Aly & Bryan are always up to something…
Last winter, we hatched a plan to backpack the whole Ozark Highlands Trail with our friends Britt and Debbie. While we’ve all hiked a ton, none of us has spent much time on the OHT. One weekend trip each spring and one each fall should be enough to finish the 225-mile trail by the time Mandy graduates from high school.
We want to do the trail sections in order, from west to east. We started walking at Lake Fort Smith State Park. Continue reading “Ozark Highlands Trail: Trip 1”
There’s been a lot of snow this winter. We’ve had four or five snow days. We could have braved the bad roads – they really do get awful here, with the lack of equipment and people to clear snow and ice – but why bother? Mandy’s school was closed, and since Bryan and I both work for the state, we had days off work too. We planned ahead, bought groceries and cozy socks, and just stayed home.
It’s a three-day weekend and we invited Mandy’s cousin Claire, who is from rural Oklahoma, to come visit. Mandy and I drove to Clarksville Friday night to meet Aunt Julie at Wendy’s, and we brought Claire home with us.
We had a great time showing Claire around Little Rock. She watched several bike polo games, and was a good sport about trying it herself.
Mandy’s new polo bike is an old-school Specialized Rockhopper. It’s not really set up for polo yet, so after the games we drove out to Pinnacle Mountain for a quick spin around one of the beginner mountain bike trails. Claire thought mountain biking was pretty cool.
Bryan rode his polo bike, and since the trail isn’t very hilly he wasn’t much bothered by having only one gear. Mandy was on her offroad unicycle. Somehow, at dusk, she managed to get lost by herself on the trail. We split up to look for her, and she was found without incident.
Later, despite the chilly day and the threat of rain, we hiked up Pinnacle Mountain. Claire confided that, actually, she’d never been hiking before. She was a little nervous about climbing the rather steep, exposed ‘spine’, just before the top, but Mandy talked her through it. It’s fun to watch people stretch their boundaries and try new things.
I think Claire pushed back a lot of her boundaries over the weekend. We went out for regular American kid pizza one night, but another night we had supper at a good Middle Eastern place. We shared everything across the table, so Claire got to try lots of new spices. She likes hummus but not baba ghannouj. She wasn’t wild about the taziki sauce, but thought the spicy fish was yummy.
And she said she walked more during her visit than she’d ever walked before in her life.
As a special surprise, I’d made arrangements with our friends Britt and Debbie to take Claire on a behind-the-gates trip to the zoo. The first order of business on Monday morning was to go for a walk with Mary and Ellen, the zoo’s two elephants.
The Little Rock zoo is one of only a small handful of zoos in the country who let their elephants walk around the whole zoo every morning before it opens to the public. It’s good exercise for the animals physically, and it’s an interesting part of their lives. And it gives kids like Claire and Mandy an occasional opportunity to do something really, really cool.
When we’d finished with our walk, we got to visit the big cats. The weather was icky outside so most of them were still in their ‘dens’ and we got to say hello. Since lions are Claire’s favorite thing, this was a big deal – she even got to touch one of the lions’ fur through the cage. She loved having Debbie there to answer questions. She’d always wondered if big cats purr, and know she knows the answer.
We got to see the bears, too. We had to be quiet in the ‘bear house’ because the grizzlies are hibernating. But Claire and Mandy fed the otters and sun bears. Thor, the big male sloth bear, was his usual charming self, sucking cheerios off our hands and through his door. Sasha, the other sloth bear, was less agreeable. When she saw Mandy, she backed up and rushed the door, slamming against it and flinging spit all over Mandy’s jacket. When we walked by again, she did the same thing. Apparently Sasha doesn’t like plaid hats.
Before taking Claire back to meet up with her mom again, we stopped by the Big Dam Bridge for a walk across, and to just sit and look out at the water for awhile. We so enjoyed having Claire nearby for a few days.
We don’t really do New Years’ Resolutions at our house – we’re just as likely to begin an exercise program in March, or set goals to be more organized in August, or try to eat better in October.
One thing we have been doing, though, is to set some specific goals for biking and hiking and ‘bag nights’ – nights spent in sleeping bags – for each year. This means that these goals are specific numbers to work toward rather than a soft idea (camp and ride more).
You can click on the graphic below to see how we did in 2010. Go ahead, your eyes aren’t good enough to read that tiny print.
For 2011 we’ve adjusted these goals a little:
Here are some other outdoors / exercise-related goals for this year:
And in the spirit of reaching those 2011 goals, Bryan and Mandy rode 34 miles on Saturday with our friend Kathy and seven other Arkansas Bicycle Club members. The temperature that morning was in the high 30’s and would wind up in the mid-40’s. (The down vest Mandy is wearing came off after the first couple of miles.)
Our nearby bike shop, Outskirts, had a holiday party / ride / bike-decorating contest this year. We all decorated our bikes. I was proud of mine – I zip-tied a mini-tree to the back rack, and wired the ornaments securely to the branches. It even had a tree skirt and a wrapped gift underneath, and I tied a ‘happy holidays’ tag to the saddle. At the last minute, I wrapped some tinsel icicle sheets around the bar-ends and secured them with gaffer tape. They look like the plastic streamers on the yellow banana-seat bike I had as a kid – but they’re prettier.
Mandy bought blue LEDs and Bryan helped her rig up a battery pack to run them. We attached a plain white box to her rack, to hold the electrical stuff, and tied it shut with pretty blue ribbon.
Bryan wrapped his bike with three dollars’ worth of silver garland. As a nod to Christmas in New Orleans, Mister Bingle rode on the front.
The party was everything parties should be – it had cookies, and it was very short. After a half hour or so, we went to a nearby neighborhood to ride around and look at the holiday lights. It was a fun ride – nearly thirty people, most of the bikes decorated in some way with garland and lights and bows, riding though a dark neighborhood together. A handful of people sang. At one house, we interrupted what appeared to be a holiday party – when our group rode back by, about a dozen people were standing on the porch to wave at us. We rang our bells and yelled ‘Merry Christmas!” back at them.
And guess what? I won the ‘Best Decorated Bike’ contest! I have a great new super-bright headlamp for my bike!
Once again our family drove out to the Bradbury Christmas Tree Farm (9427 Donna Lane, Mabelvale, AR) and cut down a live tree. Mandy and I really like fresh trees so we haven’t fallen prey to the fake tree craze that everyone else seems to buy into.
This year we DID get a wreath, though, and trimmed it to match the tree. We hung our stockings over the fireplace (and the cats’ stockings over the litterbox.) We carefully set the cards from friends on the mantel, where they fall down every time we walk past. And now, we’re ready for the holidays!
Today, Mandy turned thirteen. She and I spent the day in a silk-staining workshop on campus, and we enjoyed it.
After stretching silk scarves on frames, some people sketched directly on them with marker or pencil. Mandy, who wanted to do a koi-pond scene, thought she’d do better sketching the elements on plain paper first. Continue reading “Birthday Silk Painting”
We always go to New Orleans for Thanksgiving.
We enjoyed the lunch on Thursday with family and friends, and after lunch Bryan’s grandma Schambach and I went for a walk all the way to West Esplanade, trailing Mandy on her unicycle. That afternoon, we had a quintuple birthday party with presents and cake for Mandy, Aunt Dot, Juliana, Aunt Julie, and JD. (Emma blew out the candles.) Then we went to Bryan’s Aunt Lynn’s house for Thanksgiving supper with his mom’s side of the family.
It rained most of the day Friday. On Saturday morning, we went on a bike ride on the trail along Lake Ponchartrain. (The trail is closed, which we handled by just yelling “Over there!” at the policeman who tried to talk to us, and continuing to ride.) We rode across the 17th Street Canal to the site of the break that caused so much damage after Hurricane Katrina. The repair in the floodwall is clearly visible, and it’s obvious that a lot of homes that used to be in this neighborhood are gone now. The houses that have been repaired or rebuilt are on tall footings.
Late on Saturday afternoon, we got together with Bryan’s brother Michael and his girlfriend Juliana at City Park. We didn’t have a lot of time before dark, but we used the light that was left for some portraits.
My favorite shot was really an afterthought. The light was gone, we’d finished with what we wanted, and we were headed back to the cars when I saw a warm yellow wall, the outside of the old casino. Juliana sat in an opening in the brick wall, with Michael behind her. We wanted his face next to hers, but it just didn’t work out that way, so Bryan just shot what he saw, and serendipity gave us the best portrait of the evening.
Later, we came back to City Park for Celebration in the Oaks. Beginning each Thanksgiving, an area of the park is lit up with holiday lights and carnival rides. One of my favorite things to watch is the restored carousel, with carved wooden horses and brilliant lights and cheerful families bundled up for the evening.
Bryan’s mom, Mandy, Julie, and little Emma rode the train around the park. While they were busy, Bryan and I wandered through the park, taking photos.
The park was crowded, but we were able to find quiet moments.
It’s a big place, with lots of lights that almost but not quite totally don’t go together, a sort of cacophony of Christmas lighting.
Storyland is an area of the park set aside for little ones. It’s got lots of scenes from children’s books and stories, as big as life, and only slightly creepy. When the train ride was finished, we met up at Storyland to watch Emma play.
Emma’s a big fan of slides, but her favorite spot at Storyland seems to be the pirate ship.
We didn’t leave New Orleans until mid-afternoon on Sunday, so the drive home was one of our traditional late-nighters. But the extra time spent visiting with Aunt Dot and buying a supply of andouille and beer at Dorignac’s is always worth the midnight drive home.
LRBP learned a lot in Austin and then we learned even more in Lexington, KY at the 1st Midwest Open bike polo tournament. Nathan, Dan and I asked the organizers questions, we asked the computer programmer guy questions, we participated in the refereeing meeting and we helped ref several games. We paid attention to how the registration and the after-party was done. We also had a great host who loaned us his apartment and some of us discovered FourLoko (just in time for it to become banned).
With these notes, we should be well prepared to put on our next tournament and show our polo friends a good time!
The courts in Lexington were very nice (and blue!) and a lot bigger than our home courts. This led to me feeling like I was always chasing the ball around. Our passing game was pretty good due to recent practicing. I think we played good defense but our shooting wasn’t up to par. And the larger courts led to us getting tired and allowing goals to be scored in the final couple of minutes.
We went into this weekend wanting to score at least one point in every game and we accomplished that. Our scores from Saturdays games:
1-3 them
4-2 us
1-3 them
1-4 them
3-2 us
This autumn’s Boy-Free Backpacking Trip was the first weekend in November, in celebration of Amy’s having taken the PE test the weekend before. It was planned by Miss Pic the Iowa Chick, and it couldn’t have been better. Well, it could have been better but that didn’t have anything to do with Pic. She chose to have us spend parts of three days in the Irish Wilderness in Oregon County, Missouri. Everyone from last spring’s trip was there again (Mandy and I, Debbie and Amy, Pic and Sue) and we were joined by Amber, Kathy, and Patti. And lots of snacks, including Godiva pumpkin truffles. Continue reading “Boy Free Backpacking in the Irish Wilderness”
