20070602 - Untitled ....

tMail asked the question: what's on tap. As usual, he's 6 days ahead of me. I should be shitting solid particles and farting with confidence by Wednesday, so I'm up for anything, except keeping up w/ tMail.

Has the MPM gotten his bike dusted off yet? I haven't ridden in a few weeks - maybe we should save the ride for later. I could probably stand a little elevation gain - haven't seen any views from above 1,500ft in a few weeks.

One possibility is the Hale/Zealand/Zeacliff/notch loop. I think it's about 13 miles and pretty fast hiking except for the immediate assault on Hale right out of the car door (15 feet of warmup before ascending sharply).... oh yeh, and the slog out to Zealand if you want to tag that bitch .... oh yeh, and the death-defying plummet down Zeacliff .... And the nearly horizontal 4 miles along the Ethan Pond trail to end the day ... and the mile along the service road back to the car ... and is the service opened up yet? If not, add a few more miles of tedious, boring, paved road slogging from 302 ... Well, I think it sounds fun.

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend witnessed a mixed bag of activity. Team tMail seems to have dominated the southern blue hills and is well on his way to wearing out a new set of bike tires. Team Rassel kicked in the marathon relay at 3:19:27 at a blistering 7:37 overall pace.

we ranked

29 out of 430 in mixed team relay
58 out of 664 in overall team relay

Treadmill hamma'd out the first two legs at top speed while the MPM filled in as a last-minute sub for mutha, who while running a great time on his leg, finished with a record-breaking sprint to the port-a-potty. Lastly but not leastly, Rachael "The Pace" Richards ran so fast she crossed the finish before she even started.

go team.

I couldn't find Tanya Rassel (for whom our team was named) in the 2-person relay race results. Rachael, do you know anything about her team name?

Other highlights:

• "Let's dust this hair-tie" (overheard by treadmill, spoken by two massholes in reference to our very own two-legger. her reply: "the last time i heard that was from the first janitor to climb off yer mom").
• "Hey, you have shoes you can run in - c'mon, run the 4th leg with me." (said to the MPM by mutha, ominously foreshadowing his own pending intestinal collapse)
• I will never let treadmill run before me in a relay. I set out at a good clip for leg #3, only to find myself surrounding by all the lunatics that she was running with. It was like watching the tide go out.
  

Mutha spent the evening in the ER but aside from cramps today, can only think of one thing "praise Allah that the MPM brought his trail runners".

[Update 5/28: From Rachael:

Oh, by the way, Tanya's team name was "Dottie Rocket". They finished 21st out of 137 two-person relay teams. 8:22 pace; 3:40:08 finish race time

20070524 Kayak from Marshfield to Montpelier

About 20 miles of relatively shallow, wide, slow, fast, rapids, dams, falls, birds, weasels, turtles, turkeys, cows, horses, ducks, geese, etc.

8.5 hours.

That includes hauling the fucking kayak up by rope, up a steep heavily wooded slope to get around one dam, then doing it again, and at the end of the trip, hauling it up to a service road to get around another dam, through knee-deep poison ivy. I couldn't get back down to the river for the last mile, so pulled the kayak along the dirt service road to the main road. Then changed into running shoes and ran back to Sue's office to get the car.

The second pic on the right shows the kayak being lowered down to the water after being hauled up through the woods.

I'm glad I brought the 10m climbing rope.

Movie (youtube) will show up one day of course - but not today. After dinner I passed out (the two glasses of wine didn't help me stay awake). The worst part of the photos is that there is only one of any of the rapids. I couldn't deal w/ the camera while dealing w/ the rapids. The one photo (posted here) was after a brief portage across the dam in Plainfield, I took a shot of where I set in.

The rapids down in Montpelier were a lot worse, but I ended up missing the worst part by hauling the kayak along the service road. I suppose I could've got to the water if I was inspired, but I was pretty wiped out, didn't trust my left arm (was cramping up while fighting w/ the last rough section) and at that point, just wanted to go home and take a shower and wash off the poison ivy oil.

This was my first river run. Technically it was my second, but the first was just a 1/4 mile jaunt up the Cockermouth from the north end of Newfound Lake in NH. I was kayaking though the marsh at the north end, and noticed I was actually heading upstream for a bit. This was substantially more interesting.

Note on the Winooski River: It meanders like a motherfucker. At times, I went around 180° curves. It rarely exposed more than 50 yards of river ahead. The first 4 hours consisted of about 1/2 hr of rapids and 3-1/2 hrs of glassy, flat, moving river. It was pretty sweet.

Key gear: sunscreen; shitty hand-drawn map showing bridges, rapids & dams that some guy posted on the 'net - not accurate, but better than nothing; EVERYTHING in plastic bags. Also, I wore a PFD the entire time (mostly) even though the water was rarely very deep - in a few cases, the kayak got hung up on river stone beds and i just stood up, scooted forward a few feet, then continued on. I didn't use a spray skirt and didn't miss it until the very end toward Montpelier where things got substantially more exciting. The PFD had convenient pockets w/ latching clips.

Forgotten gear: bug repellent; huge bomb to nuke the fucking dams.

Apparently There's an Official Certificate!

Oh ho! Check out what arrived in the mail last week: a Certificate for the 4kers. Interesting. The best part of this map is that is lays out all the summits nicely in one picture. Not that this is necessary, but it's kind of ... uh ... visually informative.

I think the hardest thing for me is to stand on Lafayette and pick out he summits around Crawford Notch and down by the Osceolas and the Tri's.


I've had a plan for some time to create a map on 8.5x11 that is accurate in scale that illustrates just this kind of set of relationships, but has less olde tyme decoration. What's the point? I don't really know. I guess it seemed fun. Yeh, I'll get to it some day.

20070519: Miscellany At Its Best

Spring hath sprung and we're all doing our thingy ding ding dingy. We picked Travis up at Johnson & Wales college yesterday and my hamstring is still fucked. I think the PM is getting his MPM today: Master of Puppetry? tMail had a google-change and is now gMail and is doing the Iditarod or something. g-$$$ is ... uh ... what was it? Probably riding like a banshee. And then there's MadDog - laying on an operating table, having his vasectomy or meniscusectomy or something. Ahhh spring.

20070512: Chocorua? La-de-da-da?

The strongs are going to be in NH this weekend? But where?

I've got a social engagement tonight and won't be home until kind of late, but I'm up for a saturday jaunt. tMail was talking Chocorua and g-$$$ is going to attempt to competitively drown a passel of infants but we haven't heard from the Strongs or MD. MD, if you want to stay closer to home i'll join you on Mansfield.

I'm going to play it safe and simply say: "i'll do whatever" but i'll be checking this blog from time to time today from a client's offices. If we haven't figured out the logistics by 5pm, I'll check back in when I get home (around 11pm).

Update 5/14:
We didn't do shit, although we all did something in our own individual way. Spring is great, but after this intense winter, missing a weekend in the mtns seems like a lost opportunity. Too much momentum. The PM and Mrs. PM hit Chocorua after all. tMail ran and biked 800 miles in 40 minutes and I pulled a hamstring on a 12miler. Not bad, but no pics to post.

20070505: Great Bicycle Ride Dodge's Drop

It sounds like tMail, the PM and I are in, g-$$$ is giving short odds, MD is riding the fence at 50/50. (Still waiting on route decisions).

Update 5/4, 6am:
MD says he's out for Sunday. I though we were riding Saturday. Either way, still waiting on tMail and g-$ for ride suggestions. Please post in the comments what day you thought we were riding!

Update 5/11:
Okay, finally got the cable I needed to get the video off the camera. Will post pics/vids of the damn thing this weekend. See next post for 5/12 excitement.

Update 5/14:
I finally got the goddamn cable i needed and the video is posted. Now it's time to get the goddamn pics posted on some goddamn site.