Ahhh!

Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park, WashingtonSeptember 10, ..

Sometimes I just love climbing

It was just Sister Matt and me at the cave today.

I love a crowd at the crag but it's different when you have the place to yourselves.We have a shot at climbs we don't usually do. Dogging aroundon hard stuff and then suddenly pulling off a surprise lap on the project.

Storms o'er the cane feilds. Water falling in the wind off the lip of the cave.

Bits of chat. Other bits of nothing much. Weekday climbing always feels a bit like wagging school.

Bunchberry Field

The other day we spent the afternoon on the Gunflint Trail in search of wildflowers and Moose. Thanks to my friend Bryan Hansel (www.bryanhansel.com) and a recent post of his on Facebook, I knew the general area where to look for a nice big patch of Bunchberry. They were easy to find since they were very close to the road and it was probably the largest patch of Bunchberry that I've ever seen. Photographing them proved to be quite a challenge, though, as the bugs were awful. I felt like I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and little black flies. It was a pretty cloudy evening so I was thrilled when a break in the clouds presented itself and the sun shone through for a few minutes, allowing me to capture this nice starburst of the sun through the trees.

The Tree-Root Waterfall

The Tree-Root Cascade, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

Here's a pretty unique waterfall.

This cascade is formed by the roots of a bigleaf maple growing through the creek bed. The water flows over the roots in a curtain and plunges into a somewhat deep pool.

This waterfall, like many others in the area, only flows during the rainy season. It's completely bone dry right now.

Clover in Poly Canyon

Clover in Poly Canyon, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

With all the rain we've had this season, the hills are especially lush. I found a big patch of clover down near Brizzolara Creek which made for an interesting photo study.

Spring is coming into bloom here in SLO; be on the lookout for pictures of what is looking to be a great year for wildflowers.

Ducks with short memories

Despite my euphoria last year when the ducks took a dip in the pond, they didn't make it a regular practice. I eventually resigned myself to the fact that they'd never be pond ducks.

It was so dry over the fall that the spring feeding the ditch dried up. Once it started raining, water flowed there again, but the ducks ignored it in favor of their kiddie pool.

At first we just tried driving them into the ditch. "Hey, remember this? You loved it last year!" Even though their feet were wet, I guess they were too scared to realize where they were.

We applied weed-eating and subtle pressure. We moved their food closer and closer to the ditch. Then one day they remembered, or maybe just rediscovered, how much they liked it there.


Happy duck


You've heard that phrase about water and a duck's back...?

One day last spring we saw them wandering towards the far side of the pond. "What in the world are they doing over there?" we wondered, but didn't think much about it. That night they came back to the pen with one less duck in tow... So we're down to seven ducks now. They may forget the ditch, but so far they've never forgotten that there are coyotes beyond the yard.

Covering Distance

Last week I did two 100 mile rides several days apart. The first I rode on my own bike, with my camera, stopping along the way. That was really nice. The second I did on an unfamiliar demo bike, riding the course straight through except for a lunch stop. That was really nice too. The rides didn't take all day and they didn't wipe me out, allowing me to work before and after.Had time been no object, I felt as if I could have kept going.



To me, it is this private moment of realisation that "I have it in me" to do this kind of distance, casually - that feels like an accomplishment. More so than, say, an official brevet finish. It is not that I don't value organised events and their objective measures of performance. It's more that when doing an event, I already know that I can do it; I would not attempt it otherwise with all the logistics involved. In that sense, it feels not unlike taking a test based on material I've already learned. It's the learning itself that's thrilling. That "A-ha!" moment. Doing well on the test? It's nice, and often necessary. But it's not the same as the learning itself.



Maybe this line of thinking just means that I am hopelessly non-competitive. Or maybe it is simply not a good analogy. In fact almost certainly not. But there's a grain of something in it, somewhere.




Covering new distance, covering new material. And along the way that feeling of having truly grasped, understood, internalised something new - something that had previously seemed unattainable.