Snow Day and Run Around Screaming

It snowed last week as everyone knows. We did this

which was pretty much awesome. Helen and Lucie (who were sick) got cold and went inside, but Opal sledded by herself for an hour while I fired up the hot tub.

Helen came back out and sat in the yard chair while I tended the fire. Finally, it was ready and me and the girls all squeezed in the tub while it snowed. Pretty much awesome.















Also, the circular floor plan is as spectacular as expected. Opal tried to do 100 laps the other day, but petered out at 86. Mizu and I tried to explain the concept of only 14 more, but it wasn't sinking into tired 5-year-old brain.

Anyway, here's our new favorite game: Run Around Screaming.

Summer Bridge Comes Out

This post is a bit old, but it wanted telling. We were perfect in our timing: we waited long enough to see salmon swimming under the bridge, but soon enough to get the bridge out before the water got too high.

Short + Rain = Explosion

It's been raining and storming off and on for a couple of weeks, so it was no real surprise when the power went out Sunday morning. Every winter we lose power a couple of times for an afternoon or day or three days, so we are well prepared with candles, kerosene, generators, etc, but it is always a pain in the ass and always makes me appreciate electricity.

For once it was polite enough to wait until daylight, so we were spare the hassle of waking in the utter dark and puttering around by candlelight. About three hours later, it came back on for ten minutes and went out again. I was upstairs and I heard a terrible zipping, ripping explosion. I looked out the window and saw the power pole down in the pasture engulfed in a cloud of smoke. A bright blue and yellow light was shooting out of the smoke, pulsing in time with the ripping noise.

Much kicked-anthill-scurrying ensued. Our phone was out as well, so we couldn't call anyone but Billy had seen it as well and called our co-op, Blachly-Lane. They showed up and tramped around for a while as I hurriedly got my boots on and grabbed the machete to clear out around around the transformer. The two guys messed around in the transformer box and pulled out the arrester before heading down to the power pole.

In a marvelous display of engineering and skill, the electricians proceeded to use a giant telescoping pole to fix the pole from the ground. The pole is equipped with a hammer and an unturned hook. The cylinder (fuse?) had burned up, so first the electrician knocked out the charred remnants. Then, using the hook and an ingenious loop and clip system, snapped a new fuse in place. It blew out, which was bad. It meant we had an underground short.

They left and two hours later showed back up with a digger (a third worker) and grudgingly drove across the bridge ("That stupid bridge.") They attached some kind of magic instrument to the transformer which told them how far away the short was. Then they dug it up and fixed it.

The only lasting damage was to Mizu and my fantasy football teams. We'd waited until Sunday AM to set them and in a 78-80 loss I had the Giants D (v. the Seachickens!) on the bench. Mizu had three starters on byes. Oh well.

What's this Blog about anyway?

One of the oddities of teaching for a small school with a steadily declining budget is that you end up doing a little bit of everything. This year everything means in addition to teaching math, I am working as the 8th grade disciplinarian and teaching a math/writing enrichment/elective thing.

I am gearing up to teach it as a social studies/negotiation class using this awesome game. In preparation for it, I am doing a lot of reading about late 19th and earlier 20th century European history. My current book, and inspiration for this post, is Fall of Eagles, by CJ Sulzberger. Rather than try to describe it, I'll quote it and you can see why it is so delightful(?!)

"Outstanding among the Romanovs had been a creative, brilliant, visionary, half-mad giant and a German nymphomaniac, long since dead. Outstanding among the Hohenzollerns had been the psychopathic heir to a boorish father, one who aspired to the arts and culture of peace and became a familiar symbol of warlike talent, who dreamed of everything and left nothing. As for the Hapsburgs, since Charles V, the Wunderkind of political marriages, they slowly, steadily, undramatically but with the diginity of great noblemen, slid down the hill of fame. In each case the flicker of talent was submerged in a night of mediocrity."

If anyone has any good resources on this period (Franco-Prussian War of 1870 - WWI) let me know.

Biking

The weather has contrived the last three weekends to push me out the door and onto my bike. I've been riding up to the end of Deadwood Creek Road and then splitting either left or right. It probably ends up around 16 miles round trip, depending on how far up I go. Both roads go on indefinitely; Hwy 25 (left) goes over to Alsea and a turn to the right gets you lost up high on logging roads.

The ride doesn't begin with such wildness. The first mile and a half, through Sidell Flats and past the community center, is quite pastoral. It is a mix of pasturage, young orchard and yard that stays open and unwooded until the big hill at the head of the flats.

Once up the hill, the road clings to the steep side well up and above the creek. The flats down below have been allowed to return to forest. Never having been commercially planted, they are a lovely mix of big leaf maple, fir, cedar and hemlock. The cut-away face on the left drips spring water, ferns and moss. Don't get too distracted; it's a hundred foot fall to the creek below!

The view opens up (and the pavement ends) at Alpha farm (MP 7), the traditional commune that has been part of Deadwood since 1971. There are thirty-odd people living there at any given time, so the collection of cars, building and people is always worth checking out. In recent years, their garden has taken off so it's nice to take look at it and see what's doing - who's working and what's growing. A short while later is another farm, Rock Creek. (MP 8) Unlike the relatively compact Alpha, Rock Creek is stretched out over a mile of creek bottom. They have a small vegetable garden but mostly it's pasturage for cows, goats and horses. The view isn't great because, again, the road is far up above, but somehow it still feels open.

It's one more mile to the T.

Go right and you'll cross the Wedding Bridge, pass the biggest chestnut in Deadwood and get to see Jesse's giant anti-bear bee platform. Quickly, the end of county maintenance comes and the road begins to ascend into the mountains. When I rode this way two weeks ago, the big leaf maples had carpeted the road in six inches of giant webbed leaves. I was the only traveler to disturb them and left an almost imperceptible track in my wake. When I was this way two weeks ago, I was treated to a remarkably tame and unconcerned baby bobcat. The size of a small housecat, it let me watch and follow it from a distance of ten feet or so. Finally, it got bored and ran up the hill and disappeared.

Go left and you'll pass a few scattered houses before coming to pavement again. This is Hwy 25, which passes up and over the mountains to the Alsea Valley. Yesterday, I rode up about three turns to a little swatch of clearcut private land. I sat up on the slash pile, ate my sandwich and and looked out over the valley. Twilight rolled in and the moon rolled up from the East. As I left, I noticed three long, black piles of cougar scat. Nothing unusual, but it was a bit unnerving as I rode off into the gathering dark.

The ride home is fast, fast, fast. The long, steady climb of the way up is replaced by a long, steady descent and before you know it...you're home.

Vacation

One week ago I took a vacation. I drove down to California, played two days of ultimate and drove back. All kid-free. The whole thing felt so normal for a pre-kid Mizu, and so totally bizarre for the now-Mizu. It was fun. I found I still love road-tripping like that (four or five women in a car, not a lot of time, and even less of a plan). You can really cover the miles when every stop doesn't entail exiting car seats, getting shoes on, reclothing three kids who have somehow removed every stitch they had on ten miles ago, tag-teaming the bathroom, and getting loaded back up again---only to repeat in sixty miles.
This trip also reconfirmed my love of the game of ultimate. Our team was twelve women who practiced very little together pre-tourney. The other teams were legit teams with 20 women and a whole summer of practicing and conditioning under their belt. As you may be able to deduce, our record wasn't very good at the end of the weekend. But I found, despite my fondness for winning, that every time I jogged (or crawled) out to the line to play another point that I was full of joy to be doing just that.
Thank you to the other women on Further--both those that came to Regionals and those that played any of the rest of our patchwork season. I enjoyed being on the field with you for practices and games. Hopefully it will fit into all of our busy lives again next season.
Coming home was wonderful. I had missed the family lots and apparently missed an achingly beautiful fall weekend in Deadwood. This weekend it is raining, but are working on one of the year's most satisfying tasks for me--filling the woodshed. Opal, Helen, and even Lucie are old enough now to help a little, which makes the whole process even more fun. Here are a couple of pictures of them in action:

Commute

I started work again yesterday and was immediately greeted by 90 minutes in my car. Ugh.

My drive isn't terrible. It is 33 miles one way and picturesque throughout. It takes me exactly 42 minutes door to door, day in and day out. Unlike my Seattle commute (Cap Hill to Skyway,) it never varies. There's never an accident or construction to turn a 20 minute drive into 2 hours of hell. But I just can't get around feeling like I'm wasting a huge part of my life driving and flipping through the radio listening to NPR or sports radio or the 80s station.

Zoo and I did our budget last week and found out that we were spending about 25% of our disposable income on gas. Driving and eating up gas is one of the lifestyle costs of living in the country. Still, it bugs me.

So I decided to start biking part of the way. This morning I drove to Brickerville, up and over the N. Fork - Siuslaw River Rd and parked by the bridge in Minerva. Hopped on the bike and did the 12 miles to school in about 45 minutes. It's a beautiful ride. The gradual decent down the N Fork starts in pure coast range forest and quickly opens up with the valley into a string of pasturages. Little homesteads, barns and cows fill the flatlands and the hills above feature various stages of logging from clear cut to mature forest. Finally, it all levels out into a broad estuary rife with ducks and geese. The weather this morning was perfect. Fog clung to the hills, but slowly burned away as I rode. A hint of blue sky was overhead when I pulled into the school parking lot.

So my commute now takes a good bit longer, but it doesn't feel so wasted.