Adventures in True Grime

Procrastination Blogging: Eek My Science Honors Proposal is Due Edition

2012-02-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

Ugh, proposals. I need a little space to think out loud, and to get my doubt and self-loathing out of my system so I can be productive. I know it's just an internal undergrad research grant and not an NIH R01, and I am making it a lot harder than it needs to be probably. I had a really hard time getting my (easier) STEP proposal out last quarter too. A big part of it is feeling like I don't completely understand the project, in large part because I haven't been working in Dr. P's lab (or any labs for that matter) unlike most of the other kids applying. So here goes trying to sketch out some thoughts about the background and experimental design--I think best out loud and process by talking, what can I say. Thanks in advance for listening--you guys are the best!

Soap Lake, Microbial Observatory Extraordinaire

The overall area is looking at how viruses drive microbial evolution and genetic diversity in extreme or stressed environments, in this case a super salty and alkali lake in central WA known as Soap Lake. Such lakes are common in areas where there is more evaporation than rainfall or inflow--the minerals and such become concentrated. Soap Lake is an interesting study area for microbes, because it is so salty and the pH is so high that not much else can live in it besides some bacteria, archaea, and their phage. There are also two distinct layers to the lake due to its geomorphology. The whole area of central and eastern WA was shaped by the massive Missoula floods.

The bottom layer, or monolimnion, was formed first in an earlier flood; the top layer, or mixolimnion, formed on top of it in a subsequent flood. The interesting thing is that due to the difference in densities and composition, the two layers don't mix. The trippiest part is that the zone dividing them, called the chemocline, is surprisingly thin--about 0.5 meters. Dr. P tells me that when they take water samples from the monolimnion, if they forget to weight the instrument it literally strikes the chemocline and floats there. The monolimnion is a constant 7-8ºC, and total dissolved solids of about 85 grams per liter, and there is pretty much no dissolved oxygen--it's pretty much all anaerobes down there. The mixolimnion varies by season in terms of temperature, oxygen levels, and composition (average about 14 g/L).

The mixolimion represents stressed environments because of this flux, particularly in the shallower coastal areas, or even the sediment left when lake levels lower. The takeaway is that since the two layers don't mix, and there are different communities of microbes in each layer, it is interesting indeed to consider how common genes get between them. One should be able to compare the numbers of phage and bacteria in stressed areas (coastal mixolimnion) vs. stable areas (monolimnion) to see whether there is support for they hypothesis the greater the stress on an organism, the more that viruses are movers and shakers of genetic diversity.

Bacteria and the Viruses that Love Them

There have been a number of studies showing that viruses represent one of the richest repositories of genetic diversity on earth, and that one of the key drivers of elevated mutation rates in bacteria is antagonistic coevolution with parasites, vis-a-vis viruses, or phage. Further, because of how virus "lifecycles" (I don't know what to officially call them, since phage aren't technically alive) work, stressed bacteria show evidence of greater horizontal gene transfer.

Horizontal gene transfer is simply any transfer of genetic material that isn't passed from parent to child, which would be vertical transfer. In bacteria and archaea, which are single-celled organisms that reproduce by basically simply dividing, there are only 3 ways this can happen. There's conjugation, in which one bacteria can transmit genetic material directly to another, and is sometimes called bacterial sex, even though it doesn't result in mixing gametes because bacteria don't produce gametes. In conjugation, the receiving bacterium just gets some genes from the donating bacterium. However, bacteria of different genera don't conjugate in natural environments, so that doesn't explain all of the genetic mixing one sees in microbial communities.

There is also transformation, in which bacteria can incorporate free DNA in their environment. However, in an environment that is so salty and alkaline, the free DNA is not particularly functional, and in shallow water areas it is damaged by UV radiation as well. Thus, transformation doesn't really represent a likely vehicle for microbial gene mixing.

That leaves transduction, which is mediated by viruses (which are essentially free DNA or RNA protected by a protein capsid. The reason viruses aren't considered to be alive is because they can't reproduce their genetic material on their own--that is why they infect a host cell and hijack the host's cellular machinery to reproduce themselves. Viruses can undergo lytic or lysogenic reproductive cycles, and some can do both. Lytic phage copy themselves inside a host cell without inserting themselves into host DNA, and then burst or lyse the cell open (killing it) right after replication. Sometimes, when the viral particles are packaging the newly minted DNA, they can incorporate bits of host DNA with them, which get carried to new hosts with subsequent infections. This is called generalized transduction, because any bacterial gene can be transferred this way.

Lysogenic, or temperate phage, have enzymes that allow them to insert themselves into a host's DNA. The host then continues to replicate its "enhanced" genome without incident, creating several copies of new bacterial cells with incorporated prophage, until some sort of stress to the host (lack of nutrients, unfavorable environmental change) signals the prophage to cut themselves back out of the host genome and kick over to the lytic cycle. Sometimes, when these activated phage are excising themselves out they don't cut in exactly the right place, and they end up taking bits of host DNA with them. When they go forth and infect new host cells, they transfer those genes, which can then be incorporated into the new host's genome and reproduced. This is called specialized transduction, because the enzymes of the phage can only insert themselves into specific places in the host genome. The takeaway from this part is that in Soap Lake, the only real avenue for significant genetic recombination is bacteriophage transduction.

And Now, the Experiment!

Now it follows to design an experiment that will not only show evidence of transduction, but whether there are elevated rates of transduction in areas where there is greater stress, since we know that 1) phage protects the integrity of DNA and RNA; and 2) stress induces both lysis of cells and conversion, or excision of prophage, which in turn propagates transduction. So, how to measure transduction? What evidence will point to transduction taking place? For me, this is easiest to conceptualize in steps.

1. # of Transducing Particles (ie Phage)

This step will show how many transducing phage are present in each sample area--if transduction is taking place, then transducing viruses must be present. It is also reasonable that the more viruses, or transducing particles, are present, the more transduction is taking place.

Stressed areas are represented by the coastal waters of the mixolimnion and by the steep chemical gradient of the chemocline. Stable areas would then be the monolimnion and perhaps deeper levels of the mixolimnion. Water samples can be collected for each. The numbers of temperate phage can be figured out by filtering out everything but viruses (which are super tiny compared to bacteria, archaea and zooplankton!) and then reacting the the isolated virus DNA or RNA with probes that will "tag" the temperate, transducing phage that I am interested in. The tagged phage DNA or RNA can then be quantitated to tell me how much of it is present in each sample. If my hypothesis is correct, then more transducing particles will be present in the stressed areas than in the stable areas.

I am in the process of developing those DNA probes right now, as a product of my STEP research grant, using the myriad wonderful gene databases to find genomes of phage and prokaryotes that we know are present in Soap Lake, and then using the equally wonderful free software to compare those genomes and find areas of common, or "conserved" DNA sequences. A probe is basically a short piece of DNA (or RNA, or even antibodies for that matter). DNA is double stranded, and the two strands bind to each other in a very specific way: of the 4 nucleotide bases you have to choose from, only adenine ("A") binds to thymine ("T") and vice versa, and only cytosine ("C") binds to guanine ("G"), unless something goes wrong. Thus, for a sequence reading C-A-T, the complementary strand would be G-T-A. This makes for a stunning and elegant mechanism for coding and replication.

Further, a gene is just a segment of DNA that codes for a product: it can be a protein, or a ribosomal RNA, for instance. So, if you are looking for presence of a specific gene, you can make a probe out of DNA that is a complementary sequence to the DNA of the gene you want. Then you can mix your sample DNA and your probe DNA together in specific temperature and pH conditions, and if your gene of interest is present, it will bind to your probe. Oh, and you can attach markers to your probe to make it easy to find: say, a glowing fluorescent signal. You can then separate the tagged DNA from non-tagged by running it out on a gel and transferring it to what is called a blot membrane, and the strength of your fluorescent signal will tell you how much tagged DNA, or gene of interest, is present in your sample. Pretty neat, yes?

2. Evidence for Actual Transduction

So, hopefully from the experiment above I will know whether or not there are more transducing particles in stressed areas than stable areas. But, that still doesn't tell me that those transducing phage are infecting bacteria and mixing up genomes. I need another arm to my experiment to show that.

For this part, I can collect water samples bacteria and archaea from the same stressed and stable areas as I took for my phage quantitation samples, and catch them on a 0.2 µm filter--the tinier viruses will go right through leaving just the prokaryotes to play with. Once the bacteria and archaea are collected and their DNA is isolated, I can use a DNA probe with a more narrow target, say specifically for viral integrase and excisionase genes (the enzymes temperate phage need to glue themselves in and cut themselves back out of host DNA). If the probe binds to the bacterial DNA, it means that those viral genes are in there--which means that those bacteria and archaea are infected with lysogenic phage! These can also be quantitated in similar manner as in Experiment 1. And, if my hypothesis is supported, then stressed areas will also have greater numbers of infected bacteria.

Finally...wow. That's about it, actually. Other than some snappy statements proving that Sarah Palin and her ilk are anti-science, anti-Greater-Good ingrates if they make fun of this research because they can't see the larger picture, that is. As stated above, viruses are major drivers of bacterial evolution in different ways. Specifically, this research is important because knowledge of viral interaction with bacteria in stressful environments has direct application to how viruses and bacteria will interact in other stressful environments, e.g. clinical medicine when combatting pathogens with antibiotics or antiviral compounds. Further, in an age when antibiotic abuse is epidemic and multiple drug resistant "super bugs" are on the rise, understanding the process(es) and conditions of how bacteria acquire resistance is critical.

So what do you think? Would you give me $3500 plus another grand or so for supplies to carry this out and present it at a conference or research symposium? What parts are good? What parts are missing or need work (other than some of the specifics of the methods, which Dr. P is going to help me fill in, and obviously some of the more breezy, conversational tone that will be formalized up for the actual review committee audience).

More Summer Projects

2011-06-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I'm one of the AMSA community/environmental health grassroots coordinators this year? I am!! It sounds like an important title, and in some sense it is, I suppose, but not as titles go. I'm just happy to have some kind of support and example and community learning to be the kind of doctor I want to be. To that end, I've been kicking around ideas that I might want to head up for my personal project this year, trying to find synergy between things I've done, read, known, like, believe in.

I also need to get off my sorry ass and start volunteering again, and find some docs to shadow. To THAT end, I filled out an application at a network of community clinics here in western Washington (I wish they were east of the Cascades, but oh well) thinking that even if I was doing shitwork in the front office at least I would be getting to see how such a clinic works, how care is delivered, etc. I might even be able to sweet-talk some shadowing. I lagged on getting my PPD test sent off though, and by the time I did all the local positions were filled. However, whatever passes for Providence these days smiled on me--the first suggestion of the volunteer coordinator turns out to be the most awesome. Turns out the Marysville clinic has a small garden behind the building that has fallen into some disrepair, and the new chronic care coordinator and health educator think it would be a peachy idea to revamp it and make it into the community-building, health teaching tool powerhouse it was meant to be, and I quite agree. So that's what I get to do, can you believe it? I get to spend my summer working in a garden for an enormous amount of good, AND I get to make friends with a lot of people who can help me implement a similar sort of project in Ellensburg next year after I move.

Also, I get to serve on the National Primary Care Week planning committee this summer. Shut up, I'm not bragging! I'm just stoked is all.

If you had told me even 2 years ago that this is what my life would look like and this is the kind of potential future I was looking at, I'd have sighed and said if only. Sometimes I really can't believe how lucky I am, to have this chance to become what I might have been.

Friday Summer Freedom Edition

2011-06-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

You guys! Finals are finally over. W00t!! I still can't believe that I just took a full year of o-chem, and not only that it was fantastic and I'm in love with it and I CAN'T WAIT for biochem. Also, calculus--so fun! I learned this week that I am only 2 classes plus linear algebra short of a math minor, so there's that. I am, however, a little burned out, so a break from nerd studies is good.

No time for cooking this week, subsisting on salads and toast and oatmeal. And coffee. Lots and lots and lots of coffee! So I'll start the CSA stuff for realz this week, and maybe I'll even have pictures. The weather continues to be cold and mostly kind of crappy, considering it's the middle of June even for out here. We're hopeful but not super optimistic for the garden, although it looks good so far...

I am also finally getting off my ass and learning how to brew. Sunday will be my first foray. We are using James' recipe for a Mutant Blonde--hefeweizen malt, ale yeast and Cascade hops. There will definitely be a post about that. Also, my fantastic calculus prof is also an avid brewer, and started the local club here in B'ham. There are meetings and tastings all the time, so I'm excited to cram as many in as I can before I head east in September. I hear Yakima and Leavenworth both have clubs, so we'll see what happens. The best part of all is that my new bio dept offers a certificate program in craft brewing--my genetics prof is teaching one of the classes. I'm at least 7 different kind of excited about that, as this is something I've wanted to learn how to do for about 20 years now.

OMG CSA!!

2011-06-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Finally! I thought this time of year would never get here. CSA blogging posts forthcoming! CSA's are awesome, you guys. They are an amazing bargain AND you get to support local agriculture, and trying to figure out ways to use what you get every/other week is a super fun and sometimes challenging game--WAY more fun than just shopping for what you want at the farmer's market, which is ok too I guess. Every bin is a surprise, and you may have weird stuff you have no idea how to cook or you may have a ton of something that requires some creativity to come up with different ways to use it all up before it spoils. Last year I discovered gratins, refrigerator pickles, kale/collard/beet chips, veggie burgers and ways to use winter squash so that even I can stand it (not a huge winter squash fan! I wish I were, because it is so beautiful and bright when the weather really starts sucking around here).

So far, the low-hanging "fruit": a gigantic salad with beet greens from the bin, and mustard/collards from the garden, and lettuce and bell peppers from the store and half the cucumber got made into a mint raita that will probably go over some lentil patties or dress some bean/grain salad.

What are you guys doing for food this summer?

Becoming a Mol Bio Nerd For Realz

2011-06-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

It's true. I'm off to CWU in September--w00t!

With Callous Disregard

2010-01-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

This. Definitely click through on the links Liss has helpfully provided, they are worth the read. It's exhausting, infuriating, and despair-making, and I don't even have little ones, let alone ones with autism. I get why people distrust the medical establishment, but I also still insist that medical science is the best protection we have: paraphrasing Einstein's quote, "All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have." Science is only a tool, and it can be abused like any other. It has been before, and is, and will be again. Particularly in alt health, where all kinds of magical claims abound. Sometimes they turn out to be true, and most of the time not so much. Often measuring their truth claims is hampered by the limitations of current technology, or even sometimes how we think about them and frame research questions. It is true that changing your thinking and questioning your assumptions about what you think you know leads to breakthroughs and important new knowledge. Also, it is often those outside the priviliged class of knowledge makers, those on whom knowledge is deployed, who show that knowledge is incomplete, flawed, and/or comes from a deeply biased place that has no place in responsible science. Before this turns into a huge essay on Kuhn, Haraway and feminist standpoint theory, all I can say is let your own embodied knowledge guide you, but not blind you. Also, skepticism: embrace it.

In Which Greta Christina Says What I've Been Thinking For a Long Time

2009-11-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

It's a hazard of the trade when you work in alt health, I know.

But damn--if I have to listen to one more person earnestly impress on me how the universe will provide for me if I let it, how things are meant or not meant to be, or how staying positive!! will totally make everything turn out peachy, I'm going to throw up all over hir shoes. Really, I will. At least Greta has given me fodder for a reply besides a tight-lipped smile and a "Yeah, wow, look at the time, I've gotta get to somewhere else." And she pretty much nails it.

You should check out her Facebook meme project too. I can't deny that sometimes a little of the appeal of being an atheist is how horrifying and scary so many people find it, even though of course it's really pretty innocuous and it usually shines quite a big giant floodlight on that person's unwillingness to be totally intellectually honest with hirself. But mostly, it's just tiresome and annoying.

This makes it all worthwhile again, though. Enjoy!

Why I Want to Be a 'Punk

2009-10-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

This post started as a reply to a comment in the last post, and had the added benefit of helping me earn my self-anointed crown of The Procrastinatrix. But it kept growing and growing, so I decided to make a whole other post about it, since it's stuff I've been thinking about for a while and have been trying to tease apart its threads since I got here.

The comment that started it all stated that Boulder and Denver were totally saturated with LAc's and trying to start a practice in either place was only for the punishment gluttons. I think Denver is still pretty wide open if you know where to go and you have a decent referral network in place. This is especially so with CA style practices, if you are willing to set up shop in some the the scrubbier places like the southwest or northeast.

Likewise with Boulder, only there you need an EXCELLENT and large referral network, otherwise, it's beyond annoying. Also, they have two community clinics now that apparently Mary and Sammhita are running separate shops or at least two locations of the same shop. Jen sent me an article last week titled "10 Things About Colorado You Thought Were Cool Until You Got Here", and Boulder is one of them. It's not even the yuppiness and priceyness I don't like. There's this very self-conscious and self-congratulatory awareness and identity of being awesome by virtue of living in Boulder and driving a Subaru and shopping at Whole Foods and doing yoga and having an outdoor lifestyle, whatever that means. Blearrgh.

Earnestness, or performed earnestness that calls attention to its authentic earnestness is obnoxiousness of the first order, I think. And I resemble this description a bit, I admit: I couldn't stand Whole Foods even before their libertarian asshat of a CEO opened his literary piehole in the WSJ and if I could find a yoga teacher who would just teach us the movements without narrating to me what kind of enlightenment I should be getting or how awesomely balanced my chakras were supposed to be becoming I might actually go more than once every two years. But maybe not--running free outside and alone holds a hell of a lot more appeal for me. But, I do drive a Saabaru which I freely chose because I liked it and I play outside a great deal. I guess the difference for me is that what I do isn't my "lifestyle", emphasis on style. It is, quite simply, my life. It's my culture and my orientation and my values and my redemption and my community and the only thing I've found ever that consistently puts me back into phase with myself so I can deal with the rest of the world. There's nothing decorative or "styled" about it. I really can't emphasize that enough.

Which is why I have no interest in people who (earnestly or not) feel the need to "work on themselves" like they'd work on restoring a classic car or model train set. Back a couple of years ago when some Cristo-type artist "stuck" the city of Portland with giant acupuncture needles after mapping out "meridians", and it was all controversial and shit, Skip put up a post about it. I do recommend clicking through and scrolling down the comments, particularly to Lisafer's discussion of what she calls "Hipster Chinoiserie", or the interest in Chinese medicine that is really just interest in it as decoration for something. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Done? Ok then. I'm as irritated by it as she is, and largely for the same reasons. I'm not a goddamn lifestyle and my work sure as fuck isn't about being someone's hobby of spiritual enlightenment. Without realizing it when I began writing, I think I've fleshed out that long-ago promised post on why I can't stand luxury spas and other trappings that deliberately convey exclusionary status by virtue of their cost, rarity and general ostentatious displays of excess. Because at the end of the day it's all a big, elaborate conceit. Because by the time you've gotten to that level, all the other things that go into a zen spa acupuncture treatment are worlds away from the acupuncture and completely about something else. Which is not to say there is no value in such things, and that if places and treatments (giving or receiving) like that really make your heart go pitter-pat, well that's valid.

Just please don't tell me that's all there is to what I do, or all there should be to what I do. If that were true, I wouldn't be an acupuncturist any more. All this time I've been laboring under the delusion propagated by the Marilyn Allen types of our establishment that value is connected to cost, and high cost equals high value, and that if people see that I live a high-cost "lifestyle" (see?!) then they will accord me more respect and value more greatly my work, which will be proven by the amount they are willing to pay for it and I will be a rich (which defines successful) acupuncturist who brings honor and prestige to the profession. I have also been laboring under the delusion that my unwillingness to participate this way means my self-esteem is for crap and I need to "work" on that so I can be a rich successful acupuncturist who brings honor and wealth and prestige to myself and my profession.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for prestige and respect for my work and my fellow LAc's. We are some pretty amazing people and we do beautiful work in the world, no matter what the setting or patient base. The thing is for me, that prestige and respect and success and value, to me, have nothing to do with how much money I make or charge. Which is not to say I intend to take a vow of poverty, or that I think money is evil and loathsome and too dirty for my noble spirit to brook any truck with. It's just that it's only money. It's functional for me, and enables me to do what I want to do. And except for a few choice pieces of gear and technical clothing, what I want is pretty simple. Also, so. I value community, connection, family, friends, love, simplicity, integrity and kitty cats a lot more. I can't pretend for the life of me I don't.

So yeah, personal growth takes consciousness and discipline and reflection, but it also takes integration and the willingness to live it as you're doing the work. And if you have to advertise what you're doing so people will give you the cookies you think you deserve for being such a speshul widdle snowflake, then enlightenment: ur doin it wrong. Avoid nothing, face everything. As you live it. It really doesn't get more simple than that. And you by no means have to execute it perfectly--fucking up royally is part of the process. Art and activism are inseparable from life. I also have a lot of contempt for dogma, stereotype and cliché.

That being said, that's no reason for Absolute. seriousness. at all. times. Back in my halcyon Women's Studies days, my favorite inspirational quote was a saying attributed to Emma Goldman: "If I can't dance it's not my revolution." My medicine and my work and my approach to both are joyous, fluent, flexible, often unruly, possibly irreverent, probably humorous and generally sacred by being not at all sacred. Hmm. Sacred is another word with I have trouble with, but that's still another post. For now, my work is me and my work is of the world. It is humble and borne of love. It is my offering to the multiverse. No fanfare, no fuss.

Mental Aether Update 2

2009-10-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

I almost don't know what to say, so much has happened since the last post. And I'm actually sleepy at a somewhat reasonable hour, which is a minor miracle. So I'll just sum up for now.

Loveland is out. Also, the practice purchase in Longmont is a no go. True, it has its problems, but I could have dealt with that if I knew I were totally in love with being her and committed to staying indefinitely. Or at least for the next 5 years. Which I'm not. Necessarily.

Practice is slow, for a number of reasons. The economy blows goats. No one here knows me. People who have heard of me are freaked out about losing their jobs, and even if they are not, $75 per tx is a tough sell when your patient base is what/where it is. Every time it seems to pick up it slows back down again.

I feel exactly like I felt on the JMT last year. Sitting on a rock at the base of Donahue Pass, miserable and hating myself for wanting to quit and knowing I was going to, even thought it was what I wanted and I knew it would make me happier. I really just want company.

So for some reason I picked up Lisa's book about Acupuncture is Like Noodles, and was instantly made happy and inspired again. A lot of it resonates with me, and themes I've been rassling with lately. Namely, privilege. Throughout my acupuncture education, there was absolutely no examination of privilege or intersectionality. There was no attempt to locate any of what we were learning in any kind of historical or cultural location that MIGHT just not be universal. There was not much attempt of any kind to be critical of anything at all. And it really gave me buttrash sometimes, especially when concepts like yin and yang got conflated with gender performance and what a woman or man was SUPPOSED to be or supposed to act like. It really made me want to yell at things.

The stuff about class was just as awesome as the stuff about gender and sexuality (and I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's line about how heterosexuality isn't normal, just common). To wit, that if we really valued ourselves and our work we would charge expensive prices for it and if people couldn't pay then it meant they just didn't value their health or they weren't ready to get better. Because everyone can tell stories about poor black single mothers with elaborately braided hair and painted nails who buy groceries with food stamps. It boils down to the whole "Why you haz cell phone?" argument. But of course not all working class people are like that. Most of them aren't. And whether they are or are not, is not the point. As Lisa cogently notes, a person earning $25k a year pays about 7% of their monthly income for a $100 treatment. For a person earning $150k, $600 represents about 7% of their take home pay. No one morally scolds the professional earning $150k for balking at paying $600 for acupuncture, even though doing so would likely not jeopardize that person's ability to keep their utilities on.

I've been in tight spots too, and I have to say--that's just not accurate about people not valuing their health. It sounds a lot like blaming victims to me, like the concurrent obsession with mendacious fuckwittery like The Secret wherein if anything bad happens to you its your own damn fault for not thinking more positively. Ugh. These are people supposedly in the vocation of helping people with compassion. To me the class bigotry is unmistakable. Privileged people never tire of hearing the ways in which their own privilege is justified and makes the world as they experience it a just so story.

So I'm going back to my original passion of having a community style practice. It squares with just about everything I want to do, with all that drives me and gets me up in the morning. The only question is... where? Stay tuned.

14er Day!

2009-08-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

See how windy it was?

Well, it happened. I spent a perfectly good Sunday clambering up and down Longs Peak, the highest 14er in the Front Range. It's a rite of passage, really, if you are a Coloradan. I mean, we have a few 14ers in California, but people don't keep little passports and check each peak off as they bag it. Perhaps because most Cali 14ers are somewhat technical, or at least a huge pain in the ass to access, even if you want to spend a weekend doing it.

So, I figured it was about time. I've heard about the legendary shitty weather. I was supposed to climb the Kieners route in June with my BMS class, but my need to spend a week on the San Juan (I'm so NOT sorry) negated that. This seems like the best time of year to go for a "hike" route, even though our weather has been unpredictable even by Colorado standards, which is saying something.

Jamie and I had tried to do Audobon the day before, but weather. It was cold,rainy and generally shitty from waking up in the morning, and it didn't get better until we were mostly back to the car, lolsob. As a few drops fell, and thunder rumbled languidly in the distance, we looked at each other, not wanting to turn back but... we said, we'll turn back if the graupel comes. Sure enough, right before we popped out above treeline the graupel hit--fortunately for us we had timed it perfectly and the hill plus trees provided the perfect lee if we hunkered down low. It passed, and we decided to go up to the top of the ridge and see what it looked like. It looked better, but then there was a huge, ugly black cloud moving fast from behind the summit, straight at us. The cold wind picked up and nearly knocked up sideways. It was painful, but we bagged it and started down. By the time we got to the car, it looked better at the peak, but... it's close, we'll do it another day.

So for Longs, I crashed at Bob's and we got up at 4, were out of the house before 4:30, and were walking by 5:05. The parking lot was FULL, so we found parking on the side of the road, which was also pretty full. And it was COLD--about 45º, less than I would have thought, even if it is 9400 feet. And it was windy--cold windy. Bob's headlamp died a sputtery death before we even got to the trailhead, so it was all on our little LED flashlight (I forgot mine too, duh). A harbinger of things to come? Sort of.

We stopped after about an hour when Bob announced he had to dig a cathole. He said something about, "You can go on if you want..." trailing off into the trees. But it wasn't settled, so I sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. I tried to take a 5 minute catnap, thinking surely he wouldn't miss me coming back to the trail. Weeeeell.
After 20 minutes or so I decided to go tell him I was going to start moving, because I was starting to shiver. But I couldn't find him. I shouted out, but nothing. So, do I assume he moved on, or? I picked up the trail and started walking, and asked the first party of people coming the other way if they'd seen a man meeting Bob's description. Sort of--they were positive they did, but then they also asked if he was wearing glasses and a turtleneck and trekking poles (he was wearing a short-sleeved crew, no glasses and no poles). Hmm. I made a note of the burnt snag at the side of the trail, checked my watch, and kept walking, in case I needed to find the spot again. After a few more minutes who should come hurrying down the trail, confused because he knew I wasn't as slow as some of the people out there but no way I could be that fast either. We resolved to wait for affirmation of communication from now on.

We peeled off onto the Jim Grove trail, and soon enough joined back up to the masses and found ourselves at the Boulder Field. We found ourselves some boulders to hide between and snack on last night's leftover pizza. This was where the fun part would start.

Boulder-hopping onto the north face, no big deal, just easily winded from out of shape and 13k feet. Then, the route crossed a snow field. The snow was rock hard and crusty. We had no axes or crampons. We opted to scramble up the exposed rock spine at the edge of the snow, and discovered that there was a net of ice, or verglas, strewn over lots of the rocks, which made placing hands and feet limited. We started up a crack that looked a little dicey but doable, until Bob, who was above me, said, "Let's not go this way." We downclimbed, traversed back across the snow and onto the proper crack.

But, we had no pro--and our only ropes were a cordelette and a 15ft length of 11mm rope someone had fashioned into rap sling which Bob retrieved on our way up, thinking it might come in handy. Ahem.

The crack route got icy, and there weren't super bomber handholds everywhere for starters. The cable has long since been taken down, although the fatty eyebolts are still there and frequently used as rap anchors. Thus, making sure your hands and feet weren't going to slip or otherwise make you lose your balance was super, SUPER important--because if you did, you were probably going for a tumble off the north corner of The Diamond, a huge, sheer cliff on the east face. It would be a recovery effort more than a rescue, likely. But we didn't let our brains go there until after we sat, shaky, at the top of that section saying, "Let's never do that again."

Fortunately, Bob is a better and taller climber than I, so he led us up. We fashioned a ridiculous belay for me with a loop of the rope around my wrist and him holding onto the other end and the rock with a death grip. Also fortunately, I'm good enough that I only needed the rope as a kind of aider for my left hand on the last pitch, where he could hitch it securely around one of those eyebolts.

All that was left was more scrambling to the top, where we popped out onto a huge, windy and cold football field at 14,265 ft, or something like that. Even tucked in behind a rock it was still cold. Bob grabbed his super sexy red GoLite down jacked for me, but packed only a thick fleece for his insulating layer. I admit, and so does he, the wind was unexpectedly cold that day. We finished the rest of our pizza, and headed back down the Keyhole route like everyone else that day--we had Cables all to ourselves. Still, it wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it might be.

The route down was just long--seemed way longer than the way up, but then I guess it usually does.

Jamie and I are doing Elbert on Labor Day weekend. According to my sources, there is considerably less of a pucker factor on that one. Stay tuned!

More Women We Love

2009-07-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Finally, someone publicly debunks Uncle Pat's racism for the crustified, unreconstructed wankery that it is.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

How I Love Sarah Haskins

2009-07-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

The next person to offer up patriarchal, crustified wankery dating advice like this bolus of writer's crap that appeared in my inbox yesterday is totally getting this link.

I do recommend clicking through to the Intent articles comments thought. The mind reels.

CU's PA Program is Officially Awesome

2009-07-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

So I meant to put up a post when I got home on Friday and then things got away from me. I've officially begun the search for a good PA program and to organize the effort to get in! I've thought about it a lot over the past year or so, I've shadowed a couple of PA's (ones in family practice and one who does ortho surgery), I've talked to docs who've been in the profession long enough to sense which way the sands are shifting, and I'm pretty well there. I know from the message boards that PA's exist who hate their jobs because they would rather be docs, but those who thoughtfully weighed their decision between the two, evaluated the differences and came out on the side of PA are really, really happy.

On the MD side is my ego and the fear that maybe I am able to only work for myself. On the PA side is getting to do the part of the job I love the most (diagnose and treat) while not having to mess with the responsibility of a practice, of getting to work with a doc so there is someone to bounce difficult cases off of, 4-5 years of training as opposed to twice that, the ability to pick up and change specialties as easily as changing jobs instead of having to complete a whole new residency if I end up not liking what I'm doing, etc. etc. In short, it looks like it will fit into the life I want, instead of requiring me to dedicate and conform my life to it. Sure, there are specialties you can choose if you prefer to "dabble" in medicine: radiology or maybe physiatry, ER can be pretty flex too. But still. The more I learn the more excited I get, and I don't think I've felt this excited since I realized I needed to go to acupuncture school. Being a PA will, of course, mean that I will not only still be able to be an acupunk I will be able to get to people who would otherwise not think to try it in a million years. It will satisfy my need to integrate the two worlds. I can work with overseas and underserved populations that as an LAc are years away. And so on and so on.

So I visited my first program on Friday. Holy shit! The medical campus makes up for being in the middle of east Jesus nowhere by being all sparkly clean and new, and by having all kinds of cool stuff like a standardized patient program and high tech mannequins for practicing procedures and treatment scenarios. In the gross anatomy classes you only share your cadaver with 3 other students and you don't rotate--you get to do a full dissection. They have overseas rotations including India, Ghana, and a Spanish immersion in Costa Rica. You can put together your own rotations if there's someplace you'd like to work and they are open to it. You have the advantages of going to a school that also has a medical school, dental school, nursing, PT, etc. schools and all the professional resources that those provide. They work integratively with some of the other schools so you begin to get a sense of what it really means to work as a team.

Predictably, it is competitive. 600 applicants compete for about 100 interviews and about 40 of those get spots. I have my work cut out for me as I plan my prereq courses and start prepping to retake the GRE (sadly my awesome previous score is so 1998) early next year. It will be at least 2 years out, but I'm so excited sometimes it's hard to sleep at night. I am still a dork.

A very, excited and purpose-driven dork.

Why Health Shouldn't Equal Moral Rectitude

2009-07-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Amanda has a great post up over at Pandagon on the concern trolling of OMG Regina Benjamin is too fat to be surgeon general!!11! and the larger issue of moralizing health. If you guessed that all the fuss really isn't about Benjamin's weight or health status at all (last time anyone checked, there were no such requirements in order to be able to kick ass at the job), congratulations--you win a pony!

For instance:

It’s enough to know that most people strongly associate health and weight. So when disingenuous sexists start to bellyache about the dangers of letting fat women out in public, they get traction, because it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to suggest that not being perfectly healthy is a moral failing that should be punished with social disapproval, shaming, ostracism, and lowered access to society. Of course, we double down on fat people, and triple down on fat women, because of plain old prejudice, but this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Smokers, people who don’t eat right, and other people with poor health habits are also considered morally inadequate, if harder to judge because they’re harder to spot.

What is troubling about this is how it shapes policy: healthcare coverage is only for the deservedly healthy--if you have a poor outcome it's probably due to your irresponsibility and therefore you don't deserve help.

There is also an important discussion on the tactics of shaming in order to eliminate or modify people's behaviors:

People who see sex as a fraught, moral issue aren’t often in a good place to make healthy changes to their sexual habits. People who don’t view the status of your genitals as a judgment on your moral character are often in a lot better position to take care of themselves. For instance, if you get an STD and you think this means that you’re being punished for sin, you’re much more likely to be in denial, not get treatment, and pass it on. If you think it’s got no more moral implications than getting a cold, then you’re much more likely to get treatment.

I guess we need to make a choice, and sooner than later: do we really, truly care about helping people and having a healthier society full stop or do we care more about the smug, self-satisfied superiority we get from being moral scolds who other and punish?

On Food, Economics, Community and Development

2009-07-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

This is EXACTLY what I was on about in my last I Write Letters post.

Having access to healthy food and an active lifestyle is, simply put, a matter of privilege. I grew up around towns like these and we'd see it all the time, although the industry was less agriculture and more logging/millwork since we were closer to the foothills.

Which is not to say there is nothing people in such circumstances or communities can't do about it--there are plenty of examples, from community gardens and CSA's out of vacant lots and school grounds to the group in the story that met with their city government to fix up their park so they could safely start a walking club. It's just to say that some people have to work a little bit harder, and it's not just about simply making "different" choices. As the story shows, plenty of people in the central valley would love to make different choices, but there are barriers preventing them from freely doing so.

The audio can be downloaded at the link above.

One More Future Post Note

2009-07-13T19:02:00.001-07:00

I really, really need to explore why spas make my skin crawl. I just know there's lots to unpack in that knapsack, don't you?

I Write Letters

2009-07-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Pitchers of Self-Righteous, Sanctimonious Victim-Blaming Health Woo:

You make me crazy with your assertions that people's poor health is totally, 100% their own fault for choosing to live "toxic" (conveniently ambiguously undefined!) lives how if we'd all just detox we could live in wellbeing and harmony and all fart rainbows. You piss me off for the same reason all the people still yammering about things like The Secret and the so-called Law of Attraction piss me off: that you are 100% responsible for everything that happens to you and that you are in 100% control, and if you don't have what you want or bad shit comes your way it's your own damn fault so just change it already and quit yer bitching and victim talk and take control problem solved thanks that will be 3 low, low, LOW payments of $29.95.

I want to say a lot more about this later, as it really deserves its own(additional) post, but for now, I want to get down that I understand the inclination to want to control your world. I do. I want it just as much as anyone else. But your assertions are patently ridiculous. And it reeks, reeks, REEKS of economic and class privilege to aver that this is categorically, uncritically so. It's like telling the poor to go and eat cake if they can't find bread to eat. Seriously.

So, for the article I read this morning (one in a series which I also hope to get to eventually--I've reached my critical bullshit breaking point) opining that health is up to the individual, I agree and disagree. Partly on the basis of the author's shaky at best "grasp" of the science of diseases like cancer, straight up. But also, even presupposing the author's premise that health is a choice and unhealthy people get cancer because they choose to live such a filthy, toxic lifestyle, I say your privilege is showing again.

I am a privileged person. I grew up in a white, middleclass, educated family, with two grandmothers who were so old school they were hippies before hippies existed. We ate almost exclusively homegrown fruits and vegetables, whole grains, weren't allowed sugar or soda or even juice on a regular basis (except, everything else as preservative and additive free as possible. We never ate out and never ate fast food. Not allowed to watch TV and "forced" to go outside and play in our vast yard or safe suburban neighborhood or even more vast (and safe for kids to roam free) open space behind our house. My mother even made much of my baby food herself with our Foley mill. I grew up in a small, rural town with most of its nature intact and unpolluted/uncontaminated by industry. Etc, etc.

I am lucky to come from GENERATIONS of such people on both sides of my family. Read: we have no family history of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. Nearly everyone lives to be at least 90. Yet, my own mother, who was also subject to this healthy genetic pedigree and was raised in the same privilege and was so conscious of health that she made my own baby food, was herself diagnosed at the age of 34 with cancerous tumors in her heart (yeah, wrap your head around that one, it's extremely rare even in the medical literature) that aggressively metastasized, well, everywhere and was dead about 3 months later. And children cancer--are you seriously going to tell me their parents brought that shit on by insisting on living a life of shitty food and environmental toxins? Or crappy, negative thoughts? Really?

I now am lucky enough to live in a sweet little neighborhood in south central Denver in a well-cared for house amongst many well-cared for houses, far enough from the freeway or messes of high tension wires that I need to worry about such things. We have an excellent water supply. On Sundays in summer I can walk to the Old South Pearl farmer's market, and when I can't I can afford to shop (if I'm picky) at either Whole Foods or Vitamin cottage which I can either walk or ride to. As I shop in such places, surrounded by organic whole foods many of which are local and most of which are sustainably produced, I notice that pretty much everyone shopping there is like me. They always are. I live this way because I care, because I am conscious that it DOES matter what food and lifestyle choices we make. And because I have privilege, I am able to CHOOSE in the first place, not to mention make fully informed choices.

Even though I have been quite poor at various times in my perpetual student lifestyle, I recognize that I am still privileged. Even the times when I was happy to eat rice and dried beans and oatmeal for a few weeks just to have something to put in my belly I'm still privileged. Because I know it won't always be this way. Because I have the knowledge and experience of taking good care of my health and making good choices. Because I am not so debased that even in (especially in!) Los Angeles I was able to afford to live in a neighborhood that was safe, and quiet, and green, and close to the ocean where natural breezes helped dispel some of the hazardous pollution, and safe places to recreate were all around me. Healthy people surrounded me and supported and praised my decision to choose health. It makes a huge difference. Does it ever occur to anyone to ask why everyone at their yoga classes and such is almost always from a certain cultural and economic station?

When I worked at Scottel, I shared an office with a young woman who had a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. She and I would talk about them from time to time, and the trials and tribulations that come with raising kids. She and her husband were basically just starting out with fairly entry-level jobs, trying to raise 2 little ones in an expensive city. They lived in a little apartment where it wasn't safe to send kids out on the streets to play unless you watched them like a hawk, so they spent a lot of indoor time, watching more TV than she would like. And since her husband was all but a child himself in the kitchen and she worked full-time and neither of them were raised with the best traditions of food choices, it was tough for her to make sure everyone ate right all the time. Etc, etc. Tough going for a 23-year-old. I understand her frustration.

So my proposition is this: yes we live in a toxic shitty world. Yes, it is possible sometimes to choose whether (and to what extent) you will live in it. But at some point you have to acknowledge that not everyone has those choices, or at least that range of choices. For millions it's not as simple as telling them to quit eating conventionally grown produce and fast food, and get outside and get some exercise and start a meditation practice in the 5 minutes you may have to yourself as a single parent holding down 3 jobs to make ends meet. And I haven't even started on access to decent healthcare, or problems endemic to our current system of healthcare as predicated on a disease-management model vs. one based on prevention, but whatever, as we say in grad school academia, "that is beyond the scope of this discussion."

At some point, if you are serious about helping people, if you really, truly, REALLY give a shit then you have to acknowledge institutionalized forces (that are bigger than any individual) of economics, of public policy, of FOOD POLICY in this country which SUCKS tremendously, of racism, classism, sexism, able-ism, all the other -ism's that dictate and constrain the choices people make every day about how they negotiate their world. And once you do that, of course, you become dangerous, and radical in the most traditional meaning of the word. And not everyone is ready or willing to go there, to see that much or call for something so big and comprehensive. It means going through the looking glass.

It means acknowledging your own unearned privilege and maybe even giving some of it up. It means committing to paying with your life (not in death, necessarily, but in myriad other ways) in order to continue your work for wider goals of economic and social justice for everyone. It means considering that there are barriers in the way of everyone living your so-called simple universal "cosmic laws". It means having an honest discussion about our country's food policy and making sincere efforts to support community gardens and CSA's and the like that are actually trying to empower people and communities instead of just telling them to buy better food and get some exercise, fatty or you'll get all the health problems you so richly deserve (ah, fat hatred apologia--yet another series of future posts!)

And if you're not there yet, that's ok, I totally get it. I wasn't always where I am, and boy have I been painfully called out on the carpet for my ignorant assumptions over the years. Wanted to sink through the floor and die, I did. It's a process, and we are all in it, and it takes a lifetime. It's not always comfortable, and sometimes it's depressing and even scary, and you may occasionally find yourself paralyzed with despair. You'd be in some good company, believe me. But you move forward with it because you care, because you are committed. You can only start where you are and go from there. But goddamn. Be upfront about it.

And until you are willing to be that comprehensive and self-conscious, kindly take your self-righteous, healthier-than-thou sanctimony and shove it up your ass.

Love,
LoLo

Mental Aether Update

2009-07-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

A lot of things have been swirling around in there for a while. There are many, many posts I should probably write. There is a whole other health-related blog that I need to imagineer for my practice and soon-to-be-honest-to-goddess website. I'm feeling frustrated and somewhat rudderless trying to find my way and how I will fit into the larger world as a practitioner of TCM, like a woman without a country since I don't feel much affinity with what I've encountered so far in the "orthodox" TCM camps, but allopathic medicine by and large still has its head up its collective arse about incorporating anything new that isn't shiny and expensive and readily demonstrated by randomized, double blind controlled studies. Also, I went to an awesome functional medicine seminar in Boulder last week given by a former internist named Larry Dossey that was extremely interesting and thought-provoking, on the growing importance (and hopefully inevitability) of [allopathic] medicine's acknowledging the connection of mind, body and spirit when it comes to healing (and that each has the potential to affect the others, to which those of us trained in Chinese paradigms roll our bored eyes and mutter "duh!" while taking another swig of some elixir out of a highball glass).

In short, there's been a lot going on in my head, and I've been feeling a lot of frustration about wanting and not being able to zero in on the words to express it.

I need to review a couple of things, hopefully this week or next. One, there was a huge expose of Oprah and her great love of woo (fine, it's Oprah, whatever) but the privileging of that (with the complete abandonment of reason and science) over what we now practice and believe to be true about medicine is not okay. And I come from a long background of analyzing and criticizing bias, privilege, knowledge and knowledge production, etc. I am not beholden at all to the idea of science as some kind of church or holy sacrament for which you will be swiftly and surely punished if you dare to be critical. But I do see lots of parallels to work we did in women's studies and later in my career in education. So there's that.

And in my quest to begin to understand why I hate woo and have such a visceral reaction of anger toward it (and the pressure to accept it uncritically, even if it seems made up out of whole cloth), I came across yet another article this morning about how your poor health is totally, 100% your own fault for choosing to live a toxic life. It grew to be so long that it became it's own "I Write Letters" post. If you are reading this far, you've already hopefully enjoyed it.

So yeah, I have lots to say. Lots I NEED to say. As Gloria Anzaldua wrote that she was afraid to write, but she was more afraid NOT to write. She also wrote a shitload of righteous awesome in her book La Frontera and her other writings in This Bridge Called My Back, which should be required reading at some point. And please understand that I don't mean to appropriate her struggles and the risks she took to speak out about them or even consider them to be remotely my own, but they do help. They illuminate and inspire. And stress the importance that there has to be hope and vision for something different, and better.

As she and Cherríe Moraga once said, "To assess the damage is a dangerous act. To stop there is even more dangerous."

Now, if you'll excuse me I have some reading to go and do!

Finn Discovers Mushrooms!

2009-07-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

The boring kind, that is. But still awfully cute...

For Whom the Maroon Bells Toll

2009-07-08T16:37:00.001-07:00

You ever have a trip that turns out to be nothing like what you worked so hard to make it be? Even when you didn't really work that hard? Then you know what I'm talking about.

The original plan: leave early Saturday for the 26.something mile 4-pass schlep around the Maroon Bells. Arrive at trailhead, hoist on packs, and go--hopefully at least getting over West Maroon by the end of the day. Day 2 and 3 more of the same until back at the car, whence glorious shedding of stinky trail clothes and plans for post-trail beer and pizza commence. Drive home full of delicious beer and pizza, take showers, take naps, procrastinate cleaning gear as long as possible.

Well. Blink. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong--this was an awesome trip! Just, different.

It began the night before Day 1 when that nigori I split with Quinn over dinner made me too sleepy-drunk to drive home and James had to instead. Plus getting home and remembering that we still had to write out recipe instructions and prep/repackage all our food and pack since we got back too late from climbing the 5th to do it before dinner. James wanted to do some of it at night, but I made sad puppy eyes at him and flopped on my bed, practically falling asleep instantly.

We got up at 6 and did all that, had almost left the house just after 9 when we realized all kinds of stuff, like ZOMG we forgot the wine AND the platypus to put it in, we still had to stop off at the Crushery for coffee and breakfast, etc. I think it was more like 10 when we finally got on the 25. Once there decent time was made--I loved the red convertible with a couple in Cat in a Hat hats, all decked out for the 4th. It seemed like forever until we got to Glenwood, but we did.

Then, we had to stop at the gear shop because James needed a shirt and I needed a rain jacket (except I didn't, since my old one was hiding in the deepest darkest corner of James' pack unbeknownst to us until we shook everything down in camp later that night). Ah well, you can never have too many jackets, right? Then Safeway for a pot scrubber and pouch of smoked salmon and inferior deli sammiches, and finally we were on our way down to Aspen.

As we drove up the road to the trailhead, a road easel informed us that auto travel was restricted up to the Bells and we would have to take a bus. Crap. Or not, depending. We circled around, found parking, tried to find info in the people-forsaken visitors center (nice touch, Aspen Highlands!) and finally figured out from a guy working down in a gear rental shop that overnighters could in fact drive up and park. So up we went.

We pulled up to the ranger booth at the entrance. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: We're here to start a 3 day backpack trip.
Ranger: You have to go back down and take the bus.
Me: But there's no overnight parking down there--what are we supposed to do?
Ranger: Oh, you're overnight? Oh! Well ok. $10. When are you leaving? Oh, let me write you a different pass then.
James: Here's $10.
Ranger: You'll also want to take some chicken wire to wrap around your car for porcupines 'cuz they--oh, you know?
Me: Boy howdy, I do--I've had a car eaten by marmots in the Sierras more than once.

Etc. As she talked I noticed a list of annual passes taped to the window, and that my National Parks pass looked a lot like one of them, so I asked. Turns out, it did. So she took back our pass, and threw a couple rolls of chicken wire into the back seat, but didn't give us back James' $10. When we asked, she replied, "I don't remember you giving me a $20... but..."

Sheesh.

So we get up to the trail head, and realize we don't have the pass it sounded like we needed to put in the window, so after gulping down the inferior sandwiches (I was powerful cranky by now, and it was raining--yay!) we drove back down, only to be informed by a different ranger that putting up our annual pass would be just dandy, thanks so much. So, back up again. Changing into trail clothes in the rain, getting organized in the rain, etc. We toyed briefly with either trying to find a campsite or hotel room in Aspen, but then laughed at ourselves for thinking such a thing on the 4th of July. Suck it up and at least hike to Crater Lake, and then reassess. We even considered driving back down the road the the place in Snowmass where James took me and Jamie last year.

By the time all of this was done and we were on the trail, it was about 3:45 and the sun was back out. No excuses now! We quickly slalomed through the day trippers around Maroon Lake and headed up the Crater Lake trail. Such a relief to finally be out! After about an hour it started raining again, even though it was still sunny and no clouds overhead. Bloody weather. Soon enough we got to the lake, and were pleased to discover that hardly anyone was there--even backpackers. We found our camp at #4 (the best one is #6, but that's what you get for not finding enough beta beforehand I guess) and set up. James took an awesome shot of his tent pitched in front of a dark, wet clearing that, along with the reflection from his camera flash on the guy-lines, made it look like the tent was hovering above the ground, suspended by lasers. I set about setting out the kitchen to make quiche, WEA-style. No cotton gloves for stove operation though--oops!

In retrospect, as I sat trying to cut the butter into the pastry mixture with a tiny plastic spatula and the titanium spork for which James had finally found a use (did I mention he mentioned this was his first trip not eating freeze-dried meals in pouches?) I reflected that really, this step could probably have been done at home. Also, a couple pairs of vinyl gloves are way better than the unwieldy used ziplock bags for handling the dough and keeping your hands from becoming a gooey, clubby mess.

The quiche poofed up beautifully, and unfortunately settled a bit too much as it cooled. However, it WAS very filling, which is a nice feature of backpacking food. And the flavor was good, although some dried herbs would have worked wonders. Next time, I suppose. The brownies turned out much, much better. And all the same, it was all good enough to attract the biggest, most fatty-boom-balatty porcupine I've ever seen (ok, it was the only one I'd ever seen, but zie was so big and fat zie could barely waddle away after grunting at James for trying to get a closeup pic).

At night, it stormed well--bright bursts of lightning and deafening cacophonies of thunder. Most of it was 1-2 miles away, but it came from the west and disappeared off to the east, right overhead. The morning dawned cool and overcast, and so we decided to leave camp where it was and just range out as far as we could on day hikes. We headed out toward West Maroon Pass with the leftover quiche for brunch, and got a couple more miles up the trail before we ran into our neighbor from the next camp coming the other way. He reported he'd gotten to the first major stream crossing (and we could see the stream from where we were, and it was fairly major) and turned around since he was just out for fun and didn't feel like changing out of his boots. His dog was ecstatically wet and muddy though.

After sitting down to eat and watching the weather come in around 11AM, we reached the same conclusion--no sense climbing higher out of the trees if it was going to be electrical. We donned raingear and headed back, made it almost to camp before it really started raining and a huge clap of thunder sent 3 dayhikers scurrying for tree cover along the shore of Crater Lake.

What else to do but take a nap? So we did. And it was nice, since neither of us slept well the night before. Woke up to still cloudy and a little drizzly, but lightening. We pulled out the packs and headed up the Buckskin Pass trail around 2:45 and the sun was already blazing.

Buckskin turned out to be a pretty cool trail, and amazingly beautiful. Fairly steady climbing but nothing rude, and flowers everywhere--columbine, avalanche lily, shooting star, Indian paintbrush, alpine strawberry, and lots of others I don't know. Lots of avalanche slides down that gulch, some of them pretty recent judging by the bits of still-green fir branches that littered the ground. We came on a guy in a good mountaineering tent camped in the most idyllic spot, except for being totally exposed in an open meadow to storms. Hrmm.

At last we were able to see the top of the pass, totally blocked by a gigantic cornice. As we got closer, we could see another trail that swung way out to the left of it to clamber over a much shallower wedge of it, but alas, no time. And no axes anyway. We turned around at the trail junction with Willow Pass and headed back down to camp.

The pizza with sundried tomatoes, olives and artichoke hearts came together nicely in spite of not having a big enough plastic to roll it out on (and I don't trust my throwing skills enough to not land our only bit of dough in the dirt). We were pleased as well that we had wine left in the platypus. The storm that looked like it was brewing seemed to swing north of us and pile up in the east, where it looked dark and angry.

Around the last of the sunset James spied a tiny wedge of alpenglow on the peak behind us, so we grabbed cameras and wine bottle and headed down to the lake. There we saw our 2nd porcupine, although not nearly as fat as the first. There were some deer too. I love twilight.

The rain chased us back up the hill and into the tent, where we stayed for the rest of the night. Of course, we awoke to bluebird skies. Breakfast of pancakes with butter and boysenberry jam, because really--why carry it on your back when it can go in your belly? On our way out we gave lots of beta to people coming in, and got reports that the weather was supposed to dry up for a few days. Nice timing, eh? Oh well. It was still amazing.

Once back at the car we were pleased to discover it unmolested by porcupines, marmots or other varmints with sharp nasty teeth. We also decided not to head back out down the East Maroon trail. The bag of fresh car clothes was so seductive, as were my chacos...

The drive home was a little sad, as it always is. I would love to go back again when the weather is more accomodating--thinking about what's on the other side of those passes is driving me nutz.

Taking the 5th

2009-07-08T16:36:00.001-07:00

So Friday dawned. We slapped off the alarm (so much for leaving Chautauqua by 7AM, tee-hee!) at 6 and grunted back over to sleep for an hour. Fortunately we had sorted gear the night before, so it was a quick get dressed, grab climbing packs, stop off at the Crushery for some breakfast sammies and coffee, and up to the TH. We got super lucky--rock star parking at the nearest spot to the trail, inexplicably the last one left in the lot.

The weather looked shitty. Forecast said it was supposed to clear, at least until the afternoon storm, but I've learned this year that you really don't know. We sat at the picnic table and watched a soloist on the 1st Flatiron, barely visible without binocs. After about 30 minutes we decided to go for it. It was warm, muggy and sticky--not like my beloved high desert at all. James blazed a stiff pace up to the arch, and then after a small bit of bushwhacking discovered that in spite of our late start we were the only ones on this whole rock. James decided to try a different way onto the rock, and we set up a belay anchor for me, and up he headed. He quickly realized why he always took the left route, as this one was a bit of a garden. At least it wasn't wet any more...

Once he set up the belay station I set off to clean and climb. I was curious about this one, since it was the route that some of the other BMS groups did. All in all, I'm glad I got to do Seal--more fun, and a much longer and nuttier rap. This seemed pretty tame by comparison. But, still, easy and fun climbing. James didn't have to worry about having his lead head on too tight, and I didn't have to worry about much of anything.

We did the route a bit differently in a few other places, which presented a couple of interesting problems starting pitch #4 I believe it was. James and I each figured it out, no one fell or even slipped. I got all the gear back. As we got higher and higher the people down at the arch got smaller and smaller. Still I couldn't believe no one else was up there!

Finally, we got to the top, and James showed me a puddle with little critters swimming around.
It is amazing to me how they got there, and still survive up there. There was also a beer left by some BMS group for another, but it looked like it had been there a while. James threaded the rope through the very beefy eyebolt and executed a perfect rope throw. He rapped first, then me. Then down the trail as fast as our legs would carry us so we could hit the Southern Sun for beers and food.

We got right to a table, and after a lengthy discussion and sampling adventures got right to our beers. We knew we would be back in a few hours to meet Quinn and LJ for drinks, so we had little sammiches too. We even got invited to some private party, but alas we would be in Maroon Bell country. As we sat beering ourselves, the rain started to violently splat splat against the windows around us. We missed it by about an hour--so glad to be inside and not up on that rock as the light and boom show started up. Driving down to Denver was interesting, as many of my post-work drives have been this month. Rain so hard you can barely see, an inch or two of standing water on the freeway in spots, people pulled over under overpasses even though it's not that freaky to try and drive it. We just started laughing sometimes, it was such a storm. And huge, bright, fat lightning bolts that rent the sky in two over and over again, while the rolling claps of thunder were perceptible in the pit of your stomach they were so raucous.

And by the time we got home? Sunny, bright, blue sky... no evidence we got pounded by a storm except for the water all over everything still. This place, I'll swan.

Meet Finnomeno!

2009-06-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

The update would not be complete without this--my household grew by one kitten this week. Turns out one of the guys I climbed with the last two weekends fosters kittens for the Denver Dumb Friends League. Turns out he and his wife were assigned a mama cat and her 7 kittens, which were then about 6 weeks old. He told me what they looked like, and I couldn't stop thinking about one in particular--a little black boy with a white-tipped tail. I've always wanted a black kitty, and... well, after the climb I asked if I could come and see them.

I went to play with 7 kittens last Thursday, knowing I would probably come home with one. Of course, I fell in love with my little black one immediately. And oh, it was so hard to not take two!!!

I met David at the shelter on Thursday as he was returning them to be adopted out, and took my little one home (David and his wife kept two of them also). They did such a wonderful job raising him he wasn't nervous or afraid at all. He and Zooey sniffed each other and he started playing immediately. She, of course was not at all sure she like this new arrangement. I laughed a little as I remembered bringing her home to Gibson and how she used to torment him so. Turnabout, I suppose. So far his favorite toy is her twitching tail, for which she's walloped him pretty good. I think he's learning.

After scrapping quite a bit this morning, they curled up on the couch together and slept the rest of the day away. She then gave him the mother of all baths. Hopefully, this is a turning point and all will be well.

I've decided to call him Finn, after the Irish legend. I think the name will turn out to fit.

You can see all the cute kitten pics here, and enjoy the bath vid below. Listen to the little man purr!

BMS Graduate!

2009-06-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems trivial, and on most levels it is. But man, it was more of a commitment than it looks like on paper. Nearly 2.5 solid months of outings, lectures, tests, etc. I'm glad it's over, so I have my weekends back, but so glad I took it. I learned so much, and learned it well--it is an exceptionally run school let alone for only paying $200 and buying some gear. I invested in a mountaineering specific pack, the Osprey Variant 52 (which I totally LOVE), an ice ax (BD Raven Pro), helmet (Petzl Ecrin Rock--thought about a BD or Camp model but how can you resist a brand that means little boy penis in Yiddish? Exactly, you can't), plus sundries like a few lockers, a new belay device that could accomodate the fatty fat-fat 11 mil ropes we tend to use, a couple of new sewn slings, and a snow picket (I learned on soft snow day that if your pack wasn't anchored to a picket or an axe Frank WOULD kick it down the hill to teach you a valuable lesson!). James was kind enough to gift me an extra pair of brand new deluxe semi-rigid crampons he had lying around in his Garage Mahal, I already had a pair of new mountaineering boots, and I've been stockpiling different jackets, hats, and gloves since I got here and realized winter is a whole different shade of crazy out here than in SoCal (duh!).

Since I was on the river when my group climbed Citadel for Routefinding, I got to crash Steve Hughs' party up Bancroft. We met at the park 'n' ride at 4AM, and I immediately knew something was different from my group when I checked my watch which read 4:05 and we were still standing in the lot waiting for people to arrive. Frank would have blown the taco stand at 4:01, and if you were late tough titties. Given how unpredictable the weather is here and how important 15 minutes or so can be, I totally get it now. I think we left at 4:15. Someone asked me if Frank was a total hardass with my group. I smiled in the dark to myself and replied, "Yeah, but in a good way--I like that he won't let you get away with shit."

We jolted a few miles up a jeep road (had no idea how much crazier the ride down would be--a few times my head hit the ceiling and I contemplated putting on my helmet) past the first open gate (yay!) to the 2nd closed one. We gathered, organized, decided to shit can the snowshoes, and set off. Once at Loch Lomond we veered west and started climbing up benches to get onto the East Ridge Route. Once on it, it was fun class 3/4 scrambling for an hour or so that got progressively more knifey until we got to a feature called the Notch--a huge chunk that is lopped out of the ridgeline. Iain and David went on ahead to set up the rap and protect the climb out. By the time we reached them the wind was up (cold!) and clouds were beginning to come in. It seemed like it took forever to get everyone down and up the other side. I can't believe some guy actually free soloed it in his ski boots--it's not super hard, but it's plenty exposed and there aren't the greatest holds when you have bulky feet--if you fall you're going for a long and possibly deadly ride.

Once out of the Notch we still had to get up the 2nd crux of some very spicy class 4 scrambling, and then more scrambling just less exposed for another hour+ until we got to the saddle before the final scramble section before the false summit and easy ridge run to the top. By the time we got there it was after 11AM, and the clouds were socking in and the graupel was definitely falling. It was disappointing, especially as this pair of climbers behind us pushed on (they caught us at the bottom and said they'd summited in the knick of time but had an awesome glissade down), but we knew it was better to be safe. We traversed out onto the snow field in the cirque to our left, sat down, and had a fun ride all the way down to Lake Caroline. By the time we got to the cars we couldn't even see the mountain--it was a good call.

I also crashed Steve's High Peak climb, since my group did theirs up Lamb's Slide on Longs the day we climbed Bancroft. We climbed Citadel from the couloir, then traversed the ridge onto Pettingel, and would have climbed that too if not for the stupid weather.

We met lazy on Saturday afternoon in shorts and tank tops to backpack in the token 1.5 miles to make it an overnight. Weather began coming in and we set up camp at the last sheltered flat spot, and watched as lightning lit up the sky and clouds engulfed Pettingel. It alternatively rained and graupeled for a couple of hours. Lee built a fire, at dinner time I enjoyed my Mary Jane's Farm Bare Burrito while others ate their smooshed Subway sammiches. FINALLY it was late enough to justify going to bed, so into my bivvy I crawled. It wasn't so bad. Jen's bivvy has a hoop, which helps, and it's not the people who had schlepped tents got much sleep anyway. I got up at 4, put on boots, made sure my bento box was full and pack was arranged, and was ready for the 4:30AM leave time. Except that at 4:25 people were still boiling water for oatmeal. Yeah, we left about 4:45.

Fortunately we made good time to and up the couloir, despite 2 people veering way, WAY off route on the approach (routefinding, people!). It was a fun snow climb, and even though it was only 8AM or so it was an east-facing couloir and plenty soft and squishy--another reason to leave early.
We had some spicy scrambling along the ridge to get to the true summit, then a little bit further to reach the rappel. Once everyone was off the rap, more scrambling along the ridge until we were onto the flanks of Pettingel. The weather was rolling in fast, a few ghost turd pieces of graupel were beginning to float and swirl in the air around us, and we knew it was time to go. No more summits that day.

Lee volunteered to glissade down into the middle of the bowl and see how bad the post-holing would be. Fortunately, he took off walking easily once he reached to bottom of the glissade so we took off after him, me starting too far to the right and having to stop and adjust my course to avoid the tib/fib fracture of the rock band in the middle. We got SOOOOO lucky that our trek out was mostly easy walking--we were expecting to post-hole up to our waists, and were rueing our decision to leave the snowshoes in the car.

The rain hit by the time we got to camp, but it was a mostly quick and dirty (one tent group was trying to do a careful, artful pack job for some reason and one guy who insisted on camping on a snow slab took a bit to dig out his deadman, not that it was windy enough to need them oh well.) Again, happy to have only packed the bivvy, and happy we only had an easy 1.5 mile cruise down to the cars. Man those beers at Tommyknockers tasted good!

River Rat!

2009-06-21T15:40:00.001-07:00

Jeez, I'm behind on this thing. It's been a busy 30 days, for sure. I finished hard snow day with no crampon mishaps, and even got to do some bona fide ice climbing up a short frozen waterfall up on Mt. Lincoln. Next season, Ouray for sure! I finished my exam, am STILL waiting on results (how long can it take to score exams for 7 people? Seriously.) I finished my high peak and routefinding trips and graduated from BMS. I got a new job up in Loveland 3 days/week. I got a new kitten who is so cute it makes my teeth hurt. I made some new climbing and riding friends. This post, however, will focus on the week I spent on the San Juan River around Memorial Day.

Jen and her brother Aubrey put their heads together last Christmas and decided to put their names in for permits to celebrate his graduation in the spring. Yampa was denied, which is a bummer 'cuz I hear it's a pretty awesome river. San Juan, however, was granted, for 20 people. We started with 17: Jen, Aubrey, my brother Craig, Jen's cousin Jess and her boyfriend Chris, Jen's friend Abbey, Jen's mum Mary and her friend Marguerite, plus various Outward Bound connections (Sara, Diana, Bayley and her partner Jeff) and family friends (Bakers and his friend Dave and his 7-year-old son Andy) and Craig's friend Nate from VLS who is doing an internship in Telluride this summer. Craig, Abbey, Chris, Jess, Sara, Jeff, and Nate took out on the 3rd day in Mexican Hat, the rest of us continued the adventure to the takeout at Clay Hills.

The trip began in the rain. I left Denver in the rain, drove all the way to Bluff, UT in the pouring rain trying not to be killed by insane truckers and stupid people trying to make good time to Moab. I arrived in rain, set up my tent in the rain, etc. The morning was overcast but dry until we shoved off, and then it rained/poured the rest of the day until we set up camp in the evening. Blessedly, it stayed dry until the middle of the night when it rained again. It made the first day kind of a bummer, cold and shivery, not conducive to hanging out. At least I was on Diana's boat with the Gay Pride Umbrella! We set up the shelter tarp to eat lunch, and continued to huddle under it or the umbrella for at least an hour after we were ready to go, waiting for the rain to abate. 'Cuz that's how it's supposed to rain in the desert, right? Short, fierce, and sweet.

We gave up and moved on. We stopped to see these cool petroglyphs.

Later on we stopped to see these house ruins. What a view they had!

Once we got to camp I began to get the full sense of what a river trip is like. Since the boats were largely loaded and rigged by the time I got there, I had no idea how much we actually had until it came time to unload in camp. Everyone's dry bags, kitchen dry box, giant stove, propane bomb, several jugs of water, the groover, the food and beer coolers, etc. Plus, I got the full idea of just how well we were going to eat on this trip--fresh food just about every meal, lots of stuff, even wine and Diana's gin and tonics. Yes it was kind of a shit show, but it was an awesomely enjoyable shit show.

And the beer--I don't think I've ever seen so much beer in one place outside a liquor store. Coolers full, and mesh bags full dragged behind the boats in the water. I think we started drinking at about 10AM every day and didn't really stop until bedtime. After the first day the weather behaved and we felt more like drinking them in the intense, hot sun. We got a couple of afternoon thundershowers with spectacular lighting shows. The day we stayed at Lime Creek a couple of hours afterward we heard a strange kind of roar, and then suddenly a current of dark brown water filled with what looked like small bits of log came rushing down the practically stagnant Lime Creek--a flash flood, started miles away.

As the sun was coming up on our 4th day, Jen got us up early to hike the Honecker Trail to the rim. We got up there just as the sun was rising and the light golden-orange. You could see all the way to Monument Valley, AZ (read: hundreds of miles). Someone had built a tiny Stonehenge. The trail blends into the canyon wall perfectly--unless you knew about it you'd never know about it. We got down and Dave (who used to be a chef before he retired) and Bakers and Mary got to work making an awesome breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, coffee, fruit, etc. I think we finally got on the water close to noon.

I had been in the ducky with the kayakers and Bakers in his canoe the day before, but I chose to ride with Diana this day so she could start teaching me how to oar. I started getting how to move the boat, but still have no clue how to go through rougher water or water with lots of obstacles--this trip the water was so high all the rocks were covered and it was easy. Of course, so were the sandbars, which make it a little treacherous toward the end where the river is so silted up and backing up from Lake Powell. It gave me a new appreciation for Edward Abbey, that part.

When we got to a big class 2 rapid called Government, we eddied out to scout. Dave ran it in his kayak while we watched. Bakers showed me how to find the tongue and just follow it around to ride the wave train through the rest. He and I hiked down to run it while the others watched. I got into the ducky and followed his line into the tongue, and sure enough I really didn't have to brace or steer much of anything--the current took me, swung me through the curve and then spat me into a really killer wave train with big haystacks that were a super fun up and down ride all the way to the end. I found Dave and Bakers and we eddied out to watch the rafts come through. Then we continued on to my favorite camp of the whole trip at the side canyon Slickhorn.

As we were pulling up to our beach, I noticed a guy on the other side of the river, in jeans and a green shirt and cowboy hat, and what appeared to be a bandana over his face and gold mirrored sunglasses (later when we got on shore Bakers pulled out his binocs and that's exactly what he was wearing). He seemed to be acting strangely--downclimbing and then scrambling up this ledge, pushing large babyhead boulders off down the bank, dancing around like he was on something that looked like it could have been fun or could have been terrifying. We noticed a kid around the corner from him messing about near the bank of the river. Tried to ignore them while we set up a shower made from a water jug baked all day in the hot sun and tried to scrub all the river sludge off of ourselves (the water was the color and consistency of cafe au lait--my day in the ducky yielded a dappled sunburn from where water splash washed away my protective coating of silt). As we were drying off we saw a man come from upriver and collect them, and realized it must have been some kind of solo experience, and those poor kids had probably been out all day.

Chef Dave helped us make the perfect garlic shrimp to go with fresh corn and black bean salsa in tacos. We sat around the beach in chairs drinking wine and watching the fire in the pan, while Andy experimented with the flammability of various materials found around camp. Jen warned us to enjoy our gorgeous camp, because the next night would be none to nice. Oh, she had no idea!

We hiked up Slickhorn Canyon a bit in the morning, with Diana pointing out various fossils and layers (she's a geologist!) and Andy challenging anyone who would humor him to race twigs and leaves down the trickle of water still running down the canyon.
We stopped again at another called Grand Gulch for a hike as well--super cool arch in this one, lots of desert varnish, humongous boulders that had obviously been rolled down quite a ways in the last big flood.

Back in the water, we were clearly hitting the slackwater portion. Lots of rowing to reach camp at the not so reasonable hour of 7:30PM. We got to the official site (saw that the last one upriver had been completely destroyed by a flood that produced a huge alluvial fan feature over the former site). Marguerite and Bakers had gone ashore ahead of us and came running out of the trees thrashing their arms like mad--mossies were EVERYWHERE. As soon as we got to shore they were all over us, too.
We debated whether or not to try and make it to the takeout, at least 2 hours away and hard to spot in the dark (and a big scary dangerous huge waterfall blocks the way into Powell) and decided to stay on the rock bench above the eddy we grabbed next to the Mosquito Swamp.

We covered ourselves in clothes and bug spray as best we could--Bayley and I had nets for our heads, the rest of the grrlz made hijabs of their sarongs. We unpacked hurriedly and tried to set a fire in the pan while Bayley and Jen made dinner. By the time we ate it was just about dark and they were nearly gone, but the air still hung heavy, muggy, and hot. No breeze at all, for the first time on the trip. We cleaned up and basically got ready to go as soon as we got up, early, hopefully before the mosquitos knew we were about.

We shoved off right as they were getting bad again. Bayley started cooking breakfast on the boat named Patches while Aubrey rowed. Breakfast sammies of veggie patties, leftover tater tots from last night's dinner, cheese, grilled onion I believe. Oh, and fresh brewed coffee too. Unbelievable. We got to eat soon before we hit the takeout, which fortunately because it was early was empty.

After that it was just work--unloading everything, breaking down the boats, sorting which gear needed to be returned to which rental facility and therefore would go in which car, etc. Aubrey, Bakers, Dave, Mary and I ran the shuttle to retrieve the rest of the cars, we finished loading while Andy played in the mud (that kid is unbelievably cool, not to mention a great boater of all craft) and hit the road. It was a long trip back to Denver with all the stops: return gear in Moab and Fruita, drop off Bayley in Grand Junction (Jeff made us some killer coffee--thanks guys!) and finally Diana's place in Silt. Totally worth missing my routefinding trip (and by extension high peak). I can't wait to do another one!

I'm So High

2009-05-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

Or I was, yesterday. About 2000 feet off the valley floor, suspended by 2 9.4 mm ropes anchored by webbing slings attached to a bolt drilled into the rock by some porch swing hardware. Simultaneously beautiful, and quiet, and terrifying.

Yesterday was our 3rd Rock Day--the culmination of all the rock skillz we've been learning. We set off from NCAR early--about 6:30AM, in order to avoid traffic jams at the rock. It looked much like it looked a year ago out there--the snow finally gone, the grass temporarily green, super pretty, remembering how I got so taken by this place so quickly.

Kevin was out with some nasty sinus infection, and our fearless senior leader Deb got rear-ended the day before and could barely extend or rotate her neck, so she came in with us and made sure we got off the ground ok and bid us adieu. I was bummed, because I really like Deb and she loves to teach rock and she's a fantastic climber, but she offered to go out with us after the class was over--said she trusted our skills enough, which is a huge compliment.

Frank and Jason led us up in teams of 4 and 3, respectively. The leaders got to wear rock shoes, while we got to wear our clunky mountaineering boots. We were, to be fair, only following, and didn't really need them. But trying to climb in them was an experience all the same. Good thing the crack route up Seal isn't too vertical. Frank figured out a masterful scheme of rope management whereby we all got to try cleaning routes and anchors but we never had to untie from our initial tie-ins. Oh wait, Tim and Cindy had to switch places at the end of Frank's rope, but that was it. We also learned how helpful it could be to have radios at the top of the 3rd pitch, after Frank and Tim had climbed up to the top of the 4th and final pitch. The pitch was about the full length of the rope, and because of the way the rock curved you couldn't see or hear above or below you. There was so much drag on the rope you couldn't feel rope drag either. Apparently Tim (belaying me from the top) and I (waiting patiently at the bottom for him to pull up all the slack and signal that he was ready to have me on belay so I could climb) were yanking on either end of the ropes like ringing a church bell but neither of us could feel it. Finally they heard me scream "Climbing!!!" and two climbers waiting patiently behind us confirmed they heard "Climb on, Laura!" so up I went. About halfway up I found a nut someone had left in the crack--obviously left because they couldn't get it out, and I had no cleaning tool, but I thought I'd try anyway. It worked! I thought I scored a piece to begin building my rack. Turned out it was Frank's, and Tim wasn't able to get it out. Oh well.

The whole climb was super fun--technical enough that you could practice different moves and techniques but not so steep it was impossible for newbs like us. I climbed better than I thought I would, even not considering the boots--I felt like I was problem solving better than I ever had, and not nervous at all. Of course, I was trying not to think of the rap at the end.

Ah, the rap down. Most that I've done start with some sort of flat ground at the top, with a horizontal lip over which you have to hang your butt into space so your legs are about 90º to the rock and you just kind of walk them down as you lower yourself through your belay device. This one was different. You don't start from the tippy-top of the rock, but rather about 20 feet below it. You scooch yourself through a narrow cleft between slabs until the whole rock drops away in a sheer (except for the overhung section!) face. When you get there, you clip into the anchor at then reach one leg around the corner (like around a corner in a hallway) only there's no floor. Then you hop out with the other one and let your autoblock hold you while you get situated. Now you are hanging completely out in the void, only your face is so right up against the rock you could kiss it, and your legs are hanging straight down. Somehow you have to lower yourself a little while kicking yourself away from the rock to get in that sitting position, which you figure out how to do, and then down you go. Except there is so much rope drag it isn't a smooth or even a fast ride at all, a lot of bouncy-bouncy (at least for me). But it was very controlled.

Then I saw beneath my feet that the overhang was approaching. I lowered over it, and then... I was in space! I continued to inch down, and then I began to spin slowly around to face out from the rock. I was only about halfway down, and I realized as I gazed out onto the foothills and Boulder and the plains in the 200 or so degree view before me, I am so very, very high. Hanging by two strands of nylon. It felt surreal. I even stopped for a minute to let my arms rest--that's how difficult it was to feed rope through with all that drag. It was just quiet, and everything felt far, far away. Even my classmates below me were still far away--all I could hear was a gentle wind. Just me dangling in space.

I kept lowering, lowering, lowering, finally got back to rock against my feet, and then I was down on the ground, and that was it. Cindy came down, it looked like she nearly flipped upside down when she hit the free rappel section, but she went fast and righted herself. Then came Frank, who said he nearly tipped upside down too from the weight of all his gear. Then it was time to pull down the ropes, coil them, and hike out to the cars in time to hit Southern Sun for beers and food.

I wish James were there. I can't wait for him to get here in June and take me climbing in the Flatirons. I think I finally, 15 years after starting, get climbing. I wish I had gotten a picture from the rappel, but I wasn't thinking and my camera pretty much stayed buried in my pack. Stay tuned for hard snow day next week, wherein we try not to slash our ropes, our clothes, or ourselves by mis-stepping while wearing crampons. And then I race to the airport and maybe have to courier Jamie's cat Agnes to LA. And try to pass my NBAO exam in spite of waiting until the last possible moment to study. Should be exciting!

Climbing Continued

2009-04-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to put up some kind of climbing imitates life imitates climbing post and how the theme of this year is going to be Finally Conquering Shit You're Sure You Can't Do, but I don't have the time or imagination space right now. But we have two rock days under our, um, harnesses so I figured I should at least post an update on that.

Rock Day #1: Castlewood Canyon

Getting to the King Sooper's was really the worst part for me. When I popped out of bed, grabbed my coffee and jumped into my little blue marvel the roads were slushy but more wet than ice, and I thought--yay!--since I'm a little late already. I wasn't too far south before the wet slush became frozen slush and bonafide ice, and oh, what fun that was. I even got to go for a little slip and slide myself--I've never been so happy I bought an AWD car AND that I paid attention the day they taught us you steer into a skid to get out of it.

We sorted ourselves into the higher clearance vehicles and headed down to Castlewood, and the doubletrack of snow got deeper and deeper. We rubbed our eyes in disbelief when Frank, who was leading, stopped up at the entrance station and got out to put $6 in the little yellow envelope for the fee. Would rangers seriously be checking today? But I guess that's how we roll at CMC--we do the right thing.

Once we found our spot, Frank and Chris headed up to the top to set anchors and throw ropes while Deb helped up put up a tarp for shelter against the constant, wet melty snow and we burrito-wrapped our packs in more tarps since we couldn't all cram under there. Once the anchors were set, we paired up and practiced our fallen climber tie-offs. This involves (once the climber manages to get far enough up the rope to fall on it, a challenge since the rock was so crumbly and wet Frank said he was sure it was just a fossilized dinosaur turd) putting in a big mule knot with safety, then fixing that line to the anchor so you can take yourself and your belay device out of the system, then figuring out how to reverse the whole process with a minimum of dropping or lowering your climber.

Once we had taken turns through that a few times and were thoroughly soaked, it was time to clamber up to the anchors for some raps. The route was super short (maybe 15 feet?) but enough to give you the idea--the worst part of any rap is hanging your ass out into space over the edge and getting started anyway, right? A couple of double rope laps and a fake simul-rap on singles, and it was time to pack it in and call it a day. Blessedly it never got colder than 36º and the wind never came.

Rock Day #2: Castlewood Canyon Redux

This time we were racing other groups to get out to the wall and snake the best routes, so the meetup was considerably earlier. But, no snow or rain or wind--I'll take it! There was one group that beat us there, but we still got 4 ropes up in decent placements. Lots and lots of BFT anchors. Somehow I kept ending up on rope #4 which had not one but two little overhangs and ledges that made getting the prussik slings past them...interesting, on the way back up.

The first rap was straightforward. Then, on with the prussiks and back up we went--again, straightforward until I got to the second overhang/ledge at the top. Prussik slings are nifty little loops of cord that you wrap and knot around the climbing rope so that when you hang your weight off of it, the knot tensions and holds you on the rope, but when you unweight it you can easily loosen it to slide it up or down on the rope, depending on what you are doing. You use two--one hooked to you at your waist, and another tied onto the rope for your foot, and you sort of inchworm yourself up or down the rope. Which is simple enough when the rope is not stretched taut against the rock. When it is, like at the end of a route, somehow you have to kick your body and the weighted rope away from the rock long enough to slide your chest prussik up a few inches before it slaps back down against the rock. This is harder to do when there the ledge is an overhang, i.e. the rock for your non-prussik leg to brace against while kicking your body away is further away. Plus you are wearing clunky mountaineering boots that aren't really smearing for shit. It was tough, but I figured it out and clambered inelegantly over the ledge to clip my safety into the anchor and take a deep breath. Oh, but the fun was just beginning!

Next was a 2-fer of rapping down on your off-hand while wearing your pack (and by extension chest harness, just for kicks and giggles!). It was a little more cumbersome, but not too bad. The worse part was having to prussik back up with the pack and chest harness on. I tried, but I'm so short-waisted that my foot prussik could only be moved up about 4 inches at a time before it ran into the biner of my chest harness. I decided instead to try Frank's suggestion of lashing a sling to my pack and dangling it from my harness and hauling it up that way. This worked much better until I got to that same damn 2nd overhang, and while I finally managed to get up and over to the top, I kept tugging on the pack but it wasn't budging. Turns out it was a little snagged under the lip of the overhand, but since it wasn't a big one I was able to haul it up eventually, even with my weak girly arms.

The most awesome exercise of all was passing the knot. If you're not wearing a bunch of crap, it's not a big deal--just a lot of procedures that have to be done in the right sequence so you stay tied into the system and are safe at all times. Frank made a deal with us--go down with your packs on and you only have to do it once. Of course everyone went for that!

I started down, stopped above the knot to let my autoblock hold me, and lo--a traffic jam of epic proportions bristled at my waist. Between the chest harness/biner, big biner and belay device, double rope rap AND safety belay line all in super fatty-fat-fat 11-mil rope, I couldn't see a damn thing, let alone figure out how to get what out of where. My 2nd locker was too small to get around my loaded harness, then it was a bitch getting both rap lines out of the device in all that mess, I clipped my safety knot on the wrong side of me which made management even more of a headache (but not in that order!) etc. I was pretty exhausted but thought I finally had it, and I was prussiking down to load up the autoblock, take off the safeties and finish the damn exercise when... I realized I forgot my chest harness! It was sitting on the knot, I couldn't go anywhere but back up a bit to try to get it off and back in below the knot. Which was really, REALLY hard for me because I'm weak to begin with, plus now I'm fatigued, plus the stupid pack is constantly pulling me backwards and loading the chest biner against the rope. I figured out how to wrap my straight left arm around the rap line and step up long enough to undo the chest biner with my right hand, but it took at least 6 tries, each one costing precious muscle strength. Once that was done, I STILL had to stand up and get the chest prussiks down to load the autoblock, which took another 5 or 6 attempts before my shaking, sweating, exhausted, cursing body finally got it. All I can say is if I needed motivation to keep going to Crossfit, well...

Then Frank surprised us all by making us go again so we got the practice, but he relented and let us go without packs/chest harnesses. It was a totally different ride--smooth, easy, fast--took about half the time without all that additional crap getting in the way.

The rest of the day was spent simulating multi-pitch climbs, which will be our next rock day in 2 weeks out at Seal Rock, which I'm told sports a rappel of 200 feet or so. I remember the rap at Balance Bar 2001 was close to 300 feet, but the start was so gradual it didn't seem that gnarly or scary, 'cuz you couldn't see the bottom anyway. I am getting a little less fraidy of being up though, and it feels like everything is coming together. Which is a good thing since I have to go leave for our final!

Ciao. Someday I'll take pictures, I swear.

The Miles, They Pass Quickly, and the Days Seem to Be Hours

2009-04-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

Wow! Tomorrow turned into a week and a couple of days! Holy crap, how does that happen?

How does one spend a week in New York and have no energy to do anything? By not only shifting the time 2 hours forward by by also shifting that an additional 2 hours forward by requiring one to be in clinic ready to put needles in people's ears at 7:30 AM sharp, which means getting up at 6:30AM which is really 4:30AM to me which is really, really rude since I don't have to be in clinic before 9 or 10, normally.

I did go to MOMA, only they close early and there wasn't much time. Brian and I then roamed around Times Square area, then headed over to Greenwich Village and wandered around some more before he had to leave me for a bit to meet a friend for a business dinner thingey and I ate some grubby Japanese and amused myself in the bookstore across the street until it was time to meet back up an go for gelato and grappa. Nice.

Thursday was beautiful and I did manage to drag myself out for the obligatory jog around the inner perimeter of Central Park. Can I just say that running at sea level is awesome? Jeez, I felt fucking invincible, and I am most definitely NOT (as I found out when I got back to town and had my first Crossfit workout session--oy!) New York was interesting, and a fun place to visit, but I could never ever live there. I was happy to come home after only a week! People are not only tightly wound but strangely wound. Again, crazy and enjoyable, but not my tasse de thé at all. That being said, staying with Brian was absolutely great--super cool guy, very funny, interesting, smart, kind, etc. plus adorable kitties. I can never thank him enough, really, but I'll try!

I got back to grey and drizzle, which is pretty much what I left, except for Thursday! The week was a little mellower, and yesterday it rained, which was nice. Then today--boom! All hell breaks loose and we have almost a foot of snow on the ground by the time it's quittin' time at work. Everyone had been saying what a nightmare the roads were, that the 25 was closed south of Lincoln (I live one exit south of there) etc. It was slow moving, but only because most people were being cautious on account of how slushy and snowy it was. Flakes the size of toonies, I tell you!

It is nearly one, and even though our climbing exercise outing was amended to meet much, much closer to town and at a much, much more civilized hour I still have to get up in about 6 hours in order to pack and make it down there in time. So, I will sum up the rest: 2 patients this week (yay!), awesome biz coach continues, joined BNI and really like them, started Crossfit and totally abjectly LOVE them even as they push me so hard I puke (I really did, the first day!), and signed up for a 4-week aerial dance class starting next week.

Wish me luck climbing out in Castlewood tomorrow, and rejoice with me that it is not Stoney Pass instead!

New York Fuggin' City

2009-04-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've been here since Sunday afternoon. I kind of wish I had had more time to plan stuff, on the other hand I feel so tired because clinic starts at 7:30AM here, which is 5:30AM my time and let's just say that other than Saturday for BMS I haven't gotten up at 5:30 in a long, long time.

I'm staying in Harlem at the northeast corner of Central Park, where my former stepbrother Brian has been kind enough to put me up for the week with his two awesome kitties Jax and Cleo. I am happy that it is at least a quick easy train ride into the Bronx at the recovery center where we are being trained and certified in the NADA protocol. I didn't realize it at the time but apparently Michael Smith, who runs the program at Lincoln was one of the originators of NADA? Anyway, I'm loving being able to take trains wherever I want to go, as I always do. They make commuting SO much nicer than driving. And handier when you're from out of town and don't want to bother renting a car.

So far it's all pretty mellow, except for the Trader Joe's here, where I shopped today to get groceries for the week. The place is a complete zoo, longest lines I've ever seen, overcrowded, etc. Why there is only one open in NY I can't figure out. I did discover, by the by, that they open stores based on where they have warehouses, and so until they open a warehouse more accessible to Denver/Colorado, we ain't gettin' any, no matter how friendly the booze laws get. Ha!

Rosa Reyes runs the acupuncture clinic/program, and she is as good an example you will ever see of how to be gentle and generous and filled with lovingkindess but not get taken advantage of for a minute. I kind of wish I were able to stay next week and do my 2nd week of training and get it overwith, but oh well. It will give me a chance to do New York a little more right as a tourist, I guess. Hopefully I will see some museums with Brian tomorrow, and maybe finally get over to the trapeze school and/or a run around the park before I go home.

More tomorrow, totally knackered now.

Navigation Macht Spaß

2009-04-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

Regretfully I don't have any pictures for this one. Yes, I brought the camera, no I didn't feel like taking it out and taking pictures, since at least half the time we were out I was on point with my partner. I will try with words, then.

Up at 4AM, out the door at 4:30 to make it over icy roads to the park n' ride by 5:15 to meet the BMS crew for our nav party up at Stoney Pass. Made it, got my map plots verified by Deb, aka one of the most awesome instructors evah, and piled into a 4x4 with some teammates and we caravanned in the dark up to Bailey and then for several miles up a snowy dirt road to the drop-off point. I won the packweight contest at 47lbs--I swear to Maude Frank said our packs should weigh 45lbs with all our crap, and that 10 essentials should be at least 25. They told me to go and take out all but my 10 essentials after that, and in retrospect I was happy with that decision. Tim and I were tapped to lead us to the first point, and as we headed away from the cars in the quickly falling snow none of us had any idea we wouldn't be seeing them again for nearly 11 hours.

The deal was we were not allowed to use altimeters--just map and compass. Which is difficult on a clear day but when you can't see for shit the features around you because they are all socked in by clouds and blowing snow, well, it ups the challenge factor considerably. Oh, and add to that no roads or trails--which would have been covered in snow and unidentifiable anyway, so wev I guess.

Frank avowed once we finally found the first point nearly 2 hours later that point #1 was the hardest. He was totally lying, we found out later, when I was tapped along with Cindy to nav from point#2 to point#6. Point#1 was only the second hardest to find! But we finally did get it, and it was nice to hand off the reins to someone else for a while and just follow. The weather acted like it was going to cooperate a few times, but it never really did--just kept snowing. I am grateful we were enough in the trees that it was not too windy!

Getting to point#6 was tough--it was at least 3 miles from our start point, with no straight lines to follow and only one feature to line up with to keep yourself on point to follow the due south bearing to the final location. We conferred with our teachers and decided to follow a course of contouring, or following the sidehill around and around until we could see a knoll and a saddle from which we would head south, cross a creek and continue into a wide open meadow. The travel was arduous--snow up to the knees in spots, and all off-trail so we were slipping and sliding on rocks and logs and deadfall thick enough that you had to weave a complicated path in and out of it to get past. At a spot where we thought we were close to the saddle, we stopped for lunch, and I discovered my water bottles were at least half slush--surprising since it didn't seem that cold, but then we were pretty much on the move the whole time.

Frank, who could find his way aound with his eyes closed he's done the course so many times, tipped us off that we actually stayed so high that we passed above and beyond the saddle when the clouds completely obscured the knoll we were looking for. It was nice to know we had traveled further than thought, but frustrating because now we didn't know exactly where we were, and other than knowing we needed to go generally south it felt like every move was potentially multiplying errors. I have been doing this long enough to know how easy it is to do and it was tough to stay focused. Lunch helped considerably though. Frank helped guide us the last 1/4 mile by "breaking trail", and once in the meadow it was obvious. I know that technology can fail, devices can be lost/forgotten, etc. but it underscores how important it is when in unfamiliar [winter!] terrain to have your altimeter and your GPS. I calibrated my altimeter on leaving home, but because of the wonky weather it was about 300 ft off by the end of the day!

We got back to the cars around 6PM, and from there it was another 2.5 hours until I got home. We saw a couple of cars that had gone completely off the road from all the snow and ice. The slow trip was ok.

The next day Frank was kind enough to send out the GPS track of where we actually wandered so we could see how off course we got, and we actually did pretty well all things considered. Our route-finding and high peak trips are going to be outings to be reckoned with, however. Just remember to increase however long you think it will take by a factor of at least two, maybe three!

On the Other Hand

2009-03-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

Bellingham has a Trader Joe's, a Crossfit, an Outrigger club and adventure races. This could be very dangerous.

Bragging

2009-03-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Not only did my awesome brother make the Water Law Review at DU this semester, he also scored first place in the Bluebooking section. W00t!!! I love my brother, and not just because he's such a Smarty-Pants™. Congrats, Craigo-- you deserve it and more!

Saxon Mountain and One Step Closer to BMS

2009-03-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a ridiculously beautiful day here. It dawned a little cold, but the winds never really picked up and the skies were bluebird, even up above Georgetown which is apparently famous for being windy. The pic above is nowhere near where we were, but I wanted a graphic and that's pretty much what it looked like from the vista point near the summit...

We CMCers gathered at the bottom of the road and began the trek up, which seemed a lot longer on the way down, actually. I had no idea we'd covered so many switchbacks until we had to descend them. There was a nasty piece of thick, treacherous sheet ice clear across the jeep road near the bottom that pulled one guy's feet right out from under him. It continues to amaze me how slippery ice can be. We passed some old mining detritus and the remains of some tumble-down shacks.

After a couple of hours of that we reached the top of the switchback section, and donned snowshoes, only to take them off about 200 yards later, put them back on 300 yards up the road from there, take them back off in another 300 yards...

We finally said screw it and just gingerly picked our way through the bare rocks and sections of bare dirt. Soon enough we were slogging (first tracks, dude! only in heavy wet snow--yuck) through this awesome sugary mess and by awesome I mean not awesome at all. I got my turn at the front breaking trail about 3 minutes before we got to a junction of a road where snow cats had come up from Idaho Springs and tamped it all down--I couldn't believe how heavy it was, just a few inches on my snowshoes as they sank into that morass of depth hoar so prevalent in Colorado. I can see what big, scary avalanches it can cause--your basic nightmare, and I understand why Bruce Tremper characterized it as "guilty until proven innocent." My other favorite quote about depth hoar from Canadian avalanche specialist Clair Isrealson:

"Depth hoar is like having your crazy aunt come for a visit. She stays forever and you just never know when she's going to snap."

Anyway, we weren't in avy terrain, so no worries that day--although you could definitely see cracks and shearing in the snowpack when we stepped on it, even on pretty flat surfaces in spots. We finally reached the almost top where the road ended at a vista point complete with half-buried picnic table and BBQ. There was a sign that labeled a lot of peaks to the west that I have heard people talk about. I think you could pretty much climb a peak a week in Colorado and not live long enough to get them all. And those are the named ones...

One last off-trail push to a rocky pile of the finest Colorado granite and we were there. We found spots and ate our lunches while passing around the summit register. On the way down we shortcut some of the road by finding fun off-trail descents between the road cuts, and then it was a long, long, frankly boring haul back down to the cars. Jebus it took forever, although not without entertainment. There was this cat named Andrew who was halfway through a doctoral program at School of Mines who was strong as an ox but had no gear of his own, and there was a retired mathematics prof and a near-retirement physicist from NIST who had a great time talking about all things science and math, and it was really fun just listening to them having such a good time getting geeky.

At long last we reached the cars and agreed that the only thing better than sitting down would be sitting down on a barstool with an alcoholic barley-based beverage of some sort in our hands. Our carpool contented ourselves with a stop at the convenience store right before we got on the 70, where Mathematician Phil bought a coke because it was in a glass bottle and it made him nostalgic. I, however, noticed the extra nutrition label pasted on the neck of the bottle and asked if it was a Mexican coke, and of course it was! I told him what I had learned from Sang--that in Mexico they were still made with sugar and not that nasty-ass HFCS and therefore tasted so much better and that's why at Father's Office all the cokes are Mexican.

Soon enough we arrived at the park-n-ride, and that was the end of that. Legendary CMC leader Dave G signed off on my C rating upgrade form with a nice compliment about my general outdoorsy awesomeness, and that was that. I emailed a copy of it to the BMS director as soon as I got home, and I will send it in to the upgrade committee tomorrow. Even if I don't get into BMS, at least if I want to go on an outing that is at least halfway cool I won't have to call or email the leader and beg, proffer climbing resumes, etc. So yay, me!! Hopefully I'll actually get into BMS and will be able to be a fully contributing member of our rope team when James and I do Ptarmigan Ridge this summer.

As for James declaring that we are climbing Kelso Ridge on Memorial Day weekend, I have a counter-proposal of my own: Craig and Jen's San Juan River permit was granted, so how'd you like to do a super cool float trip instead?

Pivotal Moments

2009-02-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

It is a great feeling when you can truly say:

I'm not sorry I met you.
I'm not sorry it's over.
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.

That is all.

Horseshoe Mountain in the Bag, Plus My First Snow Kitchen!

2009-02-24T17:41:00.001-08:00

That's us at the top, squinched up against the wall of some ramshackle, falling-down hut trying not to get too pounded by the howling wind, since the ridge wasn't super wide and true to Colorado form the leeward edge/side was a huge, scary cornice. The wind was strong, and it was COLD as it screamed up from the valley from Leadville, but other than that the weather and conditions were pretty idyllic.

I am trying to get into the Colorado Mountain Club's basic mountaineering school in order to facilitate my summer Ptarmigan Ridge traverse plans and also to raise my coolness quotient a bit--no one can deny that a girl who knows how to wield an ice tool and tie a bowline blindfolded in 10 seconds flat is pretty sexy, after all. But I am a little late to the party, and there are all these hoops and prereqs to jump through first. I think my waiver from trekking school should be granted, but I also have to go on two qualifying outings to prove that I have the mettle to hang. Thus, I pleaded my case onto this Horseshoe climb last Sunday and this coming Saturday.

9 of us gathered at the (apparently) renowned restaurant The Fort, where you can find all sorts of western game and other traditional fare for a pretty penny. We sorted ourselves into carpools and headed out the 285 to South Park, which is not a town like the cartoon (that would be Fairplay, where the creators grew up) but a huge kind of grassland surrounded by mountains. There are lots of these features called parks here; a Middle Park, Winter Park, etc. We drove as far as the road in would allow, which was 1.5 miles shy of the trad trailhead. Which meant that I think by the time all was said and done we did around 16 miles and quite a bit of elevation gain too--and for 202 feet that thing wasn't quite a 14er! Rats. Oh well. It is still an iconic mountain that is quite distinct from just about anywhere in South Park. Can you guess why they call it Horseshoe? (Blogger is not playing well with others at the moment--I may have to add images later)
Update: here it is!:

Apparently you can do a bunch of 14ers in one trip here--the only other I remember by name is Sherman, and Cameron which doesn't count because apparently there has to be a loss of 300 feet between peaks to count as separate peaks. It was harder than I thought it would be, until I realized I wasn't eating enough and I insisted on eating half of my sammich even though we were still about an hour away from the summit. I felt a LOT better and started climbing better too. The snowshoes stayed on the packs even though there were plenty of spots where we were postholing up past our knees and the depth hoar was making me use bad swear words, but the cuts of the old mining road we were following were always just up ahead in sight, so we gritted them out.

Most of the way we were pretty sheltered from the wind, and I didn't realize how lucky we were until we climbed up high enough that we weren't protected anymore and felt like I was leaning at an angle as I slogged up the last mile or so of trail. Not surprisingly, the top was pretty much bare rock/talus/shale on the windward side, and I got to see up close what the avy people mean by the term "wind loading". I don't remember the exact statistic, but Colorado gets significantly more snow built up from wind than actual precip.

We stopped at the hut at the top for a quick bite, then down again before anyone got too cold. I wanted to stop and sign the register and take more shots from the summit, but my fingers felt like they were being crushed in a vice just from a few gloveless moments in that wind and I just wanted to keep moving. We took a slightly different way down, which included a nice glissade that was gentle enough to not require an ice axe--really fun! Once we got down to the main road section I put my head down and trekked, I get barnsour when I'm close to the car, yes I do. Plus the pads on my big toes were beginning to hurt--it was a long way to hike in snow in feet and boots not yet broken completely in. But I love my ZOMG Bootz!™ Ditto my brother's Patagonia DAS parka and expedition weight balaclava.

The day before was the first winter camping class outing. We schlepped out to some place called East Portal south of Nederland by a big huge railroad tunnel. Nothing remarkable except it felt like it took forever and the guy sitting next to me was possessed of a quite heady bouquet of halitosis and BO that almost made my eyes water and definitely wonder if I could get away with cracking a window on the grounds with windy road was making me carsick.

There were quite a few of us there, and despite all of us marching up and down and all around a large, flat-ish clearing several times, we couldn't get our compressed snow platform to set up very well, even after heading over to watch a presentation on the wherefores and why-nots of tent pitching and deadmen. Still, with the guidance of Instructor Dave we planned a simple straight-ish trench with a counter on one side and seating on the other. While half of us dug it out, the other half of us tried to excavate blocks of depth hoar, which if you don't know depth hoar is this kind of faceted snow that does. not. adhere. to itself, making sculpting, building, or snowballs a lot harder. Plus Dave told us to take our snowshoes off and of course we were still postholing all over the place and trying not to lose our balance as we kept sinking into the sugar snow carrying our loads of snow blocks on our shovels.

We managed enough to build a short windbreak, and finally settled down to fire up the stoves and make our lunches. My little food pouch cozy with the orange flames was a huge hit with the instructors, as was the Mary Jane's Farm. Then we learned how to melt snow without burning it (which is possible, shit you not, if you just put a pile of snow in your pot and stick it over the burner.) Then after what seemed an interminable time of trotting around looking at other groups' kitchens, we were trotted over for one final exercise-- finding out what happens when you drop your stove in the snow. A guy with an MSR Reactor got his stove lit first--me with my little Jetboil came in second--we could have taken Reactor Guy if we better understood it was time trial to get the things lit and not ready to cook a meal. Oh well. The need for a redundant fire source was a point well taken.

Health Insurance

2009-02-20T00:31:00.000-08:00

Officially sucks the root, sayeth me. As a long-time patient who fortunately almost never has to deal with using it, and now as a practitioner who's gearing up for all the super fun times to be had waiting out the sign-up processes, figuring out the stupid quirks of individual insurers, and the non-stop hilarity that ensues from having to submit your claims 2-4 times, simply because you are an LAc and not an MD, DO or PA.

I have a lot of potential posts about healthcare policy, reform and the like, for later, once I get the practice somewhat going and plans for PA school well under way. For now, I'm feeling the resentment of being relegated to everyone's secondary or even tertiary tiers of care networks, which basically consist of discounting your fees and requiring so much submission of superfluous paperwork you wonder if it's worth it. Yeah, I'm working on my more long-range plans to get my own self-paying patients in my door, but that will take time--right now, referrals will only come from DPM if I can bill directly (no dice with submitting your own superbill, sadly). Some systems of care leave us out entirely (I'm looking in Medicare's direction, although the Hinchey Bill is apparently up for consideration again, and since we have fewer or at least a different assortment of douchebags in Congress, it might finally get passed this time around. I don't feel like getting into a cost/benefit analysis of joining a system that is presently collapsing under its own weight right now as it is nearly 2AM and I'm tired, but in terms of access and parity this would be a huge boon).

I'm harumphing off to bed now. Besides scheduling another job interview for next week and figuring out how to fill out 45-page insurance network applications, and writing more marketing copy than you can shake a checkbook at, I have to figure out where I can get a PPD test on the cheap, and get all my warmest gear together for tomorrow's snow camping outing. Cross your fingers the mild weather (by mild I mean no lower than 0º and no wind at night) holds! Pictures and trip report to follow, I promise.

Winter School, Part 1

2009-02-14T18:01:00.000-08:00

It is a strange thing to go from knowing your local roads and trails (at several levels of zoom!) so intimately to knowing almost nothing, and almost no one to show them to you. I'm not even sure where all the different areas of trails are, which makes research a titch more challenging. I'm slowly acquiring an assortment of guidebooks and topos (did you remember to put some in my crampon care package, James?!), but I'm realizing that winter throws in another wrench of unknowns and potential danger factors I know nothing about being a spoiled, SoCal princess for lo these many years. Even my time living up in San Fran was more straightforward than this. I can't tell you how many times I've found a loop that sounds exciting and challenging and has everything I'm looking for in terms of distance, climbage and freedom from hordes of stupid people, only to realize... holy shit, that there might be some avalanche terrain. And/or what do I do if weather comes in that makes it so hard to find my route down I don't?

So, I signed myself up for a beginner's avy class. The AIARE level one class from CMS required backcountry skis which I don't have [yet], so I went for the offering from the Colorado Mountain Club instead. Ethan and Ben from the Colorado Avalanch Info Center gave two days of outstanding classroom lectures on snow science and how to spot trouble spots, and then we all headed out to Jones Pass to try our skills at digging snow pits and performing rescues, 'cuz we learned that by the time SAR comes to dig you out you're probably dead, even if you survived the initial slide. You have to rely on your mates, which means be extra, super thoughtful about just who you venture out into winter backcountry adventures. We set out from our cars and tested our transceivers to make sure they all transmitted and received, and then set about practicing locating transceiver duffel bags the instructors hid for us, including scenarios where we didn't know how many burials there were.

Next we got into two large groups and took turns coordinating a rescue with multiple unknown burials, only this time we had to get out our probes and shovels and dig the duffels out. We spread ourselves out in a line from one end of the bottom deposition zone to the other and started hiking uphill, looking for signals and calling out numbers to the leader. I got lucky and happened to be standing practically right on top of a burial where I started, but it took at least 15 minutes to find the actual location with the probe and then dig it out from at least 4 feet of snow. It was easier on us, too, since the snow we were digging out hadn't actually slid and required minimal chopping with the shovels to get it out. One of our instructors said that in his Level 2 class they actually buried his instructors (with radios and avalungs of course) to simulate the rescue. The rest of our group dug out the other burial and off we went to dig a snow pit.

Snow pits give you and idea of how the snow is layering, and how well those layers are sticking together. In practice, if you were worried about a slide you'd find a slope similar to the one you were going to be crossing, dig out a cross-section of it and then locate the hard and soft layers, and test whether or not they sheared when you put different weights and directions of force on them. Our slope turned out to be fairly stable, except in the tree shadow. Afterward we had fun jumping on our Rutschblock test column to fill it all in so as not to make a hazard for snowmobilers, which weren't too much of a plague that day but ugh. Do not like.

And now? I feel like I know just enough to be really wary of where I go, because I know just how quickly ugly things can happen. But I also know better how to keep myself out in the first place. And to make sure I take competent and well-practiced buddies out with me!

Next week, I learn to build snow caves and kitchens and all kinds of cool shit you can only do when camping in the snow at the CMC Winter Camping School. W00t!

Sugar Lumps!!!

2009-02-14T17:41:00.001-08:00

Fucking outstanding.

Great Shao Yang Winter of '09

2009-02-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

At least, everyone here says it's atypical and ridiculous, what with record heat alternating with record freezes. I last left off kvetching about flying to LA. It has now been 3 consecutive weekends I have been home, and not had to take a class or go to a seminar. It has been glorious.

LA turned out well--Steve picked up Mikel and me in his awesome White Maurauder® and after a lovely gorge-fest at Tacos Plus we set about trying to make sure we had memorized all the exams for all the body parts. Mikel's friends collected him around 9, I got my hard drive back from Karen around 10, and Steve and I stayed up until nearly 3 studying like fiends and cursing ourselves for waiting until the last minute. But it went fine--the written exam was painless, and the practical nearly so, even being as punchy as we were. With plenty of time left until the mandatory party, we headed out to the beach and went for a walk in the 85º sun, and hatched a plan to go to the trapeze school on the pier when I come out in May for the final NBAO board exam. After the party we hiked off some of the meal at Fryman Canyon and caught a spectacular sunset on the way back to the westside for a quick dinner at Terried before dropping me back off at LAX.

It was clear and not too cold when I got in and drove home. Imagine my surprise when I woke up 5 hours later to 4 inches of fluffy dry powder all over the world! I got to shovel the sidewalks and everything. But it was beautiful--the snow settles onto the branches of the leafless trees like delicate lace and it is so, so quiet. Within 2 days it was back up in the 50's, was in the 60-70 range through the middle of the week before plunging down a yawning gradient into highs around freezing. But that week was amazing, besides enabling me to get out the Chacos and tshirts and gad about relatively naked. It also enabled a road ride in nothing but shorts and jersey and a perfect day out at RMNP. No wind, temps in the 40's, bright, bright sun, not even that many people out on our trail--pretty near perfect. I'll update with pics when I get them transferred over to the new machine--the other exciting thing which happened in LA was the death of my logic board signaling the call to the next Macbook.

I also managed to get in a trip up to Brainard to poke around but didn't end up getting much further than Brainard Lake, owing to a late start and taking the hilliest and longest route to get there. Once I started back on what I thought was the CMC snowshoe trail, only to realize after a bit that I was going in the complete opposite direction of where I wanted to go and the signed snowshoe trail I was on was not on the shitty trail map I carried. I backtracked to the dam where picking it up should have been obvious, and no--the map was unequivocally shitty. Like a good little orienteer I crossed the dam, found the parking lot on the other side and picked up the trail there. I never did find the CMC cabin, although I suspect if I'd only followed my first return trail further I'd have run right into it. I've got to get some nav worthy topos, that's all there is to it. And next time I would prefer to take the easy trail out so I could have more time to push further back to maybe even Blue Lake. Otherwise you're in the trees the whole time until you get to Brainard Lake when the terrain opens up a little and lets you see some pretty great views of the peaks around you.

Walking on frozen lakes is a trip. Skating on them is a trip too, or it is to someone who grew up without even an ice rink around for hundreds of miles. My friend Garrett took me out to Evergreen last week though and showed me how it was done. Garrett is from Rhode Island and has been skating practically since he could walk. It was a beautiful night--not too cold, no wind, but the ice was pretty rough, making things interesting. Still, I did reasonably well for it only being my 2nd time ever. I held on to Garrett for the first lap or two, we tried moving over to other sections that looked glassy but really, really weren't, and finally back on the main space I wobbled along by myself and only fell once. To my embarrassment, however, I noticed that after a few laps I could not keep my ankles from collapsing, no matter how hard I concentrated, and I kept dragging my toes which prompted a frantic kind of running step to keep ahead of my momentum and not go pitching head first onto the ice. Garrett agreed I was probably getting tired, and we headed for the warming house to sit down. Right before we got onto the ramp I went down again, this time twisting my knee, which still kinda hurts. It's been a long time since I tried to do something to do something so totally new that I hopelessly suck at it, and will until I develop that unique balance and muscle memory. But it was fun and I want to go again. And not that I didn't before, but I will really never view a hockey game in quite the same way again!

In Which I Whine About Work Travel

2009-01-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

I know it's almost over. I know this weekend is almost the last of my ortho commitments, and that if I pass I only have one more trip to LA to pass the board exam and it's done. I know that going to the Whole Foods orientation in 2 weeks in San Fran is probably pointless and I won't go, likely. I know that the week-long training in NADA certification in Dallas (or NY, I guess--I know people there now!) will be a huge benefit to my practice, especially if I only limit my practice to Denver Pain for the foreseeable future (and of course I'm not--there's a sleep therapy gig in Boulder I've applied for, as well as work with the Mile High Council on Drug/Alcohol Abuse, trying to get an Acupunks-w/o-Borders-style vet clinic going here in CO, etc.) I even know I'm racking up a shit-ton of frequent flyer miles I can count toward a really fun trip somewhere next year.

I'm just sick of having to up and leave and I want to go out and play in my new adopted state with other people who live here. Especially since we're finally having spates of days with highs in the 40's!

That is all. Back to the inclinometers and P4 reports I go.

Jon Swift's Best-of-08 is out!

2009-01-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

This will keep you entertained until at least 2010, I promise.

And while you're at it, please send him your votes for best humor blog. And it's not too late to help out Driftglass beat out Anchoress (who declares Bush was right about Gitmo, among other nuggets of awesome wingnuttery) in the Best Individual Blog category.

Hurry, voting ends Tuesday, Jan 13!

I Can't Believe It's Not The Onion!

2009-01-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

Joe the Erstwhile Plumber is heading off to Israel to be a war correspondent! Yes, you read that correctly. The mission? To let Israel's "average joes tell their story."

And the Right wonders why it's sliding into total fucking irrelevance. Other than not knowing how to do it in the Facebook or the Twittering, that is.

Those Weren't the Days

2009-01-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

So I'm of the so-called weaker sex, except that as a modern Amurikin girl I play as hard as any man and even my girly "women's work" would have a man's ass draggin' by the end of the day, thus men invent labour-saving devices like sewing machines and E-Z Shift transmissions so I can still be a weak (read: sexxeh!) chic and have enough energy left over after my grueling girly day to still keep myself beautiful! Or something like that. Note well the interchangeable use of terms "girls" and "women" while curiously "men" are never "boys".

Oh, my sides!!!

The Year Ends Quietly and Slips Away

2008-12-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

I've posted a few times with retrospective-ish thoughts on the progress of this last year, so I won't belabour the point. Even so, a lot has been surfacing for me the last two weeks--I guess because it's finally been a little quiet. All the stuff, the reactions, the emotions that I shoved to the back of my consciousness because I didn't have time to deal with them because we were Moving On™ have been quietly pushing themselves to the forefront and demanding their moment of attention.

So beyond the obvious of what a year of incredible accomplishment it has been, it has also been one of great sadness for me. I don't think it really hit home until I got, well, home, and my grandmother and grandfather were both glaringly absent. Especially my grandfather, because my grandmother had been so withdrawn and frail for the last 2 years of her life. But in a way, my grandmother too, because she told my father before she died that she didn't want a service. He honored her wishes, but it was hard to not have some way to ritualize saying goodbye and acknowledging the whole of her life, either. And then there was Gibson. What can I say but I my heart aches missing his sweet face and six-toed feet clicking their way through our tiny home?

There were other heartbreaks and disappointments along the way too, which I didn't get to grieve or resolve because, well, it's complicated. And I had board exams to pass and a life to pack up and plunk down in a new place. I'm just finding it hard to be fully at peace about it without at least looking at what is gone, let alone acknowledging that I had to say goodbye to some things way too soon, way before my heart was ready, way before it could accept that some things will never change or be what you want them to be no matter how much wishing and hoping you twist yourself up in doing. It helps me understand those realities intellectually, which I grasped nearly instantly, but it doesn't make me feel any less sad, and the sadness can't be gone over or under or around, only passed straight through.

This has been a year of great happiness too--I saw a 4-year project of incredible effort and endurance culminate in a master's degree and the crushing of my state and national board exams. I've met some incredible new people and reconnected with countless old ones I thought I'd never see or hear from again. I live in view of some of the most beautiful mountains and wide open skies on earth. For the first time in almost 20 years I get to see my brother nearly every day and be a part of his life. I finally found a field I love that helps people and communities heal, whether I end up going to PA school or not (Dude, I KNOW.) And all of these things are in the end separate from the sad and setback things. It is not a zero-sum game. It is possible for my heart to exult and grieve, to love and to lose at the same time. Indeed, it is the only way it has ever known how to be.

Occasionally you listen to an old song and the lyrics jump out in bold relief at you because they ring so true. Here's one from Kate Wolf sung by the incomparable Nanci Griffith and Emmylou Harris--which I particularly love these days because I am at a literal and figurative crossroads, looking simultaneously backward and forward. I am far enough along in life that I have a bona fide past while still having a bright and promising future, and because I am literally on a Great Divide mountainside where the rivers indeed change directions. I keep the last stanza close when the sadness and uncertainty seem intolerable and endless:

The finest hour that I have seen
Is the one that comes between
The edge of night and the break of day
It's when the darkness rolls away

All of the lyrics are here.

This second one is about the return of light after darkness, covered by Nina Simone whose styling suits my bittersweetness.

Enjoy. And gratitude to all who have made this year what it was for me, for showing me all you have shown me and taught me all you have taught me. Mahalo to you and to 2008.

Project Tamale '08

2008-12-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

15lbs chicken, 10lbs carne, 32oz mole paste, 400oz crushed tomatoes, 60oz ea of black beans and corn, 22.5lbs masa harina, 96oz shortening, 320oz vegetable broth, 60oz corn husks, 15lbs cheese, plus amounts of carrots, roast peppers, onions, squash, and red/green food coloring to dye the raffia strips that tie it all together, so to speak=about 400 tamales. New this year were vinyl gloves from my med kit so that my hands weren't also dyed red and green for a week.

This year I really, really tried to find local and organic everything--did reasonably well, considering I had no idea where to go for anything. The project completely overwhelmed my tiny kitchen. I listened to endless amounts of NPR. Even the boring BBC stuff. If it was on last week, I heard it. Several times.

At least Zooey had some fun.
And I was able to use the garage for extra cold storage since it was so stinkin' cold--seriously, it was colder outside than inside the fridge. Once I get them all distributed, I'll stash a bag in my freezer for myself--it should be about 4 months or so before I'm able to look at them again. I know I say it every year, but next time I am seriously recruiting help. The happy looks I get when I give them take some of the weary ache out of my neck and shoulder muscles too...

See the whole process, including Zooey's invaluable oversight here.

Project Tamale Update

2008-12-21T00:18:00.000-08:00

The finish is in sight! 120 veggie and 180 chicken so far, likely 130-150 carne by the time I have to cram some clothes into a suitcase and light out and hop a plane tomorrow to Sacto for the family holiday thing. Pictures to follow soon.

Conchords News!

2008-12-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

New season starts in just 30-something days!! To herald, there's a lip dub video submission contest, and the best will be cut together and aired on the show. Here's one submission I found on Youtube:

I think his Jemaine is a dead ringer, don't you?

I Wanted the Opposite of LA and I Got It

2008-12-15T13:34:00.000-08:00

I'm impressed that at 2:35 in the afternoon I still have ice on the indoor side of my windows. Allegedly out at DIA the windchill is supposed to give one the impression of having been knocked out and kidnapped to some undisclosed location in Saskatchewan. It was nearly 14 below when I went to bed and according to the news it got down to 20 below. It's in the mid-teens at the moment. It's a record! Yesterday was a record too! And I was here!! We are supposed to get a teensy bit of snow tonight, possibly teensy bits every night through Thursday. The highs are never expected to much top 32. But at least the sun is shining bright! Ahem.

I guess indoors slaving over a hot kitchen making 300 tamales is as good a place as any to be this week, no?

The rest of the park at sunset series can be seen here--taken when it was a balmy 41 out. I hear that's shorts and teeshirt weather in Antarctica...

Thank-You to Gabby Johnson, For Saying What Needed to Be Said

2008-12-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

I could watch this all day. Via Petulant at Shakesville who came up with the best-titled post ever.

To see the original song from the Liam Show and one of the most incredible homages to shoes ever click here.

Rocky Mtn Rox

2008-12-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

At least I think it does. It hinted at scenery and vistas--Dr. Ken swore up and down on a stack of Bibles it was there, but I kind of had to take his word for it. But hey--his word is good, no reason not to assume he's not good for it. And what little we were able to see when the snow and wind calmed down was compelling enough to make me drive straight home and buy an annual pass to find out more. Okay, not quite straight home--after the mandatory pint of beer and plate of eats, then.

Oh....speaking of eats...my belly feels vacuous and is making me feel a bit peevish. I'll be right back.

So much better! I continuously underestimate the power of low blood sugar to make one feel crappy. And may I gush for a moment about how happy I am that it is pomegranate season? I don't care if pomegranate-flavored/juiced foods are so totally last year, it will always be one of my favorite fruits, filled with those succulent garnets as they are. Tonight they went on my barley and wild rice pilaf. For the last 3 days they've gone in kale salads. Tomorrow, I don't know. I need to roast the butternut squash I bought last week, make pumpkin bread, and shop/cook all the tamale fillings and sauces. I know! Maybe I'll make pomegranate molasses and incorporate it into the sweet tamales...and I'm totally blogging that stuff this year--way, WAY too much of a 3-4 day process not to.

So yeah, RMNP. About the same distance from Denver as some of the trails in the Angeles high country, of which I thought nothing when going for a hike or monster training run. I find that I'm needing to put distances in terms of LA equivalents because everything feels so much further here I find I don't want to drive--nah...too far! Drive to Boulder for a road ride? Or even the foothills for a 10k? I'm having a hard time, but Wash Park is beginning to get very tiresome. Anyway.

I set out early after getting way too little sleep staying out late and Craig and Jen's holiday sweater party. But it was worth it to catch the sunrise hitting the Flatirons--holy nature show! And it was already in the high 30's in Boulder. As I rolled through Lyons, however, the bright sun disappeared. As I climbed higher still, so did the mountains. As I got to Estes, I could see furious maelstroms of snow blown off the Divide whipping around the ridgelines. On getting out of the car I discovered the wind was an icy knife as well--nothing but the snow pants I haven't worn since 2000 would do, and on they went. I really, really need better true coldweather gear, btw.

Ken and I set out and ditched my car at the visitor's center, which was near empty. Apparently in the height of summer you have to be in by 6AM or so if you want a spot. Which, I guess if you're going to be bagging peaks or otherwise climbing up high you need to be up and below treeline by the time the storms come in around 1, so... After a brief start up the trail we decided to go back and retrieve the snowshoes. Which turned out to be the call.

Fortunately, we stayed in among the trees most of the time and there wasn't much wind. I was temporarily fooled into thinking the temp wasn't so bad. Ha! As soon as we got to the frozen lake, I discovered my folly. We paused long enough for Ken to point out some of the ice hanging off some frozen slabs in the rock above us where ice climbers go to play. It's still wild to me how gigantic icicles can get, or that gushing, unruly waterfalls can be tamed into silence when they freeze solid. We pushed on toward Black Lake. I began to feel sparkly, either from not enough food or altitude or both. We got close to the lake, but decided to turn around (ok, I decided, Ken kept shrugging good-naturedly and saying he was fine with "whatever") when it got too blustery--the kind that stings your face as the snow scours off the top layer of skin.

We headed back, and found the downed tree on which we rested before, to eat lunch. Ken brought hot chocolate. I have GOT to replace my thermos--I have no idea where it went but a thermos of hot tea or soup or something is mandatory gear when it's cold like that. I also learned that you should pack a down jacket for when you sit down to eat or rest for more than 5 minutes. Before too long we were back at the first lake, looking up at the ice climbing formations underneath the lacy veil the snow makes as it fills in the cracks of the rock wall. Ken swore the ice was in enough to walk on, and we still had the snowshoes on so we opted to take the shorter route across the middle. I didn't fall flat this time (man, the stuff is !) and it's totally neat-o how the bubbles freeze in the very thick layer of ice--like you're going factor five in space when you look straight down into it. Anyone who gets that reference award yourself 500 bonus nerd points.

At the fork in the trail we took the fork untaken to a small, frozen waterfall. Not big enough to climb on, but interesting nonetheless. You could hear the water running under the ice in the creek, too. Yeah, so I'm easily amused in wilderness. There are way worse things to be, right? Right. Before we knew it we were skittering across the icy parking lot to the car, and my indecisive fingers which had been thawing and refreezing the entire time were grateful. My frozen behind was sorry, however that Ken's car had no butt-warmers. Butt-warmers are the business. There's something about radiant heat that just makes you feel safe and happy. And whatever they don't take care of the post-outing beer and eats will. Unfortunately, my fingers were too cold to feel like whipping out the camera and taking lots of pics. Or any, for that matter. Not that there was that much to see vista-wise. You'll just have to trust me that it was awesome in the purest most slang-free sense of the word.

So yeah. I finally got out since that embarrassing ride up Lefthand in October. I remembered why I moved here, why I fell in love with this place at first sight. Why I would be perfectly content to call myself a near-lifelong Coloradan.

Whirlwind, or What's a Lazy Blogger to Do?

2008-12-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. So much has happened, so much is still on the horizon. I think I might have to break this into a few posts, before it turns into a 10-pager.

To start with, I'm a hobo no mo. I found a nice little finished basement with tons of storage for bikes, gear, etc. I even have a garage, which now that it seems like it's snowing once a week at least, is nice. Zooey is not always happy with the smaller space--I think she got spoiled at Craig and Jen's spacious house. She also definitely does not like being alone--getting a kitten (or at least broaching it to the landlord) is definitely on the agenda for next year, once I finally start working. Whenever I come home from being away she meows incessantly for the first 30 minutes, when she's not fiercely rubbing her forehead into me or literally running after me when I change "rooms" (this place is really more of a studio) to make sure I'm not going to abandon her again. I'm finally unpacked, mostly arranged, almost entirely furnished.

So far, the weather has been making me really happy. I went for another semi-slippery run in the park, where the slush that got tamped down from the runners yesterday froze overnight. But, that park is gorgeous at any time of year. I love it covered in snow--it made me so happy to look down and see exuberant dog tracks dotting the trail. There is now a thin layer of ice that covers the entire pond--it was fun watching the geese walking on the water instead of swimming in it. And it is just wide open and peaceful. As long as have to live in Denver, having this within walking distance makes it not so bad. I did discover yesterday that what I thought were my cold-weather tights were really only mid-range--my entire backside was completely numb by the time I was halfway around the park, and it was only 28º when I went out (which don't get me wrong is cold, but not as cold goes, you see.) Today (like yesterday) there is not a cloud in the sky and the sun is blazing brightly. They said it was only supposed to get to mid-40's, but it's at least low 50's. I shucked my long-sleeve and ran in the tank top before I even got out of my neighborhood.

We have had our first bona fide storm--and 2nd and 3rd, really. We've had our first night of authentically butt-cold (10º qualifies, no?). The day of the 10º night I believe the high was only about 19º, and it snowed off most of the day. I thought I was being smart scheduling all my errands/meetings (including up in FC) for one day, but it turned out to be that day. Have I sung the praises of my little Saabaru lately? And if I had a dollar for everyone I saw slid off the road along I-25 I could have taken my self out to a very nice lunch when I finally got to Fort Collins. And yeah, I know I'll be sick of it by February, but it's barely December and we got off to a late start...first time in years the kids had Halloween with no snow, they say!

And now, since I have to come up with a superbill form by tomorrow and because the incessant cigarette smoking at the next table is driving me nutz (the only thing I don't like about Stella's...besides not much in the way of eats and sometimes too noisy). Off to try Pajama Baking instead...

I haven't had much chance to get to explore trails and rides yet. I had an embarrassing ride up Lefthand to Ward in October. Yes, I didn't eat enough, yes I was not used to the altitude (Ward is up at 9K at least) but still. That ride was not that steep. At least I beat the guy in the shorts full of holes--no one wants to ride behind that if they can help it.

And I'm finally getting up to Rocky Mtn this weekend for some hiking/running with my new friend Ken the Hand Surgeon! He lives up near Horsetooth in FC, and rides and runs all the time. He even did a 100 mile ultra last year. Talk about living the dream. Trip report to follow.

I also had a fantastic week up at Ortho Center of the Rockies. I got to meet and watch some wonderful docs, including Dr. Ken Duncan (the hand guy), my physio friend Nik, and a non-surgical ortho guy who used to be a family doc named Dr. Steve Yemm. Both Drs. Duncan and Yemm were great, and taught me a lot. I also got to see lots and lots of xrays. I spent a few hours in clinic with a spine surgeon, and I got to spend two mornings in surgery (in the OR!) watching knee replacements and foot/ankle repair/osteotomy stuff. It seriously made me bummed I didn't go to med school first. I was very interested to chat with Dr. Sobel's (total joint replacement guy) PA, Jason. He was Dr. Sobel's right hand, and all the other docs in the group that I met spoke very hightly of him. He got to do a lot. First Marcus and now this guy--perhaps PA school is in the cards after all. I know, I know--MORE school?! But hey--at least I know now that I love medicine of all kinds, so it's not like I'm totally switching fields...I don't know if there will ever be a job there, but there may at least be a referral list someday. Keep your fingers crossed!

And speaking of jobs, I've been shmoozing up a storm trying to get something going. I'm working out particulars with the pain clinic, which will hopefully be unbelievably awesome and shortcut 80-90% of the headaches and pain new acupunks go through when starting out. I've met with a bunch of acus and chiros here and in Boulder and up in the 970. I also got a tip-off to go get on the list for shifts at a local rehab drug/alcohol rehab council, which would be good experience and good connections too. Since my dream of a community-style clinic will have to wait for now, this may be the next best thing. Other than that, everyone's freaking about the economy and holiday craziness in general. Good thing there's always stuff like applying for EIN's and insurance credentialing and work comp training to keep me busy in the meantime.

And the wild and woolly world of work comp! I can now do impairment ratings (even though technically I can't sign my name to a report as an acu. Yet.) There's a whole boatload of potential patients and fun with paperwork and endless tables and figures I could delve into. Dr. Lerner's position is of course that we should--that it pays well compared to what we earn as acus, but it pays crappy compared to what docs can earn as surgeons, so there's our niche. Speaking of which, the Whole Foods thingey is rolling right along, even though some of the regional managers are being curmudgeonly. I will fly out to San Francisco in January, after my ortho test for the orientation and to hopefully meet someone in CO who can help me get it going here. I wonder if Fred would be interested in having me teach some courses out here...

Fina

Hobo Blues

2008-10-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm kinda getting 'em. It has been months officially, but it feels like longer from all the time I'd been spending in June, July and August traveling. It's been a nice break, but I think I'm ready to plug in again.

So much has happened--my already late JMT trip got pushed another week for my grandfather (and oh, my grandmother is so scrappy, I just love her so much!). I spent a fantastic few days in Yosemite hiking up from the valley, taking my sweet time, climbing Half Dome, meeting cool people (none of them going my way though, not a single one!), and then once I got to the high country my enthusiasm just kinda evaporated. And it was starting to get really cold--much colder than I thought it would, about as cold as my ultralight gear would allow. I was nervous about the isolation, and the potential for weather with temps that low, and having to march 16+ miles/day whether I felt like it or not since my ortho class couldn't be missed...long story endless, I punted at the base of Donahue Pass, and headed back to Tuolemne. I met a couple of super cool guys just out for a relaxing, lazy trip, and hung out with them for a couple of days, and then they were kind enough to cram me into their 2-seater pickup and give me a lift back into the Valley, since the hiker buses had stopped running 2 days before. It was a nice trip all the same, and I can't wait to go back and start the Tuolemne to Portal section next year! I heard, after I got back to LA, that 4 guys who hiked up from Onion Valley got caught in a bit of a storm--they got some high winds, snow, ice, thunder/lightning etc. around Muir Pass. They were fine, but I was glad I quit when I did, since surviving that shit solo can get ugly pretty fast, especially that cold. Sometimes my risk aversion really does save my ass. And I will probably get around to putting up the journal at Summit Post or something. Photos are up here.

And really, I was feeling awfully lonesome and hankering for some nice mellow company, moreover I could NOT stomach the thought of blowing a week of vacation in LA, so I went up to Bellingham to visit my friend James. Now that I'm in Colorado I'm sad James is no longer in Boulder, but he's happier in Bellingham, which is a pretty lovely place I have to say. I spent a couple of days bumming around by myself in Seattle, found another Hostel From Hell™, and rode some ferry boats. Once with James we got to take long lunches messing about on the waterfront, play in the park, give ourselves sushi belly, try new beers, watch the veep debate with an unruly crowd of Bellinghamsters (they really call themselves that, I'm not making it up), and go hiking near the base of Mt. Baker and begin to plot our summer adventure traversing Ptarmigan Ridge. Oh, and I got to see the Fremont Troll on the way out of town. Photo record of that is here.

I swooped back into LA in time to make the ortho weekend, and here is where it gets sad again. I made arrangements with the wonderful woman who took care of my cats while I traveled to pick them up Sunday the 7th, or whatever the date was. Sunday morning she called me and said that Gibson was very sick and needed to go to the vet, so I said please take him. They called me in a couple of hours and told me as near as they could tell he had a stroke, and was pretty bad off. Somehow I made it through the rest of the class and went over there as soon as I could, knowing what I would probably have to do. I was fine (mostly) until I saw him--he was so skinny I almost didn't recognize him--he had evidently all but stopped eating, and was severely dehydrated too. He couldn't stand up, or hold up his head, or see too well, and he was scared out of his kitty mind. It was awful but I knew the kindest thing to do would be to let him go, he was so far gone. Dr. Jones was very kind, and let me stay with him, and even passed me a box of tissues when my blubbering was beyond control. I got the tiny little box of cremains in the mail yesterday. So now I can mix them with Pearl's and scatter them somewhere nice, I suppose.

By the time it was time to pick up Zooey I was somewhat composed. I did a championship cramming job of stuff into the car, and off we went. Zooey hated the box, and as I was pulling off the highway to get gas in Victorville I realized it was perhaps time to clip her leash to the door handle and let her find her own favorite place. Victorville was a little scary--this guy was roaming the parking lot back and forth across the road, and finally ended up dropping a dollar bill on the ground and convulsing himself with peals of hysterical laughter. We stopped again in Baker so I could get something to eat, and the nice lady at the drive-thru window gave me a small bowl and some water for Zooey. Naturally, she didn't want any of it, or the extra-stinky special wet food I brought to try and get her to eat. She ended up crawling behind my headrest and draping herself over it and falling asleep until we got to St. George, where I gave up and got a hotel room for a few hours. A few of her favorite hiding places are here

The next day was more of the same, but I was glad I stopped in St. George and got to see all of southern Utah by daylight. It was pretty incredible. The dry plains east of Grand Junction were nice too, but Summit County was the best (duh!). The aspens are brilliant gold and just shimmer against the dark evergreens. There was a little snow in the high country even, and the air was clear and crisp and not too cold. I landed at Craig and Jen's awesome little house in Platte Park around 5PM, happy to be there at last.

So far I've just been trying to get my bearings and get organized. It's hard to start your practice when you don't completely uproot yourself and move to a place you hardly know anyone, this is adding a few more wrinkles. But I don't care--I'm so SO happy to be here, I love it already. Even if I do have to stay in Denver for a year or two, since my strongest job prospects so far (super hot one tomorrow morning at an integrative pain clinic, stay tuned!) are here. I did meet a fantastically awesome physio who is the director of rehab at a large ortho facility up in Fort Collins this weekend, which was a nice surprise. I will go up there later this week or after I get back from LA in a couple of weeks to do some observation), and who knows? I'm also trying to figure out how I can make a connection at Boulder County Hospital, because it would be entirely possible to practice 2 days a week up there to start, as long as I have something busy down here. And, this morning I had coffee with a DNBAO from Fred's class 2 years ago who turned out to be so generous and kind and filled with heaps of useful information. I will observe at his office and possibly at the pain clinic where he started a month ago. It really is all about affinity.

I feel very lucky--I've hardly started asking around for help and already I've gotten so much. I try to remember that when I'm feeling scared, nervous, or lonely, and that if I found this much in 3 weeks hobo-crashing with my brother, surely in a few months once I have my own community life will be pretty good. And none of this I could have foreseen a month ago, let alone a year ago when I was struggling hard to answer all the questions about what was I going to do to make this work, to make it work for me, to get the life I wanted out of it. I still don't have all those answers, but I'll figure it out by the time I need them, I think.

The Year of No Middle Ground

2008-09-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

It's either way, way up, or way, way down, or just way, way milestone/watershed/sea change either way. No wonder I'm ready to head for the hills for a while.

No sooner did I pass that stinkin' herbology exam and thus complete my nationals OM cert than my aunt and brother called on Sunday to tell me that our grandfather had died in his sleep earlier that day. Like with my grandmother's death (not his wife, my other grandmother is still doing remarkably scrappy and well) earlier this year, it wasn't really a surprise and it was a fair amount of relief, as neither of them had been feeling particularly well, but it's sad in the end when it finally comes. All four of my grandparents mean a great deal to me, and I felt lucky to have them and grow up near them so I could be with them often. I would not be the person I am today without them, that I know. I'd like to write a longer post but I'm having trouble collecting my thoughts. Now that I can finally sit down, so to speak, I feel like I never want to move again.

(Finally) A Bona Fide Acupunk

2008-09-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

I got the news late Saturday night, as I was gathering the pizza box and beer bottles (I goat-roped my friend Chris into coming over to help me carry the table and bed into the alley for Salvation Army, then fit my new bike racks to the car) to take the the recycling box and put myself into a hot epsom salt bath and subsequently pass out. My dad called and told me I had a notice from the CA acupunk board, so I took a deep breath and told him to open and it and give me yea or nay. I exhaled when I heard him say with a bright voice it was yea. I gave a happy little exclamation when he told me I passed by a wide margin of 20 points, and resolved to name my next-born kitten Kokko or Bina, or at least send them a nice note thanking them for the tireless hours of painstaking work they did to get us all ready for that heinous exam. The next day I gleefully tossed out my flashcards and exam prep papers, and reflected that if I had gotten the news the day before I could have bundled my box of study binders and books in with the storage carton now bound for Denver instead of schlepping them around with me. Oh well. w00t! I say.

I'm officially a hobo now, without a home to call my own. Cleaning out a place you've lived in for 7 years is a job! Even when it's the size of a hotdog stand. But I finished cleaning and loading the car and dropped the keys in the mail slot at exactly 8:04PM on Sunday night, thus ending my stay at Chateau 2513. Kinda weird, doesn't seem quite real. I'm staying with a friend in the 818. The kitties are staying with a wonderful cat lady for September (endless thanks to Brady for the referral!!) and then I'll take them out to Denver with me in October to stay with my brother until I find work, a home, a life, etc.

This week is consumed by studying for my last NCCAOM exam (which I don't need to practice in CO, it's purely for my own ego because I like letters after my name, and because I put in the time to learn all those formulas and herbs, I'd kinda like the credential), taking my #8 ortho class, and getting packed and off to Yosemite to start the JMT on Monday. I'm looking forward to living in the land of post-card ready scenery and peace-n-quiet, but getting there and getting the permit isn't going to be fun. Sort of like any trip, I guess, or at least like any race. Getting to the start line is the hardest, most stressful part.

I'll try to make a post at VVR (the relative halfway point, depending on how fast you hike) but I will definitely post links to pics and trail journal when they are up, likely in early October. Here's to some of the finest true grime around!

TCM Fried Brain: CALE Edition

2008-08-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it's over. At least for this go 'round. Hopefully, this is the last go 'round ever for all this world and the next, as far as the CA licensing exam is concerned. It made me very tired. About 25% why-are-you-guys-wasting-my-time, 25% waltz-tango-foxtrot-are-you-talking-about, and the rest somewhere in I-think-I-know-what-you're-driving-at-but-not-totally-sure...in other words, I have no idea how things'll shake out. Won't be surprised if I don't make it, will be relieved if I get the envelope with the yellow piece of paper in it after all. Nationals start day after tomorrow, but somehow those aren't as scary. The sitting in that chair in that cold room completely undid the good work of the Harbin Hot Springs yesterday.

For now, I'm content to pour myself another glass of wine and dissolve into Daily Show reruns I've been missing since I've been away at the library.

Travellin' Blues

2008-08-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

I totally <3 the new Saabaru, but goddamn I'm over the moon to not have to drive it for at least a couple of days. In 48 hours I've been from LA to Denver then up to Cheyenne, over to Salt Lake, Reno, Sacto, and finally back in SF. I can't remember the last time my eyes were so tired! And 6AM is coming early tomorrow, so off I go. 'Nighty-nite!

TCM-Fried Brain

2008-07-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Oh kittens. This adventuregrrl is worn out and so very, very looking forward to two weeks from now when board madness is at least temporarily over, and hopefully over forever. My brain is so unruly and tired, the stuff I have left to learn is just resisting being crammed in, kind of like when I try to put kitties in the box to take them to the vet and they splay their legs out in all directions so I can't fit them through the little wire door. I know this is the biggest exam I've ever faced in my life, and so none of this is really a surprise...just...damn I'm tired, and stagnant, and antsy, and drained all at the same time.

The traveling isn't making things easier, but hopefully they will help ensure a good score in the end. The mock I took in LA on Sunday didn't go so well as I had hopped (even though it was ridiculously hard, with plenty of terrible questions that are apparently par for the course). It scared me sufficiently to figure out how to get myself up to the Bay for Kokko and Bina's review intensives for the next 2 weeks, coordinate couch-surfing and hotel rooms, craigslist rideshares, etc. I'm feeling a bit better now--Kokko and Bina are amazing, and I almost wish I had made the trek up to Berkeley every Sunday for the regular review class. Oh well. I took another mock in SF last weekend, and did considerably better (the questions were clearer too...). I've been doing well on case studies and other practice tests too...I just can't seem to make myself care about arcane pointless crap like crossing points that have no clinical significance whatsoever (then again, does knowing that a surging pulse is a yin-within-yang pulse help me not harm the public? but I digress...). I'm working on needling depths, precautions, techniques and the like, since I know that will feature prominently (and it should--that's the whole point of a board). This weekend's ortho madness will be a nice departure, as Dr. Neil has promised to teach us cool stuff like some kind of super cupping and whatever else he's picked up in his nearly 30 years of practice. And it will be nice to see the little whiskered ones again, and hug them and kiss them and generally squish them good.

The car thing is also semi-sorted out, which makes me feel semi-better. I fly out to Denver on Monday morning to pick up my little blue prize and drive it straight back to SF for one more week of review, and then a week of national boards and general relaxing in sweltering fire-smoked heat up in Redding afterward. Lars still sits awaiting his fate in a tow yard in SLO, waiting for an adjuster to go and tell me what I already know, that he's a total and he's only worth his salvage value plus whatever repairs I've made recently. Sigh. Blink. Sigh. Stagnant liver qi much? Should I be dreaming of volcanos or all my teeth falling out apropos of nothing or none of the above? Groan. No wait, groans are kidney...

Then there is figuring out moving without having a definite destination or end date in mind, as I need to go on ahead and look for work and see what happens where before I plunk down the money to lease an apartment, drag the kitties with, etc. And of course my JMT epic. I do believe I have everything except the wool undies for camp, the water tx tabs and the food. And renting the Bearikade from Wild Ideas. The Jetboil goes to 9 levels of awesome--I've been cooking stuff on and off for the last 2 weeks to avoid eating out, and it's been great. The tent weighs a mere 1.5 pounds--I think I'm going to seam-seal it and try it out in my dad's back yard while I'm up there. Maybe even a trip to Marble Mtns or Warner Wilderness is in order, if I can get James on board. Shasta has no snow, and Craig's transfer to the law school in Denver was accepted so he and Jen are scrambling to get their stuff out from Vermont and settled in ready to begin L2 in about 3 weeks, so climbing Shasta or Rainier is out this summer. I'm happy they are moving though--hopefully I'll be in Boulder or Fort Collins soon and then we can play together again!

And now...back to crossing points.

Shameless Proud Mama Moment

2008-07-14T00:04:00.001-07:00

My good friend and pro photog Leila shot this when she came over for dinner last week, and I just love it! Of course, it's small pommes de terre for Leila--if I ever get married she's definitely my go-to, and she should be yours too!

Ok, imitating the cute sleepy kittens now.

Why I Keep the Cuteness Blogroll Handy

2008-07-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

So the rest. Class was good--Bina and Kokko were awesome. I especially appreciated the case study practice. It's anathema to me to not read a question carefully from top to bottom, but with these that's the worst thing you can do--you're guaranteeing you'll fuck your shit up. Some questions I didn't even read--I could eliminate 3 choices with tongue and pulse alone. I couldn't believe I was about 92% right in the end. So, some more confidence that I sorely need right now.

I found my way to Monterey, and met my dad and Sharon at the same place they took us for dinner last year. We were even at the same table. No, I didn't order the same dish. I'm not that boring and predictable. It turns out that their rental broke a pipe or something the day they were supposed to arrive so the rental company put them up in the most ridiculous house off 17 Mile Drive for a week gratis. 4 bedrooms, 4 full bathrooms, not much living space, but a back deck to die for that looked out over the steeply dropping and forested hill toward the ocean. Definitely less worse than the hostel. We spent Monday messing about at Point Lobos, where I learned that whales have really, really big vertebrae and if you were to plow up the land around the whaling cabin you'd dig up all kinds of cool artifacts. There was eve a coal-mining operation for a brief time. Who knew?

The next morning I hit the road early, got to SLO in time to study for a bit and have a coffee before meeting a friend for lunch. Almost home, or so I thought. I got on the freeway innocently enough, I checked my rearview and blindspot to change lanes, when suddenly the girl in front of me lost control and was swerving all over the place. It happened in about a second or maybe two, I really didn't have anywhere to go but straight into her passenger side as she slid around. Neither of us was hurt, but oh, poor Lars is gone! Hemorrhaging antifreeze, not drivable at all. Apparently there was a delivery truck in the #1 lane that started to veer into her and she cut right to get out of his way. He didn't stop, but presently a guy pulled over and said he had seen everything and gave us a plate number. We hugged him. Then the CHP arrived, took statements, we called insurance, and all that rot. They asked me where I wanted to have Lars towed. I told them I was 200 miles from home and I had no idea. The tow guy was really nice and said he could hold the car for 24 hours at the yard with no storage fee for me. I had an inkling that I may never see Lars again so I had to get all my stuff out, and the girl offered to drive me back into town so I could try and get my shit together at my friend's office.

Which took hours. And I was hot and tired and cranky and hungry and I ended up having to spend a night at a hotel because all the rentals cars were "sold" for that day. Argh. I must have looked pathetic with my little hobo pile of luggage, books, maps, acupuncture travel kit, emergency car tools, etc. My friend had plans with his girlfriend (did I mention it was his birthday the next day?) but was kind enough to send a friend of his who I had met once out to meet me and entertain me and generally keep me company while I had dinner and a few beers. And a scotch at this lovely and quiet bar we stopped in on the way back to my hotel. After chiding me for keeping him out late on a school night and making sure I got in ok he rode home and I swallowed a handful of Ping Wei tablets and went to sleep.

The next morning I picked up my rental, headed over to the tow yard to take pictures and sign over the papers (it's totaled for sure and I'm not paying $2500 to tow it home or storage to figure out what to do with it even if it won't be). It made me sad. I love that car, and I wasn't ready to say good-bye, and I'm definitely not happy about having to figure out how to affect a replacement all of a sudden with everything else that's happening. So it goes, I guess. Lawyer Mark is going to help me put my claim to the girl's insurance together, and he thinks it should be pretty open/shut as far as getting it paid. I sent away for the CHP report on Friday, we'll see if it turns up anything on the plate search.

On the other hand, I got my nationals go-ahead to test, ortho is more than half over, my Jetboil and new GoLite bag came yesterday, and I got the contact info for Dr. Jeff Spencer, (yeah, that Dr. Jeff Spencer) from Dr. Lerner this weekend, and my classmate Mikel was offered a job at both the ortho group and pain clinic where he observed this month (they basically told him, "Where have you been all our lives?!") which made me happy because I like Mikel and hopeful because Dr. Lerner says it happens a lot, if we acupunks would just come out of our shells and connect with other docs already.

So, maybe things are looking up. And these really are some of the cutest things I've seen in a while...

Picaresque

2008-07-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

What a... mixed bag this week has been. This really should have been put into about 5 posts, but time is not my friend lately so the smooshing commences of past posts and present observations.

7-5-08

I'm having this weird reaction. I drove up to Berkeley for class tomorrow. As I started heading west toward Altamont Pass, and seeing the vast open expanse of rolling golden hills studded with dark green and grey oak, I started getting all sentimental about leaving. Not about leaving SoCal. Just Cali in general, I think. I mean, it's pretty uniquely cool to live in a place named for a warrior queen. Even so, I can't really think of any place I'm burning to go to live. I found myself wishing as I was bumping along the margin of the Oakland Hills that I could want to be there, but I just felt weary and overwhelmed, and like I arrived to the party about 40 years too late. As usual. Am I really this old?

I found my hostel soon enough. I even got rock star parking right in front. The beautiful 3-story Craftsman with garden in front and big porch to the side looked so inviting; I walked inside, and... kind of a dump, really. I mean, I've stayed in plenty of hostels and I certainly wasn't expecting the Ritz. But for what they were charging I was hoping for a place where I at least didn't have to unscrew the light bulb to turn off the lamp and the trash was more than a plastic grocery bag lashed to the door handle, half full of previous tenants' trash. Oh well. I found my check-in slip and discovered that my room was directly across from the front door. This would become infinitely more annoying late into the night when every late arrival woke me up from my tenuous slumber. But the place has potential, as all old houses that have been uglified to make cheap rooming houses do. The woodwork has miraculously not been painted over, the hideous oilcloth carpet covers what could be lovely wood floors, and I have one half of a once-magnificent boarded-over stone fireplace in my room. The artist and mother in me wants to undo it all and restore it to its original splendor, not for vanity but for love.

Other than that, the management is too stereotypically Berkeley for words. The check-in slip exhorted that my stay in Berkeley (and my life!) be "filled with joy and purposes." Boy is it ever. Pass boards, move, find new car, get new life. But I'll get to that later. The best part was the contact info in case of problems, reprinted here exactly except for area codes 'cuz publishing cell #'s without people's permissions is rude:

Jian (555) 464-9828
Justin (555) 849-4800
Dearl (***) ***-**** (telepathy)

I thought, if they are serious, that's pretty dorktastic. On the other hand, if they are being ironic, that's pretty brilliant. After the frat party incident though, I'm leaning toward dork.

Ah, the frat parties--goddamn kids are annoying and get the hell off my lawn! I came home from walking around at 9:30, everything seemed quiet. I got hopeful. I thought maybe since it was summer and most of the kids are gone...and maybe that giant chalk drawing of male genitalia (not to scale!) on the sidewalk (and helpfully labeled for the anatomically illiterate) was from the previous night's bacchanalia in honor of the 4th, and everyone was out late getting totally fucked up and tonight they are quietly wallowing in their own crapulent (it doesn't mean what it looks like, look it up!) wages of last night's many sins...

Sadly, no.

Around 11:30 it began with a bang and devolved from there. The most precious part by far was the withering rejoinders of the hostel staff to the oblivious reveling next door, like repeated (repeated, I say!) shouts of, "It's a quarter past Sh-h-h-h-h-h, PLEASE close your door or keep it down!" Um, yeah. You can guess how effective it was. I thought of the scene in Canadian Bacon where Rhea Perlman's character is up in the CNT with an automatic rifle and the mounties are buzzing about in helis begging her to please put away her gun and come down. Fortunately all things are impermanent, and I think most people were passed out by 2:30.

Now I am drinking a pint of coffee (that's right, served in a bona fide pint glass) with my bagel for breakfast. I love that we are listening to Bach's B-Minor Mass, one of my favorite oratorios ever. And there does seem to be a preponderance of ridiculously cute puppies here. My favorite so far is the little black lab mix who couldn't have been more than about 3 months who has tied a pretty sound tournequet around the tree to which his leash is girthed while waiting for his human to get coffee.

The Onion, Je T'adore!

2008-07-03T12:56:00.000-07:00

Usually funny, but every so often they come up with something that blinds you and gives you vertigo with its unbridled awesome:

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Descend Into Madness

2008-06-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

See the album here

It began innocently enough. Long ago when I first moved back to LA I began perusing guidebooks of local mountains that I had been too busy racing my bike to pay attention to the first time I lived here. And, those who know me know that I love a challenge, and that if you tell me something is really hard you'll make me want to try it even more. When I read that Iron Mountain was "the hardest climb" in the San Gabriels, I was totally in. Just a matter of when.

But life happens, and there are many, many other adventures to be had. Also, the route I wanted to do required a shuttle (I was pretty sure--and after having done it you have no idea how grateful I am that I didn't try to do a yo-yo) and I usually end up going solo on my rides and runs. However, my time to pull up stakes from SoCal is really drawing nigh, and I've been making a real effort to cram in all I can while I'm still here. At June's ortho class I brought maps and such to dinner with my friend Steve, who thought it sounded like a good enough time. We made the plans for after I got back from Colorado.

I at least had the presence of mind to set an early start time, which is good because I ran a little late, then the car shuttles took longer to set up than planned, etc. But we stepped off the chair at Baldy around 10:30 and thought we'd be fine. Off we went up the rude beginning that is getting onto Devil's Backbone. Every time I do that route I see how people get themselves into trouble in winter--windy, icy, and dangerously exposed, sometimes on both sides. We clambered onto the top and discovered the usual hordes at the summit--fortunately, Baldy has lots of stone windbreaks to accomodate them.

We didn't tarry long, and we struck out for West Baldy which we could see. I missed the use trail to the summit of West Baldy and I'm glad I stopped a hiker coming up when things didn't seem right--turns out we were headed down to the Village via Bear Flat. That would not have done. We turned right and scrambled straight up the hill onto the top and looked around. On the map it seems fairly obvious which is San Antonio ridge. In the field, in retrospect, it was decently clear, but we wanted to be dead sure--ending up on the wrong ridge would have been worse than ending up in the Village and having to hike 4 miles up the road. There are no trails from West Baldy, so we were on our own. We scrutinized the ridge to our left, and shot bearings off what we thought was Baden-Powell (it was) and at least I still remember how to do that...

Still not 100% certain, we agreed to hike to the first peak on the ridge and turn around if it seemed...not right. As we started down the steep shale slope, we found a faint use trail, and as we continued slipping and sliding down we began to see cairns and figured we must be on the right route because there was nothing else out here to get to. We had a bit of trouble keeping to the ridge to find the saddle because we kept having to dip below the edge to avoid thick stands of pretty vicious chaparral. We were averaging about 1 kph, and figured we'd get to Iron around 6 or 6:15. We downed some chow and set off again. The chaparral was harder to avoid in this section, and after crashing through a short stretch we decided to don pants--stinging nettle my ass, we saw none. But I'm oh so glad I thought there might be and insisted be both bring pants.

We kept making our way along the undulating ridge, and finally around 4:30 found ourselves staring at Iron Mountain's fabled arete. If you don't know an arete is a rugged, rocky knife edge in mountains. It was class IV for sure, but even if we had ropes the rock was so loose and crumbly it wouldn't have held. We eyed it and got spooked--it looked sketchy. We discussed alternatives: we could try to go back the way we came and suffer back up all the loose crap and chaparral we descended, we could try and descend into the Alison Gulch drainage and find the old mine trail to the car, or we could try and descend into the drainage on the other side and pick up the Fish Fork canyon and hike out via the narrows to the car. All of them involved hours of grueling work we didn't have, and only bail-out #1 was a known quantity. We gulped, took deep breaths, and decided to try the aretes and hope it looked better on the other side.

The rock was loose, but if you were slow and careful and tested all your holds before weighting onto them, it was ok--not quite as scary as it looked, but a screw-up would have meant serious injury or possibly death, so it was a little tense for me. Even while it was tense, it was still kind of fun--I pretended I was Jamie and thought of how much fun she would have been having. It took a while, but we finally made it to the top at 6:30PM. What a relief! I signed the register, we had a quick bite, and 10 minutes later we were headed down an obvious use trail down the south ridge. The light was beginning to turn golden, but I figured (based on what I know about my pace) we would be at least down onto the properly built trail that made up the bottom 4 miles to the car by 9, if not at the car by 9. Unfortunately, I didn't figure Steve into that. Poor Steve!

He was strong the whole way to Iron, and was doing better than me on the arete being a better climber. But by the time we got to the top he was out of water (we both were) and tired, and had blisters on the pads of all his toes which made his descent pure and slow misery. Add to that that while the "trail" was better than nothing, it was steep hardscrabble in many places and studded with yucca onto which you could impale yourself if you weren't careful. I agonized over our slow pace, watching the sun drop lower and lower and the light turn redder and redder until it was going, going, gone. I forgot to pack my headlamp--I never dreamed I'd need it. I didn't think Steve had one either and was getting really nervous because we were still on that shitty trail in the dark. There was a point at which I squatted down on my heels and "glissaded" down that way. It turned out to be the safest and most expedient way down in many places. I tried to keep my panic at bay and told myself that we were ok, we were safe, we were on trail and headed down, all we had to do was keep moving, even slowly and eventually we'd get to the car.

Fortunately Steve had a headlamp and fortunately (did I also mention it's about new moon time so that was no help?) the trail was still fairly easy for me to see in the dark, with no confusing forks or treacherous sections. I also happened on a white manzanita bush as it was getting dark and flashed on when I went to ecology camp in 5th grade and they taught us that if we were thirsty we could suck on a manzanita leaf (the white works best since it's bigger) and it would help us salivate and feel less thirsty. Damn if that shit doesn't work! Thank-you Whiskeytown Environmental School!
I kept leading the pace, and I could hear an occasional moan or mumble from Steve behind me. I felt wretched--I know how much he was suffering and it was all my fault (I warned him that this was an untested route and anything could happen, but still...it's my nature to feel responsible). I have been in many an adventure race and felt just like him--blisters, thirst, hunger, nausea, exhaustion, etc.--just wanting to curl up and not move another inch for a week. It's then that you rely on your teammates, and I tried to be a good one. Towing was not an option, and he wouldn't let me take his pack. So I tried to keep calling out our elevation as we dropped to try to keep his spirits up. Every time I checked in with him he quoted the episode of the Simpsons where Homer becomes a missionary and shouts "Get me off this damn rock!".

By this time we were at least onto better trail, but around 10PM we came to a clearing and Steve lay down and curled up like a shrimp. He was officially miserable. I ticked off our options: we could both stop and sleep in the dirt, I could leave him and hike to the bottom to get water and hike back up, or we could keep going. They all sounded pretty hideous, but Steve opted for the last and hauled himself up. He kept telling me how hardcore I was but really, he was. I know how hard it is to dig beneath that suffering and keep going when every fiber of your being is shouting "Fuck this!" and wills you to quit. And for the record I was better off than he was, but I was pretty done too.

At last we saw the lights of the campground below, and popped out. We headed over to the nearest one where people were still up (it was nearly midnight) and asked for water. An older man was nice and gave us some ice and his last small bottle, but this younger sketchy dude walked up to a tree in front of us and pulled out 5 knives that had been thrown into the trunk, and then crawled into a tent and made some strange crashing noises. Steve and I thanked the nice man and headed out the last half mile to the car. 12:15 was the official finish time. Except that we still had to drive up to the ski lift to get my car. 1:30AM then. That bottle of gatorade that Steve left in my car for the finish sure tasted good. I led him down the mountain and onto the 210 while I took the 10 and jesus h. christ on a raft that was one of the scarier parts of the outing. I drew a grateful breath as I exited onto Cloverfield. I hobbled into home and texted Steve I was home safe. He did the same. I had to extrasuperduper scrub myself to get all the grime off--it was like patina! I think I crawled into bed at 3:30 after drinking another pint of water.

And damned if I was just wired! Could not sleep. Decided to get up and go to review class with Kirsten (it was pretty excruciating) like a good kid. I drank another pint on waking and it was still a few hours before I had to pee. Cripes. Today my quads are screaming at me and my whole body is so tired it's hard to concentrate, but I'm still glad we went and did it. I got my wish. And even Steve agrees. Yes, he's still talking to me and seems like he still wants to be friends. We survived the gnarliest hike I've done outside of racing. Fair play to you, Steve.

Engineer's Guide to Cats

2008-06-25T11:21:00.002-07:00

Jen sent this to me last week so I am using this study break to put it up here, especially for Karen! The corporal cuddling technique made me laugh, but the cat yodeling made tears come out of my eyes.

Happiness Is

2008-06-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Watching the sun set and listening to the birds conversate while reading the Mountain Gazette with a Mothership Wit in hand. That is all.

Colorado My Home

2008-06-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

6-22-06

Yeah, finally getting around to finishing this. The internet tradishunz are unreliable here at Chateau LoLo this week, what can I say? I’m back in LA now, and not exactly happy about it. Would you believe I cried actual, real tears as the bus pulled out of the Boulder park/ride? Yes, I did—I didn’t want to leave that much. What a life I can see for myself there and then some—the only hard part is trying to choose between Ft. Collins and Boulder. I see why some people say that Ft. Collins reminds them of SLO—it’s similar, a smallish college town with bikes a-plenty (almost a 1:1 bike/resident ratio) and more delicious beer than you can shake a growler at, and some killer housing stock to boot, trails and climbing areas right next to town, with proximity to more if you want to venture into Rocky Mountain National Park or go the other direction into southern Wyoming.

I did finally get to visit New Belgium (they were closed on Monday after I finally found it) and it’s a pretty neat model of business and sustainability—they even give you a cruiser (many people have been enjoying Fat Tire Ale, a flagship beer, for years) after a year of employment and a trip to Belgium after 5. I also had plenty of time to wander around town on foot and explore, and even run some trail around one of the local reservoirs, which kicked my ass since I haven’t been running and it was hot and dry as a bone that day. I also got to spend many hours with my brother’s girlfriend’s mom Mary, who was kind enough to put me up and feed me and let me watch her garden while picking her brain about all things Ft. Collins or Colorado. She has a beautiful old house about 100 years old right in Old Town, adorned with prayer flags her friends bring her when they vist Nepal and a garden (she is an amazing gardener/farmer and even does work professionally) filled with baby herbs and veggies just starting to grow in the ground. She rides and hikes and backpacks and skis and shoes. She co-founded an outdoor school with her ex-husband. I’m really quite in awe of her. She also dos indeed make a killer pesto from the basil she grows, which we sampled on pizza with pignolas for dinner. People rode by on bikes day and night—students, cyclists, commuters, you name it. Seriously, I think I might have to flip a coin.

Jamie’s birthday on Tuesday was also lots of fun—she is gorgeous no matter what she wears or how grubby she gets but damn that girl is exquisite when she dresses up! We met some friends at the sumptuous Med for dinner and drinks and I had a nice time getting to meet even more of J’s very wide circle of friends. One of them was a cyclist (one of the few—most of ‘em just climb) so I made sure I got some beta on the local riding scene. It sounds agreeable, to say the least. Wednesday was more of a lazy day—we met Jamie’s lovely LA friend Donna for coffee at Amante (seriously amazing) and then I tried to motivate to go to the school and poke about but lagged and then it looked like rain (it didn’t much). I did get to have dinner with my old classmate White Eagle and catch up with him on the personal and professional goings on, which was no end of fun because we each keep in touch with different people. He had a rough first year owing to joining a practice full of dishonest douchebags, but he’s on his own now and doing fine. I also had an interesting (and tasty) beer from Left Hand out of Longmont called Juju Ginger which tastes like, yeah…ginger. It was really quite good. If it sounds like I’ve done nothing but drink beer and eat pizza for two weeks, that’s about the size of it, btw.

Thursday was my last day in town. We met Donna on her way out at her beautiful hotel for breakfast, and then bought tickets for a ride on Banjo Billy’s Bus Tour of Boulder—we just HAD to. In the mean time, we resolved to…laze on the couch and watch a beautiful little film called Once. I have the soundtrack in my head to this day (when it’s not playing the Decembrists, that is). We got downtown in time for lunch (yeah, you guessed it—pizza at Old Chicago’s and a local micro called Hazed and Infused (very good!). We found a bunch of older ladies sporting red straw hats in front of the Boulderado hotel and figured this must be the place.
We got on the bus that was built to look like a log cabin but came out looking like a hillbilly shack (read the whole story by clicking on the link above) and set off to hear tales of ghosts, suicides and sex scandals that are the stuff of legend. We even got mooned by 3 frat boys as we drove through the CU neighborhood known as The Hill. The stories made Jamie sentimental and not want to leave Boulder for even a little bit.

The final adventure was a bbq on a farm east of town where Shala (who wasn’t able to take me skiing that day but promised she would if I ever came back) does some work. The ramshackle barn was full of cool old stuff, including a very old-timey sleigh and piles of old skis. Even the gates were made out of skis. Soon a few of Shala’s climbing buddies showed up and we started in on the food and beer. A couple of groups each showed up with a dog, one of which was an adorable 4-month black lab/border collie mix that I just wanted to scoop up and take home. He had fun nipping the heels and trying to herd the other dog (a chow mix of some kind) until the chow put him in his place. A few of us played on the swing hanging from a giant oak tree until we realized we were getting eaten alive by mossies. There was even a guy who grew up in Santa Rosa so we had fun picking each others’ brains and comparing California with Colorado. The sunset set the clouds over the mountains on fire, and then a large moon came up and lit up the place almost like it was day. Lightning split the sky a few times in the east and thunder rumbled but no rain came. They say that’s pretty typical. What an awesome way to spend a summer evening—I am totally signing up as soon as I figure out where.

Alas, Friday morning dawned and it was time to stuff everything back into the suitcase and pack (how had I ever gotten it all in to begin with?) and head on over to the bus stop to come back to LA. Jamie and I laughed as we hugged good-bye and promised to keep in touch (neither one of us really has any idea where we will be or what we will be doing in about two months) and that was it. I really did cry for a few minutes as I left—just welled up and got all plum-pitty and sad as the bus pulled away. I guess I should pay attention to those heart strings—they grew like honey-suckle vines around a Kentucky barn in those two weeks I spent there. It's been so long since I could make a choice about my life from my own heart I've almost forgotten what it feels like. The other song I’ve had stuck in my head since I’ve been back? Colorado My Home from The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

3 Days in Snowmass

2008-06-24T19:03:00.001-07:00

6-16-08

In Ft. Collins now, waiting for lunch to arrive. Now I’m confused, because so far I really like this place too. I’m also fairly certain that when I visit Bend I will like it, and if I go to Utah to hang with Jamie in October I will find that agreeable too. I have a distinct pain about leaving California too. I just handed over my driver’s license to get a beer (Skinny Dip from New Belgium, simply divine!) and thought that if I move here I will have to give it up and get a Colorado one. Which shouldn’t be giving me this much anxiety because all I have to do is return to California and apply for one and I’m a Cali girl again. Totally silly. I think too about what if I stayed in northern Cal, and while part of me really wants to, another part of me would feel like I was missing out, settling for the comfortable and the known rather than seize this opportunity to start over in every sense of the phrase and explore part of the world I have never before seen. It is clear that that would be the best thing for my adventuring…I would pretty much have to learn how to climb and backcountry ski to live here, and I’ve wanted to do that for years so what is my problem exactly? Separation anxiety, I suppose. And because I really do love California with all my heart and soul, it is a hard place to leave. But opportunity is deafening…

So I’m going to wander about the town and see what’s here today, and then have dinner with Jen’s mum who apparently makes a mean basil pesto. More on Ft. Collins later.

The backpacking though! Just wow. Eye-popping, jaw-dropping beautiful those Elk Mountain are! The driven-too-hard-for-my-own-good part of me is a wee titch disappointed that we didn’t get all the way to the top, but most of me is just slap-happy I got to see what I saw. And I got to meet Jamie’s friend James who is seriously good people and might even take me up Rainier in August after my boards!! It deserves some exclamation points—if I get to do Shasta with Craig in August and the JMT in September this is going to be the best year of adventure I’ve had in a long, long time. And that’s not even considering canyoneering in Utah in October with Jamie…

So, we got to the trailhead around 1, after lunch in Glenwood Springs and finding Jamie an Ensolite pad at a local army surplus store. Even without the polarized glasses, everything looks riotously green and blooming and…the prodigal summer, I guess. Get it while you can, ‘cuz life (or at least the growing season) is kinda short. My new pack is awesome btw—totally comfortable. And while I will always love cooking in the backcountry, I may have made at least a partial conversion to dried food that cooks in a bag from Mary Jane’s Farm, especially for days of long hiking when all you want to do is eat and not wait half an hour for dinner to be ready. Anyway.

Everything was going swimmingly until we hit our first creek crossing. We could scooch across a log over a very cold and fast-moving snowmelt runoff, or find a better ford. We opted for the ford and hiked back downstream a ways, nearly got attacked by a mean dog belonging to some douche who was camped WAY too close to the creek, and found a spur trail leading down to…the best place to cross. Which wasn’t great, but…James went first, and toward the far side stepped in some holes up above his knees (he’s 6’1”). Jamie and I cast side-long glances at each other and I set out, trying to position myself so my knees wouldn’t get buckled by the current, and was quickly in so much pain from the frigid water I just crashed through to the other side as fast as possible. James and I surveyed the wet hems of our shorts and ruefully joked that we had wet our pants. Jamie made it across, and we prepped feet and changed back to hiking shoes, and soon encountered another trib that wasn’t as easy to cross as James had remembered. We hopped across rivulets and threaded our way upstream, and finally decided to build a bridge from some deadfall. They said it was an easy crossing, but it looked sketchy so I opted to go back down and wade. After that the bushwhacking along an intermittent game trail into our Camp 1. It wasn’t the traditional Camp 1, but we were tired and it was getting late. We found reasonably flat spots with good access to Snowmass Creek and a relatively bare spot for a camp fire. James was a champ and volunteered to pump water both nights (about 7 liters at a time!). Jamie and I set about trying to find firewood.

We discovered that even though it hadn’t been super warm, the marshmellows had glued themselves together in a morass of sugary, bleached goo. The chocolate shattered like glass. The graham crackers weren’t much better off, but we made due and they were delicious. The temperature also dropped precipitously, and I was grateful to be able to dry out my shoes and socks (too bad one sock got a little too close to the heat and burned…at least it was an old pair). I slept ridiculously well, considering it was my first night out. I think I finally crawled out of my tent at 8:30, about 2 hours after I normally get up. The sun was melting off all the ice crystals from the leaves on the ground, and as soon as the sun came up it was HOT.

More creek crossings and cow path scouting awaited us. James found a bunch of vertebrae in the debris of a slide area. The trees were bent over at a steep angle to the slope and the uprooted fir trees were obviously from much higher up. I discovered the joy (and by joy I mean ouch) of stinging nettles that, while not too high were stingy enough if you dragged your flesh through them just right. We reached the traditional Camp 2, had lunch, then set down packs to cross the talus slope toward the waterfall. I wanted to try to get all the way to Pierre Lakes at the top, but the trail was anything but clear after we came to another snow-covered slide, and we opted to turn around there after taking some awesome pics of Jamie frolicking. Jamie added that she wanted to try to hike back to trad Camp 1 in the interest of less trail time the next day, and we had a lot of daylight left so off we went.

We found tent sites that were a bit downhill. Jamie said the next day if the tent door hadn’t stopped her she would have slid down into the creek. We woke up to the most amazing vista right outside the door. Have I mentioned that Mary Jane’s Farm is the best? We made short work back to the car—the slowest part was opting to scooch across the creek on a log that was a LOT rougher on actual contact than it looked from the shore. Foolishly, I opted not to don pants. James says he got some pretty great shots of me making painful grimaces as scraped my tender inner thighs along that damned tree.

The next few hours were a most wonderful sightseeing tour of Colorado. We headed toward Aspen for lunch, and then drove up Independence Pass where, upon getting out of the car we were accosted by a woman who wanted to know if we had “any beers for sale” that she could purchase to take the sting out of waiting for someone to come and tow/fix her car so she could get home to Leadville. It was chilly and windy at 12-something thousand feet, and I reflected that I shouldn’t be wearing sandals until I saw the woman ahead of us hobbling through the slush in wedge-heel sandals and gave her the award instead. We did the obligatory pictures at the vista deck, and spotted two really hot guys and skis getting ready to head up to where a few people on snow mobiles were already towing skiers. Jamie swears one of them was Bear Grylls. God I love this state!

After that we sped through Leadville and on to Idaho Springs, where we sat in an expensive and over-chlorinated hot spring tub that wasn’t nearly as nice as Avila but felt good all the same. Then, on to Beaujay’s for pizza and beer. I had a Skinny Dip (summer offering from New Belgium) and Odells 90 Shilling (do click through on the link and read the side bar where you can actually take classes in brewing science and the best master's project in the world), both awesomely delicious. We even got back to Boulder in time to upload pictures and watch The Flying Scotsman with Agnes draped over the top of the teevee. The pack, btw, performed brilliantly--light and so comfy--I can't wait to add ultralight bag, shelter, and cookset to the mix for the JMT in September. What a brilliant trip!

Soundtrack of Boulder Part 1

2008-06-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

The Decembrists are coming!

Boulder Dispatch #1

2008-06-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

So, I've been here for about 3 days now, and I really, really don't care if I never go home, other than to collect my kitties of course. I would have to get really, really good at riding bikes and climbing rocks and mountains, and running them, and wouldn't that totally suck? I can't believe how clear and clean everything looks, and just...uncrowded. I'm sure this town has its share of ass-hats as well, but so far everyone I've met (and Jamie knows LOTS of people being the beautiful and charismatic social butterfly that she is) has been pretty cool. And I know that I'm still in the throes of novelty as when anyone goes to any foreign country, and in about a month I'll probably be crying for the familiar (although not all of it, I guarantee). But still. What an awesome town this is!

I got in Monday night, and headed over to South Sun brewery where Jamie works to have a beer and wonder what to do with myself until she got off. As it turns out I didn't need to wonder much--I had hardly started my fragrant and herbaliciously hoppy FYIpa when a friend of hers who works at the legendary Neptune's Mountaineering walked in with a friend, so the 3 of us sat and ate and drank together. Shala is going to take me on my first backcountry ski adventure next Thursday before I go home! We got to go in and see Neptune's today, which has a climbing museum with some pretty amazing old gear and some quirky gross stuff like a preserved frost-bitten toe off one of the local mountaineers. They also have a bench made entirely from ice axes, with which I fell in love with instantly and want one for my future porch for sitting in with someone special after a long day of adventuring with dogs at our feet and beers in our hands and a setting sun in front of us.

Tuesday was kind of an overview day--we wandered about downtown, got some coffee, wandered some more, saw the exquisite Shambala Center, wandered some more, then when Jamie left for work I hiked back into town and saw Blindsight and bought a couple of books I'd been wanting. Yesterday we did mostly trip errands, and spent some time lusting after stuff in the Montbell store (especially these quilted down skirts. We did get to go to the local community acu clinic and have treatments, and the acu was very nice and very cool when I told her I was a newly minted grad and wanted to work/open a CA clinic of my own someday. Plus, since the insomnia is back it really really helped me sleep the last 2 nights. I did another monster urban hike around the south/east part of town. I was fairly knackered by the time I got home, and after washing dinner down with another fantastic beer offering from New Belgium (which we are going to visit in Ft. Collins next week--yay!) I was all in. I think I woke up with drool on my face this morning.

Now, we are putting the finishing touches on our packs to be ready for when James picks us up in the morning to go to Snowmass for 3 days of backpacking. We had a great day--breakfast at Lucille's complete with beignets, sealing James' tent, an intensely beautiful hike to Mallory Cave (closed for bat nesting at the moment) in which we fortunately discovered that the soles of my boots were ready to peel themselves almost completely clear of the boots within 2 miles of hiking (guess I get my wish and don't have to hike in heavy boots after all...hope it's not TOO snowy up there...). We finished by giving ourselves sushi bellies for dinner in town and then dispersing to pack. I'm excited to take out the new pack--I wonder how it will feel after a few miles on the trail? Stay tuned...

I Finally Saw Blindsight!

2008-06-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

So last night I hiked into town to catch Blindsight at the Boulder Theater, and words can't express how glad I am that I did--it was beyond awesome, for so many reasons. I really needed to see this right now as I'm trying to figure out just what getting off the sidelines and becoming engaged will look like in my new life as an acupuncturist. My favorite part, other than the kids playing in the ice palace near the top of the peak, of course, had to be Sabriye, the German woman who funded her own way to Tibet after being told by her country's peace corps that they couldn't place blind people in the field, and founded Braille Without Borders, a school for blind kids in Lhasa. She was simply. totally. luminous. I wish I had $20 to go see it again tonight...

The film closed with this--there was a point on the climb when one of the girls was singing this song softly along the trek, but this guy is truly awesome. He got the biggest cheers of just about anyone, I think:

Music For a Wednesday

2008-06-04T15:31:00.000-07:00

Not the least of which has been happening this last week, but I feel like I really need these right now.

Farewell to the Angeles 2-Fer

2008-06-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

It may or may not have been my last trip to the Angeles--I'm hoping to do an awesome x-c route linking up Iron Mountain with Mt. Baldy and maybe some others, and I still haven't done the Bridge to Nowhere and the Fish Fork Narrows. Perhaps later in June when I'm back from CO. Brock wants to do Sans G and Jac, but that can be a Farewell to the San Bernardinos.

7AM came early on Saturday after a late night for both of us. Chris confessed he was about a hair's breadth from texting me that he was bailing--he said he almost called Brock and asked him to come along but was so afraid he'd want to bail that he didn't. But he rallied, because if he hadn't I don't know what I would have done. Maybe I'd have gone, maybe I'd have done something else, I don't know.

It was a perfect day, though--bright, not too warm, not too windy. The lot at Icehouse was its usual jam-packed self, but most people don't seem to make it up even as far as the Saddle, so I wasn't too worried. We set out at our usual brisk pace, and began catching people group by group. Somewhere around the 2 mile mark we came on the first group of what must have been a huge Scouting trip--I swear we must have passed nearly 30 of these guys by the time we got to the Saddle. What we immediately noticed was how. much. stuff. they were all carrying. Not only were the packs huge but they were also hill-billied out with all kinds of stuff festooning the outsides--stuff I'd never seen on a backpack, like full-size lawn chairs, hack saws, and the like. Turns out the were heading over the Saddle to Comanche for one night only...I remember backpacking through there on my way up from Lytle Creek and about losing my shit because the little gnats kept getting into every conceivable facial orifice as I crawled up that drainage trying to catch up to my group that had left earlier that morning.

Onward we sped with our feather-light daypacks until we reached the Saddle, where a stiff cold wind was screaming through the gap. We found a spot in the lee of a tree to stop and refuel, and then on up the Cucamonga Trail to our destination. The backside section of that trail is really fun--mostly undulating sidehilling that goes fast. There was almost no one back there either...so quiet! We passed that creepy mine opening, and soon we were at the second saddle that put us onto the final ridge we would be climbing. Up, up, up...at least a mile of those switchbacks and damn we marveled how quickly they get you up or down! Before we knew it we were at the fork. Where most people went right, we went straight onto a much less-traveled trail that would take us over to Etiwanda.

Etiwanda isn't labeled on most trail maps, including the USGS quads, but it IS on the Sierra Club 100 Peaks list. It doesn't see much traffic. As we contoured around the ridgeline, we got to cross more small snowfields...snowfields that had NO tracks at all, so we knew that no one had been there at least since the last snowfall. We had a bit of uncertainty deciding which of the little bumps on the ridge was the peak, and got to do some steep x-c exploring to figure it out (it's not marked on the map, right?). The climbing register nestled in some craggy rocks gave it away. The last entry was 11/27/07. We added ours and spent a few moments looking about at the stark and fire-scarred landscape. A look over the ridge down into the valley lands to the east below showed that the fire had burned all the way up to this point, had probably burned over most of Cucamonga or at least around it and up the east side of Ontario/Big Horn.

We found the use trail going to the peak immediately, and tromped happily along the main trail until we lost it--easy to do when trails don't get used much. We kept walking through virgin snowfields and knew that we had not come this way before. We sought higher ground, and there it was...which we followed until we lost it on the backside of Cucamonga again. Except for no water it would have been an awesome place to camp...perhaps a winter "expedition" when there is snow to melt? We opted to just charge straight up onto the peak rather than try to find the trail, follow it all the way around the frontside and then take the fork back to the top. What I like about Cucamonga is that there are so many nice open sandy spots relatively protected from wind that you can stretch out in and relax before the descent. Chris started talking to a guy who had recently moved here from Kazakhstan while I made a sammich from my last bagel and some swiss cheese. After signing that register and taking some more pics, it was time to head down to the car.

The descent dropped us as quickly as it had pushed us up. Before we knew it we were at Icehouse Saddle and amazed to still find people coming up from below (it was about 2PM at this point). Around the 2 mile marker we caught up to these 2 high school kids who decided that they would rather descend in front of us than behind us, except that they weren't particularly faster than us, but not really slower either. The kid in the lead kept a fairly steady pace to keep away from us I think, but his buddy kept lagging, and Chris was having a lot of fun picking up the pace until the kid would hear footsteps behind him and start booking again, without ever looking back. It may sound stupid here, but it was pretty funny there, and I was laughing so hard I was afraid I was going to trip and fall.

It made the descent go all the more quickly, however. Soon we were at the cabins and after than we were spit out into a now pretty deserted parking lot. As always, it felt good to put on sandals and head for home. We'll see if it was good enough training for Snowmass or not...

2008-06-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

Not that I didn't LOVE Dr. Hardy's address, but god damn--take Samantha Power's address to Pitzer's class of 2008 and imagine turning our health care delivery system on its head and the importance of Chinese medicine and Community Acupuncture to serve as alternative ways of thinking, being, doing it...

Yet Another Milestone

2008-05-28T22:31:00.002-07:00

I did it. I passed that stinkin' test. Not quite as ably as I had hoped, but decently nonetheless. Boy do I need to review techniques and CNT...in everything else I fared pretty well. So, it's on to the two Big Boards--nationals and state, in August.

I paid my $1 outstanding library fee and they ordered my pretty diploma suitable for framing on the spot. Tomorrow I sit in my last 3 hours of Yo San classes ever. It's really, really weird after going someplace day in and day out for 4 straight years to not be there any more. It's weirder when I do go back to have an appointment or something, and the lounge and classrooms are full of people but none of it is mine any more. Time is marching on, my time here is winding down.

No real grime this week, except for riding downtown tomorrow to volunteer at LACBC again. Last week Jen dragged me out to the Tuesday Night Special ride out in the 818, which was actually really fun. She and I were the 2nd and 3rd oldest riders, and there were only 4 of us over the age of 30. Highlights included tooling around the empty Valley boulevards at 11PM, holding a hobo picnic of chocolate cake, ice cream nuggets and spiced rum in the parking lot of the Sherman Oaks Ralph's, and urban sledding on road construction sandwich boards down the spillways of the Sepulveda Dam. We agreed we felt 17 again.

Hopefully there's another monster adventure in the Angeles brewing for the weekend. Now Zooey is reminding me it's time for sleep, something I have not been able to get much of until the last 48 hours in which I've done little else. Is kitty snoring not the cutest snoring there is?

Sublime Grime

2008-05-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Finally finally FINALLY! So tired and sore, but so worth it--at least my outsides feel exactly like my insides for a change. The test was a mix of ridiculously easy and quite awful. I feel ok about roughly 75%, but you never know. I've been driving myself off a cliff ever since agonizing over stuff I already know I got wrong, etc. so it has been nice to keep non-stop busy. I had hoped that yesterday's monster (for being on the couch, so to speak, for about 3 months straight) hike would wear me out so I would finally sleep, but not so much. After tonight's full moon paddle I feel quite spent however...something about the water always makes me tired.

And I didn't even have to go alone! I had partners in this grime--friends of my neighbor were possibly more enthusiastic than I was to go on this crazy outing, and they are some of the most consistently funny and entertaining guys around. Plus Chris climbs and promised to take me to run some slots this fall and begin my canyoneering addiction in earnest. My time here is fast drawing to a close and it was high time I got out and did some new trails, so I decided to cross one off the list I've wanted for a long time: Mt. Baden-Powell, jewel in the boy scout Silver Mocassin Trail crown. Most people climb from Vincent Gap, the shortest and therefore steepest route. However, with the 2 closed at Islip and no one wanting to go around through Palmdale, we decided to start at Islip and make it a 16 mile day. Brock and Chris told a funny story about being "chased" by a bear near the trail on their hillbilly piñata camping excursion. The weather was perfect--warm but not baking, breezy but not too windy, and pretty clear unless you tried to look too far in the distance. The firesmoke from Baldy must have been blowing the other way. It was gorgeous!

About a mile in we passed a scout troop, all resting except for two who hiked stubbornly on and would NOT be caught. The kid who was following kept asking the leader to slow down who kept telling him to keep up. About 2.5 miles in we passed a couple with large packs coming the other way...and I had a feeling so I asked them if they were coming from Campo, and they were! It turns out that they were from the same small town in Michigan (still lived there) where Brock grew up, and they knew someone in common. We ran into a few other groups of PCT-ers, and I was instantly envious and inspired and maybe I'll do that next year too...or the AT...or the CDT...or heck, make it a Triple Crown!

From there we began running into small snowfields on the north-facing sides of the mountain, which provided some ammo for ambushes and slip'n'slide and fall-on-ass fun for every one of us on the way back down. The last 3 miles or so it seemed like we slogged straight up the ridge to stay out of the snow, and suddenly the monument was in view and we were at the top (or so it seemed...the return trip seemed like it took forEVER.) There was a cool pair of dogs at the top, one who enjoyed playing in the snow and getting dirty and the other one who kept running over when his humans weren't looking to eat at a spot by us where someone had scattered some penne in marinara. The 3rd time someone came to carry him away he growled as he was picked up. A pair of birds and a pair of gliders circled overhead, playing in the thermals. Other than the sound of wind in the trees there was silence. We all marvelled at how awesome it was to be out, just out. The sun was warm and the bone-dry air smelled like dirt and pine bark, and I reflected that this is what life is for.

The sleepy monster began to attack, our cue to start back down before we wanted to hike back even less. We signed the register, the guys credited me with breaking the metal box that contained it but it was SO already broken long before I got there. Climbing registers are always good reads, and this one did not disappoint. The first half of the descent was fun, but I think by mile 12 we were all beginning to feel it. By mile 14 we were openly barn-sour and practically running to get back to the car. Then it was down the mountain to Pasadena for the mandatory recovery meal at Doña Rosa's, and home to clean our dirty, stinky selves and rest up for a follow-up trip another day.

Today was another review class, of which the biomed module was pure, unalloyed crap and the afternoon formulas module was test prep gold. Even so, when my friend Jason called and asked if I wanted to come out and paddle with him and some buddies to Venice Pier and back and watch the full moon come up I was all over it. I've missed paddling a lot too--this was going to be the year I raced outriggers too! Oh well. If I don't leave Cali (or if I go to Hawaii) there's always next year. Being out on the water at night is another kind of magic, another kind of peace. I wish it were the sort of thing I could do solo. I have fantasies of someday owning a folding boat and backpacking and paddling all over the world, or at least parts of it that would be suited to that sort of thing.

It's good to have goals, right?

Another Milestone (Almost)

2008-05-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

Jeez it's been a long time. What can I say but it's been busy, what with graduation, finishing up in clinic, desperately cramming for the grad exam on Friday. Very, very little time for grime of any kind, let alone the true stuff. But all that should be changing very, very soon--starting with climbing Baden-Powell on Saturday! In the meantime, I didn't get to post these during National Poetry Month, each too good not to share. But as with Black, Women's, Hispanic, etc. History Months, you shouldn't need a designated month to shine that light only to hide it under the proverbial bushel the other 11 months of the year. So here they are, two of my very favorite poems ever, by Adrienne Rich and e.e. cummings, respectively.

love is more thicker than forget

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

Final Notions

It will not be simple, it will not take long
It will take little time, it will take all your thought
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
It will be short, it will not be simple

It will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
It will not take long, it will occupy all your thought
As a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
It will take your flesh, it will not be simple

You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
You are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
You are taking parts of us into places never planned
You are going far away with pieces of our lives

It will be short, it will take all your breath
It will not be simple, it will become your will

Shirts That I want

2008-03-26T21:13:00.001-07:00

I'm pro-choice and I riot.
Originally uploaded by JillNic83

How Odd!

2008-03-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Shakes has an ongoing series of these stories Reuters includes in its "Oddities" section, which often have to do with stories of violence against women or other such displays of misogyny, and in which she points out every time that they may be many things but odd they are not.

I quite agree. This is not odd. It is fucking horrifying.

Big Pharma

2008-03-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

A moment of levity from Ortho this morning:

My Furry Alarm Clock

2008-03-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

Does yours do this too?

Your Daily Douchebaggery

2008-02-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in our post-shift wrap-up (because supervisor Cormac is awesome to the 10th power) we got into a discussion over the increasing prevalence of the terms "Traditional Asian Medicine" and its acronym "TAM" being used as synonyms for Traditional Chinese Medicine" and TCM respectively, and who is doing this and why? Now, it's not that TAM is a nonsense term; it's just that since Asia≠China therefore TAM≠TCM. Sort of like Latin America≠Mexico--Mexico is part of Latin America, and has cultural, linguistic and historical roots and overlaps and commonalities with other Latin American countries, but Mexico is specific, as is Cuba or Venezuela or Peru--none of them are exactly like the others. China is also specific, as are Japan, Korea, Thailand, Laos, and India which all include themselves as part of Asia and in the descriptor "Asian"

Thus, using "Asian Medicine" as a term of general reference to encompass all the medical traditions of various Asian cultures is fine. But what we do is specifically Chinese, and has its roots squarely in Chinese language and culture and philosophy, even as those things may share commonalities or at least parallels with those of other Asian cultures. To call our medicine Asian and not Chinese obscures its origins and is sloppy and imprecise.

And why this change? The term "Traditional Oriental Medicine" is still around even though on top of having the same issues "Oriental" is an extremely loaded and imperialist term, and that its introduction with acupuncture to the United States likely came about as much because in the 1970's Chinese was tantamount to being "Oriental", or that since the Chinese were evil communists it wouldn't be politic to trumpet the medicine's Chinese origins too loudly when its proponents already faced an uphill battle to get it into the statutes here. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. It seems that with the bad press China has been getting lately there are some in our profession who are afraid that calling our medicine Chinese will go badly for us. Could I have some Freedom Fries and a side of Liberty Cabbage with that?

Off to the Races

2008-02-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

Tour of California,that is. I'm pretty tired right now, and I'm still not sure what all I can and can't say, but let me just say this: as with any race, (so far) the worst part is getting to the start line. Jumping jeebus on a pogo stick.

Weekend Roundup

2008-02-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

This was my last weekend of freedom for a while, so I tried hard to make the most of it. Steven couldn't make our snowshoe trek, but I decided to do it anyway even if I had to go by myself. Which is usually what ends up happening. Which is exactly what happened. And I had a fine time, even though it would have been cool to share the awesome with someone too.

I got a late start, made even later by trying to call the rangers up at Angeles and find out what the deal was. The recording said the road was closed east of Islip Saddle, though--that seemed like a good sign. So I headed over to A16 to replace my frontcountry map and because I owed my classmate an Adventure Pass and book. I expected mass quantities of traffic up Angeles Crest, since it was a balmy and clear 70º and the roads were completely dry. I realized the reason why when I got up to about Charleton Flat--the traffic was already arrived and parked, people everywhere playing in the snow with saucers and sleds and tobogans. I drove up the road as far as they would let me to Glenwood Dad's Camp about 3 miles east of Newcomb's Ranch.

Once I got on the PCT and started heading north I didn't see another human the entire time I was out. I saw ski tracks that looked fresh, especially on my way back, and occasionally I could hear people from way across the drainage, but I saw no one. The bright sun burned warm on my bare arms and shoulders and I almost wished I had brought shorts instead of tights. No wind either--it was perfect. The snow was a little old, a little slushy in spots; sometimes in shady sections I punched through the thin hard crust to the soft slush underneath like it was crème brûlee. When I came to the first road crossing I got to break trail all the way up to Cloudburst--I even lost it for a short time in the same spot G and I did when we came up here a few years ago. Once at the top, I never realized how close I was to Waterman--if I had started earlier I could have hiked up the road 1/4 mile and done some of those trails too. I thought about continuing on PCT too, but it was 4PM and I opted to turn around. Maybe there will still be something left in March, and maybe the road will be closed higher up...

Sunday's feature was Episode V of The Sunset Chronicles, a sort of serial marionette rock opera starring Jen's coworker Monica as the principal singer. It was an impressive and creative show, with all hand-made puppets and sets, performed at the tiny Union theater near USC. One of LACBC's board members played violin with her cellist husband after the show in the gazebo behind the theater amidst what will someday be a stunning garden. As it was, we were impressed by the carnivorous plant collection in the gazebo. On our way out of the theater, Jen and I spied a narrow, dimly lit hallway with stairs at the end--ooh! Of course we couldn't resist, so we didn't! We climbed up the narrow tight spiral and came up into a small, circular room that was painted all around with ice floe scenes behind a 360º diorama of more iceburgs and formations. There was a subtle soundtrack too--when we went back down we discovered the exhibition was called Effulgence of the North, and that the Velaslavasay Panorama Enthusiast Society put it up for all to enjoy--I wonder what the next one will be like?

Apples and Oranges

2008-02-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

Or so it would seem, when you ride with pros. Via Kevin, who thought it was interesting. I don't disagree!

A River Runs Through It

2008-02-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, maybe not a river exactly, at least not at this point. A stream then, usually no more then 3 or 4 feet wide. But it braided itself with the trail most of the way up the canyon, even becoming the trail at one point, and just about everyone's feet were wet by the time we got to the top. Good thing it wasn't too cold last night, even in places where the coldest air normally sinks down and gathers.

I prepared for a typical Wednesday Night Ride, especially since the last ride Cyril emailed everyone promising some pub time at the end. So I packed a change of clothes into my little Jack Wolfskin, and warm riding clothes, water, etc. and headed out on the Love Goat to time-trial up to 26th and San V since I was running late and was afraid they might actually leave on time.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried--at the projected ride time most people were still putting on clothes and getting bikes out of cars. I found Cyril, introduced myself and he set me up with a sweet little Light & Motion setup that lit my way all night but since it was mounted to my helmet I had trouble adjusting to light far enough up the trail to find it in a lot of places in the canyon. Now I understand why the WNR guys always have a helmet AND bike setup...

We gathered everyone and debated routes: Westridge to the hug and down Backbone? Sully Canyon over to Westridge and down? I suggested either the canyon or Westridge and over to the Whoops--I knew a "secret" backyard trail that routed around the closed fence at the bottom, even though they locked up OJ's Escape at the very bottom which was part of the fun of taking that trail. Sigh. In the end we elected to test Sully Canyon since no one had been up it since the last round of storms. It wasn't bad compared to other times I've been there--like with 10-foot drop-offs or the raging river that literally carried my teammate Albi's bike so far downstream after he crashed that he never found it. I like the canyon because up or down it's technically challenging without being scary and steep. Even still, I haven't been on the mtb in a while, and I haven't ridden anything other than fireroad in a VERY long time, so I found that my skills and comfort level were definitely lower than they have been. But, it was good nonetheless to get out and start pushing 'em back up--I was happy that I would come to a stream crossing or some other problem I wasn't sure I could clear and I felt that familiar knot of anxiety in my gut but I breathed it down and went for it anyway, and I'm equally happy to report that most of the time I made it--only tipped over a couple of times. There were other problems I could have tried and elected not to that night, but all in good time. And I was at least climbing well even over some of the more technical sections--I even got some kudos from Christian.

Since the canyon took longer than expected, we elected to split at the top: one group would go on the Backbone, the other would ride as far as Dead Car/Cliffside and then return down Sully Ridge. Yes, I elected to go the short route with Christian and Larry from REI (btw Jamie, when you read this he says an enthusiastic "hi!")--I was tired! Larry was cool--on the ride down I learned that he's only been riding for a year (mostly road) and is just now getting into dirt, but he runs a lot. He recently spent four years as a combat medic, and now he's putting application packages together for PA school.

Turns out there were no concrete plans to go for beers afterward like at WNR, and since the ride split we didn't. But I got some laughs and scored some points with a couple of the guys who asked my what all I had in my large and full pack when I explained that it was mostly a change of clothes for when (not if!) we went for beers after the ride, since that was our WNR ritual, even if the ride took so long we missed last call we would just pack up coolers and bring them with to enjoy at the trailhead.

All in all a fun ride and fun night--I won't be able to make the next couple of weeks since apparently we are heading up for ToC on the 14th, but I can't wait for March--they are a really fun group of people and it feels good to be reconnecting to my beloved AR community after being away for so long!

In Lighter News...

2008-02-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

I picked up my graduation invitations/tix today--yay!!

In weirder news, there was a note on my car as I rode by it today on my way to clinic. It was in an envelope with my name written on it. I opened it up, and I think it was from one of my former students (I can't quite remember the name...I've been racking my brain all day) who (apparently?) lives on my street and saw me getting out of my car one day, because I didn't buy Lars until after I'd quit teaching. He was just saying hi, and wanting to know if I'd be interested getting a drink or a workout or a walk around the park since "we live so close".

Too. weird. It will take all the dirt-ride awesomeness of the Dart-Nuun boys tonight (and maybe a beer afterward), a much-anticipated PCT snowshoe trek on Saturday and a rock marionette "concert" on Sunday to reverse all the yucky-heavy of this week. I guess like Bessie Smith says, it jus' be dat way sometimes.

Appearances Are Revealing, Even As They Are Deceiving

2008-02-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

Patients often seem to come in themed waves. One day it will be low back pain, another day it will be allergies, the next might be digestive problems. Yesterday was dedicated to shen disharmonies, or at least odd people.

My first one of the day was an older man who grunted through his new patient paperwork for about 15 minutes. He seemed a little crotchety, but we get a lot of pain patients, and pain can make you pretty grumpy and not-your-usual-sunshiny self, so ok. I came back out to get him after going through his intake forms and transferring the information to mine, and he was gone. The receptionist pulled me aside and told me quietly to be sure and gather as much info as possible about prior treatments because apparently he has been to the clinic before but used different names. So I took him back to my room, and did the workup/history which yielded your basic garden-variety neck/shoulder tension, but it did give me a chance to practice some of the history-taking techniques I learned in Fred's class last weekend. I'm feeling better and better about those. But he had a strange, reticent kind of energy--like he just wanted to cut to the chase or something. I went back and presented the case to my attending, and told him about the prior visits. We looked compared the files: same SSN, same address, but he was 4 years older this time, identical handwriting, etc. Even the chief complaint was the same. What was interesting to me was that on his first file he signed the arbitration agreement but put the word "duress" in parentheses (he is a retired lawyer--does that trick actually work?) and then initially refused to sign the current agreement until the receptionist told him we couldn't treat him without it. We had a good discussion about how if this patient had come into our private practices we likely would have referred him out right away for that reason--everyone knows the profile of patients who become huge, litigious headaches.

After his treatment my attending and I went in with his files and set them side by side in front of him, and asked what was going on. And it was just a question of money, it turns out--he wanted to make sure he got the senior discount, even though he was technically a couple of years shy. We ended up giving it to him anyway, and explained that we were happy to try to work with him and make sure he got the care he needed, but that we needed him to deal honestly with us, and he agreed. So that's a story to file away for the next time it comes up.

My next patient was a woman I remembered from when I was an observation intern, who was still wrestling with the same issues of consolidating her mental energy and concentration and making a commitment to end a relationship with a much younger man whose company she enjoyed but who made it clear that he was not ready to settle down with anyone for a long time. Which is a sucky situation, and I've been in a version of it, and I totally get it 'cuz making clean cuts is still painful even though in the long run it ends up being better than the alternative.

Segue to my afternoon, where Steph and I have been co-treating a 45Y woman who initially was trying to get pregnant even though her life and emotional state are such that the last thing she needs is another child right now. So that dialogue has been ongoing, trying to approach her from the standpoint that she needs to be healthy physically and otherwise in order to give optimal chances to a new child or the 4-year-old daughter she already has. She's so invested in and identified with the drama she creates however that it's slow and uneven progress. I want to just ask point-blank why she wants another child, and see what she says. My attending is much more patient with her than I am--she is the perfect sort of person for me to challenge my practice of tonglen, I guess. I want to write another post exploring what happens or doesn't happen when patients become so attached to the identity of being sick or in pain or whatever that they don't really want to move on and get better, and what to do about that, how best to help them. Is being too patient enabling? Is it better to be compassionate but straight-up look-here's-what-you-gotta-do-no-matter-how-painful-to-look-at? Obviously, it depends on the patient and what they can take in, but still. How to evaluate even that?

Fast forward to my last patient of the night. A beautiful woman who is used to being a beautiful woman, but who is aging and has (at least temporarily) lost her mojo so to speak and is having a hard time mustering the will to get back up on top of it and impose disciplined structures like diet and exercise. And the thing is, she's totally identified those things not with health and feeling good from the inside, but with vanity and looking conventionally sexeh hawt. I was asked for a facelift and lipo a few times (joking but kind of not). Underneath it all were undercurrents of livery, livery energy because she's frustrated by her job, relationship, etc. How true that underneath every excess lurks deficiency, that underneath brash confidence underlies cringing insecurity. It is so easy for me to take people who seem so sure of themselves at face value, when really I should be wondering: what is this hiding, and why?

I Luv Planet Unicorn

2008-01-30T16:50:00.000-08:00

A new episode is coming soon! Check out episodes 1-5 in the meantime, if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

I Guess There's Still Drinking Liberally Meet-ups...

2008-01-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I missed the State of the Union drinking game AGAIN. The non-traditional Monday date faked me out. Curses!

Run Merckx RUN!!!

2008-01-27T21:48:00.002-08:00

You will never see a creature happier or more unself-consciously authentic than when you see this dog run. The pictures don't do the spectacle justice, but they will give you the idea.

I had another near-perfect half-weekend in SLO yesterday. I wish I could have had the whole weekend, but such is life. The weather even obliged for the most part--no grief on the way up or down, minimal in between. I had been going to head up to the Angeles to find some snow for trekking, but Peter said they had some out his way so I packed the 'shoes and up I went. By the time we got out to Black Mountain, there wasn't much snow left at all, certainly not enough to warrant snowshoes, but enough to facilitate a snowball tiff and certainly enough for two dogs to eat and play.

The signs said the road was impassable, but stubbornly on we pressed--WE will be judges of that, we said. When Merckx couldn't stand it any more, Peter stopped and let him chase the car the rest of the way up the road to the trailhead. The tread was a little slippery in spots, but straightforward enough. We set our sights on two large rock formations in the distance and off we went. We found some interesting (bear? we forgot to look it up when we got home) scat along the way, Peter ambushed me with some snowballs from a sidehill as I followed up behind and I embarrassed myself by forgetting my learnin' and totally throwing like a girl in response.

Once of top of the rock, we could see the Carrizo Plain on the other side of the hills, we could see Hwy 58 unfurling itself across the land toward Bakersfield, and in the way distance we could see the Sierras covered in all kinds of snow. The contours of the land were pretty amazing and it looked so vast from that view. The clouds were far away and the day was balmy. Once we got back to the car, Peter loaded up Eddy and let Merckx uncork an impressive chase all the way down this time.

The clouds and rain were returning by the time we got back to town--after a brief winning struggle with the Lazy Monster, we got on the bikes and headed out up Prefumo Canyon, which was lush and gorgeous. We saw rainclouds over Avila, and ended up bagging the section that goes to Avila Pier, and Peter tried with mixed success to get me to lay off my brakes already as he pulled me home.

And for the evening entertainment: The new Woody Allen movie? Salsa dancing? Bruins basketball game? Why not all 3? At least, that was the plan. After dinner and the movie (which was quite enjoyable--go see!) we again tangled with the Lazy Monster before deciding to sit out the dancing for another time and maybe still catch the game, until we decided that tea and shared stories sounded just as attractive and since we were already home...which was warm...and dry...and pervaded by an awesome revolutionary kitty...so, we let Mark Twain and Stephen Jay Gould provide us a rip-roarin' good evening instead.

I dragged myself kicking and screaming (on the inside!) home this morning. Work wasn't so bad except I was tired and my last client was a huge Scottish guy who about wore me out but he was nice at least and very entertaining. After that a quick foray up to Malibu for a meet/greet of the new team and job at the end of their sponsor day shindig. I'm not sure how much I'll be allowed to blog, but it is going to be and interesting year indeed--that much I can promise.

Caption This Photo

2008-01-24T18:44:00.001-08:00

Rude Pundit declares it to be "the awesomest MLK day photo featuring a white president and a black child". I don't disagree.

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-01-24T18:29:00.000-08:00

I just had to.

You Know You're Having an Interesting Day When...

2008-01-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

...your patient pees in the trash can, and it's not even yet 10AM.

Oy.

Bush Gets a Biopic

2008-01-22T23:21:00.000-08:00

No, really--it's true, and brought to you by Oliver Stone!

Check out the seriously awesome "preview", stolen from the vaults! Enjoy!

Little Help?

2008-01-22T13:35:00.000-08:00

Does anyone have any trail beta on backpacking in the southern half of Los Padres? I'm thinking maybe San Rafael or Dick Smith Wilderness areas the weekend before I have to work Tour of CA stuff. I've a tremendous yen to get out to the hills where I belong instead of this fugging city where I live for the next 6 to 11 months. I'd like to do a 2-night trip, with a base camp at the first night so I can do some longer day-hike ranging before hiking out. Any insights are appreciated!

Mike Huckabee Needs to Shut Up. A Lot.

2008-01-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

Or so I was saying to a friend the other night. Here's the latest piece of evidence for my claim:

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do."—Ordained minister and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, assuring a crowd in South Carolina of his enthusiastic support for their continued embrace of the Confederate flag.

The heartwarming display of family values is giving me the vapors, I do declare--and from a minister no less! As Liss remarks over at Shakesville, what would Jesus tell people to shove up their asses? Shit howdy, I can't open my mouth wide enough to O-o loud enough.

The Jokes, They Write Themselves: Part Wev

2008-01-18T10:22:00.000-08:00

Via Jill at Feministe, who titles her post "Not That You Didn't Already Know Fabio Was a Dipshit, but Sweet Jesus". Do check out the comments, they are pretty hilarious.

I agree, he definitely has...a way...with words.

Qian Zheng, Surprises That Rock Edition

2008-01-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

What did I tell you about this year pulling straight? A sizable chunk of student loans are gone, another will be gone by the end of the year, the other debt is nearly gone and won't be gone by Chinese New Year (according to tradition!) but will at least be erased by the end of February. What else? I LOVE my clinic shifts this term, especially the pain clinic at Venice Family--the integrative setting is so exciting and I'm learning so much from what the biomed docs, nurses, chiros, and translators have to say at our weekly meetings. I can't wait to find a setting like this for practice! At school, my stage IV lung cancer patient is doing extremely well, my infertility patient is finally pregnant this week (she's taken about 4 pregnancy tests to be sure even though her PCP assures her she's quite expectant) and while my amenorrhea patient still hasn't gotten a period she's made tremendous strides toward making decisions about getting her life under control and wouldn't you know her anxiety is improving to boot? So all that feels pretty inspiring.

The Premiere Oncology internship is looking promising, and I've been looking into ways to work toward helping get the Hinchey Bill (the bill that would get acupuncture added to the Medicare and Federal Employee Benefit Plan schedules of benefits) passed, since it looks like it actually has the best chance of passing in years. And yeah, the debate over whether or not it's a good idea to join a system that is so broken goes on, but that's another post for another day.

The coupe de grace came this morning in the form of a certain pro cycling team which had been considering me for soigneur work (and then declining to get back to me even to tell me they'd gone with someone else) calling me this morning to offer me the job! I go in tomorrow morning to sign the papers and make it all official like. I'm still in the pinching myself stage, but there it is. All the things I was looking forward to--new professional contacts, plenty of bloggable experiences, not to mention my Escape From LA fund are to be mine after all.

I really can't express how good it feels to be so excited about my life again, to feel more securely rooted and focused than I have ever been, to be getting it right, to finally be winning, to just be so happy I laugh out loud for no apparent reason and to be so delighted with the beauty of the world around me all it takes is a bike ride to Lopez Lake under a clear azure sky to feel high as a kite. I can hardly wait to see what February will bring--Tour of California, here I come!

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-01-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know it's not quite Friday, but tomorrow stands to be a pretty busy day, and Thursday Cat Blogging just sounds lame.

It's good to be the king.

Jon Stewart on Hillary's "Meltdown"

2008-01-10T18:09:00.000-08:00

Plenty of others have already blogged the topic a-plenty, but this one is worth watching since as usual The Daily Show gets it more right than most other "legitimate" news outlets out there. I love the part near the end where Rudy chimes in--is there nothing he can't relate to 9/11? I bet not.

Video here.

It's God's Will, Bitchez!

2008-01-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

Jon Ponder wonders whether Huckabee's loss in NH is all part of God's larger plan like the rest of the campaign and dares reporters to ask exactly that question. That is a presser I would love to see.

RIP Sir Edmund Hillary

2008-01-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

One of the great adventurers of our time has passed on at the age of 88 today.
Full story and bio here.