Gjetost

Year In, Year Out

2012-01-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I am supposed to write a summary of last year. I went through my photos to help with this and discovered, that there really isn't much there. I guess it's okay if every once in a while I have a year without much excitement to report. I did accomplish a few things that have been on my list of things to do like: defending a dissertation proposal (no photo)

Doing a relay for the Mt Taylor Quadrathlon:

Joining a bicycle club and riding up the Sandia Crest road:

Riding a MS150 ride (not on the same day, but apparently in the same outfit):

There should be more excitement in the coming year. But amidst all the changes that 2012 should bring in life, I'm going to try to keep bicycling regularly, and even start training for a 10k run again, yay!

Probably the most ridiculous thing I have ever knit

2012-01-05T10:10:00.001-07:00

Every year, I go to the Taos Wool Festival and visit Ellen's Wooly Wonders booth and am amazed at the patterns that she comes up with. I couldn't resist this motorcycle pattern. It took a few months (as most projects do) but sewing all those little parts together really turned out to be the time-consuming part, more than knitting the parts.

Luminarias

2012-01-03T13:35:00.002-07:00

The Los Altos neighborhood started a Christmas Eve tradition of setting up luminarias 60 years ago. When we bought our house 8 years ago, we were warned that we'd be expected to join in. This year, we put up over 200 luminarias around our house. And several hundred people made their way through our neighborhood that evening to see them.

Our house.

Looking down the block where the street was closed off for the evening.

A neighbor's design in their front yard.

The view from our front yard. You can't see it but there is a house underneath many of those luminarias.

Happy December

2011-12-03T07:04:00.001-07:00

Today, 7am. Any bets on how long the snow lasts? Until 10am?

Postponed

2011-12-02T08:37:00.001-07:00

I promised you some exciting travel updates. However, my most exciting trip of the year just got postponed by half a year, so you'll have to wait a bit longer to hear about Egypt. Instead of Cairo, I will visit another city that starts with C and has a pyramid.

Which would you rather visit in December?

Back in the game

2011-11-27T13:06:00.001-07:00

In my world, this is big news. I want you to notice the shoes I'm wearing for this walk. Not only am I able to wear heels (and even go for a walk in them) for the first time in years, this happened on a week when I went for 3 runs. And my feet don't hurt. Not anywhere. No plantar fasciitis, no ball-of-the-foot pain. Why not? I don't know. It's been 3 years of foot pain, that I just noticed wasn't bothering me this week.

This is great, because after completing half of the Mt Taylor Quadrathlon last year, I thought it would be fun to do the whole thing this year. The only problem is that it involves 10 miles of running. Now that is no longer a problem.

Holiday Travel

2011-11-25T16:32:00.001-07:00

As promised, here is the next installment of travel blogging. This time we head north to Wisconsin. Clearly, we aren't chasing the good weather. Instead, it's about good food and family.

Thanksgiving day:

Taking a walk in a nearby park.

Black Friday (sorry, no videos of shopping mobs):

Boys will be boys...

...while I try to get some work done.

Knitting Backlog

2011-11-19T14:50:00.001-07:00

My knitting posts always seems to get more attention than anything I write about. Since the blog was dormant for about a year, there is a back-log of knitting project to share with you. I'll start with the things that I was working on about this time last year.

Two pairs of mittens donated to an orphanage in Kazakhstan. This is a great way to use up non-washable wool leftovers.

A sweater for Hubbers' birthday last year. This is from some great hand-dyed wool from the Taos Wool Festival.

A vest for Mom, from some yarn purchased in Kazakhstan that claimed to be camel. However, it appears to be machine washable, so I'm not so sure. I managed to find the word "100% wool" in Chinese on the label (followed by 6% something else), but can't translate anything else. The labels are nearly identical for the gray and orange yarn, yet the orange seems decidedly more acrylic while the gray has wispy white hairs throughout that could believably be camel.

A sunglasses case for my sunglasses. Made from cotton yarn purchased in Vancouver last year. The little strap with a button lets me attach it to my purse. Despite the current giant purse craze, I insist on carrying the smallest purse that fits my phone, wallet and ipod. But that doesn't leave room for my sunglasses, so this hangs on the outside.

If you want more info about these, like the names of the patterns or the modifications to the patterns, that info is available on my Ravelry page.

Portland

2011-11-12T11:24:00.001-07:00

As promised, travel season has commenced. I am enjoying a cup of locally roasted Stumptown coffee in downtown Portland, Oregon. I had to wait in a line that was less than half the length of the Voodoo doughnuts line down the street. I do enjoy a good cup of coffee, but good doughnuts are lost on me.

The first morning here, I went for a run along this river (dodging bicycle commuters everywhere) crossed the river a couple of bridges down, then came back on this drawbridge. There's a nice path along the river, although it is a bit industrial. This town has always reminded me of the city I grew up in... it's the weather, the industrialness, and the feeling that it's probably a nice place to live.

Below is the convention center where I spent that last few days. The highlight is really the gorgeous red trees surrounding it. Inside, they've gone out of their way to be sustainable. They had donation bins for us to dump our unwanted swag, compost for leftovers, recycling for all containers. Yet, they were quite punctual in everything. If the schedule said dinner is 6:30-9:30, you couldn't touch the food until 6:30 (even though it would be setup several minutes ahead of time) and announcements began around 9 to warn you to wrap up your networking because the hall would be closing in 30 minutes.

Red leaves everywhere. We only get yellow leaves at home, so it's nice to see some fall color. Although the trade-off is that they only get gray sky here for a backdrop to the colorful leaves.

Vixen's new friend

2011-10-31T09:59:00.002-06:00

I have quite a travel schedule lined up for the next couple of months, so the blog should get more active with exciting photos from exciting places. I'll let the travel unfold as it happens, to surprise you with all the great destinations.

For now, enjoy some backyard photos of Vixen with her new bff, Bronte. What makes them bff's?

They dress alike. And enjoy showing off their "sit" skills.

They play alike. It's all about chase -- no wrestling, no fetch.

And they have matching tails, but I don't have a great photo for that. You'll just have to take my word for it. They also both happen to have nervous stomachs meaning that they go on hunger strikes when the state of the world doesn't suit them.

(To avoid confusion, Bronte is not our new dog, she belongs to a friend.)

More chile

2011-09-14T11:03:00.001-06:00

I posted a couple of weeks ago about chile harvest season. We have since decided that we just didn't have enough chile, so we got another 40 pounds. I suspect that the first bag was less than 30 pounds and it didn't look like enough for all the sauce and salsa I wanted to make. Here's a rundown of the work that goes into processing 40 pounds of chile.

Hubbers has his peeling operation figured out

Roasted chiles in the bag before peeling

Peeled chiles (these were eaten as rellenos that night)

After peeling, I made 3 batches of green chile sauce from 4 pounds of chiles per batch. Then a batch of salsa (pdf of recipes from NMSU) from 3 pounds of chiles. The rest get ziplocked and frozen.

Pedal Los Pueblos

2011-09-03T18:39:00.000-06:00

The Multiple Sclerosis Society holds 2-day, 150-mile bicycling fundraising events across the country. The New Mexico version, called Pedal Los Pueblos, happens every August through beautiful northern New Mexican countryside, towns and pueblos. The cycling club I joined earlier this year (Women Riding Well) takes this event quite seriously, gathering some 50 riders as a team and raising around $40,000 together this year. It was a great weekend of cycling, riding and (for me) learning about MS and some very promising treatments that could use more funding.

I didn't think that I put in the necessary training to handle 150 miles, so I wasn't sure how much I'd ride. On Saturday, I decided to ride with my club going whatever speed we go, stopping as often as we like, and just see how far we get. The ride starts just north of Santa Fe in Pojoaque. On Day 1 (map) we head north through Espanola and Ojo Caliente, then turn westward up a big hill to lunch in El Rito, before angling back southeast through Hernandez and Espanola, ending back at Pojoaque. Turns out that we (most of us anyway)*, made it the full 88 miles and 5000 ft of climbing, in plenty of time to get cleaned up and enjoy dinner.

On Sunday, I was feeling so good, I decided to go the longer route of 55 miles, including an optional long, steep climb from Chimayo to Truchas. When I got to the turn-off for Truchas, nobody wanted to go with me... at first... and then 2 club buddies talked each other into it. Up we went. At the top, I found some members of the club that are also on the racing team. I had never ridden with them, but they said they were going to set a nice easy pace for a pace line on the flatter sections of the ride. I hopped on and did my best to keep up with the 20 mph pace through the rest of the ride. Wow, that was fun! I never would have worked that hard for that many miles without the group but with the group it was great!

* My worst nightmare about bicycling is a crash. Unfortunately, we had a crash. I couldn't possibly tell you exactly what happened because all I really know is that one minute we were riding along having a great time, and the next second everybody was falling over. It went something like this: With 73 miles done and 15 to go, Karen who I was riding next to, hit a big chunk of metal in the shoulder of the road (or she didn't hit it, but was trying to avoid hitting it and me) and went down. On her way down, she bumped me but I managed to stay up while bobbling around. Priscilla, behind us, also went down (rather than swerving into traffic) but much more softly than Karen. Once medics bandaged up Karen's road rash (no broken bones), she and her bike got a ride back to the end. Priscilla and I rode on.

The End of Summer

2011-08-25T21:39:00.001-06:00

It's the best time of the year... summer is ending and fall is getting ready. I can smell it in the air! I already have one bag of Hatch green chiles roasted & peeled. Here are about a dozen of them stuffed with cheese and getting ready to be covered in egg batter and baked into Chile Rellenos Guillermos. This is earlier than I normally get my chiles, but some good friends (and fans of chile) were traveling through on their way to Austin, so we spent an afternoon peeling.

Living in a hot climate, I anticipate these hints of fall (thunderstorms, chiles roasting, etc) much the same way I used to look for hints of spring in Cleveland (daffodils poking through the snow, sun peeking through the clouds, etc).

I could probably use another bag of chiles, and peeling is best done socially, so if anyone local wants to do a chile-peeling morning/afternoon let me know!

Yampa Float

2011-08-24T18:28:00.000-06:00

As promised, the next installment of our weeklong Colorado trip. For the second adventure of the week, we canoed 50 miles of the Yampa river from the city of Craig to a place called Juniper Canyon (several miles upstream of Maybelle). We did not expect to accomplish this in one day, so we spent two nights on the river. I don't know what the flow of the river was officially; it was enough to keep us afloat (barely), but clearly had been higher earlier in the season.

Launching from the city park in Craig

This section of river quickly goes through farmland, then through BLM land known as Duffy Canyon, past Duffy Mountain and then back out to farmland. Somewhat surprisingly, the BLM land had more cattle than the farmland. It is not fun to camp with the cows (Vixen disagrees) and it is not legal to camp on private land, so we camped on islands.

Beached on a desert island for the first night


A lazy river

Full moon rising over our second camp

The shuttle vehicle at the Juniper Canyon takeout

After 50 miles of river, I biked back 30 miles to retrieve the pickup truck. Every afternoon on the river, we had wind gusts pushing us back up-canyon. I was hoping that would be a tail-wind on the bike, but that last day just wasn't as windy. Or maybe it was the 95-degree heat that slowed me down.

Snowmass

2011-08-19T09:33:00.000-06:00

Last week I took a trip that seemed worth blogging about. Only time will tell whether this is really a blog-revival or if it will be shortlived.

For the first few days of our trip, we started near Aspen, Colorado with backpacking up Snowmass Creek to camp at Snowmass Lake with the goal of summitting Snowmass Mountain.

Snowmass Creek

Is this really the trail? Apparently it is.

Snowmass Lake - as seen from near our camp. The peak in the back is our goal for the next day.


Looking back down at Snowmass Lake from our summit hike.

This is not the summit, just a pretty meadow along the way. The summit was actually quite ugly (just rock and months-old snow). I have my doubts about Hubbers hobby (Colorado 14ers) - getting to these peaks is painful (that lack of oxygen problem always gives me a headache) and they aren't pretty hikes. If there were just a few of them then fine, but 54 ugly painful hikes? No thanks, I'll stay below the headache-inducing zone.

Plenty of people were camped at the lake but nobody hiked up the mountain the same day as us. There were others at the lake who brought along ice axes and crampons, presumably for some peak-bagging. Wish we had brought our ice-axes, it would have made me feel a lot better crossing massive snowfields... who would've thought that a mountain named Snowmass would have snow in August?

Next installment: canoeing the Yampa.

Almaty Monuments

2010-08-08T21:12:00.000-06:00

The first stop for any tourist in Almaty is Paniflov Park. It's right in the middle of town, near the downtown shopping and markets. There, we found one of the oldest buildings in the city, Zenkov Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox cathedral (the colorful building in the back).

Much of the park is filled with memorials for the two World Wars. We happened to stop by while a vet was proudly getting his picture taken.

Closer to our hotel, we found the newly dedicated Park of the 1st President of Kazakhstan. (Note that he is the 1st and thus far only president.) The first time we went there was at night and it was quite lively.

Troy wandered back there during the day to take more photos.

It's tough to capture the whole thing, but it's a 2-level fountain, with these recreations of rock art under the 2nd level.

Presumably the 2nd level will have water flowing where you see those large rocks on the "steps." They're pretty good about keeping public places clean by sweeping daily.

Next stop: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, the school that hosted our summer seminar, although we did not meet at the school. If you click on that link, check out those mortar boards! Here is Al-Farabi, the scholar himself in front of some of the newest campus buildings:

Note the Soviet-era building right next door. Can you see a difference in architectural style?

No tour of Kazakhstan would be complete without a sighting of the Golden Man. He's not so golden here on the Independence Monument, but he's been dressed up with some weapons and a flying snow leopard... apparently he's supposed to look like a rocket.

The Independence square has several statues and is a required place to get wedding photos. Couples drive around town all day getting their photos at all the major attractions.

Finally, we have the National Museum of history, housed in one of the last public buildings erected during Soviet times.

Food

2010-08-07T15:20:00.001-06:00

People always ask about the food in foreign places, and I have plenty to say and show about food in Kazakhstan.

Included in our hotel stay were three meals a day. This food was described as Soviet style. The breakfast buffet included everything from pickled beet salad to sausages to yogurt. Usually there was some type of porridge (heavy on the cream or butter), meat leftover from yesterday (possibly chicken wings), and occasionally we had some sunflower halva which the Americans fell in love with. Lunch, being the largest meal started with salad, continued with soup and ended with a meat and starch dish. Here's a photo with the salad and soup. Dinner looked similar but without the soup, and sometimes had a fruity-bready dessert.

This cafeteria-style food got old quickly, so we frequented the market at the end of the street. The outside looks like a typical fruit and veggie stand. Most of the produce seems to come from Uzbekistan. Step just inside the door, and you can fill a plastic 2-liter bottle with local beer or kvass fresh from the tap.

The downtown Green Market offered more variety. Dried fruits and nuts:

Horse sausages, a rib, and a load of fat:

Pork is actually not that popular due to the large Muslim population, but who could resist such a photo? And seriously, what does one do with a whole pig head? There weren't sheep or cow or horse heads hanging around. The most common meat is probably lamb/mutton followed closely by beef. Horse is more of a specialty and is usually served as a thin slices of sausage which are quite tender and tasty.

We had a couple of meals in yurts, featuring Kazakh food. The most memorable part of the meal is of course, kumys (fermented horse milk) and shubat (camel milk), pictured below with our Coke chaser hiding behind. The meat you see in the foreground is lamb - various parts. If it doesn't have bones in it, it is probably liver.

Here's a view of the low table inside a yurt with our salads and bread being served:

Meanwhile, the carrots for plov are boiling:

Another typical feast (not in a yurt) featured brilliantly arranged salads (and you can barely see the plate of sliced meat including liver, heart and sausage hiding behind the fried dough).

While we were in Kazakhstan, we were able to try the variety of dishes that people from other areas of the world have brought... most notably Korean dog soup. I personally did not eat this, but was told that it tasted like any other dark meat. The soup is served boiling hot with just broth and meat. Those little white bowls of stuff are things to add to one's own taste.

String cheese.

I'll end with dessert. Every cake is a work of art. They truly look too good to eat! Seriously, I wouldn't eat one because I'm sure it would be a disappointment.

I tried a lovely cupcake with my afternoon tea one day, only to discover that I needed a sledgehammer to get through the frosting and then the cake was really a dry cookie. But it had plenty of sugar, so I was happy.

They like to call kumys the national drink. But from what I've seen, tea must be the national drink. They drink it morning, noon and night... brewing it up quite hot and strong and then loading it up with milk and sugar.

Kazakhstan

2010-08-06T22:08:00.000-06:00

So, you've been wondering where I've been the last few weeks? I've been in Kazakhstan. It'll take a few blog posts to talk about the place, so I'll start with this preview:

Our hotel in Almaty, the largest city in the country. We were here for 2 weeks.

We stayed in one of these cottages.

Attending an international seminar (I rarely sat at the table, so you can't see me in this photo.) Ten of us were from the University of New Mexico. Most of the students you see are from Kazakhstan. There were also students from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Russia.

The view from the seminar room, looking south. Those mountains are the Tien Shan. Beyond them lies Kyrgyzstan.

The view from the other seminar room, looking north. In the distance, through the haze, is the beginning of the steppe.

The entryway to our little resort compound. At first, we were told that we could not leave the premises without a local (for our own safety). However, the locals were perfectly happy to hang out at the resort enjoying the pool and free food. Eventually, we ventured further and further afield to explore the city.

Then we took a train to the new capital city of Astana and stayed there for a couple of days before starting the long trek home.

Pulling my hair out

2010-07-16T11:50:00.000-06:00

This is the saga of a sweater that either wasn't meant to be knit or had to be knit, I'm not sure. In summary, I had the wrong yarn, wrong pattern, then it was eaten by a dog twice, pattern lost, and I had to learn several knitting techniques while pulling out my hair along the way to even make the thing work.

It started with a trip to the Taos Wool festival in 2008, where the mountains of wool inspired me to knit a sweater for my husband, despite having only learned to knit a year earlier. I bought 1600 yards of yarn, in two colors which he picked out... then started looking for patterns only to discover that the thin yarn I bought would not make a men's sweater.

So it became my sweater. I found a tank-top pattern that I liked and thought to just make it a bit longer, with less of a scooping neck and add 3/4 sleeves to make it more of a sweater than a tank top. Nevermind that I had never made a sweater and did not know how to make sleeves, and the pattern wouldn't tell me. I'd deal with that when I got there.

I started knitting the sweater in September 2009, and a couple of months later discovered that my re-designed neckline was not acceptable. I undid the top of the shirt, and re-knit it. Then spent a couple of weeks researching sleeves and how to get the right size/shape. At about this time, the puppy managed to bite five holes into the front of the sweater. The helpful people at Village Wools taught me how to fix up those holes.

The sweater went along with me while camping in the winter, although I also found plenty of time to ignore the sweater by working on other projects.

As I was finishing up the sleeves, the puppy once again got her teeth on my project eating the needles off of it. It is possible to make a complete circle in our house from the dining room to living room to hallway to office to kitchen back to the dining room. Puppy did this trailing sweater yarn with her... twice. What a goofball and a terror, she is missed. I fixed that mess but lost my motivation to finish those sleeves, until just a few weeks ago.

And voila, I have a very well-fit sweater, as though it were custom-made for me! And no more hair to pull out!

Mittens for Akkol

2010-07-13T10:15:00.000-06:00

I will soon be embarking on a trip to Kazakhstan to participate in a seminar with the University of New Mexico and the Kazakh National University. Upon researching what kind of knitting tradition I might find in Kazakhstan, I found Mittens for Akkol. Click on that link! It's a charity that sends warm mittens, hats, socks, scarves and sweaters to orphanages in Kazakhstan. So I'm making and donating a hat and pair of mittens to take with me.

Pinwheel hat with Lion Wool (lemongrass) and Kerry woolen mills (berry). It's sized for a child and is quite thick and warm.

Now I'm starting on mittens in Plain and Fancy wool. They may not be completed before I leave, but in that case they certainly should be done after 26 hours of traveling.

If this sort of charity interests you, you should also check out Wool-aid. And even if you do not knit or crochet, these types of charities could also use cash donations to help ship donations to their destinations.

San Pedro Parks

2010-07-06T17:34:00.000-06:00

Once again, we ventured into uncharted territory (for us) within New Mexico for a backpacking trip over the holiday weekend. This is the San Pedro Parks wilderness section of the Jemez Mountains, a high-elevation wilderness of dense forest and grassy parks. Along with a friend who is visiting before moving to Colorado, we spent 4 days hiking about 40 miles. Couldn't really say exactly how many miles because we frequently found ourselves without a trail, despite bringing along a good trail map.

Above, is the highest point we reached: San Pedro Peak itself at 10,500 feet. As you can see, it was quite an accomplishment scrambling up those rocks to a height almost the same as Sandia Peak. Actually, the Geronimo Lake trailhead where we started is at about 9200 feet, so this whole area stays pretty high in elevation. We'll have to go back with cross-country skis in the winter!

Often, the trail was easy to follow, but other times it would disappear under thick grass crossing a park, or underneath fallen logs in the forest. Most of the time, we were able to pick the trail back up again, except on day 3 when we deliberately left the trail shortly before lunch. We didn't find a trail again until later in the afternoon, and then we had no idea what trail it was because it was not labeled. We didn't figure out where we were until the last day when we finally came across a trail intersection with a sign. Fortunately, we were about 8 miles from the trailhead and it was an easy walk out on Monday.

Apparently, carving names into trees is a tradition going back 70 years in this area, and it's hard to find an aspen with any blank space left. The handwriting on the trees helped us find the trail when it wasn't visible in the ground, but then it also led us down trails that certainly were not on our map.

Spirit Lake

2010-06-21T14:36:00.000-06:00

After a full week of no exercise, and lots of sleep, I was feeling pretty good. Seriously, the most exercise I got was a 2-mile walk along the river, followed by a 2.5-hour nap; which convinced me that I really was sick and needed to rest. So now that I'm feeling ready to get out, what better way to spend the weekend than by throwing a 30lb pack on my back and hiking up a mountain? It may not be your idea of fun, but it sounds like a great weekend to me.

Vixen had been just as lethargic as me for a few weeks, so she needed some cheering up. And this is also her idea of a great weekend.

We started at the trailhead by the Santa Fe ski area (lower left on map), and hiked about 6 miles into Spirit Lake along trail 254. Spent the night there and came back the same way. As you can see on the map, there's a whole network of trails out there, so it would be nice to go back and try some of the other trails. We've hiked from this trailhead before on snowshoes in winter, but it turns out that it's also quite nice in the summer.

Two pieces of advice if you decide to do a similar hike: Don't forget the bug spray and remember that nights in the mountains are cold!

Marathon vs Century

2010-06-03T20:59:00.000-06:00

Note that I have done exactly one marathon (26.2 mile run) and one century ride (100 miles bicycling). Since I did the Santa Fe Century, I have been asked many times whether the marathon or the century was easier. So here is my amateur answer to this very easy question: The century ride. Why? It boils down to this: I enjoyed the century ride about 90% of the time. There were some difficult times, but most of it was pure fun. For the marathon, I enjoyed it maybe 60% of the time, and then the last 40% of the run was pure pain and suffering.

But there are some pros and cons:

Time (Marathon is easier)
Century: 9 hours, Marathon: 5 hours. Now imagine doing some fraction of that EVERY Saturday for a few months. So the century does not just take longer on the day of the event, every single training ride takes longer.

Expense/Equipment (Marathon wins here too)
Basically, for a marathon you need good shoes maybe even two pairs and a watch. The rest of the clothing and special food is similar in running and cycling. For cycling, you need a bicycle, preferably a nice one along with all the accessories like gloves, helmet, cyclocomputer, repair kit, shoes, etc... Note that if you travel a lot during the training season, it is more difficult to bring all this cycling gear with you than running gear.

Pain (no clear winner)
This probably depends on the individual. Running hurts joints and can injure specific muscles. I now have plantar fasciitis which prevents me from running but I don't blame the marathon because the pain started 3 years later. Also, I found chafing to be a bigger problem running than cycling. Cycling could be quite painful on the hands and butt. I also fell over a couple of times on the bike, but with no injuries. I've never fallen while running. So there is more potential for pain from crashing a bike.

Recovery (Century wins)
After a long training run, I'd be done for the day and would hardly be able to eat. After the marathon I took an ice bath to speed recovery and the next day I could walk slowly but stairs were somewhat challenging. After cycling, I'd simply go back to life as usual except that I couldn't go running the next day. Cycling never bothered my stomach the way running did.

Fun (Century!!)
Flying downhill at 30+ mph, yippeee! No such freebies in running - it's all work uphill and down. This also makes cycling less monotonous than running. Running literally is "one foot in front of the other", hour after hour. Whereas cycling feels quite different whether you're heading up, down, or around squiggly roads. There's also the pace line to keep you entertained during flat, straight sections. On the flip side, I find it easier to talk to my buddies while running than while cycling.

There are plenty of other issues that divide marathoning and century riding, such as the fact that weather can be more of a problem to cyclists than runners. But then cycling can be a more useful form of transportation than running/walking (you get better distances) so it may be easier to incorporate cycling into your regular day.

Personally, I will likely never do another marathon but I'm already thinking about which century ride to do next.

Heartbreak

2010-05-26T18:39:00.001-06:00

Heartbreak. My puppy-girl left me much too soon. Exuberantly chasing birds, too impatient to wait for anyone to grab her leash. But birds are more adept at crossing roads than are puppies. In an instant she was gone. I am missing her puppy kisses, hugs, smiles and even the headaches she gave me.

Just 7 months ago, we said hello to Eureka (post) and we were looking forward to celebrating her 1st birthday in June. This is far too soon to say goodbye. Admittedly, this isn't the first time that she did something stupid and dangerous in her life, but she just wasn't as lucky this time.

Santa Fe Century

2010-05-18T09:52:00.000-06:00

100 miles by bicycle - beginning and ending in Santa Fe. Here's the map, with North to the left (sorry, it fits in the picture better that way). We started at 7:30am and finished just before 4:30pm. So 9 hours, although my bike computer claims I was rolling for just over 7 hours. Where did I spend those idle 2 hours? At the rest-stops which I've numbered along the route (first one in Madrid). There were 6 of them, which doesn't seem like too many but apparently I spent an average of 20 minutes at each one.

Starting out with the Team in Training group. Not only have we been training together since February, we also each raised thousands of dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. All of my teammates will be doing a Century at Lake Tahoe in June, some of them (those pictured) also came to Santa Fe with me.

First stop: Madrid. Looking good after 26 miles of pure biking fun! That first stretch was mostly downhill, but right after this stop we had a lot of uphill work.

Heartbreak Hill: too bad the great view is behind the cyclists! I'm not in this picture, but I looked exactly like that as I walked up the hill. The best thing about this hill is that it's the last hill for 40 miles.

After Heartbreak Hill, there is a whole lot of flat-ish road through the plains. Unfortunately, in New Mexico it is always windy on the plains. We kept a pace line through most of this which makes the miles go by much faster. In Galisteo at mile 82, we had our last break before heading up the hills back into Santa Fe. Throughout the ride, I kept reminding myself to take it easy so that I wouldn't be burnt before that last 15-mile uphill push. Apparently, my pacing worked because I climbed up Lamy Hill without a problem and flew on through the last 10 miles back to the finish line. Maybe riding along the shoulder of I25 gave me the adrenaline rush I needed to push through those last miles.

Finished! 101 miles and 9 hours later.

April

2010-05-06T18:21:00.000-06:00

My brother came for a visit a few weeks ago to witness me getting older by a year... and we had some fun riding scooters, hiking in the Jemez, buying longhorns at Jackalope (can't believe I didn't get a picture of that), and eating birthday ice cream cake.

80 Miles

2010-05-02T16:18:00.000-06:00

Today marks the 2-week countdown to the Santa Fe Century ride. In preparation, I bicycled 80 miles yesterday, starting at the Santa Ana Star Casino in Bernalillo to the Gilman Tunnels (photo above from a few years ago), and back again. This was one of the most scenic rides I've ever done. It was tough work climbing the hills up to the tunnels, and I was worried about being able to finish the ride after being so burnt at the turn-around point. The ride back turned out to be pure fun in the sun... but less scenic as it flew by so quickly :)

Next week, it'll be 85 miles. Then finally, the 100 miles of the Santa Fe Century. I'm ready to be done with it. These long rides are getting tough. After this, I may stick with 50-mile rides for fun.

<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/nm/bernalillo/380127283792492721"&amp;gt;Gilman Tunnel - 80 miles ride&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/nm/bernalillo"&amp;gt;Find more Bike Rides in Bernalillo, New Mexico&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</p>

Happy Birthday, Carla!

2010-05-01T06:00:00.003-06:00

This photo is likely the first time I actually met my cousins Carla and Julia. I don't know how many more times in my life I spent the 4th of July with them. Usually playing in their pool and watching the fireworks over Lake Saint Clair.

Energy

2010-04-22T08:10:00.000-06:00

According to MapMyRide, I burned over 2000 calories during my 60-mile ride and nearly 2500 calories during my 70-mile ride (a loop to Los Lunas and back). That sounded so incredible, that I did a quick estimate of how many calories I consumed while riding... On the 60-miler: some fruit & nut trail mix, gatorade and peanut-butter cookies. It's possible that that added up to 900 calories. But on the 70-miler I only had the trail mix, so more like 400 calories. Apparently most of the calories for these rides get eaten in the days before and after the ride.

The photo is my new perfect bike food: trail mix with pretzels mixed in for extra carbs and salt. I tried eating runner's goo when I trained for a marathon, but it gave me a stomach cramp which defeats the whole purpose of the terrible tasting stuff. So I stick to real food.

Wordless Wednesday (because I meant to post this yesterday)

2010-04-15T21:48:00.000-06:00

60 Miles

2010-04-12T18:00:00.001-06:00

How to plan a 60-mile bicycle ride: Think of a place that seems far away that you can bike to. Map it out and realize that it isn't actually 30 miles away, then find a circuitous way to get there to add mileage. Make sure there are a few good hills along the way.

So here's my 60-mile west side hill climb ride. Starting at my house (the green circle), I went to the Bosque Trail at Central. Headed south along the trail to Rio Bravo. West to Paseo del Vulcan. North to Route 66. West along Route 66 until I hit 30 miles, and then do it all in reverse. This got me 60 miles and 2000 feet of climbing, on a 75-degree sunny day with just enough breeze to keep things interesting.

Apparently, the West Mesa is indeed a mesa... riding west out of Albuquerque, you will first ascend the mesa by climbing the infamous 9-mile hill. I did this on Rio Bravo/Dennis Chavez. Now if you keep riding west (as I did along Rt 66, aka I-40 frontage road), you will eventually drop off the west end of the West Mesa into the Rio Puerco drainage, home of the Laguna and Acoma Pueblos. The Laguna Peublo has built the Route 66 Casino there (marked by a coffee mug on the map), and a gas station where I was able to re-fuel with Gatorade and peanut-butter cookies. Rt 66 dead-ends a few miles past the casino, so you can't go further west without getting on the interstate or taking dirt tribal roads. At this point, I turned around and went back the way I came.

From Paseo del Vulcan (on top of the West Mesa) south of I-40, looking east. I could see downtown Albuquerque (the camera phone does not capture landscapes very well).

Looking east near my turn-around point, 30 miles from where I started. The massive white building on the right side of the road is the Route 66 Casino. Sandia Mountain is still visible on the horizon, but downtown Albuquerque is hidden by the West Mesa.

The Long Training Stretch

2010-04-11T20:57:00.000-06:00

Some people think that a marathon or a century ride is hard to do, but the truth is that training for the event is much harder than the event itself. On one day in May, I will ride 100 miles. However, throughout April I should ride 500 miles altogether and do other workouts in training. This is the part of the training that I like to call "all the pain, none of the glory".

At this point, I start scheduling around training. Last week, I was at a 4-day conference (without my bicycle) and was obligated to get in my weekday training by skiing during free hours in the afternoon. And I had to maximize my 3-hour ski workout by skiing telemark through the deepest Utah powder I could find on gnarly black-diamond slopes. Fortunately there were no chairlift lines to slow me down. I certainly felt like I got a workout, but I did not get much sleep during the conference, since I chose to ski during nap time. Seriously, the conference gets started with breakfast at 7am, takes a long break in the afternoon, and then runs until 10pm every night.

Unfortunately, I missed my group training ride this weekend due to the conference, so after catching up on some sleep this morning I had to do a 60-mile ride on my own. I'll blog about that next time.

Thank you!

2010-03-26T11:53:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a successful bake sale at UNM yesterday and all of the generous friends and relatives who have been sending me donations for the past several weeks, I have raised $2255.49 so far for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I set out with a goal to raise $2010 by the end of March, and am very thankful for everybody who helped to make that happen!

Team in Training sets a fundraising minimum for me, which was $1850. That is 4 times the cost for them to train and send me to the bicycle race; so that no more than 25% of the money is used to sponsor me, while the remaining 75% goes directly to cancer research and patient support. This means that every dollar donated above $1850 goes 100% toward cancer research and patient support. If you have not donated yet, your donation would still be very much appreciated.

(If you are reading this on my actual blog site, you may notice that the "thermometer" on the sidebar does not show the $2255 amount. That's just because several checks are still being processed, but they should be on there by the end of next week.)

Heeler Monsters (in the Gila)

2010-03-20T09:43:00.001-06:00

For Spring Break, we decided to head south to the Gila Wilderness for some backpacking. Sunday night, we camped at the Railroad Creek campground in the Black Range only to wake up to a bit of snow.

We were pretty sure that if we headed west to the Blue Range, we could find a lower-elevation hike with less snow. After consulting with a Forest Ranger, we were convinced that even if we got our car down the 6-mile snow-covered dirt road to the trailhead, we wouldn't hike far before being buried in snow. He suggested that we hike the classic Catwalk Trail for a few miles instead. Which we did, but noticed that the weather was great and there wasn't a snowflake in sight.

So, on we went to the Pueblo Creek Trail in the Blue Range Wilderness (it's across Hwy 180 from the Gila Wilderness). Here's a rough map of our path.

I forgot to mark the start, but it's the upper-right corner of the loop. We started south along the Pueblo Creek Trail, set up a camp along the creek, then continued the next day and following the Tige Canyon trail to the west. This trail ended after a couple of miles, but we just continued hiking west along the creek, crossing frequently until the canyon sides got too steep. At this point, we realized that we really were not on a trail and we needed to climb up to the ridge to find the network of trails on the Arizona side of the wilderness (that straight white line is the state border).

So we started going uphill, stopping for the night before continuing on a strenuous uphill bushwhack in the hopes that we would cross an official trail. As luck would have it, we reached the ridge exactly at a trail intersection with a sign, telling us that we were 5 miles from the Pueblo Creek Road that we needed to get to.

We thought we'd cruise along the trail, but there was all that snow that the ranger had warned us about! Not only did it slow us down, but it also made the trail invisible. We managed to stay on the trail with some work, and spent the third night uphill from a creek. The last day was a pleasant mile north to the road, then 8 miles east along the dirt road back to the start. Along the road, we actually saw a car and talked to the people in it (they showed us a cliff dwelling that we nearly walked by without noticing). That was our only interaction with people during the four days in the Blue Range.

36 Miles

2010-03-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

This is the halfway-point on last week's ride. It's the overlook at Jemez Dam. Fun ride!

Thanks to all the wonderful people in my life that have donated generously! I am getting close to my fundraising goal which is a great feeling.

2-Wheel Commute

2010-02-25T08:44:00.001-07:00

The hardest thing about commuting on two wheels is getting the motor started in the morning.

I have two different two-wheel vehicles that I commute with... one with it's own motor, the other uses my legs for the motor. Either way, sometimes the motor doesn't want to start on cold mornings. I may be able to fix that problem on the scooter by getting a new battery. As for the bicycle, I'm fortunate enough to have the time to eat a decent breakfast and have a warm cup of coffee at home before I need to commute. I rarely need to be on campus before 10am, so I can wait until it warms up a bit outside.

I'm going to try to do only 2-wheel commuting the rest of this semester. Cold doesn't really stop me, but precipitation does, especially snow. The problem is that if I drive a 4-wheel vehicle, I have to park far away and then walk to campus through the rain/snow, so it's not much better. On the other hand, the bus (how many wheels?) takes longer than riding the bicycle because I have to change buses downtown. so I may still end up driving the car on rainy/snowy days.

Dusting off a Meme

2010-02-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

I am way over-committed right now. Too many projects going on at work... so rather than writing a new post today, I found a really old post that never got posted. There was this Meme going around Facebook a year ago asking people to list 20 random things about themselves. I wrote 16 things, then shelved it. Here it is, nicely completed:

I am always the LAST person to jump on the bandwagon.
I became an engineer because I like to make stuff.
I became a teacher because I like working with young people who are so enthusiastic about living.
"Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone."
I can't tell you how many times that song has been sung to me by random people completely out of the blue.
I have never dated anybody named Jack. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever met anybody named Jack that I could have dated.
I became a computer scientist because it seemed like my best bet for making some contribution to the world that I'd be proud of.
Computers on my home network are named Besseggen, Kaibab and Kalalau.
Last week, I bought a computer for the first time in my life.
I have a strong aversion to almost every form of liquid sugar: non-diet soda, sweetened coffee, sweet tea, syrup, milkshakes, lowfat salad dressing, etc.
My incurable "sweettooth" should really be called a "fattooth": cheesecake, ice cream, lattes, chocolate, cookies, etc.
Running is the only exercise that I have managed to do regularly, week after week, for the last decade.
I own 5 different helmets, each for a different activity.
I hate sightseeing. There's something about driving for a bit, getting out and looking, then driving a bit more, then getting out and looking, etc... that makes me physically ill.
When travelling, I'd much rather DO stuff than SEE stuff.
The previous statement is true about me generally in life, not just when travelling.
I wrote the previous items almost a year ago, the rest I wrote today.
I can no longer do #12.
Having too much to do is better for me than not having enough to do.
I have too much to do right now.

Quadrathlon

2010-02-17T17:49:00.001-07:00

The Mount Taylor Quadrathlon happens every President's Day Weekend in Grants, NM. Here's the deal:

13-mile bike, with 1700-foot climb
5-mile run, with 1250-foot climb
2-mile x-country ski, climbing 1200 feet
1-mile snow shoe, climbing 600 feet
Now turn around and do it all back to the start

Every year, I say I'll get a team together to do this as a relay... and every year there's some obstacle. This year, I simply forgot about it. Coincidentally, last weekend I biked on Saturday, skied on Sunday and ran on Monday... so I was just one sport shy of doing my own personal quadrathlon over 3 days.

I always thought I'd do any part of this relay other than the bike ride because I didn't have the right equipment. Now I am well equipped for the bike, but no longer equipped for the run... so I'll do any of these sports except the run. Who wants to join me next year?

What Knitters do in Winter

2010-02-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

My posts about knitting generate the most comments, but I haven't posted any knitting in nearly a year. Is that because I'm not knitting? No, here's what this winter inspired me to do...

Hey, Eureka is shivering, she needs a sweater.

Hey, my neck is cold while riding the scooter.

Wow, that was fun to make... somebody else's neck might get cold on her motorcycle.

My running buddy might get cold ears, here's something for her.

Hey Hubbers, who else would want one of these? You would? But not as thick?

Now my neck's warm, but my legs are cold on the scooter.

Hmmm... my ears might get cold if I start doing a lot of cycling.

Far more details on each of these can be found on Ravelry. All of these small things have been started and finished during winter, unlike a certain sweater that I started in September and hoped to wear this winter. More on that disastrous project later.

Bicycling ABQ

2010-02-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

For my first solo mid-week training ride, I decided to hit the Bosque bike path for an hour. It seemed the best place to get used to my new bike without worrying about getting hit by a car. I started at Central, setting my timer for 30 minutes, and found myself at Paseo del Norte, 7 miles to the north, when the timer went off. Sharing the path were plenty of bikes of various forms including recumbents, firemen doing PT, rollerbladers, dog walkers, runners, fishermen and a skateboarder. And this was the middle of the day on a Tuesday in February.

A statue on the trail near Central (from a previous winter after a heavy snow).

Albuquerque has been rated one of the best bicycling cities. Whether or not you agree, this trail along with others are probably a big part of why it's rated so high. The city claims 400 miles of paths and bike lanes. Check out the map here. Also, the weather is rather friendly toward bikes with so much sunshine. Even if it snows at night, it may be warm enough during the day for a nice ride. Then in the summer, it's nice and cool early in the morning before the heat cranks up.

I'm not terribly comfortable riding many places from my house. I'd need a better way to cross the river, bike lanes that aren't full of trash, paths that fully connect and the biggest problem is the loose dogs. But I'm going to try a few rides from home since loading the bike on the car gets a bit tiring.

10 miles

2010-02-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting my Team in Training cycling team. It's an interesting mix of people who have hardly ridden a bike and others who regularly do distance rides, but all who support the mission of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. For me, road biking is a new sport so I was a bit nervous about riding in a big group. As it turned out, the 10-mile ride was very encouraging. It seemed so easy. I'm not too worried about doing 10 times that distance!

Now that I think of it, our marathon training started at 2 miles which also seemed too easy at the time. But doing more than 10 times that (26.2 miles) was quite a challenge!

Racing for a Cure

2010-02-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

In Support of All Families Facing Cancer

Five years ago, I was visiting my cousin Carla (pictured above with her family in 2003) after her second bone marrow transplant. While her team of doctors were commiserating about the pain they'd endure that weekend running a cancer fundraising marathon, I marvelled at their dedication to eradicating the disease, both in their professional and personal lives. Carla responded that she'd like to run a marathon when she got out of the hospital. That sentiment stuck with me and I decided that I'd run that marathon with her.

Four years ago, I ran the 26.2 miles of the Austin Freescale Marathon and raised over $3000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Carla was with me every step of the way, if only in spirit. Sadly, Carla was never able to leave that hospital bed to do all of the things that she'd rather do. At the time of her diagnosis, she was given an 80% chance of survival, which was a great number compared to the near death-sentence it would have been a few decades earlier. However there clearly is not a cure until that number is 100%.

This year, I continue my fight against cancer with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training by bicycling the Santa Fe Century (that's 100 miles) in May. Along the way, I'll raise another couple of thousand dollars for cancer research and patient support.

Please donate! Go to my Team in Training page, or click the purple badge on the right side bar of this page. Updates on my training and fundraising will appear on this blog frequently, so keep checking back often or subscribe (find the subscription link on the right).

Full Moon Hike

2010-01-30T17:22:00.002-07:00

The plan was to take advantage of the full moon to walk up the Sandia Peak Ski Area at night to the crest and then ski back down. However, the last time we did this, we found that clouds can really ruin a full moon, and last night was not different. In fact, you can see the clouds blocking the top of Sandia Peak in the photo above. So instead, we headed to the Petroglyph National Monument, and enjoyed the volcanoes overlooking the city by moonlight. It was ridiculously bright out for being 10pm... and I got to play around with settings on the digital camera.

Merry Xmas from Arizona

2009-12-31T08:36:00.002-07:00

The last minute plan was to head to Chiricahua for some nice winter desert camping. However, as our trips to Arizona often turn out, we hit a snowstorm. Chiricahua was buried under 6 inches of snow and hidden under heavy clouds. So we continued a bit further west to Cochise Stronghold, also buried under 6 inches of snow, but with clear skies.

The dogs love to play "King of the rock", but they're not match for Troy.

Eureka discovered a new game by jumping on frozen huecos to break up the ice, then fishing sheets of ice out of the puddle and eating that ice. (The butt in the air means she has something super special in her mouth).
After Cochise, we moved on to Madera Canyon for a couple of nights. Where we discover many great (but icy) hiking trails, and a good mountain bike trail. Near the mountain bike trail was an undeveloped camping area, but I can't seem to find any info on either the bike trail or that camping area. It's all along a dirt road called Prospect Road.

After that, we moved on to the big city of Tucson. Below is a photo of the San Xavier Mission just south of town:
We spent our last night in Arizona at Mt Lemmon where we enjoyed more hiking and biking. Then we started the drive back home (via the Gila Wilderness), and naturally found ourselves in another snowstorm. We stopped for the night at Datil Well campground near Highway 60 in New Mexico, and awoke to find the road out buried under several inches of snow!

Dog Bouldering

2009-12-02T22:11:00.005-07:00

I thought we were going for a hike, but the dogs wanted to climb rocks. In fact, they're such awesome climbers that I never caught any of the ascents, just the down-climbs.

Easy warm-up on a nice friction slab.

Dyno!

This is the boulder problem that separates the dogs from the puppies. Eureka made a couple of failed attempts before Vixen quickly showed her how it's done. Eureka eventually got to the top with some help from her spotter. But she wasn't willing to try the down-climb.

Eureka takes note while Vixen prepares for the toughest down-climb of the day.
Eureka enjoying a brief moment of victory on top of the rock.

Rope Reincarnation

2009-11-20T20:29:00.007-07:00

Operation climbing gear renewal has commenced! Step 1: admit that my climbing ropes (purchased 10 and 8 years ago) have become a danger to myself and my climbing partners, and therefore must be retired. I don't mind buying a new rope so much, but the thought of these two good-looking ropes sitting in a landfill really bugs me. They haven't been used heavily in those years, but honestly I can't remember how much they have been used, and everything I've read says that time matters as much as use anyway.

So, the ropes are not going to the landfill, but they will no longer be climbed on, and I will NOT keep things that will never be used sitting around in closets. The 8-year-old rope is now a doormat. This 9.8mm, 60m rope was purchased because my 50m rope simply wasn't long enough for El Potrero Chico. Needless to say, this rope has enjoyed some great adventures. Perhaps it would prefer a more glorious retirement than being a doormat, but this way, I'll get to see it everyday.

Find some excellent instructions here. If you can tie a figure-8 follow-through, then you can turn your rope into a fancy doormat. (It takes more time than a figure-8 follow-through, but really it's only a wee bit more complex).

Here's my test piece. Don't ask me why I thought crochet thread would be easier to work with than climbing rope, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

This is how the whole thing gets started:
And the (mostly) finished product. I still need to fix the bottom so it doesn't fall apart when picked up and cut the long end off.

As a foot note, this whole exercise was also excellent training for the puppy to learn proper rope etiquette. She quickly learned to keep her teeth and paws off the rope, all in an environment where there's no climbing to be distracted from.

Now for the other rope... I was hoping to make a hammock, but I can't find easy enough instructions. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: New and improved photos. I brushed the bottom-side of the mat with contact cement to help it hold it's shape. It worked great. Now that I'm able to pick it up and carry it outside, I have better photos.

Eureka

2009-11-15T16:19:00.004-07:00

Eureka is a 5-month-old puppy who joined our family last week. She's quite adventurous and is keeping Vixen busy. Supposedly she is a heeler/pointer cross.

Sierra Blancas

2009-10-20T18:18:00.004-06:00

On Thursday afternoon, we arrived at the Rio Bonito trailhead in the Sierra Blancas, near Ruidoso, NM. This is a little piece of the state where Texans outnumber New Mexicans 20 to 1. And horses are in equal numbers to people. Seriously, there were pairs of hunters with three or four horses. Apparently, that's what it takes to pack out a whole elk without ATVs.

Our goal was to do some backpacking, but there seemed to be numerous short loop hikes. So, we opted for a 13-mile or so loop that brought us back to our vehicle the next day. Then on Saturday, we headed out for another loop which brought us back on Sunday.

Fall is in full swing. We missed the aspen, but the oaks are still changing. On Thursday and Friday the elk were bugling non-stop. On Saturday morning, that stopped suddenly as people with rifles and camouflage arrived.
I found some enticing rock cliffs, but I couldn't find a way to the base (without ropes). In the distance, we were overlooking the Valley of Fires to the west. We could also see as far as White Sands and the Organ mountains. The views from this little mountain are spectacular since they are grassy rather than forested along the ridges.

My hiking partners enjoying the sunset at our first campsite.
On Day 2, our goal was that pointy peak, called Nogal Peak. We couldn't find a way up it through the scrub oak, but had fun trying. The other side of the peak may be more promising. Vixen is watching a bear in the distance, our second bear of the day.Speaking of wildlife, let me give you the list of what we saw in those four days in a small mountain range:

Countless elk
2 bears
Several flocks of turkeys
Countless osprey
1 golden eagle
A few deer

Below, Vixen and I are enjoying the view from Elk Point on Saturday.

This morning

2009-10-19T20:25:00.007-06:00

Hubbers opening up his birthday gift from his parents this morning:
Looking inside, it's just what he wanted... a balloon full of hot air. Actually, at this point, it's just air blown from two huge fans (not hot) and the crew is running around inside making sure it inflates properly.
Now it's starting to get hot enough in there to lift the basket.To begin our flight, we flew low over the bosque and Rio Grande where the cottonwoods were busy putting on their fall display.Views of the Sandias. We could also see as far as the Jemez mountains and Mt Taylor. Despite the clouds, it was a calm morning.
Bonus points to anybody who can name this intersection:
Deflating after a gentle landing:
In all my years of living in Albuquerque and seeing hundreds of balloons overhead, this is my first time in one. Definitely a worthwhile experience. It would also be fun to take a balloon ride while visiting another place to see the scenery. It felt like a different experience for us as locals than it did for the "tourists" in our basket.

You can see more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/doyen/

Wheeler Peak

2009-10-01T06:52:00.005-06:00

Wheeler Peak may not be the fairest of them all, but Wheeler is the tallest of all New Mexico peaks at 13,161ft above sea-level. And hence, we walked up it last weekend. It was a gorgeously sunny day but a rather chilly night. We decided to take the longer trail starting from Taos Ski Valley and hiking via Bull of the Woods meadow because it was described as having a very scenic ridge walk. It's also a bit long for Vixen's short legs, so we hiked in 5 miles on Saturday and set up camp at the Middle Fork of the Red River, then continued the last 2 miles or so to the summit on Sunday before hiking out. Backpacking also gave us a chance to camp in a beautiful place, rather than camping at the trailhead in the ski area parking lot.

To orient you... Troy is standing on Frazer Mountain on the way up on Saturday. Our campsite will be in those trees toward the bottom left of the photo. Behind Troy, the tallest-looking peak is Walter. Wheeler is further back and looks shorter.

Our campsite next to the Middle Fork of the Red River. There seemed to be a shorter trail up from Red River here.

A whole herd of big-horn sheep whose horns were not as big as I thought they should be.

That peak behind him is not Wheeler, but Walter.

On the summit.

Laboring up a mountain

2009-09-10T08:13:00.005-06:00

For Labor Day, we visited Hubber's grandma... but along the way we found this mountain that just needed to be hiked. It's Missouri Mountain standing at 14,067 feet tall in the vicinity of Leadville, CO. We started just after sunrise in the chilly 35-degree morning. The aspen were just barely starting to turn yellow. Bonus points if you can find the dog in the first photo.
This is really one of the nicest 14er hikes. It started in a forest, then proceeds up an alpine valley...
... and finishes with a good long ridge walk. You can't see them at this resolution, but there are people standing on the summit (the highest point in the photo below).
That's me just below the summit block. Those last few steps were pretty tough.
At the end, we're rewarded with a great view of mountains stretching into the distance. And gathering clouds, which can mean only one thing...
... hail on the way down. We were off the ridge before it hit, but still above tree-line. This was Vixen's first hike up a 14er and she still had plenty of squirrel-chasing energy at the end of the hike.

Sidecar obsession

2009-08-23T16:43:00.004-06:00

I've never understood this obsession, but if it means he can bike to the park with the dog, that seems worthwhile.

Central Valley & surroundings

2009-07-01T14:38:00.004-06:00

This is the continuation of my California trip. We started our trip by driving to Bakersfield and then heading up to the Seqouia Natl Forest and Park with friends. The next part of the trip, we spent a few days in the Los Angeles area, which will be covered in another post; followed by several days driving along the coast north from LA, which will be covered in yet another installment.

So here's the headwaters of the Kern River, in the Seqouia Natl Forest. Pat and Troy fly fished - somewhat successfully - while I knitted. We camped there for a night, which was quite chilly.

We returned to Bakersfield, to enjoy some delicious deep pit barbacue, and the next day we headed up to the Sequoia Natl Park which is home to some really big trees. Staci and Pooky (not her real name) joined us for this hike.
Sorry, no photos of Bakersfield itself. You'll have to make the trip out there yourself if you want to see it. On Thursday, we drove from Bakersfield to Chino Hills, part of the Inland Empire next to Orange County. The San Gabriel mountains separate the Central Valley from LA, and being mountains, we managed to find a dirt road that crosses them. Here's the view from the top, looking back at the Central Valley.We really didn't get a good view of the city as we dropped in from the mountains. It turns out that visibility is really, really bad in LA. See that blue sky in the photos above? You won't see that in the next post.

California Safari

2009-06-29T10:43:00.007-06:00

We just returned from a 2-week trip to California, which turned out to be quite a wildlife-viewing trip. It wasn't really planned that way, but here's the list of notable animals viewed, followed by select photos.

5 bears - 2 on two different days near Kern River headwaters, then 3 (a mom with cubs) in Sequoia Natl Park the next day.
Deer innumerable - most notably nestling among the hollow trunks of sequoia.
Hawks and vultures innumerable.
Sea lions - including a very friendly pup at Oxnard
Harbor seals
Elephant seals - the young bulls were play-fighting along the shore
Humpback whales on two days at two different beaches - at Oceano we were treated to several whales jumping up with the front half of their bodies above water, then splashing down hard on their backs. The next day at San Simeon with just whales surfacing and tails slapping was anti-climatic.
Dolphin on most days at the beach
Pelicans innumerable dive-bombing for fish, usually right where the dolphin and whales were also eating.
1 bobcat - it sauntered across the road just few feet in front of us as we were walking around a campground.
The Budweiser Clydesdales at pasture - okay, they're not wild, but they were just hanging out on a hill next to our campsite.

Sabbatical

2009-05-12T16:15:00.005-06:00

And the OTHER reason to get tenure is to go on sabbatical, as Hubbers is doing now. Sabbatical simply means that he's freed from on-campus duties (like teaching) so that he can focus on research. He's writing a book on archeological myths and mysteries (check Amazon for his previous book).

Often, researchers travel during their sabbatical. However, writing a book can be done from home, although there is a danger in staying home during sabbatical:

Hubbers xeriscaping the yard today (also note the split-rail fence he built in January at the start of his sabbatical)

Building a custom gate for the driveway, soon to be motorized.

Custom door for the laundry room and built-in bookshelves.

Painting the bedroom floor.

Zoo Run

2009-05-10T10:35:00.002-06:00

At the start of the Run for the Zoo 5k:
Approaching the finish line:
This is probably THE most popular run in Albuquerque. In fact, they have two 5k's - one timed, the other not, plus a 10k and a 1-mile. This year I ran it with a good friend, who just started running again within the past year after foot surgery and such had prevented her from running for a few years. I can't believe she's already running 5k's so quickly! We'll be working on doing the 10k next year.

April hike

2009-04-25T10:53:00.004-06:00

Two weeks ago Vixen, Troy and I went backpacking in the Apache Kid Wilderness (just south of Socorro). We've been there before and have learned that you can hike for miles without seeing another person. Or you can camp in their primitive, but nice, campground and see a few people.
We got there on Friday, hiked a few miles to set up the tent. Then hiked through the snow on Saturday to the San Mateo Lookout tower. Got lost while looping back... but ended up back at our car early in the afternoon. It started snowing again Saturday evening, and we were just hanging out at a car-camping site, so we eventually decided to just hop in the car and drive home to a warm bed that night, stopping in Socorro for a hot dinner along the way.

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Granby hat and scarf

2009-03-26T17:47:00.003-06:00

Soon, I will be home where the internet flows freely... well okay, I pay for it to flow at a specified bandwidth that I share with only one other person (Hubbers). I will not miss the frustration of sharing wifi with a whole building full of people and without somebody to hit "reset" on the router when it needs it. This is my excuse for not keeping up with the blog. It has just been too painful. Almost as painful as sharing a single washer/dryer with the whole building.

A while ago, I mentioned that I went to Lonesome Stone and got some new yarn to go with some previously-stashed yarn. So here's the deal. I knit this hat from their beautifully hand-dyed baby kid mohair:
However, I have no scarf that does not horribly clash with this hat. But a scarf made of the same yarn seemed a bit much. This stuff is just too bright and fuzzy. Here's where the new naturally-brown alpaca yarn comes in:
The brown was supposed to tone down the orange. Instead, it highlighted all those minor tones of blue and red. At any rate, it screams a bit less loudly. The pattern is the Anthro-inspired scarflet.Now putting the original hat with this, still looked too bright and fuzzy. Therefore, I needed a new hat to go with the new scarf (how circular). The first hat was too small anyway, so it makes a great ski-helmet-liner. Here's the new hat (pattern: Amanda hat from Sleepy Eyes Knitting).
Now if I just had a pair of gloves made from that brown alpaca, it would be complete. But I used up all of that yarn... maybe next winter.

Swap

2009-03-15T18:28:00.001-06:00

Thanks to the coolness of Ravelry, I joined a yarn swap with other knitting grad students. They called it a dissertation-a-long rather than the more typical knit-a-long. This is my first ever yarn swap, and was a lot of fun. I set goals for things to get done by the end of February, and my reward for getting at least one of those things done was this cool package full of stuff to help me get more work done and stuff to distract me from getting work done :)
Of course, I also had to put together a package to send to someone else who completed a goal.

Now I have a stash of yarn sitting in a drawer next to the couch in our little condo. Any ideas on what I should make with it? I'm thinking about making leg warmers for cold-morning commutes next winter.

Powder Stash

2009-03-14T18:12:00.003-06:00

Yay, Hubbers discovers a good tree run off the Eagle Wind lift at Winter Park.

And I discover that heavy powder can really trip me up.

Or maybe I'm just bowing to the snow gods... that gorgeous blue sky really isn't helping the incredibly-shrinking ski season.

Saturday

2009-03-09T11:17:00.002-06:00

Rocky Mountain Natl Park gives free Ranger-guided snow-shoe tours on the weekends, so we signed up for one last Saturday. The famous High Ridge Road that connects the east side of the park to the west side is closed in the winter, so the two sides are almost like separate parks. Touring the place on a snowy winter day felt like trying to spy on a wilderness in hiding... it's not easy to get to and then it's covered in several feet of snow. All interpretive signs are buried, only a few parking areas are plowed out and the road only goes 10 miles. Trails are only accessible by ski or snowshoe. (No photos, since it was just snow and trees covered in snow). On our tour, Hubbers and I were the token tourists... the rest were locals, which seems rather odd for a national park.

Our guide was a wildlife biologist. I learned that black bears weigh a mere 12oz at birth, and they're born in the middle of mom's winter hibernation so they have time to eat and grow before going out into the bigger world. I also learned about subnivean habitat - that's where all those little ground animals like mice go in the winter.

On our way to the park, we stopped at Lonesome Stone Natural Fiber Mill which is just around the corner from us. They have quite a few alpacas plus a few llamas and goats. They breed and raise the animals, as well as process fleece into fiber. And they do absolutely gorgeous hand-dyeing. After meeting the alpacas and watching the machinery work the fiber, I picked out some new yarn to go with the yarn I already have from them. The top greenish yarn is wool in a complimentary colorway as this hat I made. The brown is alpaca, and I think it goes very well with the yarn of that hat, so I'll use it to make a matching scarf (I'll explain that better once I start the project). The bottom is an odd-lot washable merino sock yarn. I don't know why I always feel compelled to buy sock yarn when I find it on sale.

Charity knit

2009-03-07T09:20:00.002-07:00

I get more comments on my knitting posts than anything else, so here's another one for you.
That is my first ever charity knit. It's another iPod cozy, using the same B's Buzz pattern as the last one, but with Peaches & Creme yarn. It's much chunkier looking which may be more stylish these days for high-schoolers. It's going to be sold at a high-school fundraiser. It was entirely knit during a drive to and from Copper Mountain. I'll see how many more I can make while riding in the car/bus by the end of the month.

Irish souvenir sweater

2009-03-03T21:28:00.003-07:00

It's done! My souvenir sweater from Ireland. I didn't have enough yarn for a full sweater with sleeves, hence the vest. I really think it's a cute design and I'm amazed that it actually turned out like the Talia pattern promised. It was really an easy pattern requiring virtually no seaming. Although there were times I though I'd never finish it.
This may not be the ideal shirt to wear with it, but hey, that's the shirt that I packed for that day (see previous post).

Stuff

2009-03-02T09:56:00.002-07:00

If you're not familiar with George Carlin's "Stuff" routine... it goes something like "Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation. And you gotta take some of your stuff with you... You gotta take a smaller version of your house. It's the second version of your stuff." Then you get invited on a side-excursion and "Oh, no! Now what do I pack? Right, you've gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The third version of your house..."

That's what we did last weekend. Hubber's grandma was sick, so we packed up and went to Denver. She's home from the hospital and doing much better now (although we did get treated to a whole litany of complaints about bowels). Funny that coming back to Granby actually felt somewhat like coming "home" last night. I imagine it will feel even more like coming home when we return to Albuquerque.

Projects

2009-02-26T14:35:00.003-07:00

I have not had much time for crafts lately (as I thought I would). Here's an update on what I'm working on. I made this cool iPod cozy out of leftover sock yarn, it even has a pocket for headphones. Hubbers is worried that the wool might scratch the touch screen, but I tried rubbing a corner of the screen with the cozy and couldn't see any damage. I did buy some cotton yarn to make this, but then decided that I really wanted use up the last of that sock yarn.

A while ago, I started this sweater vest with yarn from Ireland. It's getting close to finished. It looks almost like a vest. I just need to sew the shoulder straps together, and then there is an edging that goes all the way around the neckline and arm holes. It will probably need to be blocked quite a bit to make it fit right. I'll be glad to have my wearable Ireland souvenir less than a year after the Ireland trip :)

Then there's a sorta-secret cross-stitch project that I'm working on. It will be a gift, so you won't see any photos of it until it has been received. However, the recipient knows about (and even requested) this gift, so it's not so secret that I can't talk about it. It's a birth announcement for my friend's third baby. I made baby samplers for her first two babies, so she rather expected that I'd produce a third cross-stitch. I have picked out the pattern, assembled all of the supplies and started it. I should have another couple of months to work on it.

Monarch Lake Hike

2009-02-25T21:28:00.002-07:00

Coloradans certainly don't stay inside in the winter. Last weekend, instead of skiing, we decided to watch some sled dog and skijor races which were happening across the street from us. While talking with the woman running the bake sale (aka Pie Lady), I learned that we could also find moonlit cross-country ski dinners, good trails for walking dogs at Monarch Lake, and yoga classes at the community center. I haven't woken up early enough to make a 6am yoga class, but we did spend Sunday afternoon at Monarch Lake (just past Lake Granby) as did many other dog-walkers. On the way, we saw a couple dozen ice-fisherman, now that looks like a seriously cold sport. Here's a glimpse of the creek that feeds Monarch Lake.

Can you see the imprint in the snow on the bank in the photo below? There are no tracks to or from that "snow-angel". Any idea what sort of creature could have made it?
And then on Monday, it was back to skiing at the resort. Actually, we may have taken this photo on Saturday. However, you can get a lot more skiing done on Monday than Saturday. In fact, I don't think I'll ski on a weekend again in Colorado. We are quite spoiled in New Mexico with quick lift lines.

Lake Granby Hike

2009-02-21T08:08:00.002-07:00

Vixen says, "More hiking, less photographing!"

We followed the snowmobile trails so we wouldn't sink so far in the snow.

Granby

2009-02-18T20:48:00.003-07:00

We have settled, somewhat, into Granby, Colorado. Unfortunately, we discovered upon arrival that the promised high-speed internet is only available in the lobby, not in the condo itself. This was not what we were expecting, but the lobby is rather large and nice... and full of people with laptops :) I also discovered that I can get WiFi at any lodge at Winter Park, even the warming hut at 11,000 ft.

Going to the lobby for the internet gives us an excuse to sit in separate rooms anyway. Hubbers is in the condo writing about cannibilism, while I sit in the lobby crunching data and downloading articles (and doing social stuff).

I have not found where our camera was packed yet, so I have no photos to post. I hate blog posts without photos. Hopefully a lousy, photoless post is better than nothing.

So far, we've done some skiing at Winter Park and Mary Jane. Mostly greens, blues, a few blue-blacks (who knew they existed?), and one or two blacks. Today was an incredible day for powder. Tomorrow should be too.

The dogs know their way around the parking lot for their 4 walks a day. They aren't so sure about the condo life. In particular, the spiral staircase up to the loft is rather tricky. Vixen just made her way down it on her own for the first time today. She's still learning to go up the stairs without bailing out halfway. Wiley has previous experience with spiral staircases, knows he doesn't like them, and uses his handicap to beg for a carry up and down the stairs. He just got another steroid injection for his back-leg semi-paralysis from a vet in Granby, so his handicap should lessen. The condo has helped Vixen to silence her barking even more. She's practicing other ways to get our attention.

Between working, skiing and walking the dogs we've been pretty busy. There seems to be a lot of other stuff to do around here, but I don't know when we'll find the time.

Sabbatical

2009-02-03T17:50:00.005-07:00

Hubbers is on sabbatical through August. This means he has a book to write, but otherwise is not required to do all the other things that professors usually do. And I no longer have to take classes (because I passed my comps, yay!) So, we're both taking advantage of the "not-attached-to-campus" status by spending some time in Winter Park, Colorado where we should have a view like:

(photo by drocpsu @ flickr)

Some people are calling this our re-enactment of The Shining. If one of the dogs starts muttering "red rum", I'll know what it means. Actually, our lodgings should not be a deserted hotel: the description makes it sound quite lively and not rustic.

Here's my favorite part about the description of the condo we'll be living in:

1br 1 bath sleeps 6 comfortably.

Hah! Clearly, someone has a different idea of comfort than I do :) Okay, so it wouldn't be too uncomfortable if you wanted to come visit... we have room for 4 more people. We'll be there Feb 15 - March 31. As for contacting us while we're there, just use the usual cell phones, email, FB, Skype, comments on this blog...

Oh, I should mention that I am now moderating comments on old blog posts due to a splattering of spam comments that appeared one day. So if you make a comment on an old post, it may take a while for it to show up.

Knit-phobia?

2009-01-26T17:30:00.005-07:00

"Be afraid of skydiving. Be afraid of wild boar. Be fearless with knitting." - from At Knit's End by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

This quote is quite amusing to me... does it really need to be said? I've seen this talk of "fearless knitting" a lot in the past year. Maybe it was just last year's buzz-phrase, but it would seem obvious to me that knitting is not frightening. However, I did just read an article about a woman who was walking into her knitting group when she fell and stabbed herself in the heart with a knitting needle, nearly killing her. So maybe the fear is justified.

At any rate, I believe knitting and other crafts to be safe hobbies. So I am not afraid to share with you some of my recent craft failures. In the end the knitting failures are harmless because they can be stuffed into boxes where they're never seen again. House painting failures, on the other hand, are much more painful.

1. Chirstmas card holder
For Christmas, I really wanted to make something to hang on the wall that can hold all those cards that arrive in the mail. I bought some red wire and attempted to knit it into garter stitch. The idea being that it would hang on the wall and the corners of the cards could be pushed into the spaces of the garter stitches. However, it became clear quite quickly that wire is difficult to knit, and making a rectangle big enough to hold just one card would take a week.

So I tried using some gold crochet thread that I had sitting around from a previous failed knitting experience (trying to make fake gold jewelry for a toga costume). The crochet thread is knittable... but it creates such a delicate little fabric that it would take forever to make anything big and then it wouldn't have the strength to hold cards :(

The cards simply sat on a table in a pile all month.

2. Cabled hat with mohair yarn
I bought some gorgeous hand-dyed mohair months ago and have been waiting to come up with the perfect idea for it. I found a great hat pattern. The only problem was that there are cables in the hat pattern. I assumed that cables in mohair would be rather uninteresting... but I didn't realize that they are nearly impossible to knit (stitches dropping everywhere, impossible to see how many stitches are being slipped) and then the cable looks really terrible. So I had to pull that out and find a simpler pattern. That hat turned out great (bottom of this post)!

3. Card holder
Here's another failure turned success. Here's the post (the blue thingy) about the finished product. I want you to know that I actually made this little thing twice. The first time it was totally the wrong size despite my careful calculations and I thought of other little adjustments to its construction that resulted in the near-perfect finished item the second time around. I'm glad the size was so wrong the first time. If it hadn't been, then I would not have re-done it with those adjustments.

4. Pink bathroom
Our bathroom has pink and black tiles surrounding the shower, possibly from 1951. We are not removing those tiles anytime soon, so I thought it would be fun to give the bathroom a retro look. I painted the walls pale pink and bought black & white geometric patterns for the shower curtain, bath mat, etc. That pink is killing me. I tried to buy an even paler pink to sponge over to give the walls some texture... but they were nearly the same pinks. So I got a darker pink and sponged over again. Now it's a 4-year-old girl's dream room. But I'm really tired of painting, so I'll suffer with it for now.

--
Fyi, this post was 4 days in the making due to intermittent and irritating network failures. I may need a new modem.

Tome Hill

2009-01-21T11:03:00.004-07:00

For Xmas, Hubbers got a book called 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Albuquerque. On Monday, we thought we'd use the book to find a different place for a short hike. Wiley is limited to about 2, maybe 3 miles these days due to a bad back. But he really loves hiking so we don't want to leave him home. In the book, we found Tome Hill, near Los Lunas, which provides a loop hike by going up one side of the hill to some crosses, then down the other side and back to the start along a dirt road. At the top, there's a great view of the Rio Grande valley south of Albuquerque, the Manzanos and the Sandias. There were plenty of other people and a few dogs up there, so we only managed to get a couple of lousy photos before having to restrain our dogs.
Vixen gives Wiley a boost while I enjoy the view of the Sandias.

The longest week

2009-01-17T12:56:00.002-07:00

This past week may have been the longest week of my life. I'm not sure when I'll be ready to start the next week. Thanks for all of the supportive phone calls, emails, notes, survival gifts, cooking dinner, etc... I really wasn't expecting so much support for taking an exam, but it really helped a lot!

I won't find out about the results of the exam for a couple of weeks. But in the meantime, there is already one good thing to come out of this: a new stove. Yes, that's right. Hubbers has done all of the grocery shopping and most of the cooking for the past two weeks, and suddenly announced that we need a new stove. I've known this for years, but there are so many things we need, it never made the top of the list... until now. He's already done all of his Consumer Reports research and visited every appliance store in town taking meticulous notes about brands, features and prices. Frankly, I'm glad I was too busy taking the comps to accompany him on all that :) Now I just get to say, "Sure, that stove looks good, let's buy it."

More FOs

2009-01-11T21:22:00.003-07:00

Here are a few more items that I finished knitting recently. The purple and white dog-bone pillow was a "holiday" gift... it didn't get done until January, but that sometimes happens :) The white side is the last of the Irish yarn. The purple stripes happened thanks to my inability to decide between the two shades of purple. The whole thing was felted then stuffed to make it into a pillow.Just before Xmas, I had some leftover yarn and an idea. Thus, I created from scratch a little holder for all those cards sitting in my purse. I was rather excited that I was able to envision such a thing, and several hours later I turned a little ball of yarn (plus a square of velcro) into my vision.
Finally, I just finished this hat for myself which I also started before Xmas. It's made of hand-dyed Mohair from Lonesome Stone. I love the colors! Now I have enough yarn left over to make two more of these hats... or something else, ideas?
This blog makes it look like I've been a knitting machine lately. However, I simply stopped posting any finished objects after August. These things were worked on over the past several months and they are relatively small items.

Study and exercise

2009-01-10T16:34:00.002-07:00

While I have a few other finished knitted items to share with you, I'm dedicating this post to my priorities this week: study and exercise.

This coming Monday, Wednesday and Friday I will be taking the PhD comprehensive exams. It's 8 hours each day, and I've been spending the last few months studying, and the last couple of years taking classes in preparation. A few weeks ago, I decided that no matter how much more studying I felt I needed, I also needed some time for myself, especially to exercise.

When I trained for a marathon a couple years ago, I found that running the marathon itself was difficult... but not nearly as difficult as the four months of training that preceded it! Usually, when I run, I find the first 3rd of the distance to be difficult. Once I'm past halfway, I have a lot of motivation to finish. Especially when doing the marathon, I couldn't give up once I got more than halfway because I knew that would mean another 4 months of training to try again.

I fully expect these exams to be easier than the last four months of studying. Passing those exams is also the first of 3 hurdles to graduation. The next two are my dissertation proposal and the dissertation writing/defense. Hopefully, getting through the first 3rd of grad school will prove to be the hardest part. Maybe not, but taking exams gives me a lot more anxiety than it used to. However, writing and presenting does not.

Holiday gifts

2009-01-02T18:01:00.006-07:00

It started with 20 skeins of white wool from Ireland. I like to give people gifts from my travels, and so I started turning that yarn into gifts. First I had to learn to make cables, and so I started with the reversible cable scarf for the Ravelympics. That scarf turned out so well, that I did another as a gift for my father-in-law.

Then I wanted to do some mittens and hats. I found a Vogue Knitting on the Go book to help with that. But I needed more color for these mittens... thus the Kool-aid experiment. If you recall, there was some electric blue yarn too, but in an attempt to tone-down that color, I completely ruined it. Thus the mittens have two colors rather than three.
And then there were hats!

And then to mix things up a bit, I added some blue sparkle to this one.
If you have access to Ravelry, you'll get a kick out of looking up this Tivoli Aran yarn page - it's almost all me!

Revival

2009-01-01T19:17:00.003-07:00

I was first inspired to start this blog a year and a half ago by all the knitters that I know. And so I will revive it with several posts on knitting. Some travel and some other crafts may find their way back in here again as well.

This past fall, I knitted several gifts which understandably did not go on the blog at the time. So here's the first of many projects that are already done and gifted...

My first attempt at a sweater was a baby sweater for my nephew's 1st birthday. I was advised to make it the 2-year-old size so it would fit him for a while. So I searched for cute sweaters, and found a cardigan with paw prints. I didn't think that intarsia with 2 colors would be too difficult. However, I didn't realize until I was knitting that I needed 8 separate bobbins to make those 4 pawprints. The fact that there were 2 colors did not matter as much as the fact that there were 8 blocks of color. And I did most of this on an airplane :)

Here's the completed sweater. For more details on the pattern, yarn, modifications, etc... you can check out my Ravelry project page.
Not surprisingly, this gift was not nearly as exciting to the nephew as his big dump truck :) However, it's clearly big enough to last him 2 winters.
And here's a preview of things to come on the blog (I can't stop myself from actually writing the list forming in my head):
- more gift knits, including what happened to that kool-aid yarn and all that Irish yarn
- project ideas that I tried but couldn't get to work
- knitting and cross-stitch projects on the queue
- travel notes
- grad school ranting

Radical knit/crochet

2008-12-10T14:02:00.003-07:00

A friendly waiter at Flying Star told me about this video yesterday. You can fast-forward a minute into it to skip ahead to the crocheter.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Nailed 'Em - Radical Knitting

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Turkey report

2008-12-05T16:26:00.004-07:00

I finally moved the Turkey Day photos off the camera. We spent 5 days in Madison with Hubber's parents. As you can see, his dad is recovering quite well form surgery and was eager to dig into the turkey. You can always see more photos on Flickr.
Getting to Madison is at least a 20-hour drive. So we started it off by heading north on I-25, stopping in Colorado Springs to buy ski passes, and then having lunch in Denver at Hubber's grandma's house. We spent the night somewhere in Nebraska and finished off the drive the next day.

On the trip back, we took a more southerly route, picking up I-35 in Iowa. That took us straight south to Oklahoma City, where we spent the night with friends (actually, in Norman). I was rather brain-dead after the 13.5 hour drive, but we had a great dinner and settled down for an evening of football. The next day's drive would have been an easy 8-hour tour of the high plains, if it weren't for the nasty winds fighting against us. But we did make it back to NM in time to enjoy green chile cheeseburgers for dinner last Sunday.

Checking in

2008-11-28T12:17:00.002-07:00

Just a note to say that I am alive. I've been so busy lately that I haven't had much time at all for blogging. When I do have time to relax, I get far away from a computer screen.

I'm in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. It's rather chilly here, so I've stayed inside a lot. Except that I've gone for a 3-mile run in the afternoon on most days here. Tomorrow, we start the long drive back home.

Like I don't have enough to do already

2008-11-15T17:00:00.002-07:00

It seems that whenever I have too much to get done, I find something else that suddenly becomes urgent. Like last weekend when I made several pints of salsa. This weekend, I suddenly found it necessary to cook wool yarn in hot Kool-aid. I blame SavingNine and KBomb for this. They always give me knitting advice that I don't want to follow... but eventually I do. I used the microwave instructions given here and was amazed when I was done with the whole process in less than an hour (except that it's still hanging to dry). I didn't check the time at all, but I was afraid that yarn dyeing could take up half a day. For those who want to know these colors are grape and ice blue raspberry lemonade. My camera really didn't know what to make of that ice blue color.

This week

2008-11-09T21:43:00.003-07:00

It's been a rather overwhelming week... but not much to take pictures of. So enjoy a few shots of dogs. First, the very photogenic Vixen showing off her colors. Then Wiley, who is now officially retired from running, jumping, and climbing mountains. It's very sad, but the vet says his spine is degenerating and he already has lost some control of his hind leg. Last, is Kiko who was visiting for the weekend, and provided some entertainment for the other dogs.

On Wednesday I had one of the worst cold/flus ever. It hurt just to get out of bed. Fortunately, I've gotten over that (mostly).

This weekend, I finally admitted that gardening season is over. I rolled up the hoses, pulled out the dying plants and harvested the last of the tomatoes. Now I'm canning 11 pints of salsa.

I also went to the Weems ArtFest today, which is always fun. Although, I didn't buy any art. It's great to live in a place with so many artists.

The big C

2008-11-04T16:20:00.004-07:00

Cancer is always such an unwelcome surprise. I'm sick of cancer already, and I've never had it.

This gift I made for my father-in-law as he goes into surgery tomorrow to remove a tumor from his liver. Hopefully he'll enjoy watching lots of movies for the next few weeks while recuperating, and then he'll be back to normal.

I also want to encourage all female readers to join the Army of Women to support breast cancer research. The idea is to recruit one million volunteers for various research trials. I don't have one million readers, so you also have to ask your friends!

Here are some close-ups and details about the cross-stitch. The lettering was all stitched using fancy hand-dyed embroidery floss from A Different Drummer's going out of business sale. The purple/green stuff is made of silk as is the darker blue stuff on the first two lines. The turquoise floss in the middle is made of wool, and it was terrible to work with. It fuzzed up and pulled apart... how is it supposed to be used?

The bear came from a little pattern that I had, but I modified it a bit. Mostly the colors for the butterfly and the blanket thing he's sitting on.

School update

2008-10-31T08:37:00.003-06:00

This is the middle of the semester... the time when I realize that there isn't much time left, but there is so much to get done. I took a few midterms last week. I've been studying lots of disparate things for the comprehensive exams and finding some time to learn about Chinese restaurant processes.

Of course, I still find time to do some hiking with the dogs, racquetball, running, yoga, etc... I also went to the climbing gym last week for the first time in over a year. And I've had a little bit of time left over for knitting and cross-stitch. I'll post pictures of my latest project soon.

But I haven't found much time for blogging.

Frost

2008-10-25T07:25:00.002-06:00

Sadly, tomato season ended suddenly this week thanks to very cold night temperatures. Here's some photos of frostbitten plants with bajillions of green tomatoes languishing on them.

Fortunately, I harvested this 3 1/2 pound pile of tomatoes (and one jalapeno) on Wednesday before the frost hit. Combined with what I already had, it's enough to make another batch of salsa!

Random meme

2008-10-16T16:07:00.002-06:00

I got this one from GutsyMom.

Six random things about me:

I used to pronounce "meme" like "mimi" until I looked up the word last week. I used to think it simply reflected how bloggers (including me) always write about themselves, as in "me, me, me..." I still think that my first impression of the word meme is more correct than this definition.
I never earned a medal for any sport until I was in my 20's. Now I have several.
My ape-index is 0.
I'm addicted to coffee, diet coke and chocolate and do not intend to do anything about these addictions.
I'm not afraid to call myself a feminist.
I like doing meme's when I can't think of things to write... but this "write 6 random things" is like telling somebody with writer's block, "Just write something random". Where's the inspiration??

If at this point you're saying "I'm so inspired to write 6 random things about myself" then you're tagged. Go to your blog and write those things, and you can leave a comment here that you did so.

Fall colors

2008-10-13T10:52:00.003-06:00

We do get fall colors in New Mexico. The cottonwoods all along the valley turn bright gold, as do the aspen in the mountains. Red leaves are a little harder to find. Fortunately, the Fourth of July Canyon in the Manzano mountains was spared the forest fires this summer. On Saturday, Hubbers, Kristal and three dogs went for a hike to enjoy the chilly, wet, red forest.

Amazing... I always thought that black dogs (like Wiley) never show up well in photos. But now we have a dog that is nearly perfectly camouflaged in the forest.

Special Shapes

2008-10-10T18:52:00.002-06:00

If you get to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta early in the morning, this is what you get to see:
A little later, all the cool shapes start inflating, and then eventually they take off and fly away. Here are some of our favorite shapes from this morning.

And this scene of the normal-shaped balloons convinced us that next year we really need to go to a mass-ascension to see the entire field filled with these balloons.

Taos Wool Festival

2008-10-09T13:44:00.002-06:00

I went to the Taos Wool Festival last weekend and this is all I have to show for it:
I didn't take any photos during the weekend, so all you get to see is the stuff that I brought back with me. It was a beautiful fall weekend in Taos. It was chilly. It was wet. The leaves were turning golden. The sky was gray. Absolutely perfect!

Hubbers and I drove up with the two dogs and camped out on Saturday with a friend and her son. We went for a couple of short hikes and spent the rest of the time at the festival and the park.

The festival is really all about the wool... You can get beautifully dyed wool yarn, or wool for felting, or undyed yarn, or a whole fleece or even a living, breathing angora rabbit. I already had enough yarn at home to keep me busy for another year. So I bought yarn for the three months after that. Which means I won't need to buy any more until next year's festival.

Cosmos

2008-10-06T15:54:00.003-06:00

Behind me are the monster cosmos that I grew from seed this year... and in front of me is a monster basil. What's my gardening secret? Brag about the one good gardening year I've ever had and don't tell you about the previous years :)

Okay, I put 2 cubic feet of compost in this little garden in the spring. Plus, if you look closely at the lower-left corner of the photo, you'll see the timer for my watering system. The timer is much better at watering than I am. And to make it even better, this particular spot in my yard gets plenty of extra water that drips off the roof and plenty of afternoon shade. I tripled the size of this flower bed when I noticed that the weeds and grass do so well in this spot.

Vixen

2008-10-03T11:09:00.005-06:00

After watching all her shenanigans yesterday, I had to name her Vixen. It came down to a decision between Cherry and Vixen. I also realized that nearly every dog in the neighborhood has a 2-syllable name ending in "y": Wiley, Daisy, Sparky, Rocky, Baby, Candy, Holly... and Boo (I said Nearly every dog). Enough's enough! So she's Vixen. Besides, I have a fondness for reindeer names since one of my best dog-friends ever, Dasher, had a reindeer name.

Honestly, I call Wiley "Doggers" more often than I call him Wiley. So once Vixen learns her real name, I can also give her a nickname... maybe Cherry :)

Next week I'll have to think of something other than dogs to write about. That shouldn't be too hard since I'm headed up to the Taos Wool Festival this weekend, yay!

The naming continues...

2008-10-01T11:17:00.004-06:00

I forgot to include these two names which are also top contenders:
Ginger - ala Ginger Rogers
Vixen - she looks very much like a fox and according to Hubbers a vixen is a female fox (I didn't know that). It's also a reindeer name like the name Dancer which the shelter gave her.

I just discovered that she can hop over a 4-ft adobe wall like it's not there. She looked rather cat-like while doing it. And she had a great time rolling around in our neighbor's yarrow, which makes her smell like she just had an herbal treatment at the spa. We're working on training her to stay in the yard, just like Wiley, since the walls won't keep her in. Fortunately, our neighbors are quite friendly about that sort of thing.

Wiley seems to be smiling more often now that he has a playmate. She's actually quite mellow and she's smaller than Wiley so he's not intimidated by her. She doesn't disturb him while he's napping and she never invades his space. But she is tearing apart his toys which he no longer plays with. She's still getting over her shyness with us (she is a few years old and has had at least two previous homes), so I don't think we've seen her full personality yet.

Top name ideas

2008-09-30T15:25:00.002-06:00

In response to everyone's comments from the previous post: Her color is best described like a light dusting of snow on a red sandstone desert. If you've been fortunate enough to be in the 4-corners area during a winter snow... you have the right picture. Of course, these deserts always have a hint of green sage, cacti or junipers, so I'm getting her all green accessories (collar, bed, etc...)

Here are the top name ideas we have (in no particular order):

Autumn - for her color and the time of year of the adoption
Pumpkin
Cherry Bomb - or just Cherry because she's sweet
Cayenne - the first name I thought of that I really liked... but Troy doesn't like it.
Pepper
Sedona - for her red dirt coloring
Sequoia
Lucy - after the famous redhead Lucille Ball

There's more, but I can't think of them now. As you can see, nearly every name has something to do with her orange-red color. We could consider non-color names. But so far I haven't thought of many that I like.

New Pup

2008-09-28T15:44:00.002-06:00

We just added a 3-year-old red heeler to the family today. Feel free to leave name suggestions in the comments. She doesn't respond any better to the shelter's name, "Dancer", than she does to "Girly Girl".

We have more photos and stuff on Troy's webpage.

For Knitting Geeks

2008-09-21T18:31:00.004-06:00

I'm trying to finish up my Sorta Secret Sweater* and couldn't decide whether to follow the instructions in the pattern or do something different. In the pattern, I'm supposed to pick-up stitches all around the front edges of the cardigan, neck and bottom, then bind off. However, this will require a circular needle which I do not have. That problem was easily solved by ordering KnitPicks' interchangeable circular needle set.

The other problem is that the bottom edge of the sweater rolls up and doesn't look very nice. I tried to get the Tuesday Ladies to tell me how to deal with this, but SavingNine would just insist that I should try out the alternatives on my gauge sample. Of course, my gauge sample no longer exists. So I read a knitting book which recommends two rows of single-crochet along the cast-on or bind-off edge. I finally knit up a new swatch and tried out the options:The top edge is what the pattern recommends: pick up stitches and bind-off. Clearly, this edge insists on rolling. So I'm going with the bottom edge: two rows of single-crochet for the bottom of the sweater. For the sides, I like the picked-up stitches (left edge). Binding off there looks like a much neater column of stockinette stitches. The right edge is single-crochet which looks messy to me. The problem with single-crochet on a selvedge is that it creates sideways v's (they're perpendicular to the stockinette v's).

*I was going to call it a Super Secret Sweater, but then realized that anything posted to a public blog is not really secret, so I needed a new aliteration.

Speaking of home improvement...

2008-09-17T18:48:00.002-06:00

Next on my list of big ideas for the house is to install solar water heating. We have radiant floor heat, so solar hot water would heat the whole house with far less gas than we're using now. I'm not so excited about photovoltaics, because they are not cost effective. However, heating water with sunlight is much more direct. Sunlight naturally provides heat and light in abundance but not electricity.

This Saturday, I'll be going to the Solar Fiesta to attend a workshop on solar hot water. Hopefully, I'll find out how to buy and install a system that will pay for itself within 5 years. I think that's reasonable, but I'm not sure.

And if I can pull that off, my next environmentally-minded home project will be composting to reduce our amount of trash. I tried composting when we first moved in, but gave it up because it didn't seem to be working. At the State Fair, I saw a brochure on composting that might help this time around.

5 years

2008-09-15T18:25:00.003-06:00

On September 15, 2003 we closed on and moved into our house. These pictures were probably taken the next day, as there was no daylight left by the time we got to our house on the 15th. It takes hours and hours to close on a house.
A few days after moving in, while there will still boxes to be unpacked, Troy painted a wall in the office. He didn't like the dark wood paneling, and immediately wanted it painted to a bright, cheerful yellow. We did manage to unpack the rest of the boxes relatively soon after, but we haven't stopped working on the house. Here's a list of some of the work done:

Painted 5 rooms and outside trim
New flooring in half the house
New roof
Repaired wall damaged from leaking roof
New windows
Repaired and stuccoed retaining wall that holds up the entire property
Plenty of little electrical repairs
Renovated one bathroom, and put a new toilet in the other
Planted 10 trees
Leveled front yard
Replaced in-ground sprinklers with in-ground drip
Demolished old shed and put in a new one
Expanded back patio and replaced broken brick walkway

So a house is a lot of work. But I really appreciate not having to pack everything up and move every time I sign a new lease :) Plus, we have more equity in our house than debt... which is pretty cool.

Productive Weekend

2008-09-07T21:10:00.004-06:00

I feel like I got a lot done this weekend:

Walked in the State Fair parade for the Re-elect Jason Marks Campaign.
19 new plants in the ground (Plants of the SW had a great sale), and requisite drippers put into place.
7 pounds of tomatoes harvested and turned into 6 pints of salsa. I can't believe how frustrating it is to can stuff, and I keep trying it again thinking MAYBE this time I actually have enough tomatoes to make a worthwhile amount of salsa... but no. At least it tastes good.
Ran 3 miles.

If you're really paying attention, you may be asking "Hey, weren't you supposed to run a 10k today?" The answer is that I had been training for a 10k, but I had to abandon it two weeks ago due to allergies, and then couldn't get back into it because my left leg became incredibly sore. It's all better now, so the next running goal is the Duke City Marathon Relay in October where I'll do a 6.2-mile leg.

Hello from Wisconsin

2008-09-05T09:10:00.003-06:00

Actually, I'm back home from Wisconsin now, but that's a picture from our 6-day weekend in Madison. While there, we visited people, fed mosquitoes in the park, toured Old World Wisconsin (pictured below), shopped at the farmer's market and ate a lot of good food.

I also found plenty of time to knit. I'm not going to say anything more about this project because it will be a gift... if you want to know more, you'll have to see the details in ravelry. Flying is so much nicer now that I knit while listening to a book on MP3 (if you're in Abq, you can download them from the library) with noise-canceling headphones. When they make me take my headphones off for landing, I can never believe how loud the plane is.

A Year

2008-08-27T18:17:00.003-06:00

A year ago, on August 24 to be exact, I went to the doctor because something seemed wrong in my abdomen. After many more appointments and a surgery, it was determined that I had a rather large, benign, uterine tumor which was removed. I bring this up today because very recently, I received and paid the final bill for this illness. Why did it take a full year to pay for this? It had nothing to do with me paying installments, I simply never received this bill until now. That's apparently how long it can take a hospital and an insurance company to muddle through all their paperwork. I'm glad I'm not an accountant for a hospital.

During this past year, I've managed to recover completely from the surgery. In yoga class yesterday, I discovered that I'm more flexible than the average UNM student that signs up for Intermediate Yoga. And I haven't had any problems running, even doing speedwork. It may be time to start rock climbing again.

Ravelympics is done

2008-08-25T09:05:00.003-06:00

The Olympics is over, so Ravelympics is over. I finished knitting two items and received two medals. The first is a cabled scarf made from the aran yarn I bought in Ireland. I started this on the first day of the Olympics and had 1/4 of it done by the end of the day. It took 12 days to finish the other 3/4.

At that point, I was running low on time so I started the second project right away (on Aug 20). It took four days to knit up the purse. Then I felted it on Sunday. The knitting part is done, so I claimed my medal. But I still need to add the zipper and liner before I can really use the purse. Hopefully, I'll get that done tonight (I had to wait for it to dry).