Thunderhead Cloud

A thunderhead cloud building up over the Sandia Mountains for a rain shower in Albuquerque, New Mexico as seen from my house west of there.

Vermont and New Hampshire Barns From My Window

And my favorite barn that we've seen so far. It wasn't the prettiest, but I loved its endurance and character!

And while I'm writing, can I say how good it is to be back? When we were in PA, we had no cell phone service and very limited internet. As in, I could not even read Pioneer Woman's blog. So I didn't bother doing much posting there. I'll have to see if I can go back and cover what we did see and do there sometime.



I have missed blogging so much though. I told Nathan tonight that it truly helps to cultivate gratitude for my life when I blog. When I'm going throughout the day, I can easily fall into a mindlessness about what we are doing. When I look at the pictures and write the words to capture the day, it makes me stop and be very mindful of this wonderful life we are living right now and all of the neat things we see each day. It's good for my soul!



Living the life in Vermont!

Enchanted Gardens

Cycling past the Boston Public Garden last night, it looked so magical that we had to stop and take some night pictures. When people see pictures like this, they often assume that the wild colours are some sort of special effect - infrared photography or Photoshop. But in fact this is an entirely natural outcome of what's known as "long exposure photography." No flash, no special effects - just you and your camera.

To take a night picture, the camera is placed on a stationary surface and the photographer sets a long exposure time (the duration for which the camera's shutter remains open). To give you a point of comparison, daytime pictures are typically taken with an exposure time of less than 1/100th of a second. Night pictures are taken with with an exposure time of 5 full seconds or longer.

In order for long exposure pictures to work, both camera and subject must remain completely still - or else every movement is recorded as a motion blur. Facial expressions are the hardest to keep still and features tends to come out blurry. Bicycles on the other hand, are quite capable of standing motionless and are very patient too - which makes them perfect models for night photography.
Looking at these pictures has made me realise just how comfortable I've become cycling at night. Especially now that it's so hot during the day, that is certainly coming in handy. On Friday and Saturday nights, drivers tend to be more distracted and erratic - so being aware of that (and having one's bike lit up like a Xmas tree) will help you stay safe.

New Year's Nordic ....

We planned on a weekend of track skiing this weekend as Jennifer was told not to do the Polar Bear Plunge by the doctor. A bummer, because it was actually cold out on New Year's Day.

I went out Friday with Sabrina and Anne to help Anne learn to ski. She told me she watched a lot of videos on YouTube and then tried it for the first time last week. Sabrina and I tried to help her by imparting the knowledge we had to give her a better time.

We went out to Cabin Creek. I'm not sure how cold it was there, but it was 20° in Seattle when we left in the morning. I ended up wearing my puffy coat for most of the time out only taking it off for a few of the longer uphills. (And then promptly freezing on the downhills that followed.)

Anne learning to snowplow under beautiful skies

We did the normal full course without the Mount Ozibaldy loop. We got there a little after 9am and appeared to have the place to ourselves. That allowed us to stop frequently and give Anne pointers and instruction at the tops and bottoms of all the hills. Near the end of our loop we started to notice a few people.

Now it was crowded. Sabrina and I talked Anne into another short lap and then we went back to the car. Anne seemed satisfied with the day and Sabrina and I were impressed with her improvement being on skis for only the second time.

Sabrina and Anne coming up a hill

On New Year's Day Amy and Jennifer were joining us and we were heading to the flat Hyak Sno Park. Our day started well enough and Sabrina and I raced ahead trying different techniques to acquire speed. We stopped as I warmed up so I could remove my puffy coat.

While we waited for Amy and Jennifer to catch up we practiced standing (kick?) turns. Shortly after starting up again I almost fell when my ski came off. A woman skating by stated something like "what a freak accident." Everyone caught up to me and asked what was up. I told them my ski came off. But when I went to put it back on I realized the binding was missing a piece. We spent about ten minutes looking for it before Sabrina found it already buried in the snow in the bottom of the track. I attempted to repair the binding, but realized that I couldn't and resolved to walking back to the parking lot. Jennifer and I parted ways with the rest of our party, but not before Sabrina gave me the advice of standing on the ski with the broken binding.

Jennifer and I skied back to the parking lot. At first I just shuffled my feet not wanting to have the ski and my foot separate. Then I started varying my technique between a left foot kick and double pole glide and a shorter stride where kicking with my right foot meant pressing down on the ski to keep my foot in contact with it. At one point I was doing so well I had wished I continued further. But passing was quite difficult as I realized when I got near the parking lot and had to wait for a young boy who kept falling. Trying to pass would have meant stepping out of the lane, picking up my ski and then running past the person in front of me far enough to get back in the track and sort myself out. Hopefully this does not put an end to my Nordic season.

Happy New Year!

DragonFly

This dragonfly took refuge on our back porch during the rainstorm. We don't normally have the really bigs ones here at the house but see them down by the river.

Wordless Wednesday :: Schooldaze ~ Eleventh Grade

Cycling Destinations

image via chris531

For the past several years, I've had a dream cycling destination that I fantasise about incessantly: the Dark Hedges in the North of Ireland. Oh the Dark Hedges! What are they? Well technically, they are just a short stretch of country road near the coast of Couny Antrim. The road is lined with ancient beach trees, and these trees have grown so crooked and twisted that the overhanging branches have intertwined to form a magnificent canopy. Overgrown with moss, the whole thing has an enchanted, mystical look to it. I fell in love with this unseen piece of landscape the first time I saw a photograph of it, immediately imagining myself under the canopy as sunlight streamed through black branches and everything turned hundreds of shades of green. What happens next? I'm not sure, but something magical. Maybe if one is there at just the right time of day, the trees will talk to you, or the faeries will come out. And if you're there at the wrong time of day, you'll be turned into a tree yourself. With a name like Dark Hedges, an element of danger is to be expected.




As I got into cycling, it was only natural that I began to imagine visiting the Dark Hedges by bicycle. I have family in Ireland, and by this time last year I had developed a grandiose plan that involved visiting them, then taking a train north, disembarking once the "scenic parts" began, and cycling along the coast for hundreds of miles - through rolling green hills overlooking treacherous cliffs, and past the Giant's Causeway - until finally, exhausted and covered in road dust, I would arrive at the Dark Hedges and triumphantly cycle through them as their beauty and magic penetrated every fiber of my being.



I know. Some dream of crossing the Pyrenees and I dream of cycling through a cluster of hedges. Well, it's my fantasy!



While I had hoped my pilgrimage to the Dark Hedges would take place last year, obviously that did not happen. The more I began to look into it practically, the more confused I became as to how to arrange it. There was the question of getting my bike over there - which is so expensive and unpleasant, that at first I thought I'd be better off renting or borrowing a bicycle in Ireland. But on closer examination, it turned out that finding a roadbike to rent would actually be quite difficult, and cycling for hundreds of miles on an upright hybrid was not what I had in mind. And while I have friends there who are willing to lend me a bike, they live in the opposite direction from where I'd be heading, so the logistics would not work out. But the final blow that made me postpone planning this trip came when a couple of local acquaintances expressed skepticism about the idea, telling me that the drivers were awful and that all the good cycling was on the west, not the east coast. Hmm. Of course "awful" should be taken with a grain of salt, as they'd never cycled on the roads in the US and their basis for comparison is limited. Still, all of this taken together made me put the brakes on the idea until I could get a better sense of how to plan a trip like this.



Which brings me to a larger point: How does one go about planning a cycling trip to a place they've never been? There are many beautiful locations that are touted as cycling destinations, but the truth is that we do not really know how comfortable we will be with the terrain and road sharing culture until we are there. Having recently read about two cycling couples' experiences in New Zealand has further highlighted this problem. Localrandonneurs Pamela and John "Blayley" picked up andmoved to New Zealand in 2002, believing (after a great deal of research) that it would be a cyclist's paradise. What they discovered in practice however, was rather different and they ended up moving back to the US just 2 years later. More recently, Russ Roca and Laura Crawford of The Path Less Pedaled embarked on a tour of New Zealand - billed as "The Kiwi Chronicles," documented by the Bicycle Times, and meant to promote new Zealand as a cycling friendly destination. It was therefore a surprise to everyone when several days ago they experienced a road rage incident involving physical violence while cycling single file. The incident has sparked a media frenzy, challenging the portrayal of New Zealand as friendly or safe for bicyclists.



I have a number of acquaintances and colleagues who have gone on trips to their dream cycling destinations, and the feedback has been pretty mixed. Those who go to France and Italy seem to have better experiences overall. This may simply be because those routes are so well traveled that it is possible to do more thorough research and have a better idea of what to expect, and it may also be because both countries have a well developed cycling cultures. While to me, Ireland seems like the perfect place to cycle - with its rolling hills, beautiful scenery and rural roads - I have found comparatively few personal narratives allowing me to gauge what the particular route I am interested in would be like for someone of my skill level, and so I remain conflicted.What is your dream cycling destination, and how would you approach planning a trip to one?