My "Son" the Ranch Hand

If it isn't entirely obvious I keep a (now 7 year) blog/diary about me training my dogs and all the unlikely places it's taken me, but this is more about me than them so it seems more appropriate to put it here.

Dog agility is a love of mine.  I really like the problem solving aspect of it and it's something I can do well.  One of my dogs I got with agility in mind, the other I got to manage the first dog and to maybe do agility.

Well that was the plan.  Turns out that agility is not Dog #1's (whose name is Yoshi) passion at all and all the dogs crowding around kinda drive him a bit nuts.  The reason?  He's an order obsessed herding dog.  Unauthorized motion drives him crazy and an agility trial is full of such commotion.  All he wants to do is tell other animals what to do to the point of clamping on to them which is rather frowned upon by all of us.  He is very physically talented, and could have gone to any high powered agility school he wanted and done well (in fact for a while he was at one).  It took me months to figure out that all he really wanted to be was a Ranch Hand.  Yes, my son the Ranch Hand who is pictured here.

I'm realizing that there's a lesson in there somewhere.  You have a plan for a child or a pet of yours and it turns out that's not what is going to happen.  I'm used to the idea that children have to make their own choices, but I sort of thought that I'd have some power to dictate what my dog did and I do, but it's hard to see your dog stressed out and being a freaky boy about OMG there's a dog/cat/squirrel/etc moving, so I gave in and we both started to learn herding.

Herding is a very difficult thing for a dog to learn as the dog has to respect what the handler says, in particular, STOP moving when asked.  What this means is that we argue a lot which I first thought was not a good thing for our relationship, but then I started to notice how happy he was.  He's still a head case as he worries about not being able to control the stock and starts whizzing around in manic circles which doesn't make anyone happy (especially the sheep, though the goats aren't thrilled about it either), but we're learning and I find myself in a pasture stomping around in herbivore poop wondering how I got there.  I used to be a horse person so pastures are at least familiar, but this is still not where I was aspiring to.  I was more thinking the Agility National Championships.  This certainly isn't it, but I look at the photo and realize that he's right were he wants to be.

Ya just have to Love Facebook

For me, Facebook is an excellent source of levity and reality check.

The suggestions from my "So What Now?" post were

 - Take up knitting (From a non-knitter)
 - Keep a goat herd on a mountain (a clever combination of one of my dog's obsessions and mine)
 - Ice Hockey! (From someone who does play it and has all of her teeth.  I asked if she was doing it right and she assures me she is.)
 - World Peace

For World Peace I said that I thought I should instead work on World Power and Dominion, but dictators aren't doing so well these days.  I could go back to the idea that I wanted to start my own religion, but you have to have a certain delusional intensity and maintain it.  I guess that's true for dictators too.

So Now What?

In July I finally climbed all the way up Mt. Whitney after figuring out how to overcome a lot of altitude issues and learning to feel comfortable around snow and rock.

It's been an accidental 10 year journey, one that I gave up on a few times, but couldn't let it go and would go back every couple of years or more often (once even twice in a year).

it inspired me to learn things that it turned out I didn't need to know, but am glad I did
 - snow skills like "self arrest" which is stopping your slide down a mountain with an ice axe.
 - some skiing and winter camping skills
 - rock climbing basics
 - route finding with a map and gps/compass, and how to travel cross country.

And I got to know the Mt Whitney Main trail really well.  I'd been on the lower part many times, I've been to Trail Crest (the hard part of the climb) 3 times.  I've been on the lower part of the Mountaineer's route (Different approach than the Main Trail) 3 times which is the best view of Whitney, albeit not the easiest way up it at all (especially that last part, just before the summit, where you're climbing up a very steep pile of rocks with a very long way to fall.  I don't think I'm going to do that - I prefer being roped in on such surfaces.)

And I learned the reality of "climb high, sleep low" as it's the one thing that kept me healthy, as I know that my body doesn't do that great with altitude, even if I can climb in it.

So I'm left with Now What? I've fallen in love with Mt Shasta and am getting to know Yosemite, and working on them further seems like a natural, but I hesitate to take on another inadvertent long term project.  Shasta is a tough enough mountain that it's possible despite if I keep trying that I might never summit it and I'm not sure I want to deal with that kind of "I'm a failure" disappointment.  I think I'm more interested in attainable goals, which is wussing out in a way, but honestly I'm tired of failing, and I want to work on something I at least have a chance at succeeding at.

Mountains offer easily recognizable goals.  Get to the top, being the most obvious version among many.  And I love climbing even if I struggle physically.  But my first love besides horses and dogs is cycling, and I'm thinking i want to do more of that especially mountain biking.  And, of course, there's the dog sports obsession.  Accidentally, I have three dog sports.  Agility is my first love, but one of my dogs really likes Herding (something I never thought I'd do) and the other is partial to Obedience and Rally.

But it's fun to do other things besides dog sports, even though it makes me chronically short on time, so I want to focus on something else but don't know what.
 - running? (not very good at it, but I like being able to sort of do it.)
 - cycling?
 - skiing - yes yes
 - hiking?
 - climbing?
 - kayaking?
- something else?  I really miss traveling internationally



One thing I've noticed is that I really like climbing up something and then being able to safely go down much faster.  I'm not that patient with hiking in that respect.  Once I've climbed something, I'm ready to go down ... fast.  Hence my love of cycling, skiing and glissading on snow (way cool).  Mt Diablo has a lot of fireroads that are actually too steep for me to bike much of, but I'm happy to push the bike up just so i can go down (weeee.)  River kayaking (as opposed to Sea kayaking) has going down rapids but it's a logistical hassle (two cars to shuttle things around), and there is that drowning potential that is a little bothersome, though that should get better with more experience.

So I dither and just have short local adventures.  The most recent being crashing down Shell Ridge in Walnut Creek. Ah well, the flesh wounds are healing.

I Miss My Dad

My father recently passed away and I've asked to speak at his memorial service tomorrow.
I still haven't completely decided what to say but writing it in my blog seems to help me focus (similar to my putting my struggle with writing my marriage vows here.)

The trouble is that I'm not going to be able to get a sentance out without breaking down in tears but I have to remember that's completely ok.  It's a small service with family and another family who are very close friends.

It feels a little strange to be talking about myself, but it's a lead in and it occurred to me as I was spreading his ashes, so it seems pretty essential.

------------------------------------


Two weeks ago I summitted Mount Whitney.  My father would have been so proud.
Climbing to the top of mountains was never really his thing, he more liked to go into the mountains to decompress and relax by a nice lake.  He would climb over mountain passes like Kearsarge in the Sierras, but it was more with a destination in mind.

However, he knew that I and a neighbor before me, liked climbing and he was always supportive.  He also knew of my struggles with trying to deal with altitude sickness, and what makes today in particular really hard is that I want to tell him:  I figured it out.  Here is how you do it.  I want to tell him every part of it, and he would ask me detailed questions and we would talk about it for hours.

In short, my being able to climb Mt. Whitney was a problem to solve, and he and I both have that in common.  We love to solve problems.

Mt. Whitney was never his thing because it's a popular trail and he claimed that he liked to get away from people.  That is the biggest lie and I do regret never calling him out on it, because it's a conversation he would have loved.  He would claim this wanting to get away from people, all the while talking to every single person we met on the trail.  He loved talking to people, and quite honestly he would have loved talking to all the people who are drawn to Mt. Whitney as they come from all over.  He wouldn't have even had to have gone on the trail, but could have just hung out at the cafe and store (after he got over the idea of a store in the edge of the wilderness) and talked with the very knowledgeable proprietor Doug Sr. and his wife Earlene and anyone else who stopped in.  I always go by the store and say hello to Doug and Earlene and I know it's a habit I got from Dad even if he would have claimed otherwise.

To spread Dad's ashes Terri and I drove up from the town of Independence on highway 395 to the Onion Valley which is a trailhead for going up Kearsarge Pass which is a trip that he took all the kids on.  We walked about quarter to a half mile up the trail to find a really beautiful spot and all I could think about was: How the heck did he convince his kids to put backpacks on and climb over a mountain pass.  And this is in the 70's where blisters and pain where a guaranteed part of the experience.  Not only that, we wanted to go.  What charisma he had.  And what a great attitude.  On a separate trip his boots fell apart (the soles had come off) which is a very, very serious problem.  He managed to find a pair of tennis shoes on a mule train and they wouldn't even let him pay for them and he walked out of the mountains in Keds, and never complained.  I sure would have been, but he was like that.

Terri and I would travel with Mom and Dad on trips to Canada and I took him to Scotland once.  Every so often Dad would turn up missing and I'd have to go find him.  If someone goes missing it can be quite stressful, but after a few times of this I realized how easy he was to find.  All I had to do was stop and listen for the laughter.  I would eventually find him talking to one or more people from somewhere and having a grand time.  People loved him.  I learned so much by seeming him through other people's eyes.  As his kid, I tend to see him as smart and grouchy, and kind of an overbearing pain sometimes, but seeing the real joy that he spread was such a gift to me.  I've lot count of the number of people who have gone out of their way to tell me "I really like your Dad."  And that is my take away:  People loved him and  I do too.  I miss you so much Dad.

Summiting Mt. Whitney - What It Finally Took

After 10 years of struggling with altitude issues (on and off) I finally summited Mt. Whitney and I was not ill.  It most certainly wasn't easy, but was doable without a lot of suffering (ok, a little but nothing like it's been in the past)  It took years because I had to explore all the wrong ways to do things.  I kept at it because I solve problems for a living and it was my personality that just couldn't let this problem go unsolved.  And it's gorgeous up there anyway.

The basics are, find a way to get enough oxygen, water, food, glycogen and sleep.  Oxygen trumps everything including sleep.  In fact, especially including sleep.

• climb high, sleep low
• learn pressure breathing and do it a lot on your climb, or doing any exercise
• bring and eat food you love as nothing else will look good
• bring and eat easily digestible trail snacks that you will eat while climbing
  I use Skittles of all things, and Trader Joe's Chocolate Nibs
  This is "Bonk Prevention"
• bring and drink a sports drink like Gatorade
  This is also Bonk Prevention
• sleeping low may mean a longer summit day
• spending an extra night at a moderate altitude (but still in the "sleep low" range) seems to help increase oxygen in the blood by a few percentage points
• if Diamox helps then feel free to use it

Not getting enough oxygen is probably the main reason I have gotten altitude sickness.  Two years ago I was feeling great and ready to go for the Mt. Whitney summit the next day.  I went to sleep at Trail Camp at 12,000' and woke up very ill and lucky to move anywhere, until I got enough energy to go down.  I detail that misery here:

http://nondogblog.frap.org/2009/07/mt-whitney-last-time.html

I let it go for a year and then I realized that I wanted to try again this year, but this time I was going to go from the lower Outpost Camp (10,300') which is a gorgeous place with a lovely waterfall and none of the crowded slum features of Trail Camp.

The issue is that when you fall asleep you lose control of your breathing, and at altitude it's important to be able to control your breathing, and you're at risk of getting ill from too little oxygen.

There is just as much oxygen at altitude but there is less air pressure (A great reference on this is the book "Going Higher" by Charles Houston, David Harris, and Ellen Zeman).  The effect of that lack of air pressure is when you breathe out not all of the carbon dioxide leaves your lungs leaving less space available for incoming oxygen.  To get the CO2 out of your lungs, one very effective way is to "Pressure Breathe" which is where you forcefully exhale hard.  I have a video demonstrating it in a Mt. Shasta parking lot with an oximeter here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-ZPjlWK0jc


Pressure breathing is probably the reason I summitted this time.  Alas there is no way that manually managing your breathing is a good as your automatic breathing so my climbing was slower, as I had to pause every so often.

So oxygen is the main issue but there is also the issue of maintaining the level of glycogen in your muscles.  If you've ever had the experience of suddenly having your muscles refuse to do anything at all you have "Hit the Wall" or Bonked (not in the British sense):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitting_the_wall

To avoid The Bonk you have to keep eating and drinking (more than water).  The exercise you are doing is seriously depleting your energy stores and you need to find a way to maintain or at least replenish it.  On this trip I actually did Bonk while carrying a backpack during the first part of the climb.  I had to pause and eat simple sugars (Magic Skittles in my case) and also do a lot of Pressure Breathing too to help with the oxygen part of the exhaustion.

I find that carrying heavy things takes a lot of the oxygen in my blood and there's not much left for everything else.  After about 30-45 minutes I was ok to start climbing again.  Fortunately we didn't have far to go, but we had a significant short climb left to do.

So I made it.  I started at 3am.  Summited 12 hours later, and then got back 7 hours after that.  It was a long day, but with breaks and attention to detail it was very doable, and I stayed healthy which was the important part.

Given that I am no naturally very good at elevations over 12,000' I'm probably going to make this my first and last 14er.  I was working on climbing Mt. Shasta too, but things are much harder when snow is involved and I had a hard enough time on the trail (and Shasta is much steeper too.)  I have gotten up to Helen Lake 3 times (one time even higher) and glissaded down but I think, for me, Shasta is going to be a place to ski on which is a very nice thing.  It's a way of extending your ski season by two months, and it's so lovely to camp near the cabin and that wonderful spring.

But back to Whitney.  The answer is you can do it.  It takes care and determination and thought but it is possible, you just gotta work for the oxygen.

Shasta Skiing

Before I get into the Whitney entries I just wanted to mention that after I decided that I didn't want to go on a multi-night snow camping trip by myself, I turned it into a couple a days trips skiing which was much more fun.

The is the second of two trips.  The first one is where I made the Pressure Breathing demo video in one of the lower entries.  This time I was using the Randonee skis again (same ones and I might buy them) but struggled to find a boot that fit me.  Leif at 5th Season tells me that that issue goes away when you buy the boots as they a fitted to you by using heat molding.

This trip was two weeks later and the snow was now not fun anymore but very sun cupped.  On one day I would up snowshoeing instead.

Shasta Revelation: I Don't Want to Do This by Myself

It's funny what it takes for something to FINALLY get through to me.  I'm in the final planning for a Mt. Shasta trip.  I'm going to have to spend a couple of days at altitude to see if I can adjust to the elevation more to see if my blood oxygen level increases to more acceptable levels.

I've done these trips before both with and without other people.  The times I've been by myself I've been miserable at camp - missing Terri, missing my dogs.  I have a great time talking to people there at Horse Camp and higher, but when I am in camp I get lonely.  And after the trip, it's funny how quickly I forget that.  I've been planning this trip for a months  now and while this must have been in the back of my brain at the time I was completely committed to figuring out this altitude issue that I appear to have (low blood oxygen at altitude)  I get obsessed with the details and I forget but just now as I'm in the middle of putting everything together (see photo) - it hits me.  I don't want to go like this.  I want Terri with me.  Of course it's logistically too late for this trip so we're looking at next year but I'm amazed at just how blind I can be sometimes.

So Terri agree to go next year and I'm kicking myself for being SO dern slow at getting this.  Who knows I could change my mind again (not leaving for a couple of days) and I'll still go, but instead will likely ski or day climb, both of which don't answer my altitude questions.  We are going to Mt. Whitney in a couple of weeks so I'll get a chance to research it them.  But it's crazy making how conflicted I am about this.  I love climbing, but am unwilling to pay the price of time to make myself successful at it.

Good thing I'm not out of any money, but this is frustrating.

Pay Pal Scam

I find I'm often writing about these types of scams over and over so I thought I'd write something I could refer to later.

It's very common to the point of passe' to get Pay Pal scams in email.  They're actually getting less common as they are kinda patently obvious, and people are getting wiser these days and scammers seem to have moved on to Facebook viruses and breaking into Yahoo accounts.  That said, there are always the Junior Scammers who are just getting their fingers going.

So in email, I receive something from allegedly from Pay Pal with the Subject line "Update your account"

Warning Notification

		Dear PayPal Member, It has come to our attention that your PayPal® account information needs to be  updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to  reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension.  Please update your records before June, 30, 2011. Once you have updated your account records, your PayPal® account activity will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Click here to update your PayPal account information [link removed]

Now first of all Pay Pal says they NEVER send this sort of request, but that's not the only thing.
Key elements of a scam are:

• Vague "Dear Pay Pal Customer
• Ominous tone "Warning" "Account Suspension" "problems"
• Sense of urgency - you need to act now
• Some drivel about "protecting your account" for which their feet should be held to the fire for an extended period of time

One thing way that you know Pay Pal or your bank is really who they say who they are is that they address you by your name.  When that is missing, with a bit of practice it's absence really sticks out.
Then the ominous tone becomes a joke.  If you're not sure about something then try doing nothing and see what happens.  If there's really a problem you'll get more email or even a phone call.

Then in these scams there is usually (almost always) a link for you to click on.  The link may say "PayPal," but it's actually going somewhere else.  You can try this link:  PayPal
After you click on it, come back and just hover the mouse over it.  You will see nowhereinparticular.com, which I assure you has nothing to do with PayPal.

So when you get one of these emails if it's not plainly obvious it's a scam, you can hover your mouse over the link to verify that it's not PayPal, though you have to be careful.  Bad guys sometimes name things paypal.badsite.com, which is just them naming one of their hosts "paypal."  The "paypal" has to be right before the ".com/" for it to be legit.

Blood Oxygen Percentage and Climbing - Good and Bad News

After my father passed away my family decided to give me his Oximeter which is that small thingy (technical term) that they clip onto the end of your finger at the hospital or doctor's office to measure the percentage  of oxygen in your blood.  Given that I've struggled with getting enough oxygen at altitude, I've considered buying one before, but held off due to the $300 cost,  As a result, it's a sweet and much appreciated gift.

One of my hesitations about buying one was that I wasn't sure how much information out of it.  It's easy for me to justify the cost of a GPS as I know what to expect out of it and use one very, very often.  Knowing my blood O2 % was either going to be really revealing or really boring.

At sea level it's very boring which is what you want.  Normal readings are 90-100% below 90% is hypoxia and a potentially dangerous condition.  Hypoxia can make both pilots and mountaineers really stupid sometimes.  I live at a glorious 20' elevation so mine is 98-99% and other people around me often have 100% readings.

However when I drive up to nearly 7000' I now know that my oxygen level plummets to the 80's without a lot of help with pressure breathing.  I made a video testing this out at Bunny Flat on Mt Shasta:

The fact that I can at least temporarily fix it with pressure breathing is both good and bad news.  The problem is that the effects of pressure breathing are highly temporary, so you have to be willing to do it a lot,  The other problem is that this explains why I sometimes get sick when I sleep at 12,000' even when taking Diamox (a drug that increases your respiration rate).  When I sleep, my respiration level goes down and my oxygen level stays very low for too long.  What I don't know yet is if there's a way that I can adapt by spending a night or two at just below the altitude that I get ill.

Even small changes in altitude will affect blood oxygen as there is lower air pressure.  Even in Redding (1000') my reading was 96%.  In Mt Shasta City (3653') it was in the low 90's.

It probably is the powers that be telling me that I have the wrong hobby and I should be doing more kayaking, sailing, and other sea level events.  I love kayaking and know how to sail and live near the water, but there's something about the mountains that calls out to me.  It may be that I am doomed not to climb super high (I don't climb well above a certain altitude which varies), but I have a new toy/tool and can gather a fair bit of information with it.

The next thing to do will be to drag my sorry butt up to Horse Camp at 7900' and hang there for a couple of days and see if my base level of blood oxygen changes.

Another thing I want to check on is how is my O2 level affected by exercise.  Is my leg dragging because of low oxygen? 

This should be fun.  Besides it's the climbing season and it's gorgeous even if I'm not getting up super high.  I'm also learning to ski off piste and skiing in June is just glorious - note the crowds on Mt Shasta.

The Year's First Predatory Loan Offer

When the housing bubble finally burst (took long enough didn't it?) all of the predatory loan offers disappeared from my mailbox.  It was surprisingly sudden.  It's like they all went off to the Cayman Islands to open casinos or something.

Maybe it's a way of measuring that the market is recovering some, or that we didn't punish the perpetrators enough, but one substandard loan-sharky offer has finally reappeared in the mailbox.

Since this is more about how to read Fine Print that to pick on a particular company (even though they really do deserve it) I've taken the name out of the images.

So after some introductory statements trying to make things look legit which is just quoting stuff off of public record here is the body of the letter:

It clearly says "Lock in a fixed rate" and even uses the S-word: security.
And goes on to say that they have an A rating with the BBB (A+ being the best).  Sadly this is true.

Now (and this is the important part) skip to the bottom.  They have to say (in the finest print possible) what they are actually talking about:

(Sorry for the too wide image - I wanted it to be readable)

"This is an offer for s new 5 year adjustable rate mortage." NOT a fixed rate.
and (OMG) "with an interest-only payment"

ARMs are not horrible (more info http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/HomeFinancing/could-a-5-year-arm-save-you-money.aspx) it's fixed for 5 years (which is why they get to imply that it's a fixed rate loan), but after 5 years the rate then adjusts ever year.  If you're going to sell you house in under 10 years and if (big if) your house's value hasn't been over-inflated and is about to become unsellable for at least what you paid for it, then an ARM is not too awful, but what makes this particular loan fall into the Run Away category is the "interest-only."  Your payments are doing nothing, but making the lender rich.  And you have probably paid a fee to them as well for the privilege.

I Wanna be a Philanthropist or Venture Capitalist

This really should just be a Facebook post but Facebook makes me neglect my blog so this is just evening things out.

i think I'd be good at figuring out who to give significant portions of money to, but I don't know how to train for such a career.  And I lack the essential large pile of money.  I have fun with my itty bitty pile at the end of the year enough to be harrassed by the recipents the rest of the year, but it's just not the same.

I think I should practice saying No as that's an essential VC skill.  We have and depend on caller ID to ignore the robot callers, but if I would just pick up the phone and politely say to the poor minimum wage slave that is answering the rare call pickups that "I'm sorry, we don't accept sales calls." and "Our donation program period is at the end of the year, and no it doesn't matter what your agenda or campaign is."  (The obvious exceptions would be around election time but we'll skip that.)

It takes effort to give money, and surprisingly little effort to say no.  It's completely maddening that charities will turn right around the second you give them money and ask for more.  It's hard not to take it personally, but they are operating on their own schedules and you have to realize that you don't have to dance to the same beat.

But back to my silly ambition.  It would be really cool to be in a position to really make a difference by investing $$$ in new research or new infrastructure, or just keep my favorite artists collective afloat.

Judgment Day - Another Jonestown?

The fervor that Harold Camping has stirred up about his current prediction of May 21 being a day that at around 6pm there will be a massive Earthquake felt around the world (never mind that's not how earthquakes work - duh) and that the usual Christian cataclysmic events will occur, has me concerned.  Dynamic leaders know they carry a lot of sway but there are some ways that they seem unable to see..

Mr. Camping (who is 89 according to here) says he is 100% sure that "judgment day" (lower case intentional) will be May 21, 2011.  What he seems to lack is a plan B that he claims there is no need for and he desperately needs one.  Given that he is 89 and he group doesn't quite count as a cult (Dynamic Leader - check, Us and Them - check, Cloistered membership - nope.) I don't quite seem him pulling off a mass suicide like in Jonestown especially since Christians are taught to be passive and wait, but I don't think he realizes that the disappointment and outright anguish that his followers are going to experience.  I worry that those who truly feel abandoned are going to feel suicidal and I worry that there is a definite risk of several of them jumping off of the cliff that they're likely out waiting on.

Several of us happy heathens have been having a good time about this but there is a serious side to it. 
If you know someone who has bought into this, please check in with them.  They will not be happy campers on May 22.

The Judgement Day people need FUD lessons

I was serious Christian from when I was 16 to until I was 20.

When I was even younger, I figured out that Jesus would come back in 1983.  Even at the time I honestly didn't believe it then and now most certainly don't since I'm no longer a Christian (I'm much more a Gnostic and the rest of Christianity wiped them out so I rather enjoy holding a grudge).  To help myself extract myself from Christianity, I took a fair bit of Christian history in college and it helped me a lot with perspective.  Anyway my point is doing these calculations are not hard as there are a lot of what appears to be hard numbers in the Bible.

So now we have Judgement Day prediction du mois which is set for May 21.

This end times thing is absolutely nothing new.  The early Christians thought Jesus was coming back very soon (like within their lifetimes, and that feeling is often stoked from time to time.

Reading this fantastic NPR article here: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/12/136239062/divining-doomsday-an-old-practice-with-new-tricks
It's clear that what Mr Camping needs is FUD lessons (Fear, Uncertainly, Doubt).  The strongest fears are vague and for heavens (sorry) sake don't put a date on it, you're just going to look like the moron that you really are.

And what I can't figure out is it they people are literalists then they really have their order all wrong.

I still have a New International Version of the Bible (a very geeky bible)

The order laid out in Revelation indicates that the current wackos are just off the scale.

There isn't a rapture in Revelation by the way.  In fact the word isn't in the Bible though this reference points out the various places the concept may be referred to in the Bible: http://christianity.about.com/od/faqhelpdesk/a/whatisrapture.htm

- Christ reappears in Rev 19:11 if you believe that "Faithful and Truth" is Jesus
- lots of B Movie bloodshed ensues
- then 1000 years passes (Where is this in their calculations?)
- at the end of that then Satan is unbound
- then you finally get your Judgment Day

Do you know how much I'm looking forward to doing a: "Happy Judgement Day, All sinners present and accounted for?" Status update?  And of course there will be: "Happy Day After Judgment Day."   A friends wants to see if she can talk one of them out of the nice car that they're driving.  I look forward to see if she succeeded.

The Search for the Perfect Place

My father very recently passed away, which albeit expected doesn't make it any easier.

He wished to be cremated and my family has asked that some of his ashes be taken to the Sierras and I'm the only one able to make the trip.  My father loved the Sierra's.  He was a Boy Scout leader and took my brother's troop on trips there and later started taking my sister and brother and a family friend, then finally after a whole bunch of whining and prodding, I was included - first to the San Gabriel Mountains and then a couple trips to the Sierra's. 

Honestly, no one cares where I take the ashes including my Dad (perhaps especially him).  I could drive to the Sierra's, stop by a nice trailhead and dump them off, but of course the original inspiration for the suggestion was from the trips that he often talked about. But this isn't about him, it's about what I can live with for the rest of my life and the "where" really matters to me.  It mattered when I was distributing some of my dog's ashes and it really matters with my Dad's. It's a way of closure and the more effort I put into the process, the more at peace I will be.

But we are talking about the Sierra's here which is not always the most straightforward of destinations.  At first it was going to be really easy.  I have a Whitney trip coming up in July and I can easily take the ashes with me (it will only be some of the ashes so it won't be a huge deal bringing them.)  No problem right?

Leave it to me to over-think things.  Dad never climbed or even tried to climb Mt. Whitney even though a neighbor of ours did several times.  It was just never his thing I get the impression.  He went into the mountains to get away and the Mt. Whitney Main Trail is not the place to get away from people.  Ironically I don't mind people, I go into the mountains for the challenge and beauty of them and the people there usually don't bother me and are often welcome company.  In fact, if I'm hiking by myself having people around is a safety net of sorts - it's why Terri is ok with me going to Mt. Shasta by myself as you're never really completely by yourself.

But back to the issue at hand - making a simple task complicated.  So I'm thinking that Mt. Whitney may not be the ideal place.  My Dad was always looking for nice lakes to camp near.  Unlike me, he wasn't necessarily a climber.  He was much more into finding a nice spot to decompress.

So I'm thinking what lake?  Well there's no shortage of really nice lakes, but it has to be one with meaning.  The place that Dad spoke of over and over again was going over Kearsarge Pass (11,750') and then down into that area which has some lovely lakes like Bullfrog and Charlote Lakes.  Those would be just fine, but the trip that he talked about over and over again is the one didn't start at Kearsarge but from the West side via Bubb's Creek.  It was the time where he took us up a climber's trail (not a regularly maintained trail) into Gardiner Basin.  What made the trip memorable was not only the scenery, but his willingness to let me talk him into taking a "shortcut" up a mountain side.  We did not get all the way up and wound up spending the night on it.  In fairness, he did check this plan out with a ranger and the ranger thought it might be fun.  It was mostly a lesson for me in just how big mountains can be especially when you're 15 years old.

Here's the basic layout.  The actual trail is in pink and my shortcut is in red.  The plan was to get from Bubb's Creek to Charlotte Lake over night there and then go up into Gardiner Basin to the North.  We never made it that far and that's where we got to sleep with the Manzanitas.

Then the next day we hiked up into Gardiner Basin which should have been hard and was, but was nothing compared to yesterday's misadventure, and that's where we landed for a couple of days.  Just fishing and messing around the lakes.  I wasn't a climber then so it's didn't occur to me to climb Mt Gardiner or Mt Cotter.  It sure would have now.

So the choice that immediately occurred to me was somewhere in Gardiner Basin, but I haven't been over there since and if I go into that area I likely would like to go see something else, so I vacillate.  What makes me hesitate is that it's two day trip and there are some gorgeous places that we (Terri will come along) will pass up to do it.

I think one solution I have for the moment is to go in via Kearsarge on the East side and camp at Charlotte Lake (if it's allowed, it's a popular place).  Then just climb over to Gardiner as a day trip and come back and then if we wish, we can go somewhere else like Rae Lakes or 60 Lake Basin since I've seen neither place.  But all this rigmarole seems a little silly as simply going to the gorgeous places would be more than fine.  And so I dither.  Fortunately unlike a Whitney trip I have some time to make up my mind.

Epilogue
My sister found some photos of a Kearsarge trip we took and that trip started in the Onion Valley.  Fortunately the Onion Valley is out of Independence which is just north of Lone Pine where Terri and I were going anyway.  So we wound up driving up to the Kearsarge pass trail head and walking 1/3 of a mile up the trail till we found this gorgeous spot similar to the photo which was just perfect and it didn't take a day of trekking to get there either.

Should I Write a Book?

So I'm toying (and that's the right word at this point) with the idea of writing a book, and I can't decide whether it's worth the effort or not.  I love writing, but I'm much more the short attention span chronicler blogger type.  Every so often someone will encourage me to or I realize that I have enough material to warrant a book but then I feel the mental panic brake being stomped on.

For one, it's a huge undertaking and takes massive commitment
But more importantly, you really have to believe that what you are doing is different from what's already out there, and most importantly you have to believe in yourself.    The cool thing about blogging is you just do it.  You don't have to agonize about it.  I had to be told that I could write decently.  I had to be told that I can write humorously.  (Really?   Right now I can see that I can write boringly.)

 I guess it all goes back to trying not to give "I can't" too much power.  I hate being so fear driven.

With respect to writing that takes a log more confidence than dashing off the overly-self-indulgent blog post.  (Which I must say I am so very grateful to have such an outlet - it keeps me and those around me sane.)

Oh and another thing is that you kind of have to be a bit secretive until your book is published.  I know someone who disappeared of the face of the internet to write another book after publishing one very successful one.  We haven't heard from her since and I'm getting concerned.  It that's what it takes then maybe I don't want to do this.

Oh! and ANOTHER thing.  Writing the book I'm thinking of means going over a lot of past effort and agony and I find that I am not really inclined to look back just yet.

The cool thing about a book is that it's a great way to clone yourself.  You can only give one presentation/seminar at a time.  Granted to multiple people if that's your style, but it still limits you some.

I'm thinking maybe I should just continue to put my thoughts on the internet.  I don't do this for a living and it appears the more you give the more you get back anyway (up to a point - people do expect a lot for free these days, but that's mostly from large corporations who are perceived to be wealthy anyway).

I could do a sort of value added thing that several small companies do.  They have a large program that is free, but if you want help with it you pay them for support.  I could put the basics on the internet and if someone wanted further help then I charge for it.

Of course then there's the Google model which is to give over 90% away and charge a fortune for the other 10%, but I don't quite see that happening for some reason. :)

Anyway I'll just continue to dither.  Never mind me.

Snowboarding: Domestic Discord

I have no issue with snowboarding personally.  It looks like a blast and I hope to learn it someday.

But I've never seen quite so many domestic arguments on the slope as I have over snowboarding.
The basic gist is unless you're a professional instructor/teacher: Don't try to teach a loved one snowboarding.

The usual scenario is guy wants to go snowboarding and talks his girlfriend into coming along.  "It's easy I'll teach you."  After about the 15th fall said girlfriend is more than a little miffed, dude just wants to go do some runs unencumbered, and there usually is a screaming argument.

That's the usual scenario, but I recently saw a father yelling at his young son over the same exact scenario, which I found particularly appalling.

This was at Sugarbowl who has a great instruction program for beginners of all ages.  There really isn't an excuse for this.

When you learn to be a teacher, you learn to have some distance (I speak from experience).  If someone you're teaching suddenly decides they hate what you're teaching, that has to be ok.  It's part of learning to be a teacher.   That distance is even harder to maintain when you are trying to teach someone you care about.  You can do it, but it takes effort and that's even if you already are familiar with the professional distance that a teacher or instructor has.  If you are tied up in the outcome then OMG you have already lost, and odds for a domestic meltdown are very good.

Do you and your family a favor and sign up your loved one up for lessons.  If you want to be involved, take the same class.

My Skiing Date with Harry and Jerome

So I haven't been skiing much since my avalanche class last yesr
http://nondogblog.frap.org/2010/01/avalanch-course-pt-i-basic-overview.html

The reason is mostly because of being forced to negociate terrain that was beyond my skill level that I detail in::
Snow Greving: http://nondogblog.frap.org/2010/01/snow-grieving.html
and
The Weirdness of Minor Emotional Trauma:
http://nondogblog.frap.org/2010/01/weirdness-of-minor-emotional-trauma.htm

But it's been a year and I thought it was time to start back up on my ski training since I'm still stuck on the blues and want to be much better.  The day before I was supposed to go I suddenly found myself stressing about it and couldn't figure out why.  Then I remembered all the fun that I detail above.  But my anxiety mystified me as simply going skiing doesn't mean that I'm going to run into someone insisting that I do something that I'm not ready to do. Then I realized that I was going to take a lesson.  The second that I told myself that I didn't *have* to take a lesson, my stress evaporated.   It wasn't where I was going as I'm going to Sugarbowl which is a place I'm very familiar with and is not Squaw (the place of all the stress though it would likely be only stressful at very particular locations of Squaw if even that.

What was so anxiety producing was being in a position where others were depending on my to complete something I wasn't qualified to so.  For some reason, however silly, signing up for a group ski lesson was causing the same stress.  Never mind that they would just stick you in a different class if you needed it.  Totally irrational, but whatever.

But I've had a lot of lessons and I know what I need to work on.  Specifically my right turn.  If you look at my ski tracks it looks like a backwards 2.  Very nice smooth left turn and choppy abrupt right turn.  My left leg gets fatigued easier because my balance isn't quite right and I'm over using it.

So once I realized that all I needed was mileage I was suddenly ok and in the morning Harry Dresden the wizard (not Potter) and I took off for Sugarbowl.  The Dresden novels are by Jim Butcher and I get them via Audible.com.  Harry is a bit of a smart ass and is forever getting his butt kicked by some manevolent other world creature.  He's just as likable as Harry Potter, but older and has different angsts (what wizard doesn't angst).  Oh and the magic is really cool.  The only thing missing is Herminone.

So today's project was to spend quality time with Jerome (Hill).  Jerome is a mostly intermediate area in Sugarbowl and there is a good variety in the blues that it has.  For the longest time in the past I would just go up the chairlift and down the main trail "Trailblazer." but there is a lot less traffic on the slightly harder."Broken Axel" and "Caleb's Way."  I haven't worked up the nerve to try "Central Pacific" and twice I've tried the backside "Sidewinder" trail and both times completely regretted it as there are some steep sections where I don't have time or the leg strength or the nerve to turn in time (it's kind of narrow too) and I go tumbling.  Oh and that "Pioneer Trail" green is green only until it starts to curve and then it gets scary steep for beginners.

And that's how I spent most of the day until my left quad got too tired.  Once that happens, my technique goes all south and there's really no point in continuing.  I think I'll do another day like this one and work up to Central Pacific and try to find a way down Sidewinder without being sideways.  One way is to hop the turn, but I really don't know how to do that well.

Then I could go back to Mt Lincoln (tougher blues that I've fallen on) or Mt Disney.  Mt Disney's blues have the fun aspect of leading you along and then dropping you off a steep section.  I talked about it here, but here is the photo again.  I know there has to be an easier way down, but haven't taken the time to find it.  It takes a while to get over to this part of the park so it's easier to just stay in once place and work on skills instead of investigating which is fun, but a different thing and I have easy access to Sugarbowl so it's not like I will never see it again (hopefully).

I hate: "I can't"

I've noticed that nothing quite makes me seeth nearly as much as "I can't" - especially when we're talking about physical limitations.  Having trouble with what I thought was elevation just made me nuts.  I kept thinking that I should give up and do something more productive rather than going up to elevations that make me miserable on a regular basis.  But I never could just drop it and now that I've figured out that the issue is over-exertion and not necessarily elevation, I'm really glad I did.

Verifying: My issue really is Over-Exertion and not Altitude

In October, I climber Mt. Hoffman to test out of theory that maybe I don't have altitude sensitivity at all.

And I go into a great bit of detail about it here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2091225&id=1013097814&l=cdab32dd10

On Black Friday (Day after Thanksgiving) I did go snowshoeing at Mt. Shasta just to verify this theory that it's not altitude at all but working at too high of a heart rate.  This is a trail I know well and I always seem to have trouble around 7200' to the point that I could tell you the elevation without having to look at my gps.  That day I climbed to 7600' before turning around due to the weather deteriorating, but I had my verification.  At no point in time did I hit the wall   I had to stop often to let my heart rate come back down as it would want to climb over 150 very easily, but doing so made it so that I could easily climb it with no energy taking leave of my muscles.

As I said in the previous post this is life changing and now I have something I can train for.  It was so frustrating when I thought it was elevation as there is no way to train for elevation - your only hope is aclimatization.  I'm quite proud that I stuck with trying to figure this out and that finally after 10 freaking years of working on this I finally see a way through it.

There is another point that I had been noticing is that if I'm magically dropped at a higher elevation, likes taking the cable car up to Squaw High Camp at 8000' I'm fine.  If I hike up to that level I often have trouble.  Noticing that was a big clue that altitude probably isn't the problem I thought it was.

I'm now working with a training on increasing my endurance, first by running and then incorporating spin and climbing.

The trouble is that I'm perfectly happy with my heart rate going over 85%.  I've the endorphin junkie and it's proving to be quite a challenge to learn how to work more at a maintainable level.  Even today I was letting my dog tow me up Mission Peak and my HR was 160-165 and I was fine for the 2 miles we were going up, but that isn't workable for very long.  In face even on Mission Peak I may have run out of energy at that rate.  I will be routinely repeating the climb without a dog encouraging me to charge, so I'll have to see how doable this is.

My dream is to be able to climb and keep up with a group.  If I can do that then I can climb Ranier and other Washington and Oregon Mtns and maybe even some Canadian and Alaska ones.

But first lets do Mission Peak at a normal HR.

Ambivalence about The Hunger Games

My book club is reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins which is ostensibly for older kids and is hugely popular.

I raced through the audio version and was more than a little obsessed by it and I was a little concerned about that obsession.  You see, I could have written a very similar version of this book and fortunately for my own mental health, I did not write any such thing.  I had two very different responses to this book and at first I was thinking it was ambivalence and now I realize it was the reaction I would have had as the rather brooding, morbid child I was and the relatively happy adult I am now.

The book is a deliberately distressing topic that involves children being forced to fight and kill each other like gladiators where the last one alive is the winner. 

As an adult, I liked the book as long as I was able to forget that many of these characters are children (the main characters are older which felt ok), but the second that it became clear that there were also children under the age of 16 involved, I most definitely did not like it at all.  The character development and imagery are excellent, and the plot twists were generally ok, but I mentally kept pulling out and rewriting it because I've had a lot of practice mentally creating these scenarios and it's why I had to sort of hold my experience of the book at a mental arm's length. The feeling I was getting was that of what I imagine a junkie's is.  Not wanting to go back for too long to the mental place that I was at as a kid. 

As a pre-teenager I was having crushes on girls and the occasional boy, (but mostly girls) and I had no context for understanding those powerful feelings at all.  All I knew is that I really, really liked whoever I was crushed out about and I wanted to spend time with them and I wanted to tell her how I felt even if I didn't know what I was feeling (I didn't come out until I was 20, so I really was at sea here.)

So what a better situation to tell someone you care about them than a life and death (mostly death) situation where one of you isn't going to live anyway?  At nigh as I was going to sleep, I would mentally spin scenarios where I and another girl or even several friends were in a prison or concentration camp and were being systematically tortured and killed, with all the adjunct death scene conversations.  Yes, I was a really dark kid, and am lucky to come out of it only with a tendency to get depressed (I think I got addicted to the feeling of your Serotonin level lowering when you get bad news that slowly sinks in - It feels really good for a very brief moment just before things really get awful)

When I understood the scenario of The Hunger Games, I mentally started to shake a little, in more ways than one.  The kid who wanted to experience that all over again, and the adult who most definitely did not.  Listening to the book was actually very easy and really difficult for me.

The other thing was that kidlet was really really opinionated about the plot and what should happen next.  "Well if I were writing it, then this should happen. or this, or this, or maybe this."  It was actually pretty exhausing, though I as a adult, who knows how to write, was happy to help briefly before calling time on the whole mental exercise.

My reason for holding it at bay is not wanting to go back to that dark place again.  I fear getting stuck there, even though I don't think I would.

And then of course there's the envy/jealousy factor.  Susanne Collins had the mental fortitude to turn this all into a book series.  I didn't.  Part of me knows that I certainly could have done it, but the price was and is much too high for me.

Though this does bring up.  Why do we write such things for children?  Is it because that's what they want to read?  I certainly would of read it as a kid, but I certainly would have been (actually am) a die-hard Harry Potter fan and there's a very marked difference between the incredible intensity of the Potter series and the distressing premise of The Hunger Games.  Harry Herminone, and Ron are forced to fight evil, but they are not exactly forced to outright kill other kids.  Think how different things would be if Hogwart's was in a bloody war with Slytherin?  Feels completely at odds doesn't it?

Anyway, The Hunger Games movie may become a reality in 2013 or so (Lionsgate owns the rights as of this writing).  Some rather interesting trailer-like items are on You Tube right now but I don't know what they have to do with anything.

There are other books in the series and I don't know if I'm going to continue or not.

How to Make Yourself Really Hard to Find - Go the Other Way

Michelle Yu was on a training hike on Mt. San Antonio.  Her plan was to climb Mt. San Antonio then go East along the Devil's Backbone and then at the Baldy Notch take the ski lift down.

For reasons no one will know, but can pretty much be only explained by being lost in the fog/cloud, she didn't go East but instead confused everyone by going North towards Dawson Peak and fell into a very steep area called Fish Fork Canyon.

Her body was located at 7900' and the lowest elevation between Mt. San Antonio and Dawson Peak is 8600'.  At a minimum she fell 700' but she could have been much higher (like 9400' or even 9600' or even the summit though that seems a stretch).  Not surprisingly the cause of death was multiple blunt trauma.

This is a good lesson in how easy it is to be confused when you can't see the area around you.  This is a route Yu had taken many times in the past.  This is not a choice she intended to make as there wasn't any obvious discernible reason to go North.  I have been totally confused when I heard she was in Fish Fork Canyon as when I looked up where Fish Fork Canyon was it didn't have anything to do with where Yu was intending to go.  It took this photo from this KTLA video broadcast to really make it clear.

No wonder it took four days to find her.  Even if I had a dog with me who said the trail went North I probably would have assumed the dog was mistaken since I know the planned route was East.

This is one situation where a GPS is preferable to map and compass.  If you're in a white out a map and compass don't really help as you can't see other features to orient on.  However even a compass would have made a difference.

The Michelle Yu Search: Use the Dogs First

Tragically Michelle Yu was killed early this week from a fall during a training hike in the Mt. Baldy area.  The coroner's report is not out yet, but it's more than likely that she slipped on some ice in a narrow portion of the area called the Devil's Backbone and fell 1000'-2000' to her death.  Her body was located by a helicopter in Fish Forks canyon.

Given that the details of the search wouldn't of affected the outcome I feel that I'm not being terribly tacky in doing some arm chair hindsight looking about the search

When people go missing in the mountains near me I tend to set up a Google Alerts Search.  This time because there is more that one Michelle Yu, the keywords I used were: Michelle Yu hiker.  As a result I have read every internet post that uses those keywords and am familiar with what the news broadcasts included which included details of her route and I was able to review photos of the trail.

Though she was training alone, her route was a common one and well known.  She was going to climb Mt San Antonio then traverse via the Devil's Backbone over the the Mt. Baldy ski lift and ride it down.  She was seen at "the top."  Which was implied to mean somewhere before the traverse.

The Devil's Backbone is a narrow in places ridge with a series of very steep ravines and canyons along both sides.  A map of the route can be found here (her route is the left portion going up to Mt San Antonio and then across to the right).  Photos of the trail can be seen here - in particular page down to the 6th photo and imagine that with ice on it - yikes. While her hike was not a technical one, she was surrounded by a whole lot of rugged terrain which is why is took 4 days to locate her body.

After a day or two the broadcasts started mentioning that 4 dogs were now being used.  This totally got my attention.  "Why only now?  That's completely backwards."

I know that 30-40 people were searching for Yu and that's very admirable, but even the news casts admitted that a dog can do the work of 40 people.  Granted the terrain was too steep for most dogs, but trail was not.  Effective and judicious use of tracking dogs could have saved a ton of time.

One sheriff spokesperson called the search a needle in a haystack.  I disagree.  Yes, it's a needle in a haystack, but you can make the haystack much smaller.  I have only trained one dog to track so I'm no expert but still these questions haunt me.

We know that she was seen near the top of Mt. San Antonio and intended to traverse over to the Mt Baldy ski lift.  She never showed up.  The traverse is essentially a straight line and she was training, not on some adventure.  She was on that traverse, so it doesn't take a genious to figure out that she has probably fallen.  So why not drop two dog/handler teams via helicopter at the start of the traverse?  And hold the gung ho searchers back before they go tramping all over the track.  Have the dogs follow the track until it stops.  Then start searching there!  Release the gung ho humans and let them try not to kill themselves in the steep areas.  I know holding humans back when time is ticking is just awful, but being patient and let the dogs do their job could really pay off.

Mixed Feelings about Wiki Leaks

I am a fan of Wiki Leaks and I believe very much that information wants to be free.
The work that they do exposing suppressed information is phenomenal and disturbing.

This CNN video montage shows the US killing innocent civilians including 2 reporters.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/12/02/natpkg.wikileaks.role.assange.cnn?hpt=C2

And that's very important information that should be released.

However, honestly I have very mixed feeling about releasing diplomatic cables.  We need to provide a place where our diplomats can speak freely, and to have that compromised is worrisome.  This isn't military information that someone is trying to hide.  It's diplomatic opinions on the stability of leaders and regimes.  While I will no doubt read them, I'm not sure how that helps us, but I can guess how it hurts.  We already know China and Iran and North Korea are difficult to deal with.  Maybe releasing this information is just going to make things harder for our diplomats and I'm not sure I think we're better off knowing that the diplomats agree that those countries are a pain.

The Creative Drive; Art and Music

I wonder what the drive to create things is.  It's a drive and you can have it even when you don't have the skills to do what you want to do and it can make you (me) crazy.

I'm a good writer, a good photographer, I'm great visualizing things.
I learned to paint decently.  I'm not the best drawer but I do ok.

But I struggle with audio and music.  I love music and learned guitar at an early age though stopped due to a hand injury though I might be able to do it some now.

But what I'd love to be able to do is composition.  Hearing Cirque du Soliel is an exercise in ecstasy and torture as I really would love to be able to create that kind of music, but even after studying composition in college some my mind just doesn't seem to work that way very well.  It's a struggle in a way that I have trouble describing, but I'm sure it's similar to people who struggle with visualizing things.

But I don't think I should ever accept "I can't" as by not accepting it I accomplish some very rewarding things.
I can paint, I can run, I am working on being able to climb to altitude, I'm competing in herding with a talented dog who has behavior issues and many people would have given up on him.  All these things I had to work at and overcome mental ":I can't" obstacles, and it means so much more when I succeed.

And I've have more training beyond college and guitar lessons.  While my hands were injured I couldn't play an instrument, so instead I learned to listen to music very carefully.  Someone told me that the brain of a musician listening to music is much more active than the average person and I can totally understand why.  When I'm listening to music carefully I can follow the components.  What is that violin doing?  How about the guitar or the drum, and that vocal is incredible, and is that 3/4 time, funny it's not a waltz but just feels like it...

But there's still a block.  I can analyze music up to a point (some things are too subtle for me to follow), but I am just amazed at the incredible complexity that Cirque or Mozart come up with.  Not to mention I find a lot of classical music kinda boring (save for Herr Mozart), so I was thrilled when Cirque appeared.

Now I'm realizing what I love is film, play, and even TV (yes, Survivor) music, but I really don't know how to move forward with my enjoyment of it.  One way is to get a lot better at the piano (and consider replacing my sorry old completely worthless family piano - though my mother would kill me if she found out.), but what I love is the full effect of all the instruments at once.  Real composers can hear the full effect in their head.  That's a skill I've yet to develop and I'm not sure how to do it.

There's a scene in a Juliette Binoche film (possibly Alice et Martin or maybe it's the oh so cheery Three Colors: Blue) that I just love.  She is composing a piece with her partner.  He is playing what they' have so far and she says "Wait Wait" in French "Attend attend..." and then makes a great suggestion of what should be added.  I would dearly love to create this way.  In DVD special features I love the ones where they talk about the music and the process just as much as I love how they talk about creating the animation and the art.

When Machines are Unsupervised - autogenerated web sites

You know it happens when you mistype your bank's internet address and you get this weird site where everything is just a strange web search. These sites are just generated by a machine using only keywords and it's maddening.

Well here's one that's gone even further.

This is a site in China that's apparently using purely machine translation:

http://www.frbiz.com/

Pretty much any link has an almost understandable title, but when you get to the content it's utterly strange.

I found this site as it was mysteriously the very first match to my Googling
windows virus hiding places

http://news.frbiz.com/windows_system_the_virus_most-275070.html

Which i can assure you is not comprehensible even to a trained professional.

The second match is only slightly better:  It's clearly also Chinese.  What's interesting is that it's probably well worth deciphering (this one is sort of understandable) because the Chinese have some of the best in the world hackers so they would likely know.

http://www.softcov.com/anti-virus/windows---system-the-virus-hiding-place-ten.html

Another Blogger's :"Stalker"

Another blogger was describing a really funny story of her having a puppy dog type [human] stalker for a period of time while she was at an out-of-town event. The "stalker" was harmless and it was just someone who always arranged to be where ever she was while she was there.

I turned to another blogger (the blogger density was a little high at that moment), and said "She has a stalker. How come we don't have stalkers?" The other blogger made some mention of boring (she was referring to herself which is funny because her blog is definitely not boring) and the one with the stalker does have quite a funny blog and a good size following.

I can't figure out if I'm jealous or not. On the surface, I felt relief that it's not me. I've had to deal with human male puppy dogs in college and it's pretty awkward. It helps that I'm older and married now. But deep down there's an entsy whitezy tintzy part that is envious.

I have to keep in mind that we have vastly different audiences. Her blog is entertaining tales of the adventures of her and her dogs. My main blog is an intensely geeky dog training diary dedicated to addressing the training issues that I face with my dogs. It's not high entertainment mostly - it's me training my dogs one of them who we've been working through serious behavior issues. I'm also so possessive of it intellectually that it's not hosted by blogger, it's on my own site. So there's no commenting and the only way I know people are listening is if they tell me in person or via email.

Then there's this blog: The Non-Dog blog were I rant/whine about whatever the hell I feel like. While it is often entertaining, it has no focus as it's about 3 different blogs in one. And I'm thinking of starting another focused (ha - fat chance) on writing short fictional vinettes based on small bits of reality.

So no blog stalkers. As far as I know. This really is a good thing I must keep reminding myself. I also have to keep in mind that there are particular times when I've chosen not to blog about something as I really didn't want to deal with the truly dangerous types. I do this for fun - I don't need to get hurt or harassed about it. Funny how the Tea Partiers or Sarah Palin don't count as dangerous - yet.

The Follow Through Part of the Brain

So why is it sometimes the "follow through" portion of the brain doesn't seem to connect with anything else?

I was looking all through my parents house for some mail that an insurance company said that they'd sent (and I had no reason to doubt them) I had gone through all the stacked up mail on the living room, the dining room, beside the computer and all its stacks of printed email (there's an age distinction right there - I only print things if I need to take them with me or write on them.) No sign. I addressed the issue with the vendor as best I could anyway, but having mail disappear when i just went through piles and piles of it really seemed strange.

My sister gave me a clue. She thought she saw mom stash mail into the ginormous pile of coupons that Mom likes to go through. (She doesn't actually do anything with the coupons. I've just decided it's her way of shopping.) She couldn't have put mail in there. Right? Could she have? I finally asked. Mom is there any chance that there is mail in your coupon stack? "Oh yes. It looked important so I put it here."(Allegedly to give it to my brother but that never happened). In that stack, were over due notices, a cancellation letter, and a letter that I'd asked to be sent a year ago. "Mom these are really important pieces of mail." Talking to a wall. My dog listens to me better. This is someone who does not have dementia at all, just doesn't get it sometimes.

I grabbed their phone and quietly left the house and proceeded to rant about it to my sister, while I was standing on their driveway. My sister was sympathetic but amused. Mom had put it aside so that my father wouldn't bury it on the kitchen table, and that my brother should see it, but that part (the follow though) didn't happen. Never mind I can find things on the kitchen table. Never mind that burying something in a different pile usually doesn't help, and offers no protection.

Is this our fate? Do parts of our brain stop talking to each other?

I've set up a box titled "Mail" where my mom should put important looking mail into. I explained the idea a few times. I know it's not going to work, but I have to try.

Parental Issues Again

I haven't blogged about my parents for a while and it's been a nice break, but I really need to now.

My father is becoming more forgetful and I'm dreading that I need to convince him to see a Dr. about it. If there really is something wrong, there are medications that can help but I have to make a good case without scaring him too much. Being evaluated for cognitive skills is not a slow process and it will take more that getting him to his regular Dr. - he's likely going to also have to see a neurologist or a Dr who specializes in evaluating seniors. My Dad is renowned for arguing with doctors (he has a PhD in Electrical Engineering so he's started pulling this "I'm Dr. Clary" crap - never mind that I have more medical knowledge than he does.) and he's just getting worse about it.

Doing some Googling is just stressing me out. While there are 4 possible medications he has to be actually diagnosed with Alzheimer's (the A word that I've been avoiding) for him to be on them. If it's just Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) then there is no medication and the solutions are more along the lines of maintain a health lifestyle, don't drink a lot, and stay organized. (Sigh).

I'm dreading this conversation and I know he's very fearful about it. For his whole life he's been the Alpha Male smartest person in the room, and it's been hell on him. And therefore it's been hard on everyone else.

For whatever reason, I am the one he's the least argumentative with. Probably because I'm the youngest. Anyway convincing him of difficult things usually becomes my job out of necessity. I so do not like this role, but this is something I need to do and if I don't try I will regret it for the rest of my life.

Why is the government the enemy?

GOP has done such a good job of making the government the enemy.

Which is amazing as it was the lack of government limits that allowed the banks and Wall Street to create this most recent economic crash. How do they do that?

A friend is fascinated with how some politicians are so good at using fear that they can convince people to vote against their own interests, like tax cuts for the wealthy, which will hurt them financially because their will be less money for the government to support little things like schools, and streets.

The Anxiety and Angst of Electronic Storage

This has got to be either pathological or totally human.
My reliance on storing a lot of my life electronically is causing me some existential angst.

In particular with any creative work like photos or writing.
When you have a photograph or a book it exists. You can hold it. but it's also hard to replicate and you can't instantly share it with 300 of your friends which is a highly addictive thing and something I longed for for years.

Electronic storage is a whole lot like life. It can vanish without much warning. Yes, you can make backups, but what if you vanish and the knowledge of how to get to that information dies with you? What then? Some poor soul is left with trying to untangle things and most likely just starts canceling accounts or deleting things. This is probably as it should be, but it's actually causing me some stress. What if there are important photos that someone might want? Certainly even within my family we are systematically casing my parents house for relevant photos. Should I make printouts of every even remotely interesting photo? From the film days I have several hundred photos and I'm always sort of cursed having them, but now I kinda like that they're there. They take up space and no one can make them go poof at the press of a button.

I'm rarely reminded that I'm in my 40's, but maybe this is one of those types of things. That fear of just disappearing even though that is our fate. What I find interesting is that the one thing that I really find reassuring is that I have created a few large paintings that I like enough that i've decorated my house with them. They command a certain presence and there's something about large paintings that seems to earn a certain respect. It makes me want to make more even though I go through a lot less pain with photography. Maybe that's why they get more respect, I can't just click a button, I have to sweat some to make them.

But it's funny. Why do i care? I think it's that fear of just disappearing. Of wanting to control things after I are gone. I keep thinking that I should leave long instructions by my computer about how to get into every account and photo and writing location (like this one) which might not be a bad idea, but it might be easier just to make real copies of things and also make sure everyone knows where the sites are. It would also really help if I had just one photo site, but I have too much stuff for that, so most of it is stored locally and I'm now reminded that I need to back that disk up again.

And just even coming up with a plan is stressful and send me off in to the same "Why do I care?" cycle again. I need to ask other people what they think but this is never an easy question.

The Tea Party is a Phase

The breathtaking hypocrisy of the Tea Party (The Threatened [White] Party - people on gov't assistance protesting against the gov't), is just so astounding that the only way I can wrap my mind around it is to believe that it just has to be a phase. Given the average age I don't think I'm too far off. We'll know more in 20 years. Actually we'll know more in a shorter period of time I think.

Rolling Stone has done a couple of articles about them. The latest one being here.

TPer's are so very Us and Them. Even to the point of Good gov't assistance for US, and BAD gov't assistance for all those lazy non-white people who are just sucking the Good people dry. Sigh.

The only odd thing is the people manipulating the TPer's are younger (Paul, Palin and O'Donnell come to mind) and know what buttons to push. Fear sells especially in the Red state areas. And utter stupidity doesn't seem to slow them down, however you know that the people pushing them into the spot light are much smarter. It's enough to make you paranoid, but I believe in our internet age where information travels very quickly and it's much harder to control it - which is why you see a lot of conservatives arguing about facts and creating weird fantasies like Obamacare Death Panels (TM) that they think if they keep repeating enough times it will make it true. Ironically these are tactics that Hitler and Stalin used.

The Amazing Race in the UK - Shouting at the Screen for Fun and Amusement

I and a huge fan of The Amazing Race. I've seen every one of them.
But they are rarely in places that I've been to, save for US places like San Francisco and Boston and Hawaii. Until now.

In the first episode they went to the UK, landed in Heathrow and went to Stonehenge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge) to pick up a clue and on to Eastnor Castle in Herfordshire (http://www.eastnorcastle.com/).

I've never been to Eastnor which looks lovely when someone isn't dumping water on you, but I have been to Stonehenge and in particular I've driven to Stonehenge.

I've driven in the UK on multiday trips around 3 times. Driving on the left side of the road is a significant adjustment and was a very difficult adjustment the first time I did it. While I was able to drive ok, it took me quite a while to adjust to having the entire rest of the car on my left side. The thought of a bunch of jet-lagged, rushed Americans most who have never driven in the UK, loose in cars that are not small was more than a little alarming and I'm really surprised that there weren't more issues (or accidents) that they had.

When I've driven in the UK (this is pre GPS) I used a 1/2 inch thick driving atlas. Several of them stopped and picked up a map, but that's probably not enough without help as Stonehenge is not off a major motorway, but instead on A-303 (A map is here).

If you're not in a hurry, it's fairly easy to find and a lovely drive. As you might guess our racers did not have quite the nice time. Lots of complaints about no signs which prompted much shouting from me. "They are there if you take the time to read them!"

But to be fair, looking at Streetview there are not giant "Stonehenge this way" signs. Just the highway numbers so you have to know where you want to go. And in the case of the Stonehenge turn off the highway sign is painted on the street (you can see it here.) That never occurred to me before. Your navigator has to be able to see what's painted on the streets and The Amazing Race puts the second person in the back seat to accommodate the camera people. That's a huge handicap.

Though once you get there I assure you you won't need a sign. This is what you see from the highway.

Anyway it's a great episode (the parts at Eastnor Castle are both hilarious and traumatic), and if you see this while the season is running you can watch it here:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race/

Hitting the Wall: Rethinking Altitude Sensitivity

I went yesterday doing an experimental day hike to Mt. Hoffman in Yosemite and pretty much everything I was assuming about altitude is wrong and this is very good news.

I went over to Yosemite to do a day hike of Mt Hoffman which is 10,850'.

In the past

I would hike until 7200' or 9600' and suddenly all the excess energy or oxgen (wasn't sure what) in my muscles would fizzle away. I could feel the it just dissipate or drain away with me going "wait, come back!" The 7200' limit I consistently hit on Shasta when I hiked up from Bunny Flat and also on Ralston Peak. The 9600' happens also on Shasta after spending a night at Horse Camp and it's also happened on Lassen (though Lassen seemed to happen more around 9000'.)

So I had some elaborate theory about there must be some change in the air pressure at that level. This is how you get all sorts of weirdo, crackpot theories and superstitions. You think you are seeing something consistently, but in fact you are managing to cause it in some other way.

Recently I've been working on a problem with my running. My foot would drag after 1 mile which was somewhat heat related, but the biggest factor was working too hard and letting my heart rate go up to 90% bpm which is not maintainable. Cutting it back to 85% of my max bpm made a huge difference and then I could go much further without a leg drag.

So I thought it was worth trying this out at altitude. My plan for today saw to attempt to climb Mt Hoffman (10,850') from the May Lake trailhead (8800'), but wear a heart rate monitor and keep my heart rate at 85%. I also took Diamox and Aspirin to increase my chances of success.

It short it WORKED!! I summitted and had energy to spare, and all my altitude theories are totally wrong.

So what has been happening is that my heart has been working too hard while climbing and my heart is not pumping enough oxygen to keep things going and I run out of energy which in cycling circles is called "bonking." It's worse at higher altitudes because the lower air pressure makes the oxygen harder to come by. I'm an endorphine junkie and I love working hard when exercising and the feel of my heart beating and being able to keep going hard.

I had to stop a lot to keep my heart rate down as especially at altitude it always wanted to climb over 85%. It makes for slow climbing and while I'm almost always never jealous of 20-somthings, their heart rates can work much harder without working anaerobically, and they can go racing by me. Hmphf. In theory, over time, they can run into the same problem and do on real mountains like Shasta.

What's cool about this is that I can work on my fitness level at sea-level and that will no doubt help and it much easier to obtain.

My original plan was to spend the night and do the climb again to see if there was a difference if I had adapted more to the elevation, but that's not necessary.

So what was happening? Why the consistency in elevation?
I think it was just a fabulous coincidence. That moment happened when I "hit the wall" and it turned out to be about the same amount of time that my heart rate was working too hard. In Shasta it happened more than twice, but I was leaving from the same location and working just as hard.

This is so fantastic as it means that the world has opened back up to me. I know I can now summit Whitney. Shasta is another issue as you have to be able to climb it within a certain amount of time. I'll work on my fitness level over the Winter and see if I can make a difference in the amount of time I can run before my heart rate climbs above 85% when either running above 4.0 mph or at some incline.

I might also try my Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) snowshoe of Mt Shasta, but if I'm able to climb higher there could be an avalanche issue and I might be better off going over to Hidden Valley and up towards Shastina. Or just make things simpler and go to Lassen Park and Brokeoff Mtn which is right at the park entrance (the road through Lassen is closed in Winter.)


References

At first I thought what I was running into was called Oxygen Dept, but it's sounding more like:

Hitting the wall (Glycogen depletion)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitting_the_wall

What's interesting about this is:

Athletes engaged in exercise over a long period of time produce energy via two mechanisms, both facilitated by oxygen:

• via fat metabolism and
• via breakdown of glycogen into glucose, followed by glycolysis.

How much energy comes from either source depends on the intensity of the exercise. During intense exercise that approaches one's VO₂ max, most of the energy comes from glycogen.

So with low oxygen glycogen production is conpromised.

A little more info here
http://www.wellsphere.com/exercise-article/heart-muscles-do-not-get-tired-during-exercise/237117


An excellent description of the exercise process is here:

http://express.howstuffworks.com/web-quest-exercise.htm

Oxygen debt which I first thought I was dealing with is the term as it's more referring to the process when the body is at rest.

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Oxygen_Debt

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-oxygen-debt.htm

http://www.personalpowertraining.net/Articles/oxygen_debt.htm