Row - Ride - Run Triathlon

OK - So lets' talk bucket lists.
Get born, have a happy childhood...Check
Get educated, complete a college degree... Check
Find a beautiful woman to marry, raise large, happy family... Check
Find a way to finanically support all this and stay happy... Check
Climb Kilimanjaro, highest mountain in Africa... Check 
Climb Rainier, toughest mountain in lower forty-eight... Check
Ride a bicycle across Minnesota West to East and South to North... Check
Run a triathlon... now wait a minute. I may look crazy... but that's for Olympic types. And that's not my type... But the beautiful woman (see item three, above) found a nice triathlon that she was confident we could complete. I think she first brought it up a couple months ago just as I was waking up from my nap. There was fourteen inches of snow on the ground. April was a long way away.

Row - Run - Ride Triathlon elevation profile. Triathlon Tip One: I recommend you always check out the elevation profile of any trialthlon you may decide to run.

The Row- Run - Ride Tri is sponsored by St Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota. OK. We can do this. We'll practice for a month or so and take this one out of the bucket. Check. Winona is a cool place. On the Mississippi River, beneath tall bluffs, lots of nice old homes.  We'd find a nice cozy bed and breakfast and make a weekend of it.

The Carriage House B&B. We thought that was just the name. We didn't know we were actually staying in the carriage house. It's OK - we like carriages.

So, I don't know what your spring was like, but we didn't have one this year. Last Saturday we had four inches of new snow. Practice schedules for our paddling, riding and running kept slipping away, usually on new ice.  We drove down to Winona in the middle of the week to check out the route. The lake where the race starts still had large slabs of ice floating around in it. We watched our e-mail for the cancellation. It never came. It's OK, we live in Minnesota, don'cha know... 

Race Morning. When they saw Linda and I arrive they brought out the rescue boat.

Miracles happen occasionally. I've seen a few. Here's one. One Saturday it snows. The next Saturday it's 60 degrees. That's a miracle in Minnesota. Here's another miracle. Out of over one hundred competitors there is no one there even close to our age. If you had to come up with an average age for the entire group that number would clearly be in the mid-twenties. There were maybe two or three with some graying hair - and these were hardcore 'Olympic' types. They probably flew in from some distant climate where they actually had spring.

Triathlon Tip Two: If the age of most of the competitors is ten years younger than your youngest children, you might want to look for a different triathlon. 

This tri started with a two and a half mile paddle. Down Lake Winona and back. This was when we found out that this triathlon could be run as a 'team' event, where you pick a proficient paddler to run the first link,  a racing rider to do the bike riding link and some superhuman Ninja runner for the final link. Clever. We had signed up to do them all. Pretty smart huh?

It's a tight battle for fifty-second place between us and three kayaks. We were in a canoe. Much safer than a speedy, tippy kayak. Of course, I had to let them get ahead so I could get them in the picture. I'm very thoughtful, that way. We actually were about two thirds of the way back from the leaders at the end of this link. We certainly didn't want to embarrass any of these kids.

Have you ever tried to run up the stairs of seventy-story building without stopping? I don't recommend it. The biking section of the Row - Ride - Run took us up to the prairie above Winona. If that wasn't bad enough, we faced a stiff west wind all the way to the top.

After the paddle before the bike, still smiling. I had not yet seen the hills behind me.

 Essentially, five miles of continuous uphill. I'm a fairly competent bike rider. Last summer I rode over two thousand miles. I was down to three miles-per-hour by the time we got up to the prairie.

Finally, level ground. We actually passed other riders in this part of the race.

Yikes! Downhill. 35 miles per hour and curves.

Okay, The truth comes out. Neither of us are very accomplished runners. We're in our sixties, for Pete's sake. I'd have to say we were feeling pretty good about the paddlers we left in our wake and the bikers we'd passed. Apparently, these people took a bus to the final link and then mounted motor scooters for the run. It got kind of lonely as we'd walk briskly pass the check points and watch the race officials check their watches and yawn.

At least it was a beautiful day and pretty place.

By the time we got to the finish line all the professional cheer-ers were hoarse from cheering everyone else in.  When we were within twenty feet of the finish line there was little girl there who shouted to us "You can do it!" She must have had some doubt in her mind.

Yes, we did do it. Tip number three: Don't worry too much about having to sign autographs.

 

Change in the 'hood

Some people are really good about change. I'm not. 

This aspect of my makeup has been a part of me as long as I can remember. When my dad changed jobs in the early sixties we looked into moving to Bloomington. It would mean a big change for all of us. I did not want to leave Northeast. I protested loud and long. In fact, I don't think anyone in the family was as resistant as I was. Perhaps for this reason I have always been interested in what it takes to change gracefully and appropriately. I think I'm getting better at it.
I take for my references in this post recent changes in the old neighborhood.

Goodbye, Four Seasons.     Only a pale reflection of it's former self. Neighbors protest while Walmart decides what to do.

Case Number One: Four Seasons Mall. I'm not an expert in retail. I don't understand commercial real estate markets. I can only say I was sad to see it go. The neighborhood has not deteriorated, access is good. For whatever reason, the chemistry wasn't there. When we moved here in 1984  I was proud of the little collection of stores and services there. We bought our first real art print for our new suburban living room at the Four Seasons Gallery. Our hardware came from the friendly, local hardware store, our prescriptions from the Snyder's Drug store. It was a great place to pick up flowers on the way home for special occasions. You could drop of your dry cleaning, take exercise classes or buy groceries at SuperValu. There were two restaurants to choose from. I was happy. Today, the property is derelict. What did Four Season's do? or perhaps... not do? It's now owned by Walmart. They want to put in a Supercenter. The site doesn't meet Plymouth's strict zoning for such a use. Local neighbors turn out in large numbers to protest when Walmart officials present their plans.  A study determined that the 'appropriate' redevelopment of the site would contain small restaurants and local services like dry cleaners. Go figure.

Goodbye, New Hope K-Mart.            The last load goes in the truck.     It's now, according the new sign, 'Available for Redevelopment'                    Who knows, maybe Walmart will buy it, too.

Case Number Two: K-Mart. When I was a child there were two nationwide five and dime chains that were duking it out, S.S. Kresge and F.W. Woolworth. I loved them both, but favored Kresge's. They each had a long aisle of toys, many of them available for five or ten cents. They both had lunch counters. When you walked in the place smelled like dinner. I divided all my Christmas shopping between the both of them. Every trip downtown on the bus included a visit to both. I was happy. In the late sixties S.S. Kresge became K-Mart. The company has had a tremendously checkered history including getting into books (Borders, R.I.P.) making deals with Martha Stewart (who then went to prison) going bankrupt, firing and suing it's CEO for mismanagement. It's not a pretty scene. Look 'em up on Wikipedia. BTW, Woolworth was the largest department store company in the world in 1979. By the end of the nineties it was all gone. They now own only the Footlocker sports-shoe chain. Mismanaging change can be harmful to your health.

Goodbye, Universal Color Lab.       The end of an era I knew well.

Case Number Three, Universal Color Lab.  The Paul Simon song Kodachrome was popular around the time I started part-time work at Photos, Inc. One month later I got married. About a year later I graduated from the U of M. At that point, Bill, Photo's Inc.'s owner, approached me about working full-time for the quickly growing lab. It was intoxicating. We kept growing. We built new buildings, each one larger than the last. When I started we had seven employees. Eventually, we had close to one hundred.  Photography was cool. I made big deals with big customers for our services. The lab business was good and the bonuses kept getting larger. At the same time, many other labs started and grew. Universal Color in New Hope was one of them. Last week the building was being gutted. The banner out front said 'Going Out of Business, Thanks for Forty Great Years.' I could go on for hours about the lab business. I was there on the front lines as we tried, unsuccessfully, to deal with change, to 'reinvent' ourselves.

DigiGraphics bought what was left of Photos, Inc. shortly after I left the company in the late nineties. Two years ago DigiGraphics took the small, token 'Photos, Inc.' text line off their sign. Last year, 'Imagine Print Solutions' bought the last, bedraggled fragments of DigiGraphics. 

Today, I'm still somewhat fearful of change... but now I have managed it. I have somewhat 'reinvented' myself. Now, with retirement upon me, it gives me hope for the future. I've seen how easy it is to deny changes that can creep up and slowly surround you. We at Photos, Inc. looked at the first digital images and laughed. How could those ridiculous, fuzzy pictures ever compete with our magnificent chemical-based images? Impossible.

Impossible, indeed.

Ice-out on the St. Croix

Managing risk has always been of interest to me. The risk of starting a new business enterprise in my mid-fifties, probably tops my own personal risk list, but various other adventures compete for the title. I spent many years teaching young men how to avoid dangerous conditions, like freezing water, thin ice and strong currents. They are not the place to practice new-found skills. There are ways however, to cope with these conditions. Every now and then it's good to practice one's risk-management skills. This was one such event. 

My new super-tough Fast-Track inflatable kayak. We had hoped to get underway with a bit more daylight. Even though it was dark, we were happy to have snow instead of rain.

 Bill and Scott Keig and I had planned a spring trip on the St.Croix for over a month. We were psyched, and even though a late spring had been delivering cold, unstable weather - we were excited to go. The 90 percent chance of rain/snow in the forecast had no effect on us. Every outdoor adventure carries some small weather-related risk, but when you know how to dress and prepare, bad weather just becomes a new and interesting way to see the world. All three of us are experienced, all-weather campers.

This is what the river looked like at Sand Rock Cliffs where we originally intended to end our trip. Foxes Landing, where we eventually came out, looked pretty much the same.

       I drove up a few hours early to check out ice conditions. Things were pretty grim. Most of the river above Grantsburg was choked with ice. Huge slabs of ice were rearing up and sliding on top of one another. There were only occasional, patches of open water. We hoped to find ice-free landings where we could start and end. What was in between? We had no way to know.  Foxes Landing, where we eventually decided to end our trip, was totally choked. We gambled that by the time we got there it might have moved on. We finally found a landing about ten miles north with open water. We put on our wetsuits and warm clothing and strapped everything in. We trusted we could be resourceful enough to make it through, somehow.

10 PM. A couple miles downriver we found ourselves locked in a huge flow that we could not penetrate. With a strong current running we knew that with one mistake a body could easily be pulled under the ice flow. We called it a night.

 
     We had only gone a couple miles when we ran into a huge ice jam. It was totally dark and snowing occasionally so we couldn't even see how far it went. We found our way to shore and set up camp. We had hoped to go a few more miles to a favorite island with a nice campsite, but we ended up on a very skinny 'island' just off-shore on the Wisconsin side. 

We set up camp and cooked dinner. We were so buzzed we sat around the fire and talked until one AM.

 That night we were serenaded by the thousands of waterfowl that  use the St. Croix flyway. The Trumpeter Swans and Bufflehead ducks were my favorites. About midnight we heard a strange tinkling sound coming from the river. We looked - and the ice jam was gone! 

Morning on our skinny island. Much of the ice jam had cleared from the river overnight. (On the left)

Breakfast. The only flat ground we could find on our little island. 

We all carried complete extra sets of clothing in waterproof bags.

Fortunately, we floated most of the time. Dragging rubber boats on ice wasn't too bad, though. We were constantly probing the ice with our paddles to test it's strength. In the background is the island we originally wanted to get to.

 

Bird watching was one of the best parts when we weren't ice watching. Trumpeter Swans and Bald Eagle.

Another jam up. Pulling around these on thin ice was always... ah... exhilarating. I usually let Bill or Scott go first.  

We were urging Scott to take the picture fast - before the crack got any bigger and we floated away. Many years ago Britta and I sat under the pine trees in the background and looked out at the island behind (right.) This is the top end of about a mile of class 2-3 whitewater.

Pinch point. I pried at the log (underwater) with my paddle. I only had to move it a foot or so and the whole flow broke loose. All the ice around fractured and we went sliding through with a whoosh. Exciting.

Just above Foxes Landing we got caught in a tricky jam with very swift current. Big slabs that floated along just barely underwater kept piling in from behind, forcing us up onto the ice sheet. The exciting part was when they would suddenly tip up at a forty-five degree angle and, hopefully, break. This was a situation where inflatable boats were the safest things to be in. I can't imagine doing this with a tippy canoe or hard-shell kayak.

Just above Foxes Landing.

All in all this was a wonderful adventure. We were able to safely manage our way through miles of icy river at near flood-stage. Our gear worked. Our intuition worked. My camera worked. It was a thrill. BTW, when we got to Foxes landing the huge ice pile from the day before had cleared to the point where we only had to drag the last fifty yards. Perfecto!

Shop Time With Josh

Everybody knows that I believe in hands-on experiences, and building - or creating - with my grandchildren is one of my favorite activities. Josh has been here visiting for the last few days and we have been getting our hands dirty, so-to-speak. 

I learned a lot about working with kids on various craft projects as a scoutmaster. I was deeply pained to see boys who were working on Indian Lore, Woodcarving or Basketry merit badges, throw their projects in the campfire when they had completed them. Clearly the counselors hadn't expected enough effort on the part of the boys so that they valued their effort. Eventually, I took several of these merit badges 'in-house' at camp so I could oversee the craftsmanship. We cut wooden carving blocks from a downed basswood tree that had been in our campsite. The camp maintenance guys helped us cut and dry them. Soon we were carving projects from a tree that had some meaning. I insisted that the projects take enough time and effort so that they were valued. Nearly every boy soon wanted an authentic Boone campsite hand-carved souvenir. I also insisted that Indian Lore raw materials be harvested using authentic Native American 'vision quest' techniques. The results were gratifying. I have had some former scouts tell me they still have these projects, fifteen  to twenty years later.

Tova's multicolored 'Pegasus Unicorn' was realized with equal parts fantasy and elbow grease. Annie painted her apple puzzle. Sam chose, assembled and nicely painted his Space Shuttle. LeeAnna carefully painted and assembled each detail of her 3D framed flowers.

 Of course, how much effort you expect from a child depends on age and ability. The youngest ones don't do much more than help plan subject matter and pick colors. Most can paint them. Enough effort also instills more handling care... and bragging rights. All are built with a large dose of fantasy. (Witness the futuristic military base setting for Josh's rocket.)  I was especially pleased when Josh also wanted to take the photos of his projects when we completed them. He chose the angles and the treatments. Taking a photo is another way of establishing pride in workmanship as well as signalling completion. The skills and habits involved in conceiving, starting and finishing projects, however small, are valuable life-skills for any child.

Easter in Perrysburg

Perrysburg, Ohio is a beautiful suburb of Toledo and new home to Kali, Bill and family. It's also the home of Fort Meigs, a historic site from the war of 1812.

Downtown Perrysburg retains a remarkably healthy downtown with lots of small town charm.

Commodore Perry points the way to the Maumee River at the head of old Main Street.

We watched a jeweler at work in his storefront window.

Old Fort Miegs has been restored and is only a short bike ride from Kali and Bill's new home.

We toured the fort in beautiful spring weather. The man-made berms in the fort's interior were to stop British cannon balls from rolling through the tent city that housed most of the troops.

Both Josh and Sam had school projects they had completed on display in the Fort's museum.

Several important battles of the war of 1812 were fought in and around the fort. The Indian leader Tecumseh, was one of the Indian leaders who fought with the British.

Liam suddenly realizes that the birthday cake, placed just out of reach, was for him. Grace graciously extinguished the candle for Liam.

Josh left his new Perrysburg home for a few days in Minnesota with Grandpa and Grandma.