Slope Style

Winter Park, Colorado:  Slope style, I gather, is an extreme form of mountain biking.  I watched in a mixture of amazement and horror as young males of the human species astride bicycles hurled themselves over a series of dirt berms.  I’d say they were airborne for a considerable part of the ride, performing upside down and sideways flips.  Oh my God.

Meanwhile, spectators could view the entire ride on a super-large TV screen.  And there were replays.  An announcer gave a play-by-play description, using phrases like, “Way to go, Dude!”  or “Nice ride, Dude.”  When one particularly talented rider began his run, a remote-control helicopter with a camera monitored his progress.  There was an enthusiastic shout from the announcer:  “SHUT THE FRONT DOOR,” which meant that’s the best we’ll see.  Nobody can beat that.

When another rider suffered a nasty fall, the announcer asked, “Hey dude, you all right?”  Medics came in.  It was determined that there was a dislocated shoulder, and it was not the first time it had happened.  First aid was administered.  It sounded oh so painful. I am glad I’m not his mom.

It’s a world I’ve only recently heard about, but it seems to have a considerable following.  Slope style is not a sport for the faint hearted, but it’s pretty amazing to see.

Big picture photo below shows rider slightly below center, big screen video at left center, Winter Park Resort, center right.

You Mean the Lights Aren't On?

Last night I watched the PBS program "Nova."  It was about the amazing and complex human brain and how it works.

It was said that all of this miraculous brain activity is going on in darkness, inside the skull.  I realized, of course, it must be dark in there.  But I had never before thought about it being dark.

The way I had visualized it before, the lights were on.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/how-does-the-brain-work.html

Greensburg, Kansas, Four Years After the Tornado

On May 4, 2007, a massive tornado destroyed the western Kansas town of Greensburg, Kansas.

The day after that, I made a note in my journal:  "News today: A tornado completely destroyed the town of Greensburg, Kansas, last night around 9 pm.  The path was 3/4 mile wide !! "

On March 22, 2011, nearly four years after the tornado, it was another windy day on the Kansas plains.  Tumbleweeds rolled across Kansas Highway 54.  By the time we stopped at Greensburg I had already experienced two close calls with losing my hat.  Our Kansas road map had blown out of the car at a rest stop; it sailed into the air, heading in the general direction of Wichita.  But this was only straight line wind.

The Greensburg tornado had been big news in the Midwest, so we wanted to make a stop to fill up with gas.  It was the least we could do to pay our respects to the people who had rebuilt.

This is what we saw: Little or nothing left of the older structures.  Maybe a bare concrete slab here and there, but that was about all.  The buildings were new.  The trees told the story, though.  A few--not many--main trunks and branches--the parts that survived the tornado--remained.  Four years of delicate new growth stood out in a feathery pattern.  The green leaves had not yet appeared; it was yet too early in the spring.

Kinda makes me think about rebuilding after a disaster.  What is it about home and about land?

  

Remembering Jack LaLanne

This morning I heard the news that my long-time virtual friend, Jack LaLanne died at the age of 96.  He was one of my silver lamps: a person who showed me a new and better way of looking at things.


I guess it must have been in the late 1950s or early 1960s when I first saw Jack on our black-and-white TV.  I was a young teen girl then.  I disliked exercise and preferred cake over broccoli in those days; however, I also envied movie stars with their slender waistlines. I wasn't really overweight, but I thought I was.  In the summer when school was out and on holidays I began to exercise with Jack LaLanne in hopes of slimming my waistline.


Jack led his TV viewers through marching in place, holding onto a chair if needed for balance.  There were sets of other exercises, too.  But the thing that influenced me the most was his philosophy of health.  I don't remember exactly the words he used, but the essence of it was this:  You have been given an amazing, wonderful body, so honor your body and treat it with respect.  Love your body, and that's the only diet you'll ever need.


At the time, fitness wasn't considered trendy as it is today.  I began to eat healthier food because of Jack LaLanne, but I kept it a secret.  "Cool" in those days was eating french fries and hamburgers and stuff listed on the photo above.  I didn't tell my friends about my apples and whole wheat bread.


I bought Jack's book, The Jack LaLanne Way to Vibrant Good Health.  I bought a "glamour stretcher," a stretchy blue exercise device that would add some resistance.


I admired Jack's birthday rituals of strength, often involving swimming in San Francisco Bay while towing something, like a boat.  Many, many years later, I would visit San Francisco and come to realize the chill of the water and the distance from Fisherman's Wharf to Alcatraz Island.  I would think of Jack.


So Jack, I thank you for changing my attitude about exercise and nutrition.  I never took physical culture to the extent you did, and I never looked like Barbie.  But that's not the point, is it?  It's all about honoring the body in which we live and move and have our being on earth.  Love you, Jack.

We Found Paradise, but Where is Judd Falls?

Some visitors had heard that a little bit north of Crested Butte, Colorado, there is a hiking trail that leads to Judd Falls.  They were advised: You'll know when you get there, because there is a bench to sit on.


On the way to Judd Falls, the visitors found Paradise.  They knew it was Paradise, because that's what the sign on front, just to the right of the door said:

On further up the road from Paradise, they put on their backpacks and started up a trail.  It was late September, and the aspen trees were decked out in fall gold.  The trail split off in a couple of places, and it wasn't very well marked.

They asked the people with the Camelback water bottles.
They asked some people from South Carolina.
They asked the guy from Denver:
Do you know how to get to Judd Falls?
Nobody knew, but they said there was supposed to be a bench there.


They came to a place where they could hear a waterfall, but there was no bench.  Before leaving to walk back down the mountain, they decided to look just a little further.  What do you know!  There was a bench...

...and there was Judd Falls, down near the bottom of a seriously deep canyon.  The following picture doesn't really capture the scene.  It was a beautiful sight, but kinda scary to see someone stand close to the precipice.

Okay, there's one more picture of the hikers sitting on the bench, getting ready to snack on granola bars.

The Meaning of Winter

So what's the deal about the red-and-white stick attached to a Bayfield, Wisconsin fire hydrant?  It's so the hydrant can be located in a snowdrift.  Herb is six feet tall, so that gives us some idea as to the amount of snow Bayfield residents are prepared to receive.


Local people say that Lake Superior freezes around the Apostle Islands; when the ice is thick enough, cars and trucks can drive to and from Madeline Island on an ice road.  Many people welcome the ice road: it's less expensive than the ferry for one thing.  A Bayfield resident told of a mild winter when the ice wasn't thick enough--that made transportation to and from the island difficult.


We Missourians know what snow is, but the idea of locator poles on fireplugs and driving on a frozen lake isn't part of our winter experience.  Travel is so great because it gives a person a different perspective.

The Kettle Falls Hotel

The Kettle Falls Hotel, the only lodging within Voyageurs National Park, is only accessible by boat or seaplane.  That alone makes it an interesting place to stay.  To that add that it is a historic building, built in the early 1900s and used by lumberjacks, fish buyers, prospectors, bootleggers, and tourists over the years.

To get there, we made arrangements for a boat to pick us up at the Ash River Visitors' Center.  Hotel owner and operator Rick Oveson picked us up in his boat, and after about twenty minutes of travel on water between forested islands, we arrived at a dock.  We rode in the back of a golf cart from the dock, along a gravel road to the hotel.

There are about 12 guest rooms in the hotel, all on the walk-up second floor.  (There are villas--rental cabins--in the surrounding woods, however.)  Our room in the hotel was not large, but quite comfortable.  A couple of shared bathrooms were accessible from the hall, which was, well, a different arrangement for a city girl like me, but it worked out okay.  Our room was right next to one of the bathrooms.

A lovely screened-in porch runs across the entire front of the hotel.  That's where guests can sit and drink a beer, talk, or eat a meal.

On the left side is the Lumberjack Saloon with its famously uneven hardwood floor.  The building settled and nothing was done about it; the result was a wavy saloon floor that makes a person feel tipsy before he drinks a single drop. Fisher-people and houseboat people drift in during the afternoon.  The music starts up, and the laughter and beer begins to flow.  Pretty soon the place is rockin'.

On the right is the restaurant where one may enjoy some of the specialties of the house:  cream of wild rice soup and fruit of the forest pie.  (Fruit of the forest pie is a blend of rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries, and apple.)  And of course, there is the best fish in the world: fresh walleye from the cold northern waters.  Mmmmmm.

The hotel was named for the the nearby waterfall which is now a dam.  The border waters have the appearance of a series of lakes, but they must flow like a river, the way Nanakan Lake falls into Rainy Lake.  In the days before the dam, the swirling water carved out kettle-like holes in the rock.  Since humankind traveled those waters by canoe, the area was a place of portage over land from one lake to the other.

The Oveson family made us feel welcome during our stay.  Those people have a strong work ethic, and they do what it takes to keep it all going the way it should.  If something needs to be done, they jump right in and do it.  I guess that's what it takes when you're about 30 miles from the nearest road.

I suppose I could go on, but perhaps I've said enough.  It was a memorable experience, and we're glad we stayed at Kettle Falls.  For more details, here is a link:  kettlefallshotel.com/