Sunrise

Sunrise over the Sandia Mountains this morning. And some morning glories.

where they met

Today's Ice/mixed conditions in SWPA

Here are a few "current conditions" photos from the various ice/mixed climbing locations around Southwestern PA. Most things are thin, but climbable. The cooler temps are building ice fast!

Secret Cliffs I - left phto is of lower tier with its delaminated topout, A much more solid upper tier is pictured in the right photo.












Secret Cliffs II - Overivew of cliff conditions in left photo. Central area is shown in the right photo. Conditions looking promising. Central climbs are in and looking good. Quite a bit dripping going on. Called on account of Security is IN and looking fatter than ever. Left of Central area (Beast Wall) is just about connecting down. the lowdown L to R: Monsta - OUT, The Beast - OUT, Son of Beast - IN (very thin), Frankenstein - IN. Central Area - IN, Final Obligation - IN, The Awakening - IN, Curtain - OUT (Wet and questionable attachment at lip), Called on Account of Security - IN, The Corner - IN, The Sick-le - ALMOST.








South Connellsville Rod & Gun Club - Left photo of Laura Hahn below a very uniced Internet Connection. Right photo is Main flows. L to R Cave Shot, NRA, Longshot. Caveshot would take short screws and protect. The other 2 - OUT










Also checked, but not photographed was lower Meadow Run. I'm happy to report that there's much more ice than a few days ago. The Main flow should be good for those looking to find climbable ice this upcoming weekend. Also on a positive note, the long term forcast looks very promising for building ice.

All Four Up

All four feet off the ground

Tubing with Krystal and Austin

Next up was Austin and I. I hated tubing. I'm never going again!

NOT!

Back from Cuba and meet ‘Coralia’!

I’m just back from Cuba and not sure yet if I will be suffering from the infamous transcontinental jetlag malady (we will see!) but I was able to sleep nicely on the plane. It was quite a packed flight but fortunately we had 2 empty seats beside us that we were able to take advantage of.

So yeah, I have gone in hiding for almost 2 weeks. Internet is sadly a rarity in Cuba, it is almost non-existent. The country is frozen in time and internet is only for the privilege few over there. Most hotels starting from 4 stars have internet access (there is no wifi) and apart from having slow connections, they don’t work most of the time, and when there is rain, the country’s telephony infrastructure shuts down. No kidding. Hence, the silence in this blog.

But before I start with my Cuba blog entries, let me introduce to you an important person in Havana: ‘Coralia’ (or Coralla, or maybe Coralya?)

Meeting Coralia was one of my beautiful experiences in Havana City. I personally think that she is a heroine of the city. In her own right of course. She is Havana’s famous and affable street sweeper and she does her job exceptionally with flair. Such enthusiasm, superb grace and flower fashion that I have never ever seen before. Not from someone who sweeps the city streets while singing the whole day every day.

Yup, those are real flowers on her hair (hibiscus and a few others). She plucks them fresh from the gardens of Havana Vieja (Havana’s Old Town). I reckon she does this tradition on a daily basis. She even gave Blondine and I two hibiscus flowers! That was soooo sweet of her.

Coralia is such a joy on the streets of Old Havana.

If you happen to be in the city, do look for her and compliment her of her great deeds for serving Havana in her own unique, flamboyant and passionate way.

Coralia here in action with her broom and dustpan, and of course when she sees a camera nearby, she poses right away!

Blondine and I with Coralia, the friendly and flower power street sweeper of Havana. She is definitely a Havana street icon.

More Cuba stories, lots of pictures (I have more than 1700!) and a few videos very soon =).
Besos mi amigos y amigas!

Happy New Year

This was the image on my sister's Christmas card this year, but I think he makes a good New Year's Koi too, don't you? (It seems like he's swimming in confetti.)

I was impressed that my 4th grade niece had colored such a pretty carp. Then I found out that she'd actually drawn it! She said they'd had something to copy from, but it isn't traced.

I think we've got a budding artist in the family.

In Print

I wanted to share that this Spring I have two pieces of writing coming out in print publications. An article on my impressions of a classic randonneuring bike will appear in the Spring issue of Bicycle Quarterly. And a reworked version of a post from last December, "Emotional Landscapes," has been included in Taking the Lane, Volume 6: Lines on the Map. If you are interested in reading these pieces and the excellent works alongside which they appear, both issues are now available to order.



Since the start of this blog I've been reluctant to commit my bicycle-related writing to print. I did not feel the writing here was good enough, and I also didn't think the style really flowed outside of the blog format. But working on the Bicycle Quarterly article and interacting with Jan Heine made me aware that I've accumulated material - stories, thoughts, ideas - that do not fit the blog format and would work better in print.



Posts like Emotional Landscapes and this earlier one about Vienna are examples of writing that really should have been longer and more nuanced, adapted for the blog only because I had no other outlet for it. Publishing a slightly altered version of the former in Taking the Lane allowed me to test the waters as to whether I felt comfortable turning non-committal blog snippets into real pieces of writing.



I think that one of my readers, who comments here as "Spindizzy" (aka Jon Gehman the rackmaker) is a genius writer who owes it to the world to write a book about life and bicycles. His comments alone are literature as far as I am concerned. I've also been inspired by the writing of Tim Krabbé, Grant Petersen and Bill Strickland (in a way I see the latter two as flip sides of the same coin), and reading their stuff has made me realise that distinguishing "bicycle writing" from "literature" is silly and a defense mechanism. I've written stuff that has been published before. But with this blog I wanted to de-stress and take the pressure off with what I initially thought was a lighthearted topic. Imagine my surprise.



TheSpring issue of Bicycle Quarterly and Taking the Lane, Volume 6 are now available, and those who order should receive theirs some time in April. I derive no financial benefit from the sales of either, but invite you to support these small, independent publications.

Lovely Lilies - Another Joy of Summer

The skies brightened for a little while this morning after the rain. Long enough to grab a few shots of the lilies starting to bloom in my little garden just outside the front door. I've never seen so many blooms on these plants before. As always, click on the image to see a larger version.

Happy 15th Birthday Austin!

One of the things we had to adjust to when first going out "on the road" was the fact that we could not count on people we knew being around. It is a huge transition to never knowing exactly who will be around. For the most part, you just learn to adjust and it's not a big deal in time. Still, things like birthdays can feel kind of lonely.



This year, Austin's birthday turned out to be anything but lonely. Because we are still camping with so many other Families on the Road people, we had lots of people around. Early in the day, they decorated our RV:



How cool is that? On top of all of the friends here, our travel buddies arrived yesterday so he had family here too. We had a big surprise party for him. The Evans kept him contained inside until we were ready for him. All the kids hid with silly string in hand:





Surprise, Austin!





He had a great time!











Happy Birthday, dude! Rock on! You have made the last 15 years so interesting, so here's to many more fun years to you!



Living the life surrounded by love in Florida!

Finally went to Ephesus yesterday!

Ephesus is an ancient Greek city (later became a Roman city during the Roman Empire), one of the largest cities in the 1st century BC and very famous in the Christian world because of Paul's ministry. The apostle Paul lived here for sometime (see Ephesians book in the New Testament, Bible).



Trivia: Did you know that Saint Paul was not officially part of Jesus' Twelve Disciples? He gained the title Apostle Paul because of his work and dedication in spreading Christianity outside of Jewish territory. Before Paul, Christianity was strictly for the Jews, a tributary religion of Judaism, although Judaism never acknowlegded Jesus as the messaiah (son of God), they are still waiting for the messaiah to come. Judaism even saw Jesus as one of the false messaiahs albeit the most influential of them all.



I have always seen Paul as the best sales person and marketeer in the whole wide world. Without him, there would have been no Christianity today. This would have been an extinct religion.







Now John, one of twelve desciples of Jesus, also known as John the Baptist, the Beloved Disciple (or the disciple whom Jesus loved), John of Patmos, John the evangelist, wrote the Book of Revelations (New Testament, Bible) here in Ephesus. He wrote the rest of the book in Patmos Island but I am not going there because its a 2.5 hours boat ride from Samos Island where we are staying.



The ancient city of Ephesus was also the site of the Temple of Artemis (also known as Temple of Diana) completed around 550 BC, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world but there is nothing left to see of the temple really except for a small cut-off column.



Nowadays, Ephesus is a big touristy attraction and a pilgrimage site as well. Roman Catholics visit the House of Virgin Mary nearby. Artists such as Sting, Elton John, etc have performed at the grand theater.



The city ruins are now part of Turkey.



I will post a more thorough entry about my visit to Ephesus another time, with lots of pictures of course.

Breakwall Icicles

Icicles hang from the cable railing along the harbor breakwall in Grand Marais, MN.

Arlington :: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Changing of the Guard.
Impressive. Meticulous. Solemn. Ceremonial.
Photos taken Sunday October 11, ..

Weekend Project

We have not really changed anything in our RV since we bought it. We have more than made up for that now though. When we bought the RV, we bought it toaccommodatefive of us. Now there are three of us. Soon there will be two of us.



Our needs have changed, so we have tossed around the idea of getting a different RV when Austin left home. I would like a smaller RV. Nathan would like a less expensive RV. But we also love the RV we have.



Jack and Ruth that we became friends with this summer inspired us to think outside the box and make our current RV something we'd love. So we decided instead of having three bedrooms and one and a half baths that we would now have two big bedrooms and one bathroom. When Austin leaves home, we can use his bedroom for Nathan's office.



It was a lot of hard work on the guy's part this weekend, helping to make these changes. I caught a few shots in the midst of the tearing the walls down. Nathan, who hates all kinds of physical labor, so give him a big hand:




And the room with the walls tore out and the bathroom almost "gone".


Whew! What a mess! I spent today cleaning up and sorting through stuff, which led to many bags of goodies to be donated. It's funny, we think we live so light now given all we own fits in our RV. But each time I go through our things we find more and more that we don't really need. The longer we live this way, the lighter we want to live. But we also accumulate gadgets and gizmos along the way so we are far from cured when it comes to consumerism.



I will try to remember to snap some pictures when we have the room finished and decorated the way Austin wants to.