Pinewood Derby

OK, I'm rolling with the blogs tonight...

This is one from earlier this spring. Over the holidays when we were in Wichita, we cut out the basic shape for Quinn's Pinewood Derby car on Grandpa's band saw. We kept the shape simple. At home we finished it up with some chiseling, sanding, drilling, and painting.

We drilled holes in the back for cylindrical weights, and filled the holes with epoxy, then smoothed them with putty. We recessed the bottom of the car and screwed flat weights underneath. The car has to weigh not more than 5.0 oz, and getting as close to that but not over is critical for a winning car -- which probably means that 5.09 oz. is the weight to target. We took the car to Playmakers and used the digital shoe scale to get the weight to 5.1 oz. We had some small screws in the bottom we planned to remove to bring it down to exactly 5.0 oz at the official weigh-in, held the night before the race. Unfortunately, on the official scale we were only at 4.9 oz. We had brought some extra little screws I could have added to the bottom to get it up to 5.0 (we even had pre-drilled holes), but at that time, for some reason I just didn't bother. In hindsight, I sort of wish I had, since we'd gone to the effort to polish and dry-lube the axles; I should have added that extra 0.15 oz.

It was fun to build. Quinn did much of the sanding, and most of the painting. I got to use the power tools and chisel.



The car did pretty well, making through first series of races and into the top six. Here, Quinn's car wins another heat:



On the polished aluminum track, the cars were fast, and the time-difference between winning cars was often down to less than 0.01 seconds. Quinn's car came in 6th overall. The overall winner is that red car second from the right.



The race was run fairly, and in good fun, which made it a good experience. We've thought we might do cub scouts again for the sole purpose of making next year's winning car. But I don't think we will.

Spring Sports

I took Quinn to his soccer games each Saturday this spring. Cindy had to work and couldn't make it to any of them. You would think I would have taken a bunch of pictures, right? Well, given my excellent organizational skills, we were lucky to make it to the game with his cleats and uniform -- not once did I remember a camera. This first picture was taken with my phone, which is pretty worthless as a camera. I had to send this image to Abbey's phone as picture message, and she was able to email it me from her phone. Even our other cameras are just little point-and-shoots. For these sporting events it would be nice to have a digital SLR. Maybe someday.

This was Quinn's first time playing soccer. He played very well and very hard, especially for a first-timer.



Since Abbey's lacrosse tournaments usually last all day, I had plenty of time to go back home and get my camera.

Abbey can run pretty fast when she wants to. Yes, that's her; number 44. She usually played mid-field when she wasn't playing goalie.




Here, Abbey is playing goalie. In the last game, I watched her block two solid shots, one of which she blocked with her hip. The ball hit her just above her thigh pad. She also knocked down another shot that probably would have missed the goal anyway. Not one got passed her, so she was pleased with her final half as goalie.

She looks a little angry here, doesn't she?

School is Out

We finally reached the end of the 2010/2011 school year. I think the kids always find the last day bitter sweet, although I'm not sure they'll admit it. Starting next week we'll be looking at the onset of the summer doldrums.

Abbey missed only one day of school this year. Quinn had missed none until today. Yesterday, on the very eve of the last day of school, Quinn was stricken with a high fever and most painful headache, forcing him to miss his last day of school. Rarely have I seen him so sad. Tonight, we are still battling to keep his temperature out of triple digits.

The last six weeks of school were just about the busiest we've seen yet. Little wonder he should have a headache. Quinn was in cub scouts, playing soccer, and of course playing the piano. Abbey was playing lacrosse (four nights a week and a tournament nearly every weekend) and playing the piano and trumpet. There was plenty of homework, too. We had at least two activities going on just about every evening. On top of that, I did a couple of bike races, we've been moving walls in the basement, and Cindy has been painting the basement.

A most unfortunate reprieve from piano lessons came these last three weeks, when the kids's teacher, Mrs. Black, became ill and had to spend some time in the hospital. This meant no spring recital, but with everything else I don't know that Q&A could have found time to polish and memorize two piano pieces each.

The other unfortunate reprieve, of course, was Cindy's abrupt halt to her marathon training with the onset of a hip injury. She'll have to try again this fall or next spring. On the positive side, this has meant an earlier start to our bicycling season.

We're interested to see if Abbey was able to maintain her usual stellar academic performance through the last month. I'm betting not. How shall we punish her? Quinn of course, maintained his usual rowdy academic performance right up to the last day. How should we punish him?

Quinn's class went to the Meridian Historical Village this spring. It's a standard 2nd grade field trip. The village is great little spot just up the road where some of Okemos's first buildings were moved and are now maintained. Quinn really seemed to enjoy it - especially making and eating butter. Late 1800s dress was encouraged for the trip, and everyone was required to limit their vision to black and white.

Quinn, on our porch the morning of the trip to the historical village (our house was built in '62):



Here's Abbey, in second grade, on her trip to the Meridian Historical Village. Cindy made the dress:

Mouse Toes

Poor Amos. He's had a couple of little bumps on the webbing between two toes on one front paw. We're not sure what caused them - possibly the result of something he steppe don. He'd been licking the area for a few weeks, turning it red and bloody and sore with his tongue. Yesterday the bumps were removed by his doctor, but now he has stitches between his toes and he has to wear the cone of shame.

Get well soon, Mouse!

Easter Sunday on the Blue Burleys

Sunday morning; Easter candy; waffles for breakfast; more drywall mud. Sore butts from a long and bouncy ride the day before. Rain, rain, and more rain. Will it ever end?

Sunday afternoon, finally pulling the blue Burleys off the wall, we went on a road ride with some friends from Playmakers. The rain held off for us, and yesterday's strong westerly wind had blown itself out. The air was chilly, perhaps 50 F, but with a little sun and no wind, we weren't complaining. Well, not about the weather anyway, but after spending three hours in the saddle the day before on such a bumpy ride, we were all complaining about our bruised and tender butts!

We'd been playing around with our seating arrangement last fall, and the tandems were still configured for father/daughter and mother/son seating. To keep things simple, we left them this way for this 30-mile ride to Sleepy Hollow State Park. With Abbey's nearly full-sized body on the back of big Burley I had run 95 psi in the tires instead of the usual 75 psi I'd been using with Quinn. I probably could have backed off the pressure in the tire under Quinn on the little Burley, but I didn't think about it.

A couple of weeks ago, Steve, the guy in the orange jersey riding the Waterford, asked us if we'd be interested in doing an Easter Sunday ride. It was going to be Lizzie's first of the season so they were looking at something short and easy. Both working at Playmakers, Steve and Lizzie are very fit runners, so I guess they thought a 30-mile ride on some hills would be a good place to start the season. We were really glad to have someone ask us along for a ride, but we warned them that for a ride of that length this early in the season, 12 mph would be all we could expect to average. As evidenced by Cindy's garmin data, we averaged about 11 mph. The ride and the pace were nice. Plenty of time for chatting and checking out the scenery.

As a last-minute addition to the group, Bob, also a Playmakers staffer, also rode with us. Bob was clearly the strongest rider in the group, but if he minded the slow pace he didn't complain. Bob's getting ready to take his new touring bike, a Surly Long Haul Trucker, which has not yet arrived, on a 2-week unsupported expedition in the Canadian Rockies. Nice. Bob also has a new 29er mountain bike and we're hoping we can do a relay race with him this summer. Unless we move somewhere first.





We did really well on the ride, set up as we were. Cindy is strong right now, in the midst of her intensive marathon training program. Quinn and Abbey did a nice job of pulling their share of the load. I even popped my feet off the pedals and had Abbey push us up a long steep climb on her own. I didn't think she'd be able to do it. But she did. This should be a good year of cycling for us!

Lakelands Rail Trail

Oh, what a week it has been! Nerves in tatters. If I'd had the foresight to see the events of this week when I passed up a job opportunity with NOAA Fisheries a couple of weeks ago, this week would have been different, because we'd be packing! But I'll save that story for another day.

For now, let us back up just a few days to the weekend of 23 April:

Saturday morning, smearing mud on fresh drywall in the basement kept us busy. I do enjoy building walls, and the improvements to our laundry area will, I hope, be one more step towards getting us out this place. And, if we never do, it will at least make spending our lives here a little more tolerable.

Being a holiday weekend there were no soccer games, lacrosse tournaments, or bicycling events on the calendar, so we got to make our own fun. Cindy had the weekend off because we'd planned to go camping to make up for the weather-related cancellation of our spring break camping trip, but since the rain was still coming down like the tears of a half-giant who'd lost his baby dragon, we'd once again cancelled the camping, this time replacing it with a couple of shorter bicycling trips.

We had previeously noticed a rail trail passing through the small towns of Stockbridge and Gregory. We learned that it was the Lakelands Trail, one of Michigan's linear state parks, comprising about 13 miles of rail trail, surfaced with crushed-rock, and open to most types of non-motorized recreation. With our skinny-tired blue Burleys, we've avoided significant amounts of non-paved surface, but now that we have the two fat-tire tandems rolling, all of these soft surfaced trails are open to us.

It was a chilly and very windy Saturday, but the Lakelands Trail was quite nicely sheltered in most places by trees and hills or berms. We started at its western terminus, and rode eastward. The trail passed through a few suburban housing areas, but mostly through farmland, patches of fragmented second growth forest, and noisy wetlands. The frogs, spring peepers, I think, probably among others, were singing at their best, and it sounded just like the final track on Neko Cases's "Middle Cyclone."

The setting was quite nice, as I said, but the trail surface was not quite nice for bicycling. All sections of the trail were covered in a finely crushed rock, much of which had a particle size similar to course sand intermixed with some fine sand. In some sections, this material was compacted sufficiently to make a smooth and firm surface for our tires to roll across, although we had to pick a path through the horse prints.



In most sections of the trail, however, the surface was substantially churned by horse prints, and we could not find a firm enough or smooth enough surface for comfortable bicycling. Even with the big-hoop 29ers and suspension fork on the Fandango tandem, the constant pounding from riding on the rough surface fatigued my arms (and butt), and the skin on my arms began to itch from the constant vibration. It was probably even worse for the girls on the Cannondale tandem with its rigid fork.

When we set out, we thought we would cover the 13 miles of trail out and back pretty easily since it was a flat rail trail. We did not. We rode for at least and hour and a half, but did not complete 13 miles before we decided to turn back. The trail surface had continued to deteriorate as we rode eastward, and it soon began to feel like we were trying to cycle on a rough, dry, sandy beach: progress was very slow and difficult. We passed four horses on the trail, and I would have to say those big feet and long legs were better suited to the trail surface than were our wheels. This condition, of course, was the result of those feet.



It was a good day for seeing wildlife. Many waterfowl, shorebirds, and red-winged blackbirds were out in the marshes; we looked for the frogs we could hear, but they were hard to find. Not surprisingly, we saw a heard of at least 15 deer. We saw a wood chuck a couple of times as we passed his home, and we saw this water snake lounging in the sun on his island of grass.



We stopped to take some photos of this strange creature. At first we worried it might be dangerous, and Cindy and Abbey kept their distance while I took some photos, but after observing it for a while, we concluded it was in fact mostly harmless.



After returning to the car and loading up the bikes, we took the shortest route to the ice cream shop, where we stopped for a round of milkshakes for the drive home.

Yankee TT

I raced on my Nickel in the Yankee Springs Time Trial today. It was my first mountain bike race, so I raced in the Sport category rather than in the Beginner. I just didn't feel like a beginner. It went pretty well, I guess. I didn't sign up until the last minute, so consequently I started last in the Sport Men's 40-44 age class. At 1 hour and 9.1 seconds, I finished 15th of 39 in that class, so I must have passed 24 riders in that age class alone. I got passed a couple of times, too. If I'd had that time in the Beginner category, I'd have taken first in my age group. If you're interested, the complete results are here.

I had a distinct advantage over many other riders: I was on my Santa Cruz Nickel with 5" of suspension travel front and rear, so instead of having to tip-toe my way around the course like those poor guys on their lightweight and delicate, plastic 29er hardtails, I could just hammer the fastest lines, rough or smooth, up or down! Really, though, most folks around here ride hard-tail 29ers (like our new black tandem), which means they have no rear suspension and have bigger wheels than the 26 inchers on my bike. The idea is that those big wheels are faster because of the lower angle of attack, and that on a smooth trail a hard-tail is faster than a bike with rear suspension because it doesn't bob and suck up energy. Both ideas are probably correct to some extent, but my Nickel felt just fine to me. I was glad to have that dual suspension when going up or down the rough stuff, even if it wasn't all that rough.

The time trial worked like this: Groups of racers started in clusters based on category. The top categories, Elite and Expert, started first, then Tandem, then Sport, and then Beginner. Within each cluster, or category, racers started singly or in pairs, every 10 or 15 seconds. Starting position within each category was in order of time of registration. So with number 409, I started almost at the back end of the Sport Category. The reason I rode Sport was because I didn't want to be stuck behind a bunch of slower riders in the Beginner category. As it happened, I was stuck behind a bunch of slower riders in the Sport category (if I'd realized that, I would have signed up weeks ago). That's OK, because if I hadn't been at the back, I probably would have ridden too fast, burned out too early, and finished with an even slower time!

This was the windiest day we've had yet this spring, with gusts that must have been at least 30 mph. The temperature was in the upper 30s around noon when I started, and snow flurries were being whipped around in the wind. It was quite chilly. I wore tights and a jacket, and was reasonably comfortable except for the numbness in my two outer fingers on each hand for most of the ride.

The course was about 11 miles of the 13 we did the week before. Rain yesterday had moistened and packed the sand, so the trail felt fast. I wore Cindy's Garmin Forerunner, so I should be able to review my race on the map, with speed and elevation and all that fun stuff. However, something happened when we plugged in the Garmin to upload the data; it locked up and we had to reset it, and now there are no activities on it all. A reset doesn't normally clear any records, but whatever happened this time took the watch back through the whole setup process. Oh well, so much for that. The map from last week's ride on the same course is available, here, only this time I did the loop a little faster.

Riding away from the starting line:



Nearing the finish line:



Crossing the finish line:



Quinn also raced today, too. He raced in the kid's race, for which a special loop of about 2/3 mile had been set up on part of the warm-up loop. It wasn't organized with quite the attention to detail that that was given to the full race. For some reason, they started the younger riders first in the kid's race, I suppose to give them a head start. Maybe five or six kids, the 6- and 7-year-olds, lined up in front and started first. One of them was fast, and he got in front and won the race by a couple of minutes. Some of the others could barely keep their bikes on the trail. Quinn's group, the 8- and 9-year-olds, went next and quickly caught up with the first group and were then stuck behind them on the tight single-track. We couldn't see the course, but Quinn said that at some point the course left the tight single-track and went through a wider grassy area, but the girl in front crashed when it widened and Quinn and another boy piled on top of her. Quinn quickly picked up his bike and finally got around her. After that he lead the pack for the rest of the race. He was pleased, and had obviously ridden quite hard once the field had opened up. At least one of us came home with a trophy!

Here's Quinn finishing his race:

Yankee Springs Half Marathon and Fandango First Ride

Taking advantage of window between spring showers, we stole Friday afternoon for a trip to Yankee Spring Recreation Area. I've known about and wanted to ride the 13-mile bicycling trail at Yankee Springs, about 70 miles to our southwest, for quite some time. With the new tandems set up for Quinn and me, it seemed like the time had come. No, it wasn't actually a half-marathon of the running sort, it was a bicycle trail ride, but the distance matched.

The trail at Yankee Springs was really nice; many thanks to the Southwest MMBA Chapter and the MDNR for all the work to build and maintain the trail and the nice facilities (included a clothes changing station) at the Staging Area.

The trail conditions were great this weekend. The trail had only been thawed enough to ride for a couple of weeks, and recent rains had left much of the sandy trail damp and tacky, but there was almost no mud. There were a few areas of deep sand, which I understand will grow larger and deeper as the summer progresses, but none of the sandy spots gave us significant trouble.

The trail is generally smooth and flowing with gently bermed turns and a few rooted climbs and descents. The terrain is notably more contoured than most of what is closer to home for us. It climbs over forested ridges and descends passed lowlands and marshes as it loops around the Devils Soup Bowl, which the MDNR describes as "a glacially carved kettle formation." In some places the trail ran along the edge of the bowl, with steep forested hillsides sloping frighteningly downward; frightening, particularly if you're an 8-year-old on the back of a tandem weaving through the trees at break-neck speed.

Cindy and Abbey rode their single bikes, while Quinn and I shared the new tandem.





Most of the forest comprised deciduous trees, which had not yet sprouted leaves.



In some areas, pine trees dominated, giving the trail the look and feel of some of the trails we rode in Colorado.



Although most of the trail was smooth and easy, allowing the local racers to speed through on hardtails and rigid 29ers, there were a descents and climbs that gave our team pause. For this particular section, we'd had to stop and scout the trail to make sure there weren't any drop-offs that might cause someone to go over the bars. After a quick survey, Abbey tackled it with ease.



Abbey really did quite well on her Chameleon, handling obstacles and hills that I thought might have stopped her.



However, we did not bring enough (any) food with us on this trip, and with a late afternoon start, we were getting quite hungry and low on energy after a couple of hours of riding.



Abbey is making use of solar power, placing her face in the sun to soak up some calories, while the rest of us watch in awe at her abilities. Cindy probably wished she had solar cells in her face, too, since she'd run 16 miles the day before and consequently started this ride with leg muscles already sore and shaky.



This 13 mile trail ride, equivalent in length (but not difficulty) to a half-marathon run, was quite successful. We didn't hammer it out in record time, but that wasn't our goal. The trail was fun and scenery was nice, and we gave our legs a good first-ride-of-the-season workout.

The new (used) Fandango mountain tandem worked really well for Quinn and me. We only had two incidents in which the boy was launched from the bike. The first being a simple case of me stopping us quickly and attempting to lean against a tree, but losing control of the front wheel and tipping the bike over. It was a good laugh. The second was a little more painful for him. We were trying to wield the bike around a tight bend with a few big roots roots to climb, and lost our speed; I had to put a foot down and the bike tipped to the side, rolling Quinn off to the left on the roots and rocks. He survived, but in his eyes, just barely.

I found the biggest challenge to be just that: navigating around corners and simultaneously over roots and rocks. Although the captain of a tandem can un-weight the front end to some extent, it's not possible to 'wheely' over stuff as can be done on a single bike. For getting through those spots, the tandem requires momentum, balance, strength, and commitment. The squishy fork is very helpful, too. I wish I could get more progressive dampening out of this one for better small bump squish.



Here's the report from Cindy's Garmin:

Garmin Connect Link

Spring?

It feels like spring here today. It's 50 degrees F this morning, and by this afternoon it's supposed to reach 58! Of course, the temps are back below freezing and snow is in the forecast for the weekend.

I pulled out the Soma yesterday for a 10-mile lunchtime road ride. If I can bring myself to spend the $40 on the registration fee, I'm going to to enter the Barry-Roubaix Killer Gravel Road Race that's March 26. I'm not sure I will enter, but I'm training towards it. I'm not sure which bike I'll ride if I do it, either the Soma or the Nickel, depending on the weather and whatever else.

Also on the schedule for spring is the Yankee Springs Time Trial. It's a mountain bike race, and will be our first. I'm going to enter myself and both kids. I'm interested in giving it a try to see what it's like. I'm sure I'll win the Men's Sport class for my age group! It will be a tough ride for the kids: it's an 11-mile loop on single track trails that are supposed to be challenging and well-maintained, but at times rather sandy. What does "well-maintained" actually mean in this case? Cindy will probably follow Quinn and Abbey so they won't have to be out there on their own in case they need some help. We'll plan to preview the course a couple weeks before the race.

Today Cindy is doing a 10-mile training run with her running partner, Ckat. Amos is going, too. Although it's cloudy and a little windy, it should be a nice day for it. She has 14 weeks left to train for the Bayshore Marathon, which will be her first.

We're all looking forward to spring.

Home Sled Run

The kids have been doing their best to enjoy the snow. I'd estimate we got an additional foot last week with the big storm. Our schools were closed for two days. This weekend we build a sled run in the front yard. We made use of the natural slope of the front yard, the pile of snow Cindy shoveled out of the driveway, and the berm pushed up by the street plow. The kids and I just had to build a pile big enough for a starting platform beside the tree.

MMBA Expo Pump Track

Today was the MMBA Annual Meeting and Expo at the MSU Pavilion. From my perspective, the big attraction for most visitors was the swap meet and bike shops with booths of stuff for sale. There was also a silent auction and some seminars and meetings. I volunteered to sit at the MMBA merchandise table in the morning, which involved little more than sitting near the Pavilion entrance and directing visitors toward the event. My presence wasn't really needed, but I suppose I was there just in case.

After lunch, we all came back to ride the other main attraction at the Expo: the pump track. In a matter of a few hours, a small group of men with machines and shovels constructed an indoor pump track. It was a blast. Quinn rode his Trek and Abbey her Chameleon. That green Chameleon makes a pretty good pump track bike, and Abbey and/or her bike attracted the attention of couple of the guys on dirt jump bikes. She even got some personalized instruction on riding the track. I decided to bring the Nickel, which isn't the best pump track bike around for a couple of reasons, but it worked. Cindy rode a few laps on the Chameleon, which seemed to be a pretty good fit for her. Quinn did really well -- he certainly the fastest of the 8 and under crowd. Even Abbey will have to admit that Quinn was quite a bit faster than her, despite the appeal of her green lizard. I think it's all about having the confidence to push hard, and overcoming the fear of going down.

Some pictures of the pump track have been posted: click here to see them. Look closely and you'll find Quinn in several of them and me in one of them.

Although it can be done, a dual suspension bike isn't really first choice hardware for pump tracking. The squishy rear end sucks up leg energy that should be converted into forward motion on each roller. I attempted to offset that by pumping some extra air in my rear shock before the ride, but it was still squishy. Also, even with it as low as it can go, the seat on the Nickel is still high enough that it gets in the way. You really need to be able to bring the rear wheel almost up to your butt for maximum pump track speed. Something like this should work: The Santa Cruz Jackal...

Nonetheless, I think I did alright with the Nickel, despite being the only rider with clipless pedals and dual suspension. I'm pretty sure I was one the fastest in the 40 and over crowd. Of course, pushing as hard as I could around the track, I blew over the top of the north berm twice, and each time went down pretty hard. It was too much fun.

Basketball and a Winter Idiot

Q&A are playing basketball on Okemos Community Ed teams again this year. It's a lot of fun and they have really great coaches. They each have one practice a week and a game on Saturday. Games are eight minute quarters with a substitution at four minutes, so every kid gets approximately equal playing time. This year Quinn's age group is playing four on four; I'm not sure why.

They do not officially keep track of score in Quinn's games, I suppose to keep the focus on fun and learning, although some of the kids always think they know the score. The unofficial score this week, according Quinn (he's likes numbers so it's likely that he's right), was 22 to 26, with Quinn's team on the losing end. Quinn's ball handling is getting quite a bit better this year, and he's doing a nice job of grabbing rebounds and quickly following with shots. He took several shots this game, and a couple of them sunk.

Here he's grabbed a lose ball after a missed shot, and is getting ready to take it back to the basket.



Quinn is really good at sticking with his quarry on defense. By the way, those black and yellow things on his feet are his brand new Reezigs. We tried, but they have their own ideas, you know.



This was Abbey's third game of the season. In her age group they are keeping track of score, and the games can be pretty intense. They won their first game quite easily, lost the second game in a really close 22-20, and tied 22-22 in this week's game. They even played 2 minutes of overtime, but the tie remained. Abbey is among the taller of the girls on the court, and has a pretty good shot. I think she made two or three shots this game. Like Quinn, she plays a really tough defense, and is starting to get comfortable with fighting for rebounds under the basket.

Here she's grabbed a rebound and is heading down court.



On the move to receive a pass, we can see her taped fingers. Rebounding can be painful. It's still swollen and turning purple, but she got through her piano lesson tonight without Mrs. Black taking notice.



This is the Winter Idiot. This guy lives in our neighborhood and we see him out bicycling all the time. Can't he figure out that cycling is a seasonal sport? Sunday morning the low here was -9 degrees F! In the afternoon the sun shone and the temperature rose to 10 degrees, so the guy rolls his bike out his back door, flies off his deck through a big snow drift, and pedals down the sledding path through the ditch in front of his house, shouting something about training and riding in the woods and pedaling to the pump track as he raced off down the snow-packed street. Idiot. The pump track is covered in 8 inches of unpacked snow with a hard crusty layer on top. He couldn't ride there even though he tried.



Cindy saw this picture of the idiot and said something that sounded like "dork."

The Chaos and Tranquility of Winter

Chaos usually dominates. Especially when we travel to Kansas for Christmas and Q&A's birthdays. Sometimes in the midst of all the chaos, we find some tranquility, usually associated with snow or sleep. Chaos can be at once social, temporal, visual, and auditory. Tranquility can show up anywhere in the mix. The kids and Grandpa Nick often seek tranquility painting houses or landscapes in the train room in his basement.

Recent tradition on trips to Kansas has been dinner with Cindy's parents and a semi-quiet evening opening a few gifts Christmas Eve. Christmas morning the kids usually open a few more gifts before heading out to Grandpa and Grandma Nick and Bonnie's for the day.

Here's Quinn on Christmans morning in his skulls and crossbones.



With a day or two respite from all the Christmas gatherings and festivities, it's time to celebrate a couple of birthdays. We split the difference and had a party on December 29th.



Abbey happy with sock monkey hat and moon chair.



It's traditional that we visit the Sedgwick County Zoo while we're in Kansas for the holidays. This time we went with a group of seventeen, if my count is correct. It was a beautiful day to be outside. See the blue sky?



Our return trip to Michigan was mostly uneventful. We had sun and a tailwind most of the drive and nobody stole any of our stuff this time. It was interesting to note that within half an hour of crossing the Indiana-Michigan line, the sky became cloudy and snow began to fall.

Now we're back to the usual post-holiday mix of work and school, basketball and music lessons, running and bicycling, and paying the bills.

This winter I've been getting in one good snow ride each weekend. Last weekend, Amos and I went to Anderson Park. When it's just the two of us at the park, I don't feel too bad about letting him run leashless, although on that trip we shared the park with one other cyclist and his big fluffy dog. The dogs were civil. Amos is getting really good about returning to my side when I call, and he so loves to run the trails. There was only a little snow, and it was light and fluffy with hard frozen ground underneath. The riding was not difficult, but a little slippery. In this I find tranquility of the mental or spiritual sort, although with a substantially elevated heart rate, my body finds it less tranquil.



It's hard to imagine getting by without a mini-van. The Nickel and the dog and gear all fit inside. Visual chaos.



The following day, Amos and I took Quinn out for a neighborhood run-and-ride in the snow. We had such a good time -- I wish I'd had a camera. We probably ran only four miles, but with stops it took us more than hour. First we stopped at the local sledding hill and Quinn rode his bike down the hill a few times. After that, as we continued our ride, Quinn worked on getting up speed and grabbing his rear brake, spinning 180s on the snow pack (he was using flat pedals, not clips). Finally, stopping at the school where the kids play on mounds of snow pushed up from the parking lot, Quinn worked on riding his bike up and down the icy mounds. It was a crazy good time and nobody even got hurt. Quinn said it was the "best run-and-ride ever!"

Yesterday was another day of big fun in the snow. Cindy had the day off, so she took Q&A to Abbey's basketball game at 9 a.m. I left about the same time to go meet a group of MMBA guys at Anderson Park. I wish I'd seen Abbey's game: her team lost 22 to 20, in a really tight game with other team scoring the winning points in just the last few seconds, but my ride at Anderson was interesting; I won't go into too many details here, but with six inches of new snow on the ground it was very challenging. The snow hides slippery roots, any corner is precarious, and any climb presents a traction challenge. It was an aerobic workout at the bottom of the gear range. There were four other riders and three left after the first 1.6 mile loop. One of the riders who left early was on a single-speed 29er, and despite his big hoops his 32-17 gearing was just too tall for the conditions. The other two riders were probably hindered by their slightly narrower less aggressive tires. I attribute some of my advantage to my tires: Very lightly used, aggressive tread, with lots of sharp knobs, and running at only 20 psi. The other evident advantage I had was aerobic fitness.

After the ride, I changed into dry clothes in the car and met Quinn at Burchfield Park for an afternoon cub scout "Polar Bear" outing, involving cross-country skiing and sledding. We rented some boots, skis, and poles for Quinn at the park and spent almost 2 hours skiing groomed trails along the Grand River. These are some of the same trails the MMBA maintains for bicycling during the summer, but are officially closed to bikes once the first snow falls. I'm really bummed that I left the camera in the car for this. Quinn did very well on the cross-country skis, and he really loved it. We will definitely have to do that again and bring the girls.

After the skiing, we swapped ski boots for snow boots and trudged over to the sledding hill. We brought one of our sleds, but the park rents tubes that were even more fun. The hill was icy and fast, at (I'm guessing, here) about 100 vertical feet and maybe 100 yards long. I don't know how many times Quinn (and I) slid down that hill and trudged back to the top (sometimes I pulled him up on the tube), but we were really tired by the time the cloudy sky grew dark. I was pleased that Quinn asked several times if we could go back and do more cross country skiing. If the sledding was chaos, the skiing was tranquility.



Packing the gear into the van after another day in the snow.



The boy in the office. Chaos.

Almost Christmas?

Probably not unlike the days of most households with school-aged children, our days have been just packed. Piano lessons on Monday night, basketball practice Tuesday night, basketball practice Wednesday night, Cub Scouts Thursday night, and is it ever Friday night? Saturday school and more basketball. Usually some play dates on the weekend, and the occasional trip to the bike trails. House work and chores on Sunday. And the occasional trip to the bike trails.

I changed jobs in mid-October; now I'm trying to work from home a few days a week to avoid a lengthy drive to the office. We bought a second car in early October so that when I do make the 35-mile trip to work I won't leave the rest of the family without. That means, sadly, you lucky readers of the blog won't be reading any more of my rants and complaints about trying to commute to work by bicycle during the winter. Or ever, for that matter. Looks like that era has come to a close. Want to buy a Ute?

Cindy has been working every weekday at Playmakers, along with one weekday evening, usually Monday night, and then all day Saturday. It's a fun job with lots of good perks, so nobody's complaining much. Tonight she's been baking tasty cookies for the coming yearly cookie exchange. More on Cindy later.

Abbey's loving middle school, of course. Made straight A's on the first report card, which is almost a surprise given how haphazardly and disorganizedly she approaches her homework and studying. Of course, she'd have been severely punished for anything less. Her piano and trumpet playing are coming along nicely. We attended her first band concert last week, and were really impressed with the quality of the performance, given the most of the 60 or so members of the band were sixth graders who had been playing for only a couple of months. Band meets every day and the kids are required to practice 20 minutes a day at home. Their efforts were evident.

Quinn is loving and terrorizing second grade. He's had fewer discipline issues this year and seems happier. I think he's making an effort to make good choices even when it goes against the flow, but sometimes the current wins. I can't blame him. Quinn's piano playing is also coming along really well. Occasionally he picks up the trumpet, but we're not really pushing that one yet. After Abbey's band concert, Quinn expressed an interest in the bassoon. Of course, he'd like to be spending more time at the skate park, but it's just hard to fit it all in.

Mostly, I think Cindy and I just try to hang on to all the bits and pieces and loose ends so nothing too critical gets lost as the time train bounces down the tracks. Inevitably we lose a few but we hope the loss is mostly limited to less important stuff like sweeping dog hair off the floor, yard work, washing the car(s), and putting away the kids shoes. It could be a lot worse. Well, the dog hair couldn't.

Finally, some rambling notes about running and bicycling:

On Thanksgiving Day, we all got up and ran the Lansing Turkeyman Trot. That is, Cindy, Abbey, and I ran the 5k. Quinn was kind enough to sit it out this year to keep Grandma Sharon company on the side lines. We were very proud of Abbey for running her first 5k. She and Cindy ran the full distance together. I was too impatient to hold back and run with them, but it was great to watch them finish together. "Watch out, Mom..."

Yesterday we got our first real snow of the year, which was really just a meager 5 inches or so, but it was the latest in the year the snow has held off since we moved to Michigan. This delay allowed us to squeeze in a few late season trail rides despite the fact that my brand new bike frame had to be replaced due to a little tiny crack in a weld. It might have gone years without failing, but Santa Cruz made it really easy for me to swap out the defective frame for a brand new one, and the delay only cost me two weekends of riding. The best part was that I got the opportunity to strip the whole thing down to the frame and rebuild it!

So my new office is 35 miles away from our house and I won't be doing it by bike. That's kind of sad, but if I continue to be able to work from home at least three days a week, I'll actually save time relative to the time spent on the daily commute. The time savings may be nice, but the lack of a daily ride will certainly come at a significant cost to my daily fitness routine. One positive note is that my new office is only three miles away from one of my favorite bike trails, the Murray Lake Trail at Brighton Recreation Area. I'm hopeful that once the snow is gone and the sun stays up past 5, I'll be able to take my Nickel (beautiful isn't it?) with me to work once a week and get in a good ride before I head home. We'll see how often that happens, but it's worth a shot.

What's happened to our tandem cycling? Our poor tandem bikes hardly got off the wall in 2010. A few miles, a few rides here and there. It wasn't really planned, but mountain biking sort of took over this year. Maybe the tandems were one piece that fell from the time train in 2010. In 2009, running took over and the tandems saw less use than in 2007 and 2008. We'd like to keep the tandems and the running and the mountain biking all in the mix (along with everything else), but it's hard to get it all in. We're still trying to shape our picture of 2011. There are as yet no resolutions.

Finally, I guess I should mention that despite our attempt to keep too much from slipping through the cracks, it appears that Cindy has lost track of her mind: last week she signed herself up for the Bayshore Marathon. Memorial Day Weekend 2011. I don't know what made her think this was a good idea, although this event is in a beautiful location up at the north end of our Lower Peninsula on Grand Traverse Bay. She's got a few months to prepare. The rest of the scaq will give her as much support as we can and hope that her effort is successful. It won't be easy!

Finally, risking vain exhibitionism, I'll post this self-portrait. After all, it's my blog, and I can do what I want:



Quinn has almost completed a similar portrait of himself. I hope to post his when it's complete.

Happy Holidays and Good Night.

Crested Butte - Day 5

We saved for last our most wild and crazy day in Crested Butte. After a few morning hours spent cleaning up several days of dirty clothes, dog towels, and dinosaurs scattered about the cabin, we drove uphill to the ski resort town of Mt. Crested Butte. We purchased a full round of all day passes at the Crested Butte Mountain Resort, which included lift tickets as well as access to rock climbing, miniature golf, and bungee jumping.

Obviously, there was no snow, so we weren't going skiing. We were getting a taste of lift-served mountain biking, an activity that I can imagine could be quite addictive. My first thought was that taking the lift up the mountain rather than pedaling should be considered lazy -- or even cheating. Maybe it should, but it was really fun and I'm very glad we gave it a try.

On Mt. Crested Butte, there is a nice selection of bicycling trails to choose from. Some are long smooth "cross country" trails that wind around the mountain, flat and even slightly uphill in places. Others fall into the category of "downhill" and take a more direct route down the mountain.

At first the kids were a little anxious about the ski lift, since there were no seatbelts, and sitting loosely on a little seat with feet hanging in the air a hundred feet above the rocky ground felt precarious. They enjoyed the thrill of it, I think. We could sit four to a chair but our bikes had to come up after us, each bike hanging on the back of an empty chair. At the top, the lift attendant unloaded each bike and handed it gently to it's owner, who had to haul it down some wood stairs to the open gravel area that was the trailhead.

For the first ride, Heather stayed down with Cailan while the rest of us went to the top. Chris tested out some of the longer cross country trails on his own while we scaq started out with the trail rated the easiest. It was called "Luge" and was described as "a wider gravity assisted singletrack trail that flows through moderate terrain featuring man made berms and rollers."

The Luge trail started out slightly rocky with a few steep downhill sections that exceeded Quinn's fear tolerance. I tried yelling at him, but that just made it worse. Cindy couldn't yell at him because her sore throat was preventing her from talking, let alone yelling. Eventually, he realized the hills were well within his ability, and just looked scary from the top.

After its bumpy start, the Luge left the rocks and became a very gentle trail, smooth and winding, wide and fast, as its name would suggest. We flowed down the mountain like rushing water. The kids loved it. I loved it. With all the rain, the surface was soft and grippy, muddy in places. I followed Quinn at nearly 20 miles an hour, thrilled to watch him catching controlled (usually) chunks of air as he bunny-hopped the frequent rollers. Fear and inexperience, maybe a rational sense of self-preservation, kept the kids from letting loose of the brakes and making full use of the berms around the corners.

Heather and Abbey on the lift:



The view from the top was nice, despite the cloudy wet weather.



Cindy following Quinn along one of the cross country trails.



Heather, Chris, and I took one ride on a newer more challenging cross country route called "Westside." The description stated:

Westside is an epic new piece of single track that will keep you smiling. Flowing trail sections through forests of aspen and pine are the highlight of this ride.

It was indeed brand new; some sections looked like perhaps the grass had been cleared from the path only a few days before. We wondered if more than a handful of riders had yet ridden the trail. It was fun and challenging, and took us a little further away from the civilization of the resort. Here's Heather coming out of a uniform stand of aspens. Can you see her broken finger?



Q&A each climbed the artificial rock. I told Abbey that if she failed to make it to the top, she would not eat for the rest of the day. She's a growing girl, usually hungry, and made a strong and steady climb to the bell at the top.



All three kids got in two rounds each of bungee jumping - the first round in the rain. This looked fun, too. After being clipped in while standing on the trampoline, the bungee cords were wound tight with an electric motor, and the victim was lifted into the air. The attendant then pulled the victim down to the trampoline, just like a slingshot, and the poor child was launched into the air.

Here's Cailan getting ready to fly:



Quinn, after the launch:



Back on the bikes, Heather and Abbey went racing down the Luge again, hair blowing in the wind. Are their smiles expressions of joy, or is the wind in their faces pushing their cheeks back as they surpass the speed of sanity?



Speaking of sanity, or lack thereof, Chris and I did a couple of trips down a trail called "Avery."

Avery is the Downhill race course for the annual Wildflower Rush. Avery throws a little of everything your way as you descend through pine forest, rock gardens, fast open terrain, and man made jumps.

Avery simply zig-zagged under the ski lift. The trail probably represented an upper limit of downhill difficulty for me and my RZ. Although I must admit to bypassing the biggest drop, which I would estimate was more than 6 feet if not 10, we did quite well together. Its 140mm suspension fork got me through some very challenging rock gardens at high speed unscathed, much to my surprise. Much more of that sort of trail though, and I'd be looking for a purpose-built downhill bike with 8 to 10 inches of fork travel -- and perhaps a full face helmet and some body armor.

On our second trip down Avery, Cindy and Abbey rode the lift down while Chris and I rode the trail. They were able to get some nice pictures of us speeding down, but the jumps and rock gardens were mostly in the trees hidden from view. It seemed that every time Chris and I shot out of the trees, we'd see the them on the lift. Even with a couple of minor crashes (Chris's was quite impressive and acrobatic), Chris and I still got down the mountain before Cindy and Abbey.



When the ski lift closed at the end of the day, we drove to Grand Junction.