Gym class for grown ups

For the past few weeks, I have been voluntarily showing up for drop-in fitness classes at the rec center. Most often, I have been subjecting myself to one hour of something called "ski/sports conditioning," which is funny, since I don't actually ski. Now I was never part of any team sports in high school or college (or ever, for that matter), so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Today I have a much better understanding of things like suicides and lunges. I also know why the people squatting against the wall for three minutes are whimpering. Jumping rope has become a kind of torture.

I also gave step aerobics a try, but, in spite of a childhood spent in a dance studio, I just couldn't pick up the steps fast enough. I probably should have given it more than one night, but it was just wasn't for me. The weight lifting class was a little better, but I found there's a little nerve on my right side that puts my arm to sleep any time I rest the bar there. Neat. My arms aren't used to lifting much more than cats, so I had the fewest plates (5 kg only) in the class. I guess I should be happy that my arms were still a little shaky the next day, since that should mean they changed at least a little, right?

Hopefully all this will amount to something come summer and racing season. In any case, I've stressed a few new muscle groups and have come up with a plausible excuse for my monthly massage.

Kentucky Fried Seitan

I was inspired by the seitan buffalo wings that Walt posted a while back, but afraid of the atomic sauce, so I asked for his quick and easy seitan instructions and turned them into a different fake chicken part. I'll call them nuggets. Seitan turns out to be incredibly easy to throw together and a little gluten goes a long way. I was originally looking for something to eat with buttermilk biscuits and, not wanting to deal with gravy and pseudo-sausage, I could only envision red and white striped buckets of fried chicken parts and little cups of cole slaw (yeah, I ate my fair share of chickens when I was young). I found a recipe online that promised lots of crunchy coating and absolutely no nutritional value.

I've never been very good at frying things, probably due to an aversion to high heat and the problem of used cooking oil disposal. I reassured myself by using the deepest pan I could find and, after a quick search, learned that my local recycling center will take my sullied oil and give it to folks who will turn it into bio-diesel, so the local converted VW's will have something to run on. No more excuses - it was time to fry.


The recipe seemed to call for an awful lot of yellow mustard, which I never have in the house, but I decided to follow it to the letter just to see how it came out. I learned that you don't want your batter too thick (drips globs all over the stove top) and you should always watch your hand's altitude when you're dropping things into a fairly shallow pool of hot oil (it only hurt for an hour and now I get new skin).

After the heat kicked in, they really did start to look like a familiar fried food. Actually, depending on the shape of the seitan chunk, they looked like a couple of fried foods; could've been clams, fish sticks, nuggets, or just about anything under that sizzling, golden batter. Fortunately, they just tasted like chicken. Well, at least like what I remember of chicken. I will admit to having consumed one piece of fried chicken parts on the way home from the yurt trip (somehow just potato logs from Safeway didn't seem like enough dinner), but seitan is definitely a different beast. The inside is kind of a uniform tan color and the texture is a bit chewy, but I swear they could pass for a nugget at any fast food franchise. You probably don't want to know how little chicken is actually in those nuggets anyway.

Best of all, after getting all soggy in the fridge for a few days, they crisped right up after a few minutes in the toaster oven last night. Seitan seems to have tons of other potential uses, so I will experiment a bit more this winter in hopes of adding a bit more protein to the diet. Of course, a little extra fried stuff is always good, too.

Sleeping foxes, suicidal bees and January goatheads

Some times you have a really good day and other times the day has you. I've been eating lunch by the pond in the nice weather this week and keeping an eye on the bees. I'm not sure if they're ill, depressed or just really stupid, but a large crowd of them has been hovering just above the water at the edge of the pond and then dropping down to their icy deaths. I fished a handful out yesterday and set them on the flagstone to warm up, but I'm pretty sure some of those same bees ended up back in the water, because there were about a dozen unrevivable corpses floating on or near the ice today.

While I was looking mournfully at the bees this afternoon (because, let's face it, if we run out of bees, we're screwed), someone else was a few feet away watching the foxes sleep. He let me know as he got up to leave, so I went over there to stare at them for a while and make myself feel better about the bees. Foxes are weird animals - in my mind, they're closest to a cat/dog hybrid. These two were just having their nap interrupted by the grounds crew, but seemed pretty chill even with someone close by, poking in the shrubs. Unfortunately, the smaller one has a very badly damaged back leg, but she didn't seem too phased by it. I, on the other hand, was now bothered by the bees and the broken fox.

I figured grabbing a video and some thai food on the way home might make the day end a little more pleasantly. Somewhere between the video store and the food, I picked up a goathead in my front tire. I thought I might have just enough air to get home, so started pedaling anyway. I was still about a mile short when the goathead got pulled out and the rest of the air went with it. Oh, well, it was still at least fifty degrees, so not a bad night for a walk. After stuffing the ailing bike in the garage and promising to fix it tomorrow, I noticed a suspicious trail of drips leading from the garage back to the road. I feared my car had gone and done something dumb on its own, but, no, it was my dinner leaking from the cracked plastic container in the bike basket. You could probably find my house tonight by following the drops of green curry from town. I didn't even bother to look and see how much had ended up on the bike.

So, finally home, remains of dinner dumped in bowl, ready for some sci fi on dvd. But wait, my computer no longer seems to have a media player. Must have gotten dumped with so many other programs last week. The short version is:

• computer randomly turns off firewall and lets in a couple bad things
  
• computer is hauled to work to be "cleaned" for future use
  
• one week later I realize my wireless connection is down and the nice man at Qwest says a replacement modem is in order (and will be there in four days)
• the next morning I realize my photo editor and other Adobe and Macromedia programs are gone, along with my owner's manual for the stupid computer
• new modem arrives and we get to step 9 before the installation stalls
• another nice man at Qwest says "it's not us, it's you" and suggests reinstalling the ethernet driver
• I learn how to install ethernet driver while piggy-backing on random neighbor's unsecure, semi-strong wireless signal (seriously, you should encrypt that, but thanks)
  
• internet/wireless capability magically restored, probably didn't need new modem
• lastly, discover that Dell Media Experience was also thrown out in the great cleansing and, according to Dell forum contributors, is gone forever unless you have the Tools CD that Dell felt should only be given to very special people
• figure I can get over my dislike of Bill Gates enough to use Windows Media Player, only to find that I now require a DVD decoder that I've never needed before and that'll be $15 (wtf!)
• break down and pay online and start watching videos at 9:30 while eating my cold dinner

Which goes to show that you can't have complete faith in anyone when it comes to fixing your own computer. I had to get through a dozen web pages from Dell only to have them tell me "you no longer have any warranty, so we'll charge you if you even call us to say hi" and I doubt I will ever receive my requested Tools CD. I also still don't have my photo editor back, so I will refrain from posting any more giant images like the bison below. There's always a system restore option, to get some of my stuff back, but it requires major backing up and I just don't want to spend another evening yelling in the livingroom.

So this day is over by about 55 minutes. Time to get some rest and see what tomorrow has in store for me...

Winter takes a holiday

Based on reports from friends and family on the west coast, in the Great Lakes area and on the east coast, I'm pretty sure I know where winter is spending its days off. Fortunately for us, we've been given a reprieve and are making the best of the 60+ degree weather around here. On Sunday the roads were full of bikes and happy people. It felt just like one of those first nice afternoons in spring when you can leave the house with just two layers and feel confident you won't lose any extremities. Maybe it was the temperature or maybe the long weekend, but the riders out there were in the mood to smile. Sure, some stayed in their own private zones, plugged in to their pods, but mostly there were goofy grins, hearty waves and hellos from one side of the road to the other.

Even the non-cycling residents took advantage of the sunny day. Along the way I passed a herd of horses galloping through their pasture, nipping at each other, a camera-shy hawk on the lookout for lunch, and the bison out doing, well, whatever it is that bison do.

The cats have been lounging on the deck till it gets too hot (the south-facing spot was nearing 80 degrees at ten this morning) and I managed to get a couple walls painted in the bedroom. I've had to retrieve some screens from the garage to so I can get the windows open. Don't think I've ever had to do that in January. For those of you still enduring high temps in the teens, you may want to stop reading now, lest you think I'm torturing you on purpose. Tomorrow I'm wearing shorts.

That was not two inches

Before I went to bed, I heard "one to two inches." At six this morning, I heard "one to two inches." Clearly, that last one was spoken by someone in a room without windows. The mountain bike was stuck behind the car, I was running late, I took the road bike. An interesting choice, to be sure. But not a wise one.

I gave up at Norwood when my glasses wouldn't stop fogging up and threw my bike on the bus. The bus, full of high school students, brought me as far as Alpine, where it proceeded to get stuck. The doppelganger bus behind us tried to pass and managed to get just a little bit farther and then wound up perpendicular to the street. I have no idea what happened to bus no. three. We all got off. I got to work somewhat damp, but happier than most of those drivers who were sliding around in their autos.

The ride home was somewhat less treacherous, but only because I benefitted from someone else's experience. To the kind but unfortunate mountain bike rider who called out a warning about the ice at the High Street intersection, thanks. I'm sorry that you had to hit that super shiney patch of black ice, but, without your help, I would have done the same and made a much louder crash. Hope the bruises heal quickly.

Our own little natural disaster

This is not exactly what you want to see at the end of your street as you arrive home after a long day at work: the warm, red glow of a rapidly traveling, wind driven grass fire. You start to take a quick inventory of all your possessions and try to figure out how much can fit in the car. You wonder if it's possible to squeeze two cats into one carrier. You try to think if you know enough people who would come and ride your bikes away to safety.

Fortunately, I've been home for a few hours now and the dreaded reverse-911 call has not come to my block. The winds have died back some, down from 70 mph, and the biggest hazard has been all of the extra cars in the neighborhood full of fire-gawkers. I went out to get a better view and took the opportunity to catch up with a few of my neighbors whom I haven't seen since the end of gardening season. Lots of people were giving their dogs a longer walk than usual and there were plenty of camera flashes going off. I think the bright flames make the fire seem closer than it actually is, but it was still a relief to feel the wind start to blow from the south. I hope my friends who live a bit further north and were evacuated earlier are somewhere safe and sound tonight and that they still have homes in the morning. The hills I can see out the north window will be blackened when the sun rises tomorrow, but hopefully that will be the worst of the damage. I'm sorry for the residents of the houses already lost.

Yurts in the new year

The new year began with a new adventure: a three-night, two-yurt, snowshoeing, snowboarding fest organized by my high school friend and his wife. I've always wanted to go on a hut trip, but could never quite find a way to tag along till now. I was relieved to find most of us would be on snowshoes rather than xc skis, since I figured I could manage walking more easily than gliding (see skate skiing entry below). Snowshoes were purchased, a never-used pack was fitted for snowboard hauling, free poles were acquired and I was set. Sort of.

The weather and scenery were perfect. Southern Colorado's been dumped on for much of December, but it let up just in time to give us three cloudless days in powder. After an overnight at the Pueblo Days Inn, most of which was spent guiltily zoning out in front of the tv, I met up with my friends for the shorter of our two yurt journeys. BJ and Ethan, on their skis, pulled our group along through the snow-covered pines and we soon arrived at the Neff yurt. Yurts are still new to me, but I was pretty impressed early on. Once the woodstove got going, we found that it really was possible to leave the door open just to cool off. Another great feature was the portable, heated toilet seat that hung behind the stove - ah, luxury in the wilderness.



Free time in the yurt on New Year's Eve was spent playing card games, devouring chili, cornbread, and brownies and toasting with California champagne. We wandered around outside after dark looking at the constellations in the crystal clear sky; Orion was easily pointed out, his "sword" was a topic of brief derision, but we never did find Gemini's feet. As much as I dreaded the late night walk to the outhouse, I found consolation in the views above me. One of the best parts of camping in a remote area is being able to stumble out of the tent/yurt/cabin, look up at the cosmos and give it the reverence it deserves - for me that usually results in stopping in my tracks and muttering "well, damn..."

The trip to yurt two was a bit more involved, so we only used our boards to get back to the road the next morning. With four + miles to cover on steeper terrain, we pushed through the pretty scenery in the afternoon and I was again a little envious of the skiers in our party. I think I've convinced myself that classic xc skiing is in my near future, though I doubt my debut will be as smooth as I imagine. It was so sunny that we were able to shed a few layers.


Since we had two nights at this yurt, we took time to ride in the front yard and then hike up behind the next morning. The top of the hike looked like the undulating, white hills of a golf course in winter and just below, a pristine bowl. The conditions were great and we all got to lay fresh tracks. I hadn't been on my board in at least two years, but once I remembered how to turn, I also remembered how much I love the feeling of floating down the side of the slope. Got to get out more this winter.



We also had some of the coolest clouds I've seen in a while; some reminded me of seaweed or something gelatinous, while these were more like waves of silk.


The rest of our holiday was, thankfully, uneventful. The closest thing to an emergency we faced was the disappearance of the Baileys after the first night (it was later located in the depths of someone's pack and the hot chocolate was saved) and the near overflow of JiffyPop onto the floor.

Yurt number two also had Jenga, a game I had never actually played, but picked up faster than Hearts.


The last day of our adventure provided us with a little more excitement due to the sudden arrival of snow. We made one last hike up to the bowl for a quick descent before loading up all our gear and heading out into the weather. The return trip taught me that I probably shouldn't attempt more than one sport at a time. Falling on a board in powder I can handle; falling on a board in powder while carrying a full pack on my back and snowshoes and poles in my arms is another thing entirely. Think turtle, upside down. The constant switching from snowshoes to board and back again was tiring and I lagged behind. Fortunately the rest of the party was patient and, more importantly, we had left with enough time to meet their shuttle back at the road.

This was definitely my best New Year's Eve/Day/couple-of-days-after ever and I thank Adam and Rachel for the invitation and Heather, BJ and Ethan for their company. What a great way to start 2009!