I am Superman's Mother

Behold:

Grow a Bike

This is so completely awesome, I could cry. A man named Craig Calfee has developed a method for growing bamboo to make bicycle frames. According to Calfee, "bamboo is an ideal material for bicycles: It's stronger and lighter than most metals, but absorbs road vibration much better."
He uses lugs made from a hemp epoxy composite to hold the bamboo frame tubes together.
Apparently, the bike is similar in weight to an aluminum bike, but offers better performance. Sweet. Maybe I'll give up on tomatoes and start growing bicycles. Check out the full article from Wired here.

My Yard the Twilight Zone

In my blog description, I claim to write about things flowering in my head, my yard, my life, blah, blah, blah. The yard's been pretty neglected for awhile and for some reason, I feel the need to share now. Last spring, my father-in-law gave me some tomato seedlings. I found out later that these were seedlings that he started from a grocery store tomato's seeds. An heirloom tomato, but a grocery store tomato nonetheless. My father-in-law has a special talent for growing all sorts of things (and, ahem, we're not going to go into that too much) and he also has a fantastic greenhouse. He managed to get a few (I think 3) tomatoes from these particular seeds. I, being possessed of neither gardening superpowers nor a greenhouse, figured my chances for getting tomatoes from these plants were pretty slim. My tomato plants got big and busy, popped out a few flowers, and then started a slow, dramatic death. This is how dramatic:

Somewhere around the first of this month, I decided this was a lost cause and quit watering the plants. Two nights ago, Moses called me outside. This is what he found:

One renegade tomato. A survivor. The little stinker--now I have to water this plant again. After taking into account the price of the pot, the compost, and water for three months, that there is probably the world's most expensive tomato.

Other weird things have been happening in my yard. Apparently in Flagstaff there is this season called Autumn and this is what happens to trees:


Notice that reddish tinge? I understand that shortly the red will prevail, all the leaves will fall off the trees, and I will be plunged into arctic hell until about June 1st of next year.

We also have a bush that produces copious amounts of a beautiful orange berry:

There is some little kid part of me that really wants to pluck one off and pop it into my mouth just to see what it tastes like. Don't worry, I have resisted. Perhaps though, I will find out what these are and see if, perchance they are edible. Mmmm, random-orange-berry jam.

Answer That

Moses started up a new blog called "G&D Discuss Science" in which he attempts to answer Garion's various science questions. So far, we've gotten questions about rocks creating things (I don't know either, my kid is weird) and how people walk.
Tonight, Garion said, "oh, Dad I have a science question for today! How are people built, I mean how are they made? How does God make people?"

Yeah. Alrighty then.

Good luck with that, Honey.

Book a Month Challenge: September

Please take note: I am so on top of it that I am filing my Book a Month Challenge report before the month is over with. Because I rock. September's theme is "Change." I read "Farewell My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living" by Doug Fine. Apparently Doug Fine is an NPR correspondent, but I have been slavishly addicted to NPR for about 10 years and his name completely fails to ring a bell. Not a single one. Not even a little jingle bell. Perhaps he is a periodic (wannabe) NPR correspondent. Anyway, Mr. Fine sells everything he owns in some big city on the east coast and moves to Silver City, New Mexico where he purchases a small house on forty acres of land (see, this book is all about "change"--I'm on time and on theme, feel free to bask in my glory.) Mr. Fine's intent is to live as locally as possible and his book chronicles his adventures in local living: gardening, rainwater harvesting, solar panel installation, and bio-dieseling. Mr. Fine is single (or was at the time of the writing of the book), does not have children, and apparently has an endless, mysterious source of income. And the dude totally stole my dream. But he did not steal it well. I was repeatedly amazed in reading this book how not with it Mr. Fine-the-alleged-NPR-correspondent was. I must have thought to myself at least 20 times, "dude, what were you thinking?" For example, he let his chickens run around his yard, without the protection of the dog (who was confined to the house for the night for some reason that had to do with the author's girlfriend or something), and coyotes ate the chickens. And he describes this as if it was completely reasonable to think that you could let your chickens run around your yard in the desert and that they would die of old age and not coyote poultry-icide. However, it's probably unreasonable of me to think that everyone who attempts this sort of lifestyle is going to have a knowledge base of someone like Moses and it's probably good to have an honest account of the pitfalls of sustainable living out there. And also, if I were to attempt this sort of thing on my own (without Moses) I'd probably be worse off than Mr. Fine, alleged NPR correspondent, so I probably shouldn't talk. Although, I wouldn't let my chickens run around willy-nilly as coyote bait. On the upside, the book is a light funny read on pursuing the sustainable life and is very entertaining, if not completely informative, read.

No Use Crying Over Spilt Shampoo

A couple of months ago, my mom gave me an enormous bottle of shampoo. Yep, just randomly. Because nothing says "I love you" like a half gallon of shampoo (thanks Mom!). She scored the shampoo from her friend who is a hair stylist and gets major discounts on this kind of stuff. Or, at least that's what she told me. By which I mean she didn't say "Kerry, I'm concerned about your personal hygiene, here's an enormous bottle of shampoo, please use it."

Last night Garion emerged from his bath positively radiating the smell of said shampoo. Moses and I were sitting in the living room and we could smell him from the upstairs bathroom. The smell was so overpowering that Moses started sneezing, had to go sit outside for awhile, and we had to sleep with the bathroom and all of our bedroom windows open so as not to pass out from shampoo-smell-toxicity. This morning I investigated the half-gallon sized shampoo bottle. It was about 1/4 full. Before Garion's bath, I had used maybe a quarter of the bottle. That means my child used 1/4 gallon of shampoo in his bath last night. Further investigation revealed that he also used all of what was left in the liquid soap bottle (it was about half full), and a not insignificant amount of baking soda, which I normally use to wash Garion's hair because, up until last night, he has hated shampoo.

Garion and I then had a long conversation about appropriate shampoo and soap use. Looking to end the discussion on a positive note, I said to Garion, "but you remembered to wash your hair with soap?." To which Garion responded, "um, no, I forgot."

Book a Month Challenge: August

August's (yeah I know it's been September for 10 days now) Book a Month theme was "cold." I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Into Thin Air recounts Krakauer's experience's as part of a climbing expedition that attempted to summit Everest in the spring of 1996. Krakauer has clean, crisp writing style that is both straight forward and engaging. The book starts starts at the end of the expedition; Krakauer recounts reaching the summit, and gives a brief, vivid, glimpse of the complete mental and physical exhaustion he experienced by the time he reached the summit. In these first pages, the reader also meets the members of Krakauer's expedition group and we learn immediately that the expedition ends in terrible tragedy when three of the members of the expedition team, including its leader, and five other climbers die that day after a storm with hurricane force winds traps 17 people overnight on the mountain without shelter. Krakauer then leads the reader through the history of climbing Everest as well as some of the extraordinary preparation for a climb of this magnitude. His story moves gracefully to the present expedition and he carefully examines each of the factors--known and speculated--that contributed to the disaster of summit day. The book was fascinating not just for the train-wreck aspect, but also for its account of the enormous physical difficulties involved in summitting Everest. You hear "29,000 feet" and think, yeah that's high, but Krakauer's account of altitude acclimatization brings home just what an extraordinary feat it is to survive at that altitude. He reminds the reader that a person who was picked up in say, Los Angeles, and dropped on the summit of Everest without acclimatization would immediately pass out and then die soon after. I think that Krakauer's account of his own role in the tragedy was insightful and honest and that's part of what made this book so compelling. Krakauer admits at one point in the book that having a journalist on the expedition might have been not only unfair to the other members of his team--they weren't expecting to have their every quirk exposed for posterity when they signed up for the expedition--but might have, on some level, also pressured the expedition leader to have get all of his members to the summit or at least prompted some poor decisions. Krakauer's expedition team was on the mountain during the same season that IMAX filmed its Everest documentary and the IMAX film makes a nice compliment to Krakauer's book--I'd highly recommend both.

I WASN'T LAST!!!!!

....which, considering how hard the Imogene Pass Run is, is just freaking incredible. I came in 1061st of the 1071 people who finished the race. I wasn't even last in my age group! I was second to last : ). And also, I didn't hurt myself in any way that involves blood or broken bones! My time was 6 hours, 26 minutes, and some change. Moses, my wonderful, loving husband stayed with me the whole race although he easily could have smoked me by a couple of hours; I think that maybe he isn't ready for single parenthood. Or possibly, he didn't want to have turn around and start hiking up again to identify my body. When I say that this race is really hard, I mean that it is the second most physically demanding thing I have ever done in my entire life, the first most physically demanding being childbirth. In order to finish the race, participants have to make 7.5 miles in 2.5 hours. I made it with about 10 or 15 minutes to spare and at that point, I was sort of wishing that I hadn't made it because then I could have turned around. At mile 8, I was wishing that I had turned around regardless because I was really feeling the altitude and I nearly left 3 half cups of Gatorade, a handful pretzels, and a few Cliff Shots in a semi-digested heap on the side of the mountain. I think the only thing that really prevented this was that there was nowhere to hide, I would have had to puke in front of strangers and I have a firm rule that I never puke in front of strangers. If I had had a sharp implement handy at mile 9, I would have used to put myself out of my misery. At mile 9 you turn a corner and can see the summit, which is still a mile away. A very long, very, very, steep, rocky mile away. Mile 9 posed a nasty dilemma: I really didn't want to go on. But, the only way off the mountain, besides air vac or search and rescue, was to go one more mile up and seven more down or turn around and go 9 miles back down and then have to find a ride from Ouray back to Telluride (because we were staying in Telluride where the race ends). There was no good way out, so I opted for just going forward. It also helped to have Moses there with me. After a short eternity (it took me as long to do miles 7.5 -- 10 as it did to do miles 0 -- 7.5) we made it over the pass and started working our way down to Telluride. The last 7 miles were, of course, much easier than the first 10, but my legs were really, really cooked. I couldn't even muster enough energy to run over the finish line. By that point I didn't care and we just walked over. Moses, still being super nice, made sure that I got to cross before him (I didn't actually notice this at the time because I urgently needed to pee and I was intensely focused on finding a bathroom, but when we saw the results, he confirmed that he stopped so that I crossed first). I'm going to nominate him for husband of the year.

The weekend in general was fantastic. We had a great time with my brother and his wife, in-laws, and friends. There were about 30 people in our group, 30 incredibly laid back, nice, people who were really fun to hang out with. Nancy, my brother's mother-in-law, did all the meal planning, shopping, and made the lodging arrangements and it was all top-notch (my brother definitely won the in-law lottery). Everybody helped with meal prep and clean-up and there were no catastrophes. In fact, I think that just about everyone from Flagstaff who was in Telluride this weekend ended up at our group's house for dinner after the race. And possibly we might have picked up a few random people who happened to be passing by, saw the keg on the front porch, and thought that "hey! this looks like a good place for dinner." Telluride is beautiful and someday we will go back there when we are not Imogening. After the race on Saturday, we took the free gondola (every town should have a free gondola) over to Mountain Village and had coffee and watched some kids doing some crazy bungee trampoline thing (which was also free); 30 tired people sitting in the square, drinking coffee, and cheering on random kids--and couple of people from our group--whenever they managed a flip on the bungee trampoline thing. It was awesome. I'm not sure that I really want to do the Imogene Pass Run again (I told Moses to not let me do it again) but the rest of the weekend was so nice I might get sucked in. So I should maybe start training.

Imogene Here We Come!

We're leaving for Telluride tomorrow--woohoo! Moses decided that he doesn't like Gatorade so he concocted his own formula of electrolyte replenishing drink. It's composed of lime juice, fresh saved ginger, salt, honey, and water. I had a sip and it nearly killed me on the spot--there is no way on God's green earth that I could ever choke that stuff down on the trail. He's a tough guy though so he can handled that kind of stimulation (the overwhelming flavors--and I do mean overwhelming--where lime and salt but it had a sort of spicy aftertaste).
While we were discussing what to bring, Garion said, "make sure you have your first aid kit, and second aid kit, and third aid kit." The kid know his mom!
Stay tuned for the gory aftermath.