Back in the game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.