A most remarkable storm came through. We've had 6" of rain this month, that and 90 mph winds took down our two 35 year old oak trees in the back yard. We're assessing the damage now. It could have been much worse.

Raging River Tubing

Normally, I'm the sort of fellow that thinks that as a society we've grown too risk adverse when it comes to recreation. You know what I mean; having to wait in long lines at the water park just because you can't go down the slide until the person that's just gone is all the way finished going down the slide, silly age limit rules etc.

Well we just got back from a water tubing trip that was just a tad too dangerous. I mean we all survived - just with lots of bumps, scrapes, bruises, rashes, tears (the kind that come out of your eyes AND the kind that can expose more than you would care to from your swimming suit), lots of memories too.

I'll run you through the whole adventure - it was an adventure.

I was looking for things to do with the kids this summer. One thing we've done in the past that the kids have really enjoyed is going white water river rafting. I was looking into that, and of course, once you get a guide involved it gets quite expensive. So I thought longingly on that tubing trip I took when I was 12 on a river in Northern California. It was kind of fun and pretty.

Turns out there are all sorts of tubing trips not too far from where my brother Paul moved. Paul moved in there around 6 months ago, and we haven't visited yet, so this seemed like an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone -- as it were. Also, I figured it would give the cousins a chance to interact more.

Paul's kids are all quite a bit younger than mine, but you know - good to get cousins together. Paul thought going was a dandy idea and we agreed to do the tubing on a Saturday after his kids got out of school.

It was a nice trip on out to Townsend Tennessee from Oak Ridge. It took less than an hour. Townsend borders right along the national forest. It's a long skinny town, with the mountains on one side and a river on the other. It also had half a dozen tubing rental places. Places that advertised all day tubing for just $8 - unlimited shuttle.
Paul brought his son Christopher and daughter Aubrey. I brought Levi, Katie and Sonora. Julie is in Turkey, so she couldn't come. It also happened to be Levi's 17th birthday. Here is a picture of the rafting place we went to. It was a professional enough place. Clean, good staff, tee shirts, a place to eat, nice shuttles. As we got ready to go, I asked Levi if he really wanted to go down the river wearing glasses, he took off his glasses and put them in his shoe in the car. Turned out to be a pretty good move.

When we got in there, they mentioned that the river was up quite a bit and recommended everyone where life jackets. One of the people at the register spoke with an odd accent. Sonora practiced some Russian on her, and turns out she was Russian.

7 people fit in a van with tubes and there were 7 of us - so that worked out nice. They dropped us off just before the national park started - guess it's illegal for them to operate in the park.

We walked down a bank and looked at the river. It had a view ripples to it, but looked nice. The picture shown is actually the slowest part of the river, nice, tranquil, peaceful - maybe a little boring. Anyway - we got in the water and it was COLD! If you sat in the tube right, very little of you actually got wet. We figured we wouldn't have a lot of splashing fights on the way down.

About 2 minutes into it, we got to the first set of rapids. They were fun, a little exciting but nothing spectacular. One little problem, Paul hit a rock just the wrong way with his tube and just plain popped it. That left me with 6 kids, two of whom weren't the best swimmers and were quite young. Great....

Well Paul ran back up the bank to hitch a ride back to the tubing place, and we just kept going. As we went around a bend, we saw several tubes out of the water and wondered why? Well I was trying to keep even with the kids in front and got off on the side. I ended hitting the side of a tree on the bank and got knocked off my tube. No big deal except my tube got stuck on the tree and the current was too strong for me to swim back to it. Levi was coming down and I yelled at him to knock my tube loose. Levi got knocked off his tube too by the same tree but did rescue my tube.

Around this time I realize that Aubrey is screaming and that there are people on the bank tending to a person with a really banged up and bleeding knee. Aubrey lost her shoe and was really upset. She was sure her Mother would be really really mad about losing the shoe. I got her pulled over to a safer spot and someone found the shoe floating and got it over to us. She kind of got sucked into an eddy somewhere in there which was scary for about 5 seconds until I hauled her out. We finally got her out and since she was the youngest I figured I would follow her close from here on out. I got her back in the current, when I realized Sonora was sitting on a rock in the middle of the river quite upset. She had really scraped up her leg and feet and was out of her tube. I helped her get back in her tube, but she was ready to be done right there.

About this time Levi comes along and I see him standing up in the knee deep water with very wide eyes and a pained look on his face. He said "I hit my head". Levi couldn't get back situated in his tube either, I drug him over to an area where the water wasn't moving too fast, but it was about waist deep and it just took a long time to get him in his tube. All along I'm thinking, Levi could have a concussion, but probably not and Aubrey, Christopher and Katie are who knows where. I got Levi going and then headed down stream head first in my tube as fast as I could to catch up with the younger ones. As I leaped on my tube, my loosely tied swimming suit - loosed a little too much - and though the sun was out, whoever was behind me for those next few seconds got to see a rather full moon too.

Paul got back in the picture then, good thing. Everyone was OK but a little worse for wear. The rest of the trip wasn't too bad, I think I got knocked off the tube a few times. I eventually paddled down far enough to catch up with Christopher and Katie. Katie said the trip was fun and inspirational - we were at the real slow part of the river by then. Christopher wasn't happy at all. I asked him how he liked it and he said "not very much". Oh well. Sonora kept asking when we were going to be done because she wanted to go home NOW. That's when I finally gave up on the idea of going down a second time.

Well we pulled out of the river at the appointed spot and trudged up the hill. We gathered and assessed our injuries. Here's Levi's head and Christopher's leg. Katie managed to get through relatively unscathed - she called floating on the river "inspirational".

We grouped up, licked our wounds and ate lunch. Somewhere around then, Levi noted that he could see a bit too much of Christopher's "leg" from the back, Christopher's swimsuit had a tear that uh - well showed a little more of an area that he would have preferred not be seen.

We did get the benefit of seeing a really cool looking bug. I took a picture of it for posterity's sake. A few moment's later Christopher smashed it, which I didn't really think was called for - oh well.

Lunch was good - just what we brought. We saw several other victims go in and buy tubing tickets. Paul commented that it was a good thing they weren't handing out customer satisfaction surveys. One of the groups was a bunch of girls in bikinis. Oh my, wonder how they fared?

We left - without using our unlimited passes anymore and went to the local dollar store - which was one of the only stores in town - and bought peroxide, bandaids, cotton balls etc.

On the way out of town I stopped for two minutes at a home made dulcimer shop. Would have loved to have stayed longer, I need to get a dulcimer some day, lovely instruments.

There was also a cool place that did wood sculpture - some quite large.

To sum it up, I asked Aubrey if she liked it:

She said "not very much"

I said "but at least you'll remember it"

She said "YES, I'll tell my grandchildren about it! and they'll tell their grandchildren!"

Julie Art

Julie's been using her vacation time productively. Most of these art projects have been done over the past couple of weeks, though some are from previous times. Julie had really taken a liking to Fresco and keeps coming back to it. We have probably a dozen tiles in our house now - scattered about. Next week she goes back to the lab at the University so she might not get much art time for a while.

Here's one of Levi to match the one's of Sonora and Katie. Her first attempt isn't shown, the Fresco set up too fast and the paint didn't take well. This one's nice though. Below are the two of the girls that she did during the summer.

Scarf for Levi for Christmas

Small bird fresco - Julie likes painting nature scenes on Fresco. It's a very different medium, once you start you have to keep going until you're done or the underlayment sets up.

Julie made 5 scarves on her loom, this is one of them. Don't have pictures yet of the others.

Another bird Fresco.

Some berries, a small Fresco

This one turned out nicely - a moth.

This buffalo was done a while ago - during the summer/fall
This one was made during the Fresco class and got displayed at the university for a while.
This is the second version of this one. The first one was displayed at the university and the university president liked it so much that he bought it from her. One of the art teachers wanted the same picture, so Julie made a new one. This one came out darker. Fresco has interesting properties that make it hard to reproduce things exactly.

Here's what the original one looks like. See the similarities and differences?

Christmas Vacation 2008

Perhaps, you are one of those types of people that can keep all their things perfectly organized; that when you get some kind of new gift, you know exactly where to put it; people that are so organized that nothing is ever left laying about and nothing ever looks cluttered.

We're not those type of people.

This year - for Christmas, we decided that we needed to collect experiences instead of gifts. Now don't get me wrong, there are still a few small gifts under the tree, maybe 1 or 2 things per person, but it's not like the tree has a whole lot under it - and Santa isn't going to be bringing anything else for us. We have enough. We're cluttered enough. We're so busy, we sometimes forget how to have fun. So.. this year for Christmas we decided to just have some unique experiences as a family together.

In part, this was inspired from a vacation my family took about 25 years ago. My parents wanted us to experience a white Christmas, so we rented a cabin at Lake Tahoe. I don't remember too many specifics of the experience, other than I wanted a new wallet for Christmas (canvas exterior that would velcro shut), and that I had to duck to get up the stairs in the cabin. But I remember that we went - and I remember that Christmas.

We live in a part of the country that unpredictably gets some snow. When it does snow, it usually isn't much, and it's gone pretty quick. Our kids have never gone skiing or snow tubing. Our first thought was to go rent a cabin off to the north where there would be snow and then do some snow activities through the Christmas time frame. Unfortunately, weather didn't really cooperate with us, 10 days before, it looked pretty unlikely that if we did rent a cabin in northern Ohio, that there would any significant amount of snow there, so we dumped that plan. We thought about Tennessee and the mountains and West Virginia, but driving through the mountains when it's potentially icy isn't any fun, so we started searching around for other opportunities.

Julie found a really unique opportunity: How about going to an indoor water park for Christmas? We looked at several different places, but settled on one Katie had gone to on a band trip up at Sandusky Ohio, right on the Great Lakes called the Kalahari. As we looked at it, we figured out how we could also pass by a ski resort that made it's own snow. With that we had a plan, no reservations, but we had a plan.

As we got closer, the weather started to look problematic, Monday was going to be super cold, Tues and Wed rainy. We pretty much decided to do our Christmas fun, before Christmas because more things were open - so we kind of looked at doing everything in the Mon-Tues-Wed time frame. We decided that it would be better to snow tube in the cold than the rain - so off shopping we went. Walmart had nice cheap deals on gloves, ski masks and thermal underwear. We insisted everybody have on 3-4 layers top to bottom. We ended up having to go to Gander Mountain for some better stuff for Julie and Sonora, and got boots for Sonora and snow pants for Julie.

Our plan was to get up, drop the dog off and after I got off the phone from an important phone call, head off around 9:00 am for the ski place which was supposed to be a 5 1/2 hour drive.

Well ..... Sunday at 2:00 pm, Julie gets in the car to head off to church and the van starts and immediately dies --- repeatedly. I go get them in the little old Tercel, and ferry them over to church. I figured out how to drive the car with my foot on both the brake and the gas (if you ever take your foot off the gas, the car would die). Well obviously, that's not what we wanted to do for our trip, but at least I could drive the car enough to get it fixed.

Monday morning comes, I go get some last minute things at Walmart (it was about 20 degrees outside). Then I went looking for a repair shop. I found a place that was open and could take the car immediately. So.. I rush back to the house and get the van, drop the van off and get Julie to come pick me up so I could get back to the house to call someone that I urgently needed to talk to at 8:00 am.

By 8:45 miraculously, they had found and fixed the problem with the car - some buildup on the throttle body. $83 later, we're back to the house with a functioning car. Finally by about 10:30 am we're off on vacation - late but manageable.

One of our goals was to create memories by eating at memorable places. We were in a rush, so stopping at a real restaurant for lunch wasn't in the cards.

Julie drove - and I read a book aloud to all who wanted to hear - Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians - young adult fantasy book. Quite a decent book. We got to Louisville and it was already 12:30 our time, 1:30 Louisville time, so we pulled off and one of the first Louisville exits. We were going to go to Dairy Queen, just because - but next door to Dairy Queen was an establishment called Frisch's Big Boy. We decided to go there and got some pretty good food that still got there fast. Here's some pictures of the place. The girls didn't like the Big Boy statue too much. Julie and I had Chicken Fajita wraps and they had brown rice and whole boiled wheat in them - it was quite good.


On our way we went - this time with me driving, I pretty much got to do all the rest of the driving. Things slowed down in Cincinnatti, as you might expect and then about 30 miles into Ohio, we departed from the Interstates and took to the back roads. Sometimes we got quite held up in the cities we passed through. In Springfield we got completely turned around.

Anyway, somewhere around 6:30 pm Eastern Time we got to Bellefountaine which was about 6 miles from the ski place and where we had reserved a hotel. They had a real nice staff there for a Super 8, we got dressed up until we couldn't hardly walk or put our hands down and went off to the ski place, the temperature was 12 degrees.

The kids were too nervous to try skiing, so we had previously decided to just try tubing. We bought 3 hour passes and away we went. This place had around 8 runs each about 1000 feet long. They had a little conveyor belt which took you up most of the way. At the bottom, they would put down floor mats to slow the tubes down, before you got to the final mounds of snow at the end of the run.




It was cold, and it was fun. After about 90 minutes, we were the only 5 left. The staff was grinning and bearing it, but you could tell they just wanted to go home and since only idiots would come tubing when it's close to 10 degrees outside, they figured noone else would show up.

Levi and I started tying our tubes together, the inertia was great, and we would get a lot farther down the runs. Finally we figured out how to position ourselves for the least resistance. Once we got the hang of it, we would make it all the way to the end of the run, and tap on the mound at the end. The staff would respond by putting more mats down, and we'd try it again. Once we really got going and slammed pretty hard into the mound. It was really fun. The guys at the top wouldn't let us go down as a double anymore after that - they said they were reprimanded. Levi really figured it out and he kept getting all the way to the bottom despite all their mat work. In his final run, he really slammed into the mound at the bottom.

We left before our 3 hours were up because the girls were done, but we got our money's worth. Everyone had a great time. We made it back to the small community of Bellefontaine at 9:45pm local time, only thing open was McDonalds. We really don't like McDonalds, but it was better than nothing. We saw two deer hanging out on the grass by McDonalds.

We went back to the hotel. Our family is an internet family, so 3 of us got out the laptops, to get on the internet. The hotel had a lousy wireless system, and it was just too much of a hassle to use. After we got off, Levi must have been the only one in the hotel to use it, he downloaded an episode of Stargate - it took 5 hours, but we were asleep for it.

In the morning, we had a good breakfast, and then off to Sandusky for the water park. That trip went quite well, the towns were pretty small and we made it there in a little over 2 hours. Most of that area of Ohio was just rural farmland, growing corn mostly; old farm houses and barns. Not too different than Kentucky, just less hills.

We found the hotel/water park and went on to the lobby. On the way, we crossed over a big wooden bridge and saw something odd to us. Ducks and Geese, just sitting on the ice or in a small break on the ice. It was cold out there. I don't see how sitting on the ice would be any fun, but I guess ducks don't mind.




We got our nice pricey tickets to the water park and off we went in to change. The park had it's advantages and disadvantages. Is was quite expensive, but it did have good rides. The entrances to the rides/lines weren't laid out as well as other places I've been too. The first couple rides we went on were the best, not much wait, nice and zippy - faster than other rides I'd been to at a water park. There were several other good rides, but the lines got really annoying, they weren't terribly efficient at moving people on through, and at least on 4 different rides, they shut the ride down as we were in line because something went wrong with the ride. Don't want to make it sound bad, it was great and everyone had a fun time, though Julie was quite cold. One of the more memorable things for us was going into the indoor-outdoor hot tub. Have you ever been in a hot tub, when it's snowing on you and it's 20 degrees outside? Very memorable.

After about 5 hours, people were done, and off we went again. There is no easy way to get to and from Sandusky, so we headed back south through the countryside. As we neared Columbus, we started listening to the radio and they talked about 100% chance of light ice falling, until midnight.

Before we left we had decided that if the opportunity presented itself we would go to some restaurants that served ethnic foods. Julie wanted to try a nice Thai restaurant, so I found one that got good reviews on the internet called the Thai Orchid. We arrived, the ground was a little slick, but not bad.


In we went, Levi and Katie ordered Thai fried rice, Sonora ordered pina colada shrimp, Julie got a seafood soup in a coconut milk base with Octopus in it. At the very last I randomly picked something off the "Authentic Thai" page of the menu that said (hot) after the name of it and didn't include ginger or curry.

Within a very short period of time, our meals arrived. Mine was a mixture of shrimp, pork, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, onions and chile peppers in a sauce and rice. REALLY HOT! It was great! Julie's had a real nice slow burn to it too. The fried rice also had a slight burn. Everyone really enjoyed their unique food.

We got back in the car, and since things still looked good on the road, headed off the 100 mile trip to Cincinnatti. We thought that if things went well, we'd drive all the way home. About 15 miles out of outer Columbus loop, we came across an accident where someone had slid off the rode. At that time I started noticing that my wheels were occassionally slipping, so we slowed way down. The rain came down and instantly froze on the ground. The whole interstate was down to around 15-20 mph and it was just getting worse and worse. I pulled off at the first exit that had a gas station, since the last thing I wanted to do was run out of gas. Across the street was a sign for the "Royal Hotel". We fueled up, and then I just walked around on the road and said "I'm done". It was very icy.

We drove across the road to the Royal Inn. The parking lot had massive pot holes in it. I could barely walk out of the car, the asphalt was so covered in ice. I made it to the lobby and got a room. The guy handed me a key. There wasn't even in key holder, just a key. Someone came in asking about the TV. The guy said that all they had was antenna and they got 5 channels. He charged us about $55 for the room. I slipped on the ice getting back to the car. Somehow, I managed to drive the car about 80 feet over to our room. The kids were impressed with how I rotated the car 90 degrees in a controlled slide. I literally couldn't even walk to the door, the asphalt was too steep, although steep is a relative turn, it was really icy.









We formed a little chain, throwing bags up to the walk and sliding them in. We had to keep going back out to the car to get this and that, and even though the car was only 10 feet from the door, it was a major adventure each time. Levi had to hold onto a column and then extend his hand so I could grab it and slide up the very gradual slope to the room.

The room was clean, and the heater worked. That's about everything nice we could say about it. The toilet bowl was stained orange. That should have been an indicator. Julie turned on the faucett to get some water to brush her teeth. After about 10 seconds a massive sulphur smell started coming out of the fixture. Guess they use well water. This necessitated another trip to the car to get the remaining two bottles of water. The bathroom, was really cold, and there must have been something wrong with the sub floor because it bowed when you walked on it. The door to the bathroom would close, but you had to kind of hold it up funny to get it to align with the door frame (guess the sub floor sinking made the frame non-square). The sink counter top was ... unique. Can't even describe it. I've slept in far worse than that, but not on the North American Continent.

Julie refused to sleep beneath the sheets. The beds looked fine to me. Hard, but fine, but pretty much everyone just slept in their clothes on top of the comforters. I went to sleep with ear plugs in. The others watched Stargate. At 2:00am I woke up and noticed every one was asleep and all the lights were on. I looked outside, it looked less icy, but I figured there was no point in leaving just yet.

I woke everyone up around 5:00 am. We wanted to get back to get the dog before the vet closed.

Driving home was uneventful except that it pretty much rained and rained the whole way. We got home at 10:30 am local time, got the dog and overall had a wonderful time.

Most memorable experience:
Katie: the snow thing
Levi: the snow
Sonora: Getting stranded in the hotel & the water park
Julie: Thai food
Brian: Thai food & driving on the ice

I think we'll look back on this vacation fondly for years to come.

Merry Christmas to all

Thanksgiving at the cousins

We had a great trip to visit the cousins in Missouri. Getting together for Thanksgiving is something we've done for several years now.

Nathan likes pie.