Keeping Up

after work,bike to the park, meet the fam! What a good start to the weekend!

Torsten (he’s done with first grade today!) is over playing tennis with a friend.

Secular Chaos and the Production of Hot Jupiters. I want to have a new national holiday called “Secular Chaos.” Or maybe just the best band name ever? The groupies could be the “Hot Jupiters”? Anyway, this is up high on the list of my favorite titles for scientific papers.

I was reading a nice article in Nature (“Hot Jupiters from secular planet–planet interactions”) and this reference completely caught my eye. I recommend 1) the arxiv paper, 2) the nature paper, 3) the holiday, 4) the band! 🙂

I attempted to do the Jemez Mountain Trail Run 50 mile.
Cerro Grande was too Grande for me this year. I bailed out at the Pajarito aid station and did 28.7 miles (with 7,900 ft up and 7,445 ft down). At least distance wise, I like metric — 45.9 km!

It was a perfect, beautiful, fantastic day for a run:

Last week of school, so a special lunch time puppet show and desert potluck.

Two of Torsten’s art pieces were part of an exhibition at Fuller Lodge.

He’s had a great first grade experience! It is hard to believe he’s almost finished with first grade though..

out to the end of Baranca Mesa

at the moment, we’re enjoying glass blowing at Jackalope. Torsten is fascinated and Aven is a little nervous of the fire and heat. next? probably skatepark. the dinner & margs?

Tom and Matt took the kids (Torsten, Waylon, Aven, and Johnny) up to the East Fork Jemez trail. We made it all of 50 meters down the trail then played in the water and “helped” some folks fishing.. Water, rocks, sticks, and fish — what else is there?

Tom played lifeguard for Johnny and Aven.

Aven tromped up and down the river (she couldn’t decide between the big kids and Johnny’s nice mellow pool)

Waylon hid under his hat (from the sun–we slathered on the sunscreen as well!). Waylon and Torsten had the water, sticks, rocks, and bridges to engineer. They met another boy with a fishing pole, and got a few casts in. A total of 8 trout were caught.

For those who need more photos — here’s the gallery with more photos.

Two young kids are keeping us busy and facebook makes it very easy to share the day to day. But right now, it isn’t easy to look back into the past via facebook. This morning I started looking through our ginormous tupperware of old pictures (with the fantasty of starting to scan and organize them…) — but the memories are all there to be refreshed!! So I’m going to try and capture day-to-day (and it pushes to fb.. there may be some redundancy). Anyway… Back to blogging!

Torsten has 11 more days of first grade! Aven is definitely out of toddler-hood (and practicing away for terrible twos). She is very good at “no!” Just this week she’s gotten “dog” and is close to “Torsten”.

Today is my Friday off, so we got Torsten off to school, had an almost leisurely morning, went off to a nice hike with two lovely ladies (Carrie and Aven) — my most used trails behind the golf course (part of my regular bike or run commute to work). But today it was industrial city as a few crews were extending power lines and driving in more poles — my hope is this is an upgrade for the counties plan to put gigabit fiber to every house.

Today is especially sunny (two layers of sunscreen may not be enough!) and blue sky, high country feeling. More sunshine than my Juneau phone/camera can take…

The White Mountains are a BLM managed area about 50 miles north northeast of Fairbanks. Last year, Ann and Ed organized the first 100 mile event there. Hilary, Bob and other Fairbanks friends volunteered and I read about it more in Jill Homer’s blog. I was psyched to do it in 2011, but by the time I signed up (6am AK time the day that sjgnup opened) I was way down on the waitlist. I did eventually get in, it lined up with Torsten’s spring break, so we got the whole family set to head up. we changed the tickets to add a few days in Juneau on the way.

despite Alaska air’s effort to thwart the flight, I made it to the pre-race meeting. it was so great to see everyone (I finally met Jill face to face for the first time!). Ullr (Norse god of snow) dropped me a big hint when I won ski wax/scrapper as a door prize, but did I listen?)

I woke up early Sun to do the final gear pack, have some coffee and breakfast, and do a little more gear worry.. for this event, there was no required gear. it was just 100 miles, and at the start of the race you had to declare bike, ski, or run. and you have to finish with what you started. I wanted to be ready for “worst case” — I slip, break a leg, and need to stay warm until rescued. I borrowed Bob’s GPS spot unit (that has both a “help” button that sent Bob a message which he could use to alert race support snow machines, and a 911 button which would bring helicopters (and bills..). I had a stove and fuel (thanks Don/Anne), spare clothes, gloves, socks, and much more. I was mentally planning for 30 hours and temps between -20F and +10F. I met Jeff (from Anchorage) at the top of Ballaine hill for the ride out to the trailhead.

in Fairbanks, things were warm (+30s..). I had planned to ride in my big Sorels — I started out in them, but switched in the first mile to my running shoes (with plastic grocery bags for vapor barriers). (So more heavy gear to carry…) The start was exciting, and a little daunting (lotsa fat tires!)

The first bit of the race was a bit congested, but lots of fun. The riding was great. A bit of up and down and some whoop-de-dos (I did two kodak-moment endos over the front of the bike when I hit soft patches). The trail started softening up, and I had to start walking. I made it into checkpoint 1 and grabbed some chow from the awesome volunteers there. The weather was fantastic (I kept working the layers to avoid sweating too much and cooling down on the downhills — layers are the trick!). The views reminded me of Tolovana Hot Springs (right in the area) and I remember all the trips in with friends over the years. I only snapped one picture as I thought I’d head to the second checkpoint, and start getting more picture there.. But here’s some great black spruce:

I was averaging around 5 mph, and had set a personal “cutoff time” of about 30 hours, but the trail was softening up quick. The temp at checkpoint one was already 40F – yoikes!!! I made it to about 25 miles in, and was walking more and more and more. I turned on the GPS to track my speed, and for 3 miles I averaged 2.5 mph. I pushed the bike 95+% of those three miles. I was having a blast, enjoying the scenery, weather, and effort. Ann and Bill came up on a snowmachine (as the sweepers) and asked how things were doing. 2.5mph mean at 40 hour ride — no hangin’ with friends in Fairbanks, finishing with exhaustion for the flight home.. It was a tough choice. The weather forecast was for snow overnight (1-2 inches) and then warm temps the next day, so it didn’t sound like things would speed up. I was planning originally to not sleep on the 30 hours, but 40 hours, plus no sleep?! Finally, it was around 3:30pm, and if I bailed, I had a ride. If I waited until 8pm, it might be 9am before I could get a ride (they would obviously do a “quick-out” for injury or other emergency, but just for a “slow rider”, I would try to find a convenient ride out.. ) With great disappointment, I decided it was time to head back. I was still having a blast, and no issue with energy, temperature, or anything else (other than time)..

Bill and I got the bike tied onto the snow machine, Ann took off on skis to keep “sweeping”, and we did the two hour snow machine back to the race start. Peter picked me up, and I made it home for a nice beer and pork chop dinner. I would have rather been on the trail, but when the snow seriously started falling in Fairbanks, I knew it had been the right choice. It was a fantastic event, I had tons of fun. Thanks to the race organizers, volunteers, and participants. I’ll be back with wider tires or skis (and hopefully cooler temperatures!).