day one:
pittsburgh pa to columbia mo.
726.3 miles (according to gmaps, didn’t count them myself)
12 hrs 24 mins (again, thnks to google)
really really hot everywhere
favorite car-bound entertainment: harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone
motel, no camping :-/

day two:
columbia mo to broomfield co
734.7 miles (gmaps)
11 hrs 47 mins
hot and windy!!
favorite and only car-bound entertainment: harry potter and the chamber of secrets
the hindman’s for four nights, no camping

day three:
RMNP, wild basin below mt meeker and long’s peak
hike to callypso cascades
3.8 mi roundtrip (go kiddos!)
points of interest: copeland lake, copeland falls
lots of sunbaked granite and pine needles
a smattering of climbers with bouldering pads strapped to their backs on their way to unknown (to us) boulder problems
other wildlife: hummingbirds and a bald eagle! oh, and ground squirrels

day four:
chilling out, reading, updating blog
cousins playing nonstop
adult outing to the movies to see the avengers
meeting up with an old climbing buddy and friend for dinner

Posted on May 29th, 2012

we have left our wood pile and fireplace and  hopped a plane for florida. in florida, it doesn’t need to be sunny to be warm. thank goodness. it’s cloudy, but it will still be in the 80s today, and we’re all wearing shorts. and no socks. yippee! the house is wide open, glass doors slid aside, and all the heavy air comes in through the lanai.* the bronchitis i’ve been fighting for almost two weeks now may just be carried away on the breeze that flows past me. the coughing might be shallower, not so gut wrenching, but this could also be in my imagination, a tease, and when i try to gallivant through the world of disney the next few days, i might find myself gasping and wheezing for breath again. but for now i feel….. okay. and the sun may yet come out.

*otherwise known as a screened in patio

Posted on February 8th, 2012

it takes a long time to move and stack a cord of wood. i know. i just spent two hours stacking half a cord of wood and moving the other half into the back yard. i doubt that my method was the most efficient at getting the job done. it was only me, my arms and legs… oh, and back, the twinges tell me not to leave them out.

the person we bought the wood from dropped the truckload off around noon today. the sun was shining and the sky was blue, and brian had started in on the huge pile, stacking some, but mostly just throwing it from the alley into our back yard. at 12:30 i went outside and joined him. he had already discarded his down jacket, and i soon followed. moving wood keeps you warm. so as brian tossed chopped logs, i picked them up and worked on the stacks. two at a time, five at a time, whatever moved me in the moment. there was no rhyme or reason to my work, no routine. it just was.

brian left me a bit before one o’clock, so i was left with half the cord of wood still back in the alley. just me and a pile of wood that didn’t seem like it got any smaller with the moving that had already been done. it was okay. the sun was shining, and the work beckoned. i’d try to get the rest of the wood into the yard so we could at least close the gate, but maybe also leave a walkway to get back to the house.

part of the time i stacked, finding pieces of wood that fit together so they wouldn’t topple. two at a time. five at time. more? i don’t know. it was mindless work. stack, walk, stack, walk, stack. then i went to the alley and tossed and hurled wood into the yard. there was nothing else going on. an occasional car would slowly ride by, but mostly it was just me breathing, my shoes trudging, and the hollow sound of wood hitting wood punctuating the air. it was as close to silence as i could get. two by two, or three by three, the more pieces i put in my arms, the more i began to care . i found myself literally hugging the trees.

so many different colors and texture, this wood. some not pretty at all, some plain, other types downright beautiful. some of the wood is green, and i asked myself what this means. should i not trust the advertisement that said this wood is all seasoned and ready to be burned?  i also wish i could tell what kind of trees this wood used to be. what is the creamy colored wood with the fine grain and almost black bark? and the pieces that go from light tan of the outer rings to dark red in the center and has smooth, gray bark? is it some sort of red wood? or cherry? it reminds me of the cedar chips i used in the cages for my guinea pigs when i was growing up. but it doesn’t smell anything like them. and why is the light colored wood as light in weight while the red wood is so heavy? these questions move back and forth in my mind just as i go between the pile of wood and the yard, back and forth, back and forth. i wish i knew the answers. but i just kept on moving it.

without my coat, i ended up getting cold when i was in the alley where the air moved freely, and my fingers were nearly frozen. then i stopped and began the stacking process again in the back yard where the fences reigned that air in a bit. i warmed up again and my hands stopped aching; i eventually noticed the sun didn’t feel quite so warm and the sky was beginning to turn the color of dirty dishwater. the pile was smaller, but still not small by any means. i had a ways to go.

so it went from 12:30 until 2:30 when finally (finally!) the last of the wood made it into the backyard, and i closed the gate. ahh. work accomplished. my fingers were little stumps of pain and my back didn’t seem to want to hold me erect any more. now it’s 3:30 and my fingers are swollen and my back muscles are on the verge of seizing up, but i can look out the window in the kitchen as i fill my glass with water and see all that stacked wood. i hope it will be as rewarding to dismantle the stacks slowly and burn it.

Posted on January 20th, 2012

oren grew some hair this past year–he hasn’t had a haircut since april 2011, and it seems to be a big deal for him to have long hair. daily he reminds me that his hair is the longest in the family–even longer than mine! and somehow, like sampson gained strength with the length of his hair, oren gains the ability to say his Rs with the length of his. one recent evening, curled up in his bed as he readied himself for la-la land, oren and i had a conversation about porridge, a very inane conversation that i’m convinced came about just so he could say the word porridge over and over again, rolling his Rs.

oren: mommy, what is poRRidge?

me: it’s like oatmeal, or hot cereal… or something.

oren: are there lumps in poRRidge?

me: i don’t know… it depends on how you cook it.

oren: is poRRidge like the stuff aunt jean gave us?

me: no, that was pudding.

oren: oh. then what’s poRRidge?

me: oren, have you been listening to a word i’ve said?

oren: what?

Posted on January 18th, 2012

there is absolutely nothing worse than climbing while it’s 90 degrees outside with 90 percent humidity. except maybe falling off the empire state building and catching your eyelid on a nail (what IS grosser than gross?). but that’s what i did this weekend–climbing in nasty weather, that is. and i have to say, i would do it again in a heart beat. the reason being, the thing that is worse than climbing outside while it’s 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity, is climbing with your husband and kids who are grumpy because of the 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity. this weekend, i left the boys at home and joined three other moms for an all girls weekend of climbing, and of course, sweating with some laughter worked in there in a lot of places.

now, i really do love climbing with my family. i don’t normally like to leave them all at home. but sometimes it’s good for a mom’s heart and soul to get away for a bit. to refresh and reconnect with friends.

saturday we hit the road at about 9 am to drive 3 hours to summersville, wv where we spent the afternoon and part of the evening climbing. we sat around a good bit too, which is something that is difficult when the kids are climbing with us. i miss the sitting around part of a climbing weekend. we didn’t complain about the weather. much. it really wasn’t complaining to say how gross it was to have sweat running down every body part, especially hands that are trying desperately to hold onto moist rock. it wasn’t complaining, it was merely an observation. a statement of fact. we tried to avoid scary, young inexperienced climbers who didn’t know what they were doing. we were not witness to, nor did we incur, any injuries.

we left the crag at dusk. the low-lying clouds made for a beautiful sunset too, with the misty mountains along the horizon. we set up our tent. we showered. we enjoyed drinks and tex-mex at diogies in fayetteville. we went to bed.

the rest of the trip went in reverse, so i’ll allow you readers to imagine it all in rewind. the short of the long? we got really sweaty and stinky again, did a little bit more climbing, but mostly, i think just really enjoyed each other’s company. so it didn’t really hurt that it was 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity.

but the next time we do it, i hope that it isn’t. not a complaint. just a statement of fact.

Posted on July 25th, 2011

pop-pop came and got the boys from me a little bit ago. we loaded their booster seats into his new-ish bright red jeep liberty so they could go to his house and help him with putting up a castle in the tree house. so i have some unanticipated free time. time to myself. i haven’t been alone in a really long time, since before our trip.

i always have trouble deciding what to do when time unexpectedly falls into my hands: when a baby’s nap runs long, when friends invite the boys over, or like today. i thought, i could go running again! i could mow the front hill! i could sit on my computer and read something mindless! instead, i cleaned up the kitchen from lunch, brewed myself a cuppa, and here i sit, practicing being a writer, even to write about something like getting some free time and using it to write. since i don’t want to leave it at that, i will share some of my favorite details of our trip. this might be a short list, cause i don’t remember if i wrote any of them down in the moment. my journal keeping is pretty lacking.

walking anywhere, even the bathroom, after sitting in the car for sooo looong

the feel of a bouldering pad strapped to my shoulders

topping out on a boulder and taking a moment to look back behind me to the ground, wanting to go back and do the boulder problem again

tough fingertips after two weeks of climbing on rough granite edges

sitting in the starlit dark in the cool of the evening with friends after a scorching day

the taste of salt blown into my hair off of the ocean (okay, this is probably way more romantic to me, and you all are thinking, gross, why is your hair in your mouth? what can i say? sometimes it gets in there)

the smell of sunshine on the hot crown of a young boy’s head

a winding road through hills of yellow and green

musky wet creosote bushes

the metallic smell of wet rocks when the sun comes out to dry them off

watch our charming boys make new friends, adults and kids alike

hummingbirds zooming

pine trees in the mountains

a playground at a rest area with monkey bars and swings

a little body making it to the top of a big rock

wide open blue sky meeting bright yellow green rolling land

a dark streaked thunderstorm in the distance while i’m standing in the sunshine

my skin molting at the end of a trip, my body shedding it’s vacation self

my bed in my house

i guess that list was kind of long. all of these little things make a trip memorable. they also make me long to get back out there. well, not yet. i’m content to be home. for now.

Posted on May 23rd, 2011

i was going to write a post about leaving santa cruz, and how sad i was, and how driving through nevada sucked, and how uplifting it was to get to salt lake city. i was going to write about how pretty and well located salt lake city is, in the valley between three mountain ranges. i was going to name the mountain ranges. i was going to talk about meeting up with friends to climb on the granite boulders in little cottonwood canyon, and how the bouldering was either suited to my style of climbing or that i was freed from expectations by our time in hueco tanks, so i sent a bunch of problems there. i was going to talk about sebastien’s eighth birthday that he had while we were there, and that he could have eaten anything he wanted for dinner that night so he ordered grilled cheese and fries and ate cheesecake for dessert. i was going to write about how, on the last day we were there, the last climbing day of our trip, we got the first rain of our whole entire trip–exactly a month to the day we left–and ended up not climbing, not sending the last couple of problems on our tick lists, but sitting in a barnes and noble. i was going to write about leaving the next morning to go to denver to see one of my sisters.

but i didn’t. i started to. i was using brian’s work iPad, and it didn’t save the post i started that talked about all that stuff. and here we are, going on 24 hours being home, and i just didn’t feel like going back and trying to type it out all over again. stupid iPad.

instead i’m going to write about liquid sunshine, that now coined phrase  that people are using instead of the word rain. as if that makes an unusually rainy pittsburgh more acceptable. sunshine in whatever form should NOT grow mold in one’s basement. so i can’t accept the term, liquid sunshine. there comes a point when rain exceeds its usefulness and becomes a problem, and at that point, it just can’t be called liquid sunshine. people in the southwest, where they are experiencing drought might want to call any rain they get liquid sunshine, but we are far from drought here, people.

i’m also going to write about getting home. the end of our trip.

we got home this morning at the wee hour of 1:30. the sky was surprisingly clear. a heavy, low hanging orange moon escorted us from near youngstown, ohio where we caught i-76. we thought that it would be safe to take 28 through town to our house at that hour, even though there were signs that suggested finding an alt route. lo and behold, we got stuck in a bit of traffic. shocking. welcome home. the nice thing about home, though, is how predictable it is. infuriating, yes. but also comforting after 5 weeks of unpredictableness, unpredicticality, unpredictation. none of those are words, but you get my meaning.

and thanks to the RAIN, we had a jungle to clean up today. well, i helped a little bit. brian got some rush of adrenaline at like 7:30 am even though we didn’t go to sleep until 3:00 the same am. i woke up to the sound of the weed whacker being taken to the front… lawn or hill…. yard or whatever you call the mass of weeds and flowers that sits in front of our house. i rushed to the window to see what was the matter. anyway. yard work. welcome home. i have blisters on my thumbs and my knees hurt like i went for a long run. i guess in some ways that’s a good thing. i didn’t have to go running to feel this way. the boys frolicked all over the place, re-introducing themselves to all their long lost toys. there are nerf bullets all over the floors of the house.

so our trip is over, and i will enter a state of post-vacation depression. i will miss california especially and little cottonwood canyon and hueco tanks. but real life will take over in about a week, and i will get back into the routine of it and be happy again.

the end.

Posted on May 21st, 2011

Because we went to the beach today.

We drove from Tuscon AZ on Monday and stayed a very cold night in Joshua Tree National Park in So Cal. J Tree is a climbing destination, so it was hard for us to be there only a few hours and not climb. Well, okay, we did climb for about a half hour, but then we got really hungry because it was dinner time. Brian managed to do one boulder problem in that time even though he had been nursing a pretty bad cold for the three days we were in Tuscon.

But I digress.

Tuesday we drove up through the middle of CA and arrived in good time in Santa Cruz last night. We are staying in a Best Western about 1 mile from the beach. Today it actually got pretty warm–close to 80, so the beach was busy. I was hoping to sit on in the sand in jeans and a long sleeve as in years past, but had shorts and a tank top on and got a lot of sun. The boys chased waves for 2.5 hrs straight. I had to keep my eye on them because they were lost in the rhythm of the pounding water. The current kept lulling them further down the beach, and every once in a while I would have to coax them back. Man, did they have fun! Crazy kids…

We will be here for Brian to work until next Tuesday. On the weekend we will find climbing and camping somewhere close. And then it’s off to Utah for more climbing.

I feel like we haven’t been gone from home very long, but today marks three weeks from the day we left. We are on the downhill slope of our trip, and I know that it’s going to fly by. I imagine at some point I’ll be ready to come home, but I’m not there yet. I love being on the road. I’m speechless by all the stuff we have seen and done, all the places I have tried to imagine staying and making home. So many things that I can’t put into words here. Not yet. I will have to miss them first–the strange and hot dusty desert, the yellow and green rolling hills of middle CA, the salty humid air of the ocean–before I can understand what they mean to me. Or if they mean anything past being fun places to visit.

Posted on May 5th, 2011

Finally, a cold front! Finally, the temps are down in the lower 80s! We should be happy and content about this turn of events, yes? Well… We are mostly. The only problem is the wind. A cold front cannot come through without some sort of atmospheric upheaval, and here in El Paso TX, we are experiencing it in the form of a dust storm.

This morning, I was on my way to an East Mountain tour with Paul, April and little Silas; Brian was ready to spend a day in El Paso getting new back tires put on the van. He reads on the world wide web that we are due for 50 mi/hr wind gusts. April and I think, there is no way the wind can be worse than the day before when we had to catch flying crash pads and huddle between small boulders while the wind whipped our hair around or heads.

But as the day wore on, despite much climbing and sending hoopla, the dusty haze dropped heavy over the mountains surrounding the park until we could only see their faint outline. We knew that we needed to come down to flat land. And we did. Running down crumbly slabs of granite, only pausing to stoop out of the way of of the high handed wind.

But we are safe. Wind and dirt cannot be compared to the tornadoes and flooding that the Southeast is experiencing tonight. We are staying out of the wind and dirt at a Microtel in the El Paso sprawl–I can hear it baying at the window just now, trying to find a way in. I had been hoping we could camp every night in our blissful site #8, the stars hanging over our pretty red pop-top, but it was not to be. Too much dirt and no rest in the wild wind drove us to this. Just for one night. Tomorrow though, we’ll be back there for one more night at Hueco Tanks. Then off to Tuscon AZ.

Happy trails!

Posted on April 26th, 2011

It is almost impossible to revisit a place without comparing it to the other times you have been there before. That’s what I have been experiencing a lot these first four days of our second trip to Hueco Tanks. There are some similarities of course. We are staying in the same camping spot we did last year for most of the trip (yes, thankfully, for those of you who knew of the big where-are-we-going-to-camp-at-hueco question that loomed over us even as we were driving here, the campground is open for our accommodation for our entire stay!). Our little red pop-top is surrounded by wind-weathered trees. We love this spot. I am glad of this similarity. And our friends Paul and April are here climbing with us for part of the time. Another similarity is how awesome Seb and Oren are as hikers and climbers. They hike and hike and hike with us un the blazing sun to and fro amongst the boulders all day long, and they are as excited to climb as we are.

Many more are the differences though; some okay, some not as okay. One good difference from last year is that we have made it through the first four days without anyone (read: Brian) hurting an essential appendage for climbing. All fingers, toes, tendons, arms and legs intact.

But now, speaking of the blazing sun, we come to the differences from last year that kind of suck. It’s darn hot! Upper 80s every day, and no forecast for it letting up either. This is not helping our climbing much. Not at all. In fact, I am going to use it as my main excuse for not being able to send anything harder than v3 yet. Last year, we sent something new almost every day, but this year since we don’t have all those easy/moderate classic problems to do (at least on north mountain), we are floundering a bit. Plus, I think both of us came with high expectations of what we would be able to climb, and we aren’t feeling it yet. Not at all. In fact, our short tick lists are slowly being reassessed and downgraded to easier problems. Well, maybe. I am sticking to my main goal that I set last year: Big Iron On His Hip, v7. But the outlook is grim since I haven’t strung more than the first two moves together. I may be leaving this place with a project left undone and the need to come up with a plan on how to convince brian to drive back here next year…and the next.

Last year was the ultimate Hueco visit I think. Incomparable. Doesn’t mean this year has to be a disappointment… I guess.

Posted on April 20th, 2011