Thanksgiving day hike

Well - if you come on vacation with me, you usually get suckered into going on a hike. This time we went on a trip to Land Between the Lakes to a path around Hematite Lake - it was 2.2 miles trip.

Garrett admiring a beaver's work.

I like the way the light casts shadows through the trees on this picture.

This was kind of a neat little path across the front of the dam. Little squares to jump over. Howdy and Garrett fell part way in a one point - but it wasn't very deep. After the hike we stopped by the local tourist trap - Patti's settlement. Here is a turkey that somehow survived the festivities.

They had a nice Christmas display, here is Christopher

Thanksgiving 2009

Once again, Thanksgiving time.

This year we arranged for more of our family to be together. We rented two cabins on Land Between the Lakes (it's the slow time of the year) and 22 of us got together. All of Brian and Julie's family, Matt and Julia's family, Paul and Allene's family and Mother and Father.

What would thanksgiving be without pies?

Adam and Suzannah argue over who gets to sit in the chair (the answer was neither of them, they got their own seats at the kids table)

We're all glad that Trent could bring his good attitude and appetite to the meal.

Julie had surgery on her arm right before Thanksgiving, it was a bit rough on her.

Lots of us gathered together.

Jesse's first Thanksgiving. Only a few weeks old.

Kids table

Aubry

Parents table

Load of fun overall. Paul's children got a little sick and had to leave earlier than planned. Julia coordinated most of the cooking and did a super job despite running out of her allergy and asthma medicine. Mom just got to play with grand kids mostly.

Back to real life

Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween race

Well,

Today is Halloween. The girls are off with friends - still pretending they are young enough to trick or treat. Sonora is a hobo and Katie is a kinda boar thingy with long silver and black hair. She made the mask out of latex - sculpted the thing and made a cast etc. I'll post a picture eventually.

Noone comes trick or treating where we live - so it was quiet here.

Today was a 10k race in the area (that's 6.2 miles). I set a goal of doing this race. In addition to just being an ambitious goal, there were some major side benefits. One was that prior to race day - the medical center was hosting a free fitness test and the other that there were $10,000 worth of door prizes (I didn't win any - but hey - I had a chance - right?). The free fitness testing thing was OK - but nothing real special.

Anyway, I've never run a 10k race before - and I was a little nervous that I could run that far. 2 weeks ago - I did a 4 mile race - and finished it - but was real tuckered out by the end. I took a vacation day on Tuesday and went running at Mammoth Cave - I like to do that each year. This year has been really rainy - and not conducive to hiking. The leaves changed real rapidly and now they are all falling off unfortunately. I ran for 90 minutes at Mammoth Cave and did maybe 8 miles. My legs and knees were sore the next day but recovered well enough. I figured that if I could run 8 miles on a bunch of hills on a gravel trail, I could do 6 miles on the streets.

There were LOTS of people in the race - my number was 1411 - and I saw some people that had numbers as high as 1700. All I know is that after they fired the starting shot, it took me 30 seconds just to get to the starting line and that it was constant people all the way across the street for a huge part of the run.

Some people ran in costume (not me - I would really overheat if I tried that). The guy right behind me was dressed as frankenstein - green painted face - wig - costume the whole thing. You can see him from the back a few seconds behind me in the video. Everyone erupted in cheers when he ran by (I wasn't under any illusion they were cheering me on - though we were so close it seemed like it)

I finished in just under 60 minutes which was my ambitious goal (I would have been happy with any thing under 65 minutes and thrilled with under 58). I got real tired after about mile 5, and was worried about making it, but got a second wind as I saw we were getting closer to the finish line.


5k season is about over until the spring, so no more races for a while.

Happy Halloween.

Sometimes it just pays to show up

Often, when I'm giving advice to young people I make the point that a lot of success in life just comes with showing up to where you're supposed to be on time. A small thing, but something that escapes many.

A similar theme is "just show up". That advice came home to roost today - to my benefit.

Those who know me, know that I dearly love Mammoth Cave National Park. I'm particularly fond of the trails. I noticed a month ago that they were holding a 5k at Mammoth Cave and well, I just couldn't resist going. It was one of those 5k's where it was required to register in advance (some federal law about collecting funds in a national park I guess). So I mailed in my check for $12 and felt obligated to go.

For several weeks I've really been trying to pick up the pace exercising, I wanted to do decently on this 5k. I've done pretty well exercising - averaging the equivalent of 4 miles a day jogging. I'm a terrible runner though - it has to be my worst talent. No matter how much I work at it, I'm just slow and never get much faster. Still, it's a good way to burn calories and I really love the park, so away I went.

On Friday, I took the day off and Julie and I went canoeing in the park, it was about a 3 hr paddle, we just enjoyed floating down the river for the most part. On the way home I tried to guess where they would do the 5k. I figured they would run out on the road and then head back on the bike trail. I noted a moderate hill before the loop back would occur.

I got to Mammoth Cave about 35 minutes before the race and ran a bit to warm up. Then I asked what the course was and heard that there was no loop - we were heading all the way to Sloan's pond. I was flabbergasted! There was a hill on the trail out that way that was so steep! When I ride my bike there, I put it in the lowest gear and stand up the whole way with the tire spinning gravel all the way up. I gave up on setting a personal best time upon hearing that and just set my goal to be keep running all the way up the hill. I knew I would have to take the first 2.5 miles relatively slow to achieve that goal.

Well the race started, and I stayed in the back, knowing that's where I would end up anyway. It was pretty much as I expected. As we got closer to the hill, there was a skinny fellow running next to me - maybe 50 years old, we just kind of ran side by side. Before the race I believe I had commented to him that the last hill wasn't a hill - it was a mountain.

Well I barely made it up that hill, but I kept my legs going, with the other fellow just beside me. We jogged the last .5 miles after the hill together and then sprinted to the finish line. He pulled away at the end and beat me by 2 seconds or so. When we finished he thanked me for just running along side him. He was very friendly. The card they gave me when I finished said 71 (meaning I was the 71st person to finish). It was about 31 minutes and 40 seconds. I finished my last 5k on a real flat asphalt course in 30 min and 55 sec so I wasn't too disappointed with that.

Well, since there was no loop, we were kind of stuck at the end of the trail. There were supposed to be busses to take us back, but I didn't see them. I saw a lot of folks take off jogging back to the start of the race. I didn't really want to run another 3.1 miles, but everyone else was doing it. That, and I knew the local highschool who sponsored the race would have to pay $2 a head for the bus ride back - so I decided to slowly jog back.

As I started back, I came across a guy named Nick who works at the park and had run the race. I had seem him at other 5k's in the area. He noticed I was looking at his cool watch. He told me it had a built in GPS in it and that it indicates pace and miles run etc. We got to jogging together and talking and caught up with his friend Sue. Sue was working at the park for the summer, so we all jogged along together talking a bit. One other lady joined up with us. We were about the last people to return. We just talked and chit chatted the whole way as we jogged at maybe 5 mph. I virtually never jog slow enough to talk, so that was different for me. They were very friendly and it was very enjoyable. The 3 miles went by quick enough. At the end Sue had hitched a ride for the last mile with some rangers and Nick stopped to talk to somebody he knew who came riding up on a bike. The other lady and I talked for a while. She's new to running, but was telling me some things she had learned and applied about interval training. When we finally got back to the Mammoth Cave hotel parking lot and stopped jogging, she thanked me for running the whole way, saying she never would have done it on her own. I kept running because she was. Peer pressure can sometimes be a good thing.

Well, I usually never stay for the awards, but I did this time. 5k awards are kind of interesting. They award medals for the overall winners, then they give out awards for the top 3 females under 14. Then top three 15-19, top three 20-24 etc. etc up to age 65 or so. Then they repeated for the males. When they got to my age group, I was intrigued to see what fit looking 40-44 year olds look like. This first guy was this tall stringy dude. The second a shorter version of the same with a cool flourescent wicking running shirt. When they got to third place they said "Brian Schuck", to which I exclaimed "no way, how did that happen!?". I mean really - there were probably only 10 people that came in after me.

Well, I actually won a medal in a race. Sometimes it pays just to show up. I had a really nice time jogging and chit chatting with those folks in one of my favorite places, and to top it all off, I got a medal. Sure - it doesn't mean much - you could just as easily said I got a medal for coming in last. But it topped off a real nice morning.

I'm worn out now, must have jogged 6.5 miles today overall, hope to sleep well tonight.

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?