River Styx Dog Hike

Friday morning at sunrise finds me at River Styx Park with friends Dean, John and our dogs for a long hike and then a big breakfast (unfortunately, the cafe doesn't admit our dogs and they have to be dropped at home). Here are myself, Casey, Jack and Dean in a shot by John. The temp that morning was just above zero, I think, and NE Ohio looks like it could be the tundra.

I just received Roy Wallack's new book, Run for Life, which is a followup to Bike for Life which he co-authored with Bill Katovsky. I'll review them both in the next few days. Besides motivational material and interviews with exceptional age-group athletes, Roy is really up on some of the cutting edge fitness science and I'll try and summarize some of that in my review.

Ski Trip Postscript

The ski trip to Holiday Valley near Ellicottville, New York was Friday, January 16. Departure time was 6:30 a.m. so I was up and out at 5 to fetch the paper and fill the bird feeders. Our pooch, Casey, was thrilled to be up and out of the house so early until we hit the minus eleven air temp. I could tell that he was thinking, "What the . . . "
Here is a picture that LInda took today showing how I dressed for comfort (survival?). How do you like that smile? Dressing warm enough sometimes means putting on a bit of a sweat on the runs that translates to a chill on the lift. Patagonia gear makes it easier to tune the layers for wicking and venting. It worked for me.
I did runs from 11 a.m. until 4:15 p.m. (with some lodge breaks, of course) when the low light flattened everything out and made it tough to see the whoop-de-doos. So I quit: creeping fatigue and flat light can be the formula for crash and burn.
The chill wasn't bad on the cross wind lifts but the high speed quad for the run up Mardi Gras was right into the teeth of it. That was the only time I felt the bite. In that cold, everything squeaked: skis on the snow, pole tips in the snow. Even though it was single digits in the sun, the mostly blue sky was incredible after the week or so we've had of cloud cover.
When the bus returned us to the school lot and our cars, I found the half cup of coffee I'd left behind frozen solid in my travel cup.

Ski Trip

I'm joining a group for a bus trek over to New York's Holiday Valley on Friday for a day of skiing in the heart of the lake effect snow zone. Friday's weather over there is supposed to start out sub-zero in the early morning and soar to a high of 5 by mid-afternoon. Maybe that will thin out the crowd. I'll report.

Solstice

Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, is always a nice time to nest and consider the blessings or burdens of the recent past (luck, fate and/or perseverance). Irrespective of your take on the etiology or source of your present circumstance, this place of equipoise in the progress of celestial meandering is an appropriate time to pause and take stock of what you intend for yourself. I notice the symmetry of having started this blog on the last winter solstice. That's all I have for the moment.

Daily Visitors

These deer and a couple pals that are not in the picture visit everyday. Once in a awhile, we see a buck, but these are does and their less than one year old but rapidly growing offspring. The object of curiosity is a neighbor's wandering cat. A minute later, the deer moved in closer and the cat scampered under the deck. The deer are cleaning up leaves that just came off a pear tree in this week's snowfalls. We had a total of about five inches here this week but they still aren't blowing snow at our local hill. Holiday Valley over in Western New York is open. Got to get out on the skinny skis before this cover melts off.

Spinning

A few months ago, I became an avid spinner. I have been a lifelong biker but never much enjoyed locking the road bike into a stationary trainer. When Linda and I joined a local club that offered spinning and yoga in addition to the obligatory weights and cardio machines, our weekly workouts improved– a lot. We have both had knee surgery and don't pound the pavement anymore. We ration our remaining cartilage playing recreational and competitive hard court tennis and did time on treadmills and ellipticals with some outdoor biking. Now, we have a great off-season alternative. I've quickly become addicted to the spinning class. Monday nights is an intense one hour workout but Saturday morning is an hour and a half killer. The class leader, Karen, gears these classes to triathletes and competitive cyclists (which I presently am not) but I am pleased to be surviving and improving. Heart rate monitors are mandatory and I can report that we spend nearly all of the class in various levels of training zones and very little in recovery. As many of you know, spinning bikes are designed to replicate some of the feel and posture of outdoor riding. What is different is the lack of elements (wind and temperature variations- and traffic!) and a high energy sound track. It's just not the tempo of the music that pushes the pace but the exhortation of the class leader who wears a mike. It's not "better," just diferent. Our instructor is hard-core and also an outdoor racer. What a workout!

WHAT NEXT?

The vice-presidential debates last week touched upon the country's energy future. I was disappointed that Sarah Palin reacted to Joe Biden's dismissal of "drill, drill, drill" with a correction. "No, Joe, it's drill baby, drill!" I was hoping to hear a more substantive discussion of what might happen over the next four to eight years to get us moving toward the new technologies.
The first picture is a scanned postcard that shows a portion of the Mahoning River Valley as it looked when I was a kid in Youngstown, Ohio (click on it for a zoomed view). On overcast nights, the underbelly of the clouds would flicker with an orange glow from these and other steel mill stacks and furnaces. Water from the river was used to quench the hot steel. The air was pretty bad, but people said that the fumes and soot were a sign of good times: everybody working. My Dad and Granddad jockeyed locomotives in and between the mills and freight depots. In the late seventies, the mills began to go away and now the stacks are gone and there is loose talk of what to do with the river, again showing signs of life (though the bottom has several feet of toxic sediment). Some of us would like to see it restored to a truly live river fit for fishing and paddling. Northeast Ohio may be in the heart of the rust-belt, but we have tremendous water supplies (even though many are too polluted to bear their full potential) and beautiful, still fertile countryside in between the expanse of urban sprawl.
The second picture shows solar panels arrayed over a parking area and the third is obviously a cluster of windmills (these are not located in Ohio). The steel mills are never coming back to northeast Ohio, but I wonder what we're waiting for (as a country) to convert our power grid. Think of all the roof space atop malls, strip plazas, parking decks, schools, and factories that could support solar panels. Here in one of the cloudier regions, we will need combinations of new technology and energy efficiencies. As a family, we drive a little less and favor the hybrid that gets 50 mpg over the vehicle that averages 20 mpg. I have a feeling we are all going to be making much bigger adjustments in the near term.
I try to imagine what our towns and countryside will look like twenty years from now. I am optimistic, because we have no choice but to change.
(postcard compliments of Kelly Bancroft)