Foraging while biking?

I went out for what's looking somewhat like the final bike ride of the season on Monday night. Nice scenery down in Hemlock and south. As I rode through the hills and back woods, I couldn't keep my eyes off the wild bounty of berries and fruit growing along the back roads. I saw one rare and especially tasty one: the Nannyberry. I noted the location and went back in my truck after the ride. The light was failing, but I found the bush, picked it clean, along with a few handfuls of Highbush Cranberries next to it.

After supper, I made a nice nannyberry pudding, slightly sweetened with honey and garnished with grated orange rind. It was devoured by the family rapidly. After that, I made a sample jar of highbush cranberry jelly. While I've known for years that this plant is edible, I've never been able to get beyond the strong, musty smell when it's cooking down. I've heard that the jelly is very tasty and has none of that smell/flavor left, so I wanted to try it. I almost threw it all out as it stunk so much, but persisted and made a sample jar of jelly which I'll try on toast in the morning.

Fall is pretty much done here and the snow is coming. Sad, but ... I did enjoy the nice heat from the woodstove this morning.

Training and falling

Did you ever get stung by a bee while bike riding?  I have had this happen three times now.  Recently, I got to experience it once again.  The stupid little insect decided to give up its life in return for a pain in my leg; his decision was my downfall!

I was out training for my next bike race that day, pushing it hard up a 16% gradient.  I do this for several reasons: first and foremost, to train my max heart rate up to a higher level, secondly because I know that being clipped in to the pedals on such a hill is a sure guarantee that I cannot stop in the middle and wimp out as there is no way to unclip fast enough to avoid rolling backwards and eventually crashing.  The older I get, the harder it is to love pain!  When I train, I am looking to put my heart rate just below the anaerobic threshold (AT) and train there.  In case you didn't know, this hurts!

My violent reaction while trying to kill the bee, caused me to jerk the handlebars with my other hand and I lost momentum, swerved hard left and went crashing down into the oncoming lane.  Final resting position was on my back, feet up in the air and still clipped into the pedals.  I managed to get free and fortunately, there were no cars on the hill that night.  I suffered an expansive set of road rash from fingers to knee, and a sore hip on my left side, but otherwise nothing serious.  It probably was highly entertaining for anyone in the nearby farmhouse that happened to see the incident.

Clipping back in at 16% grade was tough, but I managed, finished up that hill and another 1700' more of climbing that night.  I took the next day off, but was back in the saddle the day after that.

Mt Equinox Race 2013

I had a great day on Sat at the 2013 race up Equinox Mtn in Vermont.  It’s an average 12% grade hillclimb with max gradient of 26%.  Said less technically, “how fast can you ride a bike up 3200 feet with just 5.4 miles to do it” … even less technically, “very steep hill!”

I awoke to the sounds of rain and low 50-degree temps.  The “warmup” was very tough on me as I tend to just freeze to death when I get wet in those temps.  I had leg and arm warmers, along with a polypropylene long-sleeved shirt under my jersey, but still, it was more like a cooldown for me.  I came to the line in my current category, the 50-to-ancients, without much presumption of a great placement.  This race falls two weeks before the big, sold-out 600-person race up Mt. Washington and most of these folks are in final training for that race as it’s a very similar grade, just not as long and without all the weather hoopla offered up by Mt. Wash.

The sun came out briefly as we waited to start, but the top was still fogged in like pea soup.  The race organizer (bless and/or darn his soul), set up a nice, $500 cash prime at the one mile mark (in other words: the best time for the first mile in all heats will take the cash).  What a mean thing to do to us at the start of a 5-mile hillclimb!  I was fouth in our heat over the 1-mile mark, not concerned at all with the prime, and very quickly dropped the two that had gone out hard.  I picked off the last person in our heat just beyond a slight downhill (200 yards), in which I briefly hit a 26MPH pace.  I cranked hard up the next hill and had the heat to myself for a while there.  Around mile 3.5 or so, I was hitting 90% of my max heart rate and began to get light-headed from lack of oxygen intake and seated myself (at 16% grade) to recover my heart rate and allow a bit less aggression to calm me.  I was passed by three folks then.  The first one had a climbing bike that had no brakes, only a fixed gear up front, and a 9-speed freehub in the rear.  He had a mountain bike handlebar on a carbon fiber road bike and was pretty much just going to cook anyone in his way, so I didn’t chase.  The second was looking very strong, seated and spinning a high cadence when he flew by.  The third was breathing like the sounds of a sump pump sucking air when its cutoff switch is broken: sucking up every breath of air with a gasp.  I figured I’d try to keep him in sight.  When I recovered down to an HR of 149, I was back at it again, pushing hard.

Beyond mile 4, we finished some steep gradients and briefly came across “the saddle” between the false summit and the real one.  I dropped the gearing into fifth gear, was standing and hammering to try to bring in the sump pump guy, but just closed the gap by about half.  After mile 5, we only had 4/10ths left to race, but we hit the 20+ percent grades.  I went a tiny bit wide to avoid the worst part of a 26% grade switchback (see below), but not nearly as wide as the sump pump had steered.

I knew I could take him and neatly passed him by on the next 24% switchback.  I had broken contact with him, and dropped into second gear just after that, beginning my finish sprint.  I came over the line about 25 seconds ahead of him.

Third in my heat of “ancients” did not take into account the elite riders who had pre-qualified for the top-notch heat, so I had another 5 folks in my age bracket in that heat.  Overall, I placed 8^th in my age range and 31^st overall.  This put me into the top third.  I did a 51:12 for 5.4 miles, which is pretty slow, unless you know about the 3200’ of ascent :-)

Winter has crested, spring is coming

This past week we came upon one of my favorite days: February 7th.  What's the big deal with February seventh, you ask?  "It depends", I will reply.  It depends on whether you happen to live in Rochester, NY, or somewhere else in the country.  For us, Feb 7th signifies the first day of the year on which our average daily high crosses above freezing.  On Feb 7th, we get to an average of 33 degrees for our daily high.  There is hope!  Winter's grip will lessen and gradually, we will achieve that noble time of year - Springtime.

I grew up in an extremely cold region of the country, so I really don't mind the cold here.  The clouds are what often bother me the most.  My wife and I had many the heated discussion for the first ten years of our marriage, about whether we would ever get her back to living in the Rochester area.  I was against it, on the principle that it was too cloudy, and too flat.  Both things are usually true, however we have had a pretty nice winter this year, with quite a bit of clear weather and much less cloudiness than is normal.

The recent blizzard that affected much of the northeast largely left us alone.  We had about 8-10" of snow here.  I had the plow truck all charged up and ready, but for the leaky brake line, and my broken four-wheel drive; fortunately I was able to get the truck started, made it stop with what brakes I have, and didn't slip at all while plowing.

Last night was cold, reaching about 2 degrees Fahrenheit here.  The morning came, with calm winds, clear skies and an absolutely beautiful look to the snow-covered trees.  Kelly was up early, documenting the moment:

By this afternoon, the sun had warmed up up enough to start the snow melting.  The kids and I went out and had a good time playing in the snow.

Highlander

The Highlander is a September bike ride in the Fingerlakes region of NY.  Great ride; well organized, wonderful scenery, great support and of course, how could I go without mentioning the hills?  The full Saturday ride is a 105-mile ride, with just over 9,000 feet of vertical gain.

This year, I decided to do both the Saturday ride, and a Friday night uphill time trial (4.94 miles, with the last two being uphill - Gannett Hill Rd, in South Bristol).  I took 2^nd in master’s men category and 10^th overall.  The hardest part was actually the lead-in to the base of the hill as there was a southern wind into our faces that, combined with the gradual 3% ascents, was deceptively hard to overcome.  I big-ringed it all the way to the base of Gannett and had to remember to get on the little ring before I shifted into my rear big ring as I’ve been dropping chain lately and really didn’t want to do that in a race.  I passed at least 20 folks going up the hill and narrowly missed catching my friend, who had left 15 mins ahead of me.  Not a bad showing for an old man.

The Sat ride was weird for me: I never heard my 5AM alarm (or screwed up setting the new cell phone alarm), so I got a 45-min late start.  I leaned in hard to my clip-on aero bar and cranked real hard, managing to catch most of the pack by the base of Bopple Hill.  I flew up the 18-20% grade portion of Bopple, passing all of the serpentine travelers and many of the straight-uppers too.  Half way up Bopple, the rain began to fall in huge drops and there was a veritable flood by the time I reached the top.  Was worried about traction on the second part as it hits 23% grade, but there was no ill effect of the rain.  The bagpiper was confined under the hatchback of a car, but still playing (normally they have him in the cemetery at the top of the hill).  Somehow they had managed to stuff the bass drummer into that hatchback and I could still him boom-booming along with the bagpipes.

Bills Hill came next and I’d never ridden it before; didn’t like it either!  It wasn’t too bad though and I managed another straight up, followed by a fast traverse and a wet descent down Stid Hill Rd with the brakes glued on tight.  Hit Rte 64 without incident and proceeded on to Gannett.  No probs on Gannett and, by then I was ahead of most of the main pack.  Straight-lined it up Gannett again but did take a break at the top as I was really hungry by then.  Ate a PBJ sandwich, drank the rest of a bottle of Cytomax and listened to others complain about the coming T-storms and grumble about the hills.  Apparently we had ‘til about 11:15AM before they were to hit.  I began to formulate a plan to short-cut the 105 miles with a metric century – figured that would get me in just about before the rain.  I don’t mind wet or wind, but cold gets me bad and lightning bolts aren’t too pleasant either.

I rode through Naples and picked up a wheel-hugger, who turned out to be a real nice guy from Montana that was lost.  We rode together through that back section south of Naples (skipping the rest stop), up ‘til the Rte 53 cut toward Prattsburg.  He headed out for Prattsburg (poor guy – sure he was caught out in the rains) and I decided to head left (north) on rte 53 then and try to get in before the storm.  I flew down Rte 53 and drafted a truck through Naples, coming off his draft just in time to head up CR12.  That was a nice easy climb after the rest of that day and I was averaging 12MPH up the hill through most of it.

I flew along the top of the hill as the wind was from the south – about the time I was passing by the CR12 rest stop (at the overlook of Canandaigua Lake), I could see the wall of rain coming down the lake.  I floored it and was just past the Rte 65 turn and just north of Gannett when the rain and wind slammed in.  35+ MPH with driving, horizontal rain.  After a full morning of winds from due south, my nice time of finally heading north with the wind was ended when the full fury of the storm came in from the north.  I tucked in tight on the aero bars and cut through, but that driving rain sure did hurt!  I arrived back at Bristol Mtn Ski Area, soggy and starting to shake with the cold.  It had dropped by about 20 degrees in that short period.  I shivered my way up to the registration area, picked up my goody bag and was also given a gift cert card for my 2^nd place finish the night before.  Headed home in the rain to a nice, hot shower.

Mount Washington - Newton's Revenge Bike Race

I got up at 3:30AM on Saturday morning, July 7th 2012, along with my friend and driver, Greg (a NH resident).  We headed up to the White Mtns of NH and were at the base of Mt. Washington by 6:45AM.  Despite all the warning signs, we saw no moose, crossing the road or otherwise.  When the sun finally rose, I was in awe of the countryside.  Absolutely gorgeous views of the hills and mountains.  We were soon encountering mist-enshrouded peaks and a few rain showers as well, but they tended to be brief and intermittent.  When we finally got to Mt. Washington, the peak was hidden by the clouds, but would briefly poke its head out to glare at me in defiance.  Temps at the base were in the mid-sixties when we arrived and when combined with the light patches of rain, I was a bit chilly at first.

Mount Washington is, as it happens is known as "home of the world's worst weather".  For years, Mt. Washington stood as the location in which the highest wind velocity had been recorded (231 MPH).  For weeks before the race, I habitually looked at the weather day by day - it was not unusual to see wind velocities in the fourties or fifties of miles per hour.  I learned (during and after the race), that they typically don't bother showing the peak wind speeds there, but tend to show the average, by fifteen minute blocks.  On the morning of our race, there was a measured gust in the mid-sixties, with a sustained average in the low-mid fourties of miles per hour.  Fortunately for us, the temperatures were out of the thirties as well.

This hillclimb race, as it also happens, is billed as " The Toughest Hillclimb in the World ^TM".  When I researched it on ClimbbyBike.com, it shows up as #4 in the US and #28 in  the world.  The top three in the US are all in Hawaii, where they have some serious climbs up a couple of volcanoes.  Our little hill, while not being that tall overall, has a pretty serious gradient to it, with less than eight miles to climb all that distance.  Unlike many bike races, shorter does not necessarily mean easier!  Oddly, despite this fact, there are two races a year up Mt. Washington - the first, and most prestigious, sells out of its 600 slots in the first ten minutes of open registration.  My race only sold around 300 slots this year.

Registration went smoothly and I soon completed my prerequisites of bike prep, feeding, hydration, and stowing a small energy gel pack for the trip.  I decided to go with only 1/3 of a bottle of fluid (Cytomax is my preference), as I knew that I would be unlikely to get much of it in my mouth anyway, given the expected syndrome of hanging-out-tongue accompanied by its friend, gasping-for-breath.  I left a full bottle in the truck so I would have some recovery drink at the top, but not have to carry it up with human power.

It was not without some anxiety that I decided to go with no patch kit and no pump, but I threw that in the truck with Greg, figuring that it really wouldn’t matter if I flatted out – I was unlikely to complete with or without a patch kit.  He took off for the summit along with the rest of the drivers.  Mt. Washington does not allow descent on a bike, so each racer had to have a confirmed ride back down.  Oh – did I mention that Greg is 7’3” tall?!  He barely fit in my compact pickup, with the seat all the way reclined and his head at the top back of the ceiling.  His knees stuck up a bit more than halfway up the steering wheel.  While the manual shift was great for the descent down the peak, the shifting and clutching was a bit tough on him.  I wished I had cut a skylight in the roof for him – the Flintstones comes to mind with that visual.

I headed out with the other 200+ racers for my warm-ups and found a nice sunny patch alongside the road where there was a nice pool of warm air.  I pulled off and basked like a snake for a bit.  A few small hills at a nearby hotel were a busy, well-used venue for many racers who were also warming up.  I struck up a nice conversation with a 61-yr old man who had a pair of lightweight shoes stuffed into his biking jersey – that’s not a normal sight for a bike race, but he explained that if he had to dismount, he would swap into those and hoof the remainder.  I later noted that he did complete the race, but his time makes me think he probably hoofed some of it.  Speaking of unusual gear, the most common gearing ratio appeared to be a 30-36 (this gives less than a 1:1 pedaling to revolution ratio).  I’ve never seen a racer with a 30-36 before.  Normal road racing is done with a ratio of 39-25 or thereabouts.  I had swapped out my front crank to an old triple ring crank that I had lying around and was all set up with my 30-26 ratio.  It made me wonder when I saw so many 36-ers, but I was pretty confident that I would have no issues with completion – just not sure if the 26 turned out to be sub-optimal for my time.  It’s ghastly to see the number of $5K+ racing bikes that folks were riding.  Mine is a nice carbon-fiber Trek, nicely equipped with Ultegra gear.  Lots of carbon fiber and platinum on it but I still keep with the hollow aluminum crank, despite the weight.  I don’t use carbon fiber wheels as those can run $2K a pair for just a wheel set.

I’ve never been a fanatic about my race day routine, so cut short the warm-ups and found a group of guys basking on some large rocks and joined them.  They were from all over the place, mostly in the northeast, but one from Virginia, and one 18-yr old from California.  We chatted amicably and joked about the coming pain.  I raced in the “45 to ancient” category, which was a mixture of juniors (13-19), and us ancient ones, both male and female.  The eldest rider of the day was 74 – he was amazing!  The categories were arranged into four heats and mine was the last one to start.  I commented to another racer on the fact that I was shocked at how many of our age bracket there were – the largest heat of them all.  Without even a pause, he said “yeah, mid-life crisis.”  I don’t think I’m in a mid-life crisis, but I get his point.  There were folks talking about “doing it this last time”, and “bucket list” and other expressions to indicate that this was abnormal behavior for them.  After 11 years of doing these mountain races, despite my latest, 7-year hiatus from racing, I like to think of this as more of a lifestyle for me, but … time will tell.

We lined up by heat along the road and the “top-notchers” went off with the sound of the cannon – not a starting gun, but a cannon.  All of the rest of us jumped every time the canon went off as we couldn’t hear the countdown that preceded it for the prior heat.  At the sound of our canon, I spent several seconds pushing along with one foot, waiting for the road to clear enough to mount and go.  I quickly moved to the front of the pack as we started off.  The front mile of the course ranged from 11-14% grade.  Overall, this race does a vertical gain of 4811 feet, in 7.6 miles, so if you do the math, that’s rougly 0.91miles up, in 7.6 miles, or 12% grade average.  I watched my heart rate closely and pushed it to 158 (nowhere near my max heart rate of 194).  I was averaging a nice 7-ish MPH during this stretch.  It was tough to get my rhythm of breathing and pedaling as the hills kicked in so quickly.  After about a mile, I eased off a bit, just sitting it while the pack surged up.  I was passed by eight or ten folks, including a junior, who looked to be about 14, but was riding very strong and aggressively.  I thought about my 14-yr old son, Ian, who wants to race Whiteface with me next year (he says he’s not quite ready to try Mt. Washington yet).

When we hit the first set of 14-16% grades, I had to alternate sitting and standing.  I found that my power could out gun most of the riders around me when I stood, but it’s so much harder on the heart rate that I tried not to make it my regular style.  I really didn’t know where my heart rate would begin to max, and I didn’t want to push it too early.  I hit 163 at one point during this stretch.  Each time I would seat myself again, the legs felt dead after those pushes and my speed had to roll back significantly.  I was in good placement in the pack when we began to pass riders from the heat that left five minutes ahead of us, then the heat that left ten minutes ahead of us began to drift back as well.  Each bike tag had a “bib number” on it and the tags were colored by heat, so you could tell when you were catching the other heats (if you were coherent enough to look at the colors, that is).  When I went past the guy that was racing his unicycle, I croaked out an encouragement to him, “you-huffpuff-are-huff-a-huffpuff-mazing!”.  Truly he was amazing!  What a feat to do that rock on a uni!  I also passed the dual amputee that I had met before the race.  He was racing with two hooks on the bars – simply incredible and very inspiring.  He ended up finishing second to last, but he made it!

The terrain changed as we climbed through 2000 then 3000 feet altitude.  The scenery was breathtaking (except that I had no more breath, so I didn’t allow it to take much).  I love the smells of plants, pines and mosses baking in the sun on the side of a mountain.  I was aware of the Indian Cucumbers, Bunchberries, Reindeer and Sphagnum mosses along the way.  We lost the aspens, maples, and white pine trees, to be replaced with the black and red spruces.  The freshness of the air was wonderful and when I went by the waterfalls I actually did give them a partial second’s attention.  I became aware of the huge drop-offs on my right and was thankful that the winds were still calm there.  When we got to 4000 feet of altitude, the spruce were quite stunted, but the road went around a left-handed hairpin turn and dropped in below a sheltering cliff of rock.  The drop-offs on the left were pretty sheer, so I tucked in near the rocks on the right, being careful not to miss the surface and slam into the ditch beside them.  Upon looking up, I could see a steady line of bikers ascending into the sky ahead of me with the cliff on their right and the drop-off to the left of them.  Inspiring, but quite daunting too.  I continued to pick off other racers from the prior heats and occasionally was passed by from folks in my heat too.  After another set of hairpin turns, the winds occasionally popped over the edge of the precipice on my right and hit me from the right front quarter so I tried to tuck in behind another rider whenever I could, but their force was enough to knock us all out of line, making it nearly impossible to draft off anyone else.

As we ascending through about 4800 feet, the road changed to hard packed gravel/dirt.  This was the section that I had been told to fear – I chose not to fear, but was aware that the real pain was about to begin.  When chugging along up 14-16% grade on gravel, the rear tire spits out the gravel and slips on most every crank.  The hard effort of a crank is wasted and the speed drops significantly.  This is also the region where the flats are most likely to occur, so I tried hard to keep my wheels on the hard-packed, smoother areas.  The little rivulets of loose sand and gravel in between the hard pack were always a challenge, with a tendency to grab at the front tire and unseat me with a face plant.  “Not too bad, just keep on cranking” I thought while trying not to look ahead as view can be demotivating.  As the height of the rock cliff lessened to my right, I got my first real taste of the winds!  We hit a hard hairpin turn to the right and came full force into a 35MPH wind.  I struggled up the 18% gravel portion at 3.5MPH, trying hard not to focus on my stomach cramps, but seriously fighting against the desire to just dismount and walk.  NO, I decided!  I thought about my family and the sacrifices they were making to have me gone for a weekend, as well as all of the nights when I was out for my solo training rides.  “I will do this for them”, I thought and kept on cranking.  The pain in my gut was pretty intense, but I didn’t have much time to think about it as the challenge of the wind was a far greater one.  The road bent back to the left and the wind was now on my front quarter then my right side.  At one point, a huge gust smacked me and I found myself struggling to just stay upright.  It was tough to not over steer into wind at the right, but the thought of it dying off and the sight of the cliff on the right was just enough to make me take the alternative: bunny-hopping to the left.  I did a few side winders to the left and almost went into the left ditch at one point.  Standing was required for a while as my speed was low enough that it was really hard to just keep it shiny-side-up.  When I stood, I became a pretty good sail for that wind, but I did a few jerky change overs between sit and stand anyway.

After that pain, the sight of paving was a welcome one.  The road had a sheer drop to the right, with grand views of the Presidential range to my right – wow!  The wind was still on my right quarter, pushing me all over the road, but with a bit better traction on my part.  I was hit with another gail-force gust and almost went down again.  The next hairpin bent to the left and as I rounded the bend, the “official photographer” of the event was lying in the road, getting each of us in a maximum pain pose:

For the first time, the wind was briefly at my back and I flew up the next stretch with a mixed set of passing and being passed by others.  Now we came to the foggy and cloudy regions of the mountain.  At around 5800 feet altitude, the road leveled out to 5% grade and I was flying along through the fog.  We began to see spectators, many were ringing cow bells and shouting out encouragements, but all bundled up in their fleece and down coats.  Gloves and mittens had become common as well.  I didn’t notice that the temps had dropped into the forties as I was still working pretty hard and putting out like I had never done in my life.  There was another brief respite with the wind at my back, then a sheer cliff on the right cut off the wind.  I came out at a right hand hairpin turn and saw the summit before me about a quarter mile up.  The polite race director had strategically placed the finish at the physical summit – a neat little 22% grade section with two switch backs over ¼ mile was all that was left to climb.  I couldn’t tell you for sure whether I was sitting or standing the final 22, but I know I flew up it with ease.  The pictures that Greg took seem to indicate that I was sitting the whole slope.

I popped over the timing treadle and heard the final beep as my e-tag snapped my time into the computers.

There were friendly arms and hands around me, helping me to stop without crashing – all were bundled up like Eskimos and as they threw the polar fleece blanket over me and hung the medal on me, I thought “this is excessive”.  I soon learned that the blanket was probably all that would keep me from going into hypothermia and, despite my prior heat, I was shaking within a minute.  I had gone from an engine of warmth to being numbed with the cold.  Greg hugged me and grabbed the bike while I pulled my blanket around tighter and slumped down behind a rock to shelter for warmth.  He had my wind breaker with him and I pulled it on as well.  I was quite a mess, but was semi-conscious that I had done it!  I made it up to the top, didn’t stop, and put in a fair showing as well.

Overall, I was 67^th of the 201 finishers, and 13^th in my age group.  I missed my 1:20 goal by 3 minutes and 45 seconds, but think that a 1:23:45 was pretty respectable.  After a brief nap in the truck, Greg drove us down to the base and we had a great, catered turkey dinner with all the fixings from Hart's Turkey Farm.  That hit the spot!

Thanks for reading!

Springtime

Memorial Day
I spent the day with my daughter on Memorial day. Our day consisted of a visit to a friend's farm wherein the time went to play and a day in the woods cutting lumber for my furniture-making. We felled a Red Oak, a Hickory and a Cherry tree.

The Oak was pretty good sized, about 25" in diameter. Unfortunately, the wind was gusting when it was ready to go, so when when felled, it locked crowns with a smaller hickory tree. This required cutting the still-standing hickory, waiting for the snap of the bole, and running like mad to avoid the oak that was about to drop! Not a safe operation, but for the sake of the cows that Karl keeps in that section of woods, it was necessary to remove the leaner.

Safely on the ground, the hickory could be limbed and pulled off with a tractor - it's amazing to see what 70 HP will do with a monster tree! After the hickory was out, I was able to finish limbing the oak, but the tractor wasn't strong enough to move all 50+ feet of the bole without segmenting it. We did a 35-footer and a 16-footer and then were able to get them out with the tractor.

On to the Cherry - a beautiful 60+ foot tree with a wonderfully straight trunk. We had no issues with the notch, or the follow-through cut, but the wind picked up at just the wrong moment and leaned it away from the notch-cut side. We ended up having to use sledge and wedges to get it going back in the right direction. This beautiful tree, while sad to cut, will become a gorgeous new entry doorway and a spendid new front door for my house - not many homes come with solid hardwood entries, cut by hand and fashioned after the whims of the woodworker - an older art for this day of instant messages and instant gratification, but very satisfying to create such wonders.

The Treehouse
It's been a fabulous springtime here. The weather has been cool, dry, and pleasant. I don't know that I can ever recall enjoying a spring this much.

The kids and I have been continuing to build on to the treehouse. We are now three floors up (just over 30 ft from the ground) with the top floor. We need to add some railings there still! It's a beautiful white oak tree, probably 100 or so yrs old. Those trees grow slowly, but attain monster size.

When up in the canopy, it's very pleasant to see the birds (have seen Baltimore Orioles up close lately), and as of last night, the Locust trees are in full bloom, casting their scent throughout the air. We had a nice reading session up there last night. I've been reading The Two Towers to the kids, having made it through the Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring earlier this year.