Pedal Los Pueblos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.