Relationship Lexicons

Talking to my valentine today I realized how much of the language we were speaking to each other was personal. Our lexicon is a creation of our combined history. No one else would necessarily understand what it means. It's like a secret joke but not always intended to be funny.

And then I realized that this is common with a lot of relationships, romantic or not. It makes all of these relationships super-fun. It triggers a commonality between us - and a connection that we can tap with one simple word. Like super-fun. That "word" takes me instantly to Wild Iris and one of my favorite 5.9 climbs. I can never remember its official name, so I started calling it Super-Fun. And my climbing friends know what that means. Know that when I say that phrase I'm probably already bouncing up and down. Even if I'm not referring to a climbing route.

Today I appreciate all of my lexicons (and the relationships that go with them). Cup full.

A New Hope

In the last week I've seen references to Martin Luther King Jr., Lincoln, FDR, Johnson, and finally, today, Woodstock to describe the inauguration of our first black president.

But I've decided that it really needs to be compared to Star Wars. It's the reference for my generation. A New Hope. You know the scene in the first movie ... the celebration after Luke destroys the Death Star where Leia gives Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker and Chewie medals with big music, lots of people, and cheering. Darth Vader (aka Karl Rove in my version of this analogy) has gone spinning into space and the rebels have won. Yooray!

But what you didn't know when you first saw the movie was that there were two more movies worth of trouble - and that Darth Karl Vader would return. Fighting on ice planets and moons with Ewoks and zingers like unexpected parentage and lost hands. Not good. But they made it through and we will too with hopefully better hair.

Fluffy Powdery Goodness Christmas

We've moved beyond your typical white Christmas and into fluffy powerdy goodness. To be fair, there was a little bit of wind-swept crusty bits, but that's to be expected.

This Christmas was spent at Francie's Cabin, in the backcountry mostly south of Breckenridge. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful and filled with lots of powdery snow. Plus! This cabin has a wood fired sauna. W-O-W! Play outside, go in sauna.



The highlight of Christmas day was cake! Christmas day also doubles as Geir's birthday. I'd scoured the web and found a really yummy recipe for Cherry Chocolate Surprise Cake. Most of the huts in the 10th Mountain Division system have some sort of cast iron Little-House-on-the-Prairie stove/oven. And dutch ovens for cooking. This cabin did not. So I improvised and created a "dutch" oven out of 2 cast iron skillets. Put the cake batter in one skillet, use the other as a lid, and put this on a propane burner stove and wah-la! Cherry Chocolate Surprise cake. It lived up to its advertisement. Cooked all the way through and moist. And is now all gone. The key was to keep the heat on the burner as low as possible.

Happy Holidays. May this year be filled with surprisingly good cake.

With love, Sandie

Turkey in the Dirt XIX

It's my second very successful year joining a tradition perpetuated by some good friends - Turkey in the Dirt.

Turkey in the Dirt? Yes, it does involve Thanksgiving Turkey cooked in the dirt. Sometimes. Sometimes the turkey is fried or cooked in an oven of a friend that lives near by. Sometimes it is all three. Although this year the turkey was cooked in a trash can pit (in the dirt), but I'd say that counts.

Where does this craziness occur? Well, Joshua Tree of course. Where else, except in the park that was built and designed by Dr. Suess, would you cook a turkey in the dirt. That and the climbing this time of year is fantastic.

So that's the story. About 40 of us converged on Joshua Tree this year from all over (I think the person who traveled the furthest came from Germany), climbed, ate, drank beer (lot of beer with the help of beer pong), and hung out. Very fun.



This year Geir was the newbie to the tradition. He enjoyed the climbing ... and discovered a key trait of a dirt bag climber. No, I'm not talking about the unwashed aspect. I'm referring to the lizard rock lounging - out of the wind is better - aspect.

Early Voting

I sat down with my 4, 11 x 17 inch page election ballot last night and started voting. Luckily for me I live in a civilized state that allows mail-in and drop-off ballots so I don't have to stand in line to fill out my choices for president, state constitutional amendments, and whether or not a historic district should be created in my town.

However, in this electronic age, I find the paper ballot a historic icon. This is a world where places like India vote by electronic ballot and the US just can't figure it out.

When I was in Bhutan and Nepal earlier this year both countries held their first democratic elections. I spent some time talking to the UN Election Observers I met and I learned that:

India uses electronic voting machines successfully. They machines were lent to Bhutan and used successfully. Although I'm not clear on how they were used in places with no electricity. Nepal used a paper ballot, at least out in the country side where I was at the time, but they were at least given a stamp and didn't have to shade in boxes (like I do) and they only had to vote for a party. Granted they had the choice of 54 parties, but only one vote.

The UN Electrion Observers were in the US for the 2004 election and they declared that the election was not on the up and up. Okay, believable, but a little embarrassing that the flagship of democracy can't hold an election that passes international scrutiny with paper ballots while 2nd world countries are using electronic voting.

I have a dream that someday we will sit down at our computers and vote via the internet. Until then, I at least got to enjoy a glass of wine while casting my ballot. And believe me, the wine made the constitutional amendments easier to understand!

Good luck to all of you who have to queue up. You're in my thoughts.

13 Quotes for A Half Marathon

This is for all you Half-Marathoners out there courtesy of Ann. Thanks Ann! And may you find everything you need in these thoughts.

Mile 1:
She wanted something to happen - something, anything: she did not know what.
-Kate Chopin
Mile 2:
I tell our runners to divide the race into thirds. Run the first part with your head, the middle part with your personality, and the last part with your heart.
- Mike Fanelli
Mile 3:
Give all to love; obey thy heart.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Mile 4:
The long run is what puts the tiger in the cat.
- Bill Squires
Mile 5:
If you start to feel good during an ultra, don't worry. You will get over it.
- Gene Thibeault
Mile 6:
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
- Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)
Mile 7:
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
Mile 8:
People forget how fast you did a job - but they remember how well you did it.
- Howard Newton
Mile 9:
Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
- Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)
Mile 10:
What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense, we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.
- Anna Jameson
Mile 11:
Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tired...You've always got to make the mind take over and keep going.
- George S. Patton, U.S. Army General and 1912 Olympian
Mile 12:
What matters is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mile 13:
I think I can . . . (chant at increasing speed five times)

Blumbering Villains and Lame Heros

It's been an inadvertent theme lately - one of those things that just sort of happens in threes. Except it's only happened in twos so far.

It all started with a book. A good book called Soon I Will Be Invincible. It's about Dr. Impossible ... an evil genius ... who just can't quite be successful in his evil endeavors. And a set of superheros that are ... well ... not exactly like WonderWoman or Superman.

And then I heard about a blog. One of the best blogs ever. Dr. Horrible's Sing A-Long Blog. A musical with a supervillain (Dr. Horrible played by Neil Patrick Harris), his archnemesis (Captain Hammer played by Nathan Fillion) and a beautiful girl (Penny played by Felicia Day). This project, which was conceived in the dark days of the writers strike and was streamed on the internet, is about the best thing I've seen since sliced bread.

Now some of you might know that I am a huge Joss Whedon fan. It all started with Firefly (the best television off the planet), has progressed through Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. And now there is something new and brilliant in Dr. Horrible. As Joss puts it on the website - musical supervillains are really just too few. Go Joss!

I'm looking forward to the third blumbering villain and lame superhero installment - but I'm wondering how it can beat Dr. Horrible.

New Shoes

I forget how much I like getting new running shoes. Today I went to the running shoe store and as soon as Lily - the shoe lady - put the new shoes on my feet I sighed. It just felt so good.

I always get the same kind of running shoe. It never changes. And the old shoes, once I'm done running in them, go into a 50 gallon bucket at the running store to be donated to someone who can't afford shoes.

I also forget how much running shoes cost. Ouch. And how fast I wear through them. Lily was shaking her head at me. I should have gotten new shoes a month ago. But I didn't.

Right now I'm training for my next half marathon - The Other Half - in Moab, Utah. I'm running around 20 miles a week. At that rate I get about 10 weeks out of my shoes. It ends up being quite the collection. And the new shoes are so shiny, that is, until my next run.

My Mom Plays the Diggery Doo

... or a story about the things you once knew.

I was walking down Pearl Street, the local downtown / open air shopping center / general hang out area for all sorts and ran across a very talented street musician playing a diggery doo, steel drums with each hand, and cymbals with his foot. And all of a sudden I was struck by the memory of my mom playing the diggery doo in my childhood living room. It was not something I'd even thought of in years, a memory so dusty that it was surprising when the words came out of my mouth. "My mom plays the diggery doo." I think it was also rather surprising to my friends. Not something you expect to hear on a warm summer evening on Pearl Street.

What is even more surprising about this dusty memory is that it's my mom. She was raised as a pretty proper Southern Belle. I'd say she still remains a recovering Southern Belle. Then, sometime in the early seventies while living in Australia, she learned how to play a real Aborigini Diggery Doo. Go Mom!

Farewell Boob Tube

Today I got rid of my television. And no, I am not going to put a "Kill Your Television" bumber sticker on my car.

Before y'all get too excited, just let me mention that I can watch certain TV shows over the internet and movies on the 'puter. So it's not like I've completely left the TV generation.

One of the after-effects from my 3 month vacation was that I place even more value on my free time. I came back with all these things I want to do. Changes I wanted to make. But once I got back, and especially went back to work, I felt like I had no time. Then I thought about how much time I would unintentionally spend in front of the boob tube. You know how it goes. You sit down to have dinner, flip on the black box of mostly mindless entertainment, and before you know it you've lost an hour. Sure, maybe you learned that you can float a sunken sailboat with ping pong balls from the Mythbusters. But really. I decided I'd rather be do other things. Like writing this blog. Reading. Playing music. Running. So I got rid of the distraction. It was too easy to turn on.

Coming back to life-as-I-used-know-it after a 3 month absence has been harder than I expected. I really didn't expect to have a hard time re-adjusting to being home. After all, it's home. Some people I know who have spent time away nod their heads and tell me it will get better. And just in case you were wondering, that's not really all that comforting. But dis-comfort is good. I need to be the change I want to see in the world. So watch out world. Here we go! A boob-tubeless life is just the beginning.

@ Home

I'm home in the Rockies. And yes, they are still beautiful, even after the Himalayas.

It is a shock. First, the time change combined with the 30 hour plane/airport adventure threw my system for quite the loop. Nepal is 12 hours ahead of Colorado and it really is on the other side of the world. Second, it is so clean and open. The streets are wide and you don't have to watch were you step to avoid something nasty. My neighborhood street would be turned into a 5 lane thoroughfare in Nepal. Third, the culture. I haven't seen a fast food chain in 3 months. Or parking lots filled with shiny colored cars. Or this much stuff! And don't even get me started on what it's like to be back @work. But you can probably tell I'm in work brain already - I made a list of the shocking things!

Don't worry faithful blog readers. The blog is not over. I still plan on finishing the blog about the Annapurna Circuit. And I'll keep you all up to date on my adventures @home. So keep reading and I'll keep "saying".

Boodha, Boodha, Boodha

The micro-bus conductors call out the destinations of the buses as the drive by the "bus stops". The call for the bus to Boudhanath always ends with Boodha, Boodha, Boodha. Three times.

Let me introduce you to one of my favorite places. Boudhanath. To me, this place is magical. Not only for the incredibly sacred stupa that dominates the region and many monasteries, but also because of the people.

My days in Boudha began and ended walking around the stupa. I would get up at 5 am every morning to circum-ambulate (always clockwise and always an odd number of times) the great stupa. Sometimes I would go with my friend Pasang who insisted on 15 times around the stupa. This took about an hour. Other times I would go by myself and only do 3 times around the stupa. This took about 15 minutes. If you're paying attention you might have realized that Pasang made me walk rather quickly.

I spent the full moon in Boudha. The full moon is a sacred day and the Tibetans feel that your religious prostrations have extra strength on this day. The day after the full moon was Boudha Jyanti - Buddha's birthday - to the Nepalis. So it was two wild and crazy religious days filled with lots of people lighting butter lamps, circum-ambulating, and prostrasting in the stupa area.

In an aside - I've found 3 different days that are Buddha's birthday. In India it is April 8. For the Nepalis it is May 21. For the Tibetans, it is June 19. Pick your day! Or celebrate them all.

Boudhanath is home to a large Tibetan refugee population. The Tibetans are amazingly welcoming. My friends spent their days off showing me around and introducing me to Tibetan culture ... from anything to making momos to meeting Rinpoches. They invited me into their homes, fed me countless numbers of times, and spent some of the best hours of my trip with me. Thank you so much Nyindha, Pasang, Dolma, and Pasang.

Rooftop Playgrounds

In Kathmandu the roof is the place to be. In the morning women do all their washing on the roofs and when they have the laundry hanging on the clothes lines (also on the roof) the rooftops look covered in clothes-flags for as far as you can see. In the afternoon, after school, the kids play on the rooftops. I've watched boys play soccer and wrestle, girls skip rope and play sort of a red rover game, and watched them both watch each other. Fathers come up to the roof in the evenings to smoke and watch the sunset. It's life played out on the tops of houses.

Kathmandu is a crowded city and the roof is the backyard of these neighborhoods. They are nicely decorated with blooming flowers in pots. The roof where I'm staying has a nice table for eating meals, writing, and watching all the other rooftop activities. I've spent hours on this roof, with new friends like Reshma, and it is definitely the place to be.

Micro-buses

There are several ways to get around Kathmandu - taxi, buses, and ... the best ... micro-buses. Micro-buses are little minivans that have been converted into small buses with 5 benches. They can hold around 20 people including the "conductor". Personal space issues are not acceptible on micro-buses - you might have to sit in someone's lap - and being short is definitely a benefit. Not a lot of leg room on micro-buses.

They are one of the more efficient ways of getting through Kathmandu's traffic. And cheap! You can get from one side of the city to the other for about 20 rupees (that's about 30 cents).

The conductor takes the money and tells the driver when to stop and go. He hangs out of the micro-bus sliding door and looks for people waiting for the bus. Two bangs on the roof means go. One bang on the roof means stop. He also helps navigate the traffic and makes sure the micro-bus isn't going to run into anything (at least on the sliding door side of the bus).

I've been getting adventurous with the micro-buses. I get a lot of interesting looks as it is not often to see a bedishee (foreigner) on a micro-bus. Last week I took a micro-bus from Jawalahkel to Ratna Park, changed to another micro-bus to go to Boddhanath. And made the return trip. I was on the final leg of the return journey, congratulating myself, when the bus turned down a street I didn't know. Hold on. When we got to the last stop I figured out I'd gotten on the micro-bus to Lagankhel instead of Jawalahkel. Oops. Luckily, in addition to sounding a lot alike, they are pretty close together and you can walk (or take another micro-bus) between the two. That's what I get for congratulating myself early.

This is Ratna Park, which is a large park close to the center of Kathmandu, with a bunch of micro-buses and a larger local bus.

Curd

The best curd (aka yogurt) apparently comes from Bhaktapur. It comes in a unglazed clay pot with a film of wax paper on top from a little grocery on the road. The clay pot is considered disposable. When you're done with it, you chuck it and it eventually dissolves back into the mud. Bhaktapur is an artisans town in the Kathmandu Valley where they also make the pots.

Curd is given to people for luck on special occassions - like Hindi weddings. It's is also a good snack and can come as a side to the Nepali national dish dahl baht. It's pretty sweet and tastes really good with ripe mangos. The mangos are Indian mangos and taste a little different from the ones that come from Mexico. But it's still yummy nonetheless!

The 40,000 1/2 ft Bar

Who has read The Ascent of Rum Doodle? Wikipedia has a good summary. It's essential reading for any of you mountaineering types out there and a highly recommended book which has bit of a cult following here in Thamel.

In addition to being able to find the book in every used book store in Thamel, there is also the Rum Doodle Restaurant and Bar which boasts of a 40,000 1/2 ft bar. Not really, but that's part of the point. Read the book - you'll get the reference. This is a pretty famous place, with memorabilia from all the famous climbers I've heard about - like Sir Ed and Rob Hall. But the interesting signatures are from the sherpas who have climbed Everest 12 and 16 times. Wow.

Thanks Don for lending me the book years ago ... so I could be in the in crowd! That's Justin-the-want-to-be-Rum-Doodle-Ascender in the photo outside the restaurant.

We're Back!

After a month of separation from the internet, we have returned. Quite weary, thinner, and full of stories and pictures.

It will take me a bit to catch up on a month of blogging - especially when the adventures continue. It might be June by the time I catch up so please have patience with me!

Namaste!

Now you know how to say hello in Nepali!

I flew from Bhutan to Nepal along the Himilayas. I got the one of the best seats on the plane - a right side window. Now I can say that I've at least seen (and taken a picture of) Everest.

I've met up with Justin again and we are headed off on the Annapurna Circuit and Sanctuary Trek. Check out www.yetizone.com for a description. We'll be out of contact for 26 days, so I'm sorry the blog is going into hibernate mode. But there will be lots of new stories when we get back!

Namaste!

First Elections in Bhutan

On March 24 Bhutan held their first democratic elections. After 100 years of monarchy, the King decided Bhutan should be a democracy. In an interesting twist, the people, who love their king, did not want a democracy. This was, after all, the king who established the policy of Gross National Happiness.

Compared to elections in the United States, these are very polite. Posters are only allowed on specific billboards. Commercials on the Bhutanese Broadcasting System (BBS) involve people walking through fields singing about the importance of voting. The two parties are promising the same things - roads and clean water in the villages. There are still many places where you have to walk for days to reach villages as there are no roads through this very mountainous country.

The Druk Truth Party (DTP) won by a landslide. The papers (which came out two days later) had the story. 44 out of 47 districts elected a DTP candidate. Only 3 districts elected a People's Democratic Party Candidate. The election observers I met said that the elections themselves went extremely well and efficiently. Bhutan used the electronic voting machines from India that work extremely well. In the remote villages, helicopters were used to deliver the machines and pick up the results. However, they were a little less happy about the strong one party majority result. But for a first election I think this was as good as you could get.

Given the US' problems with hanging tags and electronic voting machines maybe they should consider the same thing. After all, any system that allows the population of India to vote and get results efficiently has something going for it.

Paro Tsechu

A Tsechu, or festival, is held in many parts of the country during different lunar months. Luckily I planned my trip to Bhutan to coincide with the Paro Tsechu.

The Tsechu lasts 5 days. It starts on Monday with a series of events inside the Paro Dzong (a dzong is a fortress/temple/monastery). On Tuesday it moves outside to a larger venue. In culminates on Friday with the unfurling of the Thongdrel at 3 am.

The first 4 days of the Tsechu are dances and plays that mainly teach people about Buddhism in Bhutan. From my perspective it was like drinking from a firehose. There was so much to see and learn that I only picked up a fraction of it all. Some of the dances/plays, like the Dance of the Judgement of the Dead, are meant to teach people what happens when you die and are led to judgement by Shinje, the Lord of Death. Parents take their children to see this dance because they believe that then they won't be scared when they die.

Not all the dances are this serious. There are folk dances by women from a local village dressed in beautiful matching kiras. There are clowns, calles Atsaras, that run around making fun of the dancers, participate in the plays, and joke with the audience. The Atsaras carry wooden phallic shaped sticks that they poke people with and use as a prop (use your imagination).

The costumes are also very elaborate and beautiful. While the women dance in very tiny line dancing like steps in their Kiras, the men wear the elaborate costumes with masks and twirl around wildly for really long periods of time. I was trying to figure out how they didn't get dizzy.


On the last day at 3 am a giant 4 story tapestry, called the Thongdrel, is unfurled at 3 am. The Thongdrel has Guru Rinpoche (the founder of Nyingma Buddhism and the person who brought Buddhism to Bhutan in in AD 746) in the center surrounded by his eight manifestations. His image and statues are everywhere here in Bhutan and you can usually recognize him by his little mustache.

People line up to pass beneath the Thongdrel this early in the morning. They believe that if you are blessed under the Thongdrel your sins are washed away. I got up at 4 am to join the line, which actually turned into sort of a mob crush right before a police blockade. The police were controlling the "entrance" to the Thongdrel. After getting through the crush, I walked underneath this gorgeous tapestry in the half dark, was blessed by a monk with a gold thunderbolt in his hand under Guru Rinpoche, and then blessed by another monk with a gold hand of Buddha. I was blessed by having these objects touched to the top of my head.

Right in front of me, through the crush of people and then the line under the Thongdrel at 4 am, was a father alone with his 3 young girls. The baby was probably 3 months old and the other two little girls were probably 2 and 4. This is a very important event to the people.

I found it an odd coincidence that the blessing under the Thongdrel nearly coincided with Easter in the Christian world. Both have the same premise - washing away of our sins - and some interesting similarities (ever been to Easter sunrise service?). To be light hearted - it goes along with the Asian saying: Same, Same but Different.

After the blessing, I ran into Karen and Douglas, some friends I met on the plane to Bhutan. This is a great picture of Karen at the unfurling as the sun was rising.