up on the seat. And the child orbits us in big, sweeping left-handed circles, smiling, held up by the wind.



All cavers, it seems, have a bat sticker on the rear of their vehicle and this caver is no different.



Here's a short video taken on Saturday afternoon, in the parking lot of a nearby church. There's still lots to learn, some priorities being how to get on by herself, and how to turn RIGHT (not left). But my daughter may now be the best unicycle-rider I know.

Wobble...pedal...fall...repeat

Sunday morning, after breakfast, we got out the unicycle so that Matt could give it another try. We had juggling balls and clubs out, too. Bryan taught himself to juggle years ago, when he was in high school, and then he'd taught David down the street to juggle and to pass.



And Mandy gave free rides around the neighborhood on the GTT. It's funny. We had a whole circus in the front yard.



We all took turns on the toys. As it turns out, Matt hasn't ridden a unicycle in years and could only get halfway to the neighbor's driveway. Bryan can ride for about twenty scary feet.



When everyone else was done, Mandy got the unicycle and leaned on the car for awhile. Mandy has this odd little personality quirk. Occasionally she'll decide that she's going to do something ridiculous, something she's clearly unqualified to do. It's as if she just didn't get the memo stating its impossibility. I'd like to think this is consciously-directed determination, but really I think it's just a sort of unpredictable, uninformed intensity.

The first time I really noticed it was when she was tiny, and learned to walk several weeks before she could even stand up. She'd just sort of launch herself into the room and move her legs until she fell down. Then she'd crawl back to where she started and try again. Years later, the week before her fifth birthday, she said "I am going to learn to ride a bike next week." I dutifully bought a bike, and it took her an hour and a half to learn to ride it. Then, nobody really told her that an eight year old couldn't do a ten hour wetsuit trip in a cave, and so she did.

Watching her sit on the unicycle, next to the car, I had a feeling that she was going to decide that she would learn to ride. So I wasn't surprised to spend nearly all day outside in the street, providing an arm to lean on as she lurched down the asphalt on one wheel. I wonder how long this project will take?

Back to the Ranch

David came back this weekend, from Baton Rouge, with his girlfriend Selena and his mechanic-friend, Matt. We really enjoyed meeting Selena and had a good time climbing together. Late in the day, Mandy took off her too-small climbing shoes, set them on the ground next to her, and declared that she would never ever put them on again for any reason. (I guess it's time for an upgrade.)



The Speleobox at HCR is top-notch, and we nearly always visit the barn to climb through it before heading to supper. This is one is fairly new and very well made and nearly perfectly sized for adults (that's Selena's feet as she enters the box).



Matt's from Colorado, having only recently moved to south Louisiana. He's a better climber than we are, at least currently. He and Bryan had a great time talking about trad climbing near Boulder and RMNP. We made them ride by themselves in one car, and the rest of us talked about books in the other car. Apparently their conversation veered into other subjects, though, because when we got home at 10:30pm they jumped out of the car and grabbed our unicycle from the garage; Matt says he can ride.

Dark Fairies

Mandy and I just finished reading the "Fablehaven" series, by Brandon Mull, and she wanted to make a dark fairy costume. We started with her regular synthetic black long johns and added a pair of tall black leather boots and a dark green velvet dress from the goodwill store, which we altered significantly with scissors. We made a pair of black wings with four coat hangers, some black tights, and a lot of black ribbon.

The costume worked well. We were pleased by her transformation into a dark fairy, but are hopeful that her friends the centaurs will soon be able to unite the magic pebble with the nail stolen from the revenant in the grove, driven into the twisted tree of evil at the edge of the tar lake in the territory of Bahumat the Demon, restoring light to all that is dark.

Attack on Mt Magazine

A few days earlier, I had received an email from the Arkansas Bicycle Club with some of their upcoming rides listed and one of them was a ride from Danville, AR to Havana and then up Mt. Magazine.



When I first read this idea I joked to Aly that we should do that. We laughed and time marched on but later in the week I found myself thinking "ya know... I think we actually could do that."



When the day arrived, Aly didn't feel good so she stayed home to try and fight whatever bug she had off while Mandy and I packed up our tandem recumbent trike and headed to Danville.

In addition to riding up the tallest mountain in Arkansas, we would have a ham radio and GPS unit on the bike which would sent our position reports every two minutes. This was our first time trying that out and Aly would be at home monitoring our progress off and on throughout the day.



In the photo above, you can see the GPS unit and radio. If you click on the photo you'll be able to see notes explaining each of the parts.

So... recumbents aren't known to be good climbers and trikes even worse so... and we had a tandem recumbent trike! This would be the tallest and longest climb for either of us, over 2500 feet of climbing and ~21 miles from the bottom to the top. That 21 miles includes the 10-12 miles of "warmup" ride to get to the start of the climbing as well as the rolling hills in the last 3-4 miles on top.

Here's an elevation profile for todays ride...



The group waited for us at the gas station in Havana which is about 9 miles from the starting point. With the warm-up over, we turned off Highway 10 and headed for the top of Mt. Magazine.



I'm extremely proud to say that Mandy and I grunted and groaned though the next several hours and climbed that bitch at an average of 3 mph. We never did dip below 2.0 mph according to the GPS but we did get pretty close! It got to the point that if we were able to go over 4 mph then we were pretty darned happy (c:

As I mentioned, this was an ABC ride but everyone else was on their two-wheeled-skinny-tire-go-fast bikes so we didn't see them once the climbing started. They made sure we got to the top (about two hours after they did) but then they all headed down and back home.

So this "group" ride was more of a solo outing for Mandy and I with a few people in the vicinity that we knew.

Once at the top (about five hours after we left our vehicle), we stood in line for the lunch buffet at the Lodge and my legs were so week I had to keep sitting in nearby chairs!

After about 30 minutes in line, we were finally seated and lunch could actually begin. We took our time, enjoying the cold water and comfortable seats. After eating we found a sunny spot and a couch to sit on and rested while our bodies processed the food.

While waiting we watched a wedding take place outside, hang-gliders floating above the Lodge and we flipped through a photography book about Oklahoma.

As we were leaving, we had a nice lady take our photo and we answered her questions about our ride up. She was familiar with recumbent trikes because, get this, many people in her retirement community have them!



The ride down was a blast, we wore our rain jackets to cut the wind and kept the speed under 41 mph! The bike was super smooth and stable at that speed and we arrived at the bottom only 40 minutes after leaving the Lodge!

What had taken nearly four hours to climb up, took only 40 minutes to ride down. I've ridden my bike down the other side of Mt Magazine but this ride was so much sweeter since we actually earned it (instead of driving to the top).

The GPS data for this ride can be downloaded from here.

All girl backpacking trip

Sometime last summer, my friend Amy from Missouri emailed me. Amy car-camps a lot, and she canoe-camps, and she even did a four-day camp trip in Mammoth cave recently. But she hadn't gone on a backpacking trip in years and so we compared schedules and set up an all-girl trip to hike the Sylamore Trail, north of Mountain View.

Originally we'd planned to hike from Allison to Barkshed, the length of the old standby Sylamore Trail. But it's rained and rained, and I change plans every day, all week. I don't want to do the creek crossing at Allison. The Blanchard campground's closed. I hear from the ranger office in Mountain View that the new extension trail -- the connection between Barkshed and the OHT -- has reopened after months closed due to ice storm damage. So we plan to hike the new extension and then the old trail from Barkshed to Gunner Pool. We hope that the wet weather will mean there will be lots of waterfalls and mushrooms to see.



Mandy and I pick up Debbie in Little Rock and we meet Amy and her friend Catherine at Gunner, where we spend the night listening to the creek. The morning is beautiful. Arriving at the Cripple Turkey trailhead around ten, we load up our bags, lock the car, and take our group photo before someone points out that the trailhead marker has no signage posted except for a big "THIS TRAIL IS CLOSED!" I insist that just yesterday a ranger in Mountain View had said it was fine, so we ignore the sign.



It's a sobering walk. Almost immediately we're in the middle of shockingly bad ice storm damage, right on the trail. Limbs are cut and stacked to the sides of the trail, in places head-high for a hundred feet. We have to carefully navigate around huge holes in the trail made when whole trees fell under the ice, pulling up their root balls.



The trail follows near the 900 foot contour line in this area, which is exactly the spot where the damage was the worst. The destruction is staggering. They've done a great job of clearing, but the amount of work required to make the trail passable has been immense.



The trail also runs near a number of tantalizingly dark holes in the ground, and all of us are, after all, cavers. Amy is particularly inclined to notice them, and particularly itchy to explore. We laugh as we remind her that we're hiking today, not caving, and she grudgingly stays on the trail, most of the time.



We hike past some very pretty waterfalls, including one in Amy's 'Arkansas Waterfalls' guidebook. It was one she'd found and wanted to see, but didn't think we could afford the time for the side hike from the road. We are all pleasantly surprised to find that the new extension trail passes right by.



From another cascade, we catch water in the folding bucket, and filter it for later use. I fuss at Mandy for getting so wet but then realize that it's impossible not to. We notice with interest that none of these waterfalls feed into streams, but sink immediately into rocks and head underground.



We make camp a mile or so upstream from Barkshed, near the top of a wooded hill. After pitching tents and making beds and cooking supper, Debbie shows us how to properly hang a bear bag. (Those damned lazy Ozarks backpackers!) Mandy shells stick-tites and discovers that their insides look suspiciously like tiny lima beans.



It rains a bit just at dawn, but stops in time for us to make breakfast and pack up. The walk between our camp and Barkshed gets even prettier, with long views down toward Sylamore creek.



At Barkshed the nature of the trail changes a lot: we switch from hiking on new, spongy, overgrown paths to walking on the solid, packed, moss-covered old trail. As pretty as the new extension is, this old standby section is still my favorite: the views are wonderful, and much of the trail follows the edge of a bluff, sometimes undercut to form a roof over our walkway. There are springs and cascades running over the rock. We descend and hike just next to the creek for a bit before joining the gravel road that takes us to Gunner Pool.



We drive back up to get the Subaru, parked at the far trailhead. On the way out, Debbie sits in the passenger seat, talking about a piece of car she's seen leaning up against a tree some yards back. It's red. It's actually just exactly the color of OUR car. I sigh and stop in the middle of the road, and we walk back to pick up two big pieces of trim that have fallen off my car. We shove the muddy chunks of car into the hatch, completely surprising Mandy, who's got her nose in a book and has missed the whole conversation.



Amy puts on this fabulous hat and she and and Catherine head back to Missouri.



But Debbie and Mandy want to go on a Blanchard tour. $41 later, we own even more bat shirts and have made yet another visit to a favorite place.

It was a good weekend spent outside with strong women, good cavers, valued friends. The quote of the weekend came at the very end, from the cave-tour guide: "Those men who discovered this room, they really liked to cave. Why, they'd come into the cave and just explore, for fun. They even brought their WIVES down here, sometimes!"