When we left Theo for an overnight at a pal's house in the middle of a blizzard, I was pro-active and also left his xc ski equipment. I was unsure about my ability to collect him the next day by auto. Sure enough, Monday dawned with snow piled quite deep in the streets and several intersection looking impossible-by car. So I convinced Eli to strap on his skies with me and we took an urban ski over city streets to our friend's house 1.5 miles away. Theo was already in his ski gear when we pulled up- he and his pal had been skiing around the block- so we just plopped the essentials from his overnight gear (snow boots and his turtle) into my backpack and hit the road home. It was not perfect ski conditions- we found it easiest to get into a tire track and kind of mince your way forward- but it was fun. And that time that the snow plow was bearing down on us with no sign of stopping and we had to dash across Snelling and then dive into a snow bank to get out of its way- we'll remember that for a while. And it will be a happy memory because the plow did indeed turn at the last minute, sparing us an ugly death. I did dream last night of the lights and the noise and the mayhem as the plow got ever closer and we were unsure the driver either saw us, or cared. And the best part is that our neighbor Pat watched the whole thing, shaking his head, wondering what kind of nonsense his neighbors will think of next.
I do prefer a quiet ski through the woods, but when the city is blanketed 1.5 feet deep in fresh powder, it kind of begs you to strap on the skies and get out there. Ildar wanted us to rig up a rope and drive around, dragging him on his snowboard behind the car. And we might. But we'll have to wait for the next blizzard for that opportunity.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Blizzard conditions
This past weekend another blizzard hit the cities. Hard. As in it took us over 2 hours to drive from the western part of Minneapolis back to our home- a drive that usually takes us 25 minutes. But most of that time was spent outside of our vehicle, helping push other cars out of snow banks. It took us at least 30 minutes to push our friend Deb's Prius down her alley. It would have probably been easier for us to just pick the little thing up and carry it. But we got it there with the help of some pretty fabulous 11 year old boys. Eli was totally game even though he was still in his ski boots, had no mittens on, and was duct-taped into a pair of my pants. Don't ask why he was duct-taped into my pants. It had something to do with his intolerance of wearing snowpants inside. Anyway- there he was, in this crazy outfit, putting some serious shoulder into the prius with a sweet grin on his face. We got Deb's car packed into the garage, left Theo there for an overnight (in her house, not her garage) and drove one whole block before we stopped again to help a woman try to get her car up a steep little hill into her apartment parking lot. It started with just Jon, Eli, Ildar, and I, plus one stranger. He snuck away after 15 minutes had netted us 2 feet of forward movement, but soon we had 3 other strangers pull over and give it some muscle. It took at least another 45 minutes to get that sucker into a parking spot, but we did it with one final triumphant push, then high fives all around, huge thanks from the car owner, and we were all gone- dispersed back out into the storm. That's what blizzard conditions will do. It will afford complete strangers the opportunity to pull over from their busy lives, put some shoulder into someone else's problem, smack some high fives, then get back on our own treadmills- perhaps a little sore in the muscles, but also a little more confident in the knowledge that there are people out there willing to help when you're in a fix.
We saw a couple more cars stuck on our last mile home, but several of us were desperate for a toilet break and we knew we still had our alley ahead of us. Luckily Jon had perfected the manic-shovel by then so our alley was conquered in just a few minutes. Eli then scaled the back steps, blustered his way through a drift that came up to his chin, and crashed into the house, doing a hilarious dance while I tried to release him from his duct-tape belt in time for him to get to the bathroom. He made it. Barely.
We saw a couple more cars stuck on our last mile home, but several of us were desperate for a toilet break and we knew we still had our alley ahead of us. Luckily Jon had perfected the manic-shovel by then so our alley was conquered in just a few minutes. Eli then scaled the back steps, blustered his way through a drift that came up to his chin, and crashed into the house, doing a hilarious dance while I tried to release him from his duct-tape belt in time for him to get to the bathroom. He made it. Barely.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Effervescent
I was sitting on the couch with Theo this morning right after he woke up. He was in a good mood. A real good mood. Being squirrly and funny and sweet. I held him tight under the blanket, thinking about how he did things large- there's no half way with Theo, stomping or glowing, no real in between. Luckily, most of the time he's glowing. So I was sitting there thinking that at times like this he's really almost effervescent. And just as I was thinking the word effervescent, Theo looked up from where he was snuggled in my lap and said, "You know mom, sometimes I feel like you're the clam and I'm your pearl." Despite my issues with being called clam-like (really- isn't it an oyster?? which for some reason I feel is slightly more glamorous than being called a clam...), I squeezed him tight and told him I couldn't agree more.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Loppet-ing
This family undertook a good deal of loppet-ing this past weekend. If you're not familiar with a loppet- it's apparently a swedish word for race. And here in Minneapolis (Ok. I'm a st. paulite and only claim Minneapolis when they do something cool like the loppet) there's a great weekend long party called the City of Lakes Loppet. There are events all day Saturday and Sunday, but the real showstopper is the Luminary on Saturday night. This year I heard there were close to 10,000 people out on Lake of the Isles, following the trail around the edge on skies, on foot, on snowshoes, that is marked with hundreds of luminaries (ice sculptures with candles inside) and some fire-dancers, and cocoa stops, and trees hung with candle lanterns, and the gosh darn Candian embassy giving out maple cookies. Go Canada. It's downright magical. Until you lose your kids in the crowds and realize you may never see them again. But then they buzz by you with a pack of friends and you have them in your sites for just long enough to quell the panic, and then they're gone, out of sight... but you know it's a friendly crew out on the lake in the dark, and people would help kids find their way back to parents if needed. I think. I guess I'd rather not test it. This year we attached a blinking bike light to the back of them, which was such a great idea that about 3000 other people did the same thing, which somewhat diminished the effectiveness. Despite my nerves about losing kids and the fact that I have to work to control the urge to yell out, "It's cracking! I hear the ice cracking!" just because I think it would be interesting to see what would happen to a crowd of 10000 thrown into a panic and because I wonder why the ice doesn't crack with all of us out there...despite all that, it is truly a magical experience.
But the loppet wasn't over for us with the luminary. Jon signed up for the 33K freestyle race the next morning and I got talked into a last minute 10k tour with the daughter of good friend MaryBeth, who got called out of town to help an aging parent. I love the idea of this race- the 'short cut' from Theo Wirth back to Lake of the Isles, but 10k is still quite a distance. I did some sandbagging, saying, "Sure, I'll ski with Siena MaryBeth, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with her...hoho...haha..." Thinking secretly to myself, yeah right, she's 11. She may not be able to keep up with me. What happens if I get cold from having to slow down to wait for her? I suppose it's my duty to sacrifice and wait, however. Ha. Turns out Siena is one of those real fast skater girls who was apparently born with a pair of skies attached to her feet. She showed no signs of effort and I was all out dying just trying to keep her in my sites. I couldn't talk. Couldn't stop at the rest stops. Just had to keep thrashing forward, trying to keep that light blue jacket on the horizon. Luckily we were skiing on a narrow trail with about 1000 of our best friends, so every now and then Siena would get boxed in and I'd be able to make up some ground. In the end I could still see her at the finish, but barely. She was nice enough to wait for me on the other side of the finish line and then show me where our car was parked. I was too tired to be able to get my bearings and figure out just where we were in uptown. Boy. An 11 year old. Despite the blows to my confidence it was a lovely event. Great weather, fabulous snow, and a challenging, fun course. And for the record, I went back out that afternoon and did another 10k with a friend while my boys had their ski lessons. While old Siena went home to do her homework. Likely story. I will mention to noone that I was tucking myself into bed that night before 9.
Jon reports that his ski was lovely. I just love that there are 33 kilometers of uninterrupted ski trails in the city. And the trails are through woods, up and down serious hills, over a bog, through a tunnel, and around the lakes, then right up a street and into Uptown. Lovely.
But the loppet wasn't over for us with the luminary. Jon signed up for the 33K freestyle race the next morning and I got talked into a last minute 10k tour with the daughter of good friend MaryBeth, who got called out of town to help an aging parent. I love the idea of this race- the 'short cut' from Theo Wirth back to Lake of the Isles, but 10k is still quite a distance. I did some sandbagging, saying, "Sure, I'll ski with Siena MaryBeth, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with her...hoho...haha..." Thinking secretly to myself, yeah right, she's 11. She may not be able to keep up with me. What happens if I get cold from having to slow down to wait for her? I suppose it's my duty to sacrifice and wait, however. Ha. Turns out Siena is one of those real fast skater girls who was apparently born with a pair of skies attached to her feet. She showed no signs of effort and I was all out dying just trying to keep her in my sites. I couldn't talk. Couldn't stop at the rest stops. Just had to keep thrashing forward, trying to keep that light blue jacket on the horizon. Luckily we were skiing on a narrow trail with about 1000 of our best friends, so every now and then Siena would get boxed in and I'd be able to make up some ground. In the end I could still see her at the finish, but barely. She was nice enough to wait for me on the other side of the finish line and then show me where our car was parked. I was too tired to be able to get my bearings and figure out just where we were in uptown. Boy. An 11 year old. Despite the blows to my confidence it was a lovely event. Great weather, fabulous snow, and a challenging, fun course. And for the record, I went back out that afternoon and did another 10k with a friend while my boys had their ski lessons. While old Siena went home to do her homework. Likely story. I will mention to noone that I was tucking myself into bed that night before 9.
Jon reports that his ski was lovely. I just love that there are 33 kilometers of uninterrupted ski trails in the city. And the trails are through woods, up and down serious hills, over a bog, through a tunnel, and around the lakes, then right up a street and into Uptown. Lovely.
Keeping the love affair going....
A few weekends back we ventured up north for our annual winter weekend getaway with the Dale-Gaus. I do realize that there is something inherently wrong with a winter getaway happening further north in Minnesota, but we have found that when you do get out in it, you get just a little bit more positive about that white stuff.
This year we headed to BlueFin Bay- partly because ye olde Telemark Lodge has finally closed its doors, and partly because I really like having the waves of Lake Superior crashing outside our windows. I love that lake. And then there's the shuttle bus drivers at BlueFin. They'll drive you anywhere, and even come back to get you if you want them to. But often we don't, because if they drop you up the bluff at the ski trail head, and you can ski around up there and then take the 4k trail back down to the lodge. All downhill. It's fabulous.
But this year we decided to change things up a bit. We had old snowboarding Ildar along and we decided to all spend a day at Lutsen Mountain on downhill skies. When we went into the rental place (I had just brought our skies from 1985 to Goodwill in November) the guy asked me if I would rate myself a 1 (beginner), 2 (assertive/experienced) or 3 (aggressive and really good). I said, "Well, I used to be a 2 for sure...." and he reached for a fairly longish pair of skies and then I added, "when I last skied in the early 90's" and he put those down and grabbed a pair that came to about my waist. Clearly he thought that maybe I had lost my edge in the intervening 15+ years. Ok, maybe 20. But guess what....I strapped the little training skies on and hit the slopes and it all came back. Except for my derring-do. I can still get down the hills with a modicum of grace, but dang did they seem steep and dangerous and sometimes downright stupid. And those were the green hills. When Ildar and I got lost, we did end up on some blue runs and I made it down. I don't think he even noticed my knees knocking. But it brought be back to my cavalier teens, when we'd be skiing out in Colorado and the scorn we felt for my mom and dad as they horseshoed back and forth so so so slowly across the whole face of the hill....that's tempered a bit now. I don't think I used the complete acreage of every hill I tried at Lutsen, but plenty of it.
Luckily for me, my kids, as newbies, had no time to examine my style and cast scorn. They were too busy trying to get down the hills themselves. There were no surprises in the styles they adopted. Eli mastered the snowplow the first time down the bunny and then utilized it early and often. Effectively. Always in control. Except that one time when he got his speed up to about 4.5 mph and crashed into the snow bank off to the side. When I caught up to him he smiled at me while wiping the snow out from under his glasses and said, "I guess I got a little cocky." Guess so.
Theo. He tried to snowplow once and clearly found it overrated. He preferred the bomb and crash, bomb and crash. I couldn't watch. But he enjoyed himself and appears to be made of mostly rubber so came out unharmed. We thought we might only last a few hours, but ended closing down the place, heading out with our friendly shuttle driver only as the sun was dipping behind the hills to the west.
The weekend ended with one final xc ski down the bluff from the trailhead on our last frigid morning. It was really really cold and Eli was not feeling great. But he's a trooper and kept a good attitude. He and I fell just a little behind at one point and as I watched him carefully snowplow down a short hill I was filled up with love for the kid and decided I would glide up behind him, one ski on each side, and give him a quick hug. Only I misjudged my speed and when I bumped into him he bent over at the waist and somehow fell backwards through my legs, causing me to topple over and do a somersault. We ended in a pile of hopelessly tangled skies and poles and laughter. I laughed so hard that the tears came and then froze on my face, which made me realize it was time to get untangled and start moving again. Which made me laugh again. And what I love is that Eli, pinned under me, completely stuck, was laughing with me.
In the end the weekend worked. I recharged my winter-tude and am feeling excited about the prospect of there being a few more great skies left in the winter of 10-11.
This year we headed to BlueFin Bay- partly because ye olde Telemark Lodge has finally closed its doors, and partly because I really like having the waves of Lake Superior crashing outside our windows. I love that lake. And then there's the shuttle bus drivers at BlueFin. They'll drive you anywhere, and even come back to get you if you want them to. But often we don't, because if they drop you up the bluff at the ski trail head, and you can ski around up there and then take the 4k trail back down to the lodge. All downhill. It's fabulous.
But this year we decided to change things up a bit. We had old snowboarding Ildar along and we decided to all spend a day at Lutsen Mountain on downhill skies. When we went into the rental place (I had just brought our skies from 1985 to Goodwill in November) the guy asked me if I would rate myself a 1 (beginner), 2 (assertive/experienced) or 3 (aggressive and really good). I said, "Well, I used to be a 2 for sure...." and he reached for a fairly longish pair of skies and then I added, "when I last skied in the early 90's" and he put those down and grabbed a pair that came to about my waist. Clearly he thought that maybe I had lost my edge in the intervening 15+ years. Ok, maybe 20. But guess what....I strapped the little training skies on and hit the slopes and it all came back. Except for my derring-do. I can still get down the hills with a modicum of grace, but dang did they seem steep and dangerous and sometimes downright stupid. And those were the green hills. When Ildar and I got lost, we did end up on some blue runs and I made it down. I don't think he even noticed my knees knocking. But it brought be back to my cavalier teens, when we'd be skiing out in Colorado and the scorn we felt for my mom and dad as they horseshoed back and forth so so so slowly across the whole face of the hill....that's tempered a bit now. I don't think I used the complete acreage of every hill I tried at Lutsen, but plenty of it.
Luckily for me, my kids, as newbies, had no time to examine my style and cast scorn. They were too busy trying to get down the hills themselves. There were no surprises in the styles they adopted. Eli mastered the snowplow the first time down the bunny and then utilized it early and often. Effectively. Always in control. Except that one time when he got his speed up to about 4.5 mph and crashed into the snow bank off to the side. When I caught up to him he smiled at me while wiping the snow out from under his glasses and said, "I guess I got a little cocky." Guess so.
Theo. He tried to snowplow once and clearly found it overrated. He preferred the bomb and crash, bomb and crash. I couldn't watch. But he enjoyed himself and appears to be made of mostly rubber so came out unharmed. We thought we might only last a few hours, but ended closing down the place, heading out with our friendly shuttle driver only as the sun was dipping behind the hills to the west.
The weekend ended with one final xc ski down the bluff from the trailhead on our last frigid morning. It was really really cold and Eli was not feeling great. But he's a trooper and kept a good attitude. He and I fell just a little behind at one point and as I watched him carefully snowplow down a short hill I was filled up with love for the kid and decided I would glide up behind him, one ski on each side, and give him a quick hug. Only I misjudged my speed and when I bumped into him he bent over at the waist and somehow fell backwards through my legs, causing me to topple over and do a somersault. We ended in a pile of hopelessly tangled skies and poles and laughter. I laughed so hard that the tears came and then froze on my face, which made me realize it was time to get untangled and start moving again. Which made me laugh again. And what I love is that Eli, pinned under me, completely stuck, was laughing with me.
In the end the weekend worked. I recharged my winter-tude and am feeling excited about the prospect of there being a few more great skies left in the winter of 10-11.
What does it mean when...
you go outside and all the millions of birds that are chirping madly in the neighbors bush suddenly become completely silent. From deafening chirp-itude to flat silence in a second. It always makes me wonder if my hair is sticking up funny, or maybe I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe. Whatever it is, those birds have noticed and they won't dare say a thing or they'll all die laughing. Shakes my confidence, it does.
Words
Old Eli does a lot of reading. And he learns a lot from his reading- such as the fact that there are two words for cake in French- and he picks up a lot of new vocabulary through his books. And then he starts using the words around the house. Only he doesn't always pronounce them quite correctly, having only seen them in print. There have been quite a few of these instances, but I've never gotten around to writing them down because it's hard to get his mispronunciations down in writing. And now I've forgotten most of them. But there are two that stick in my mind. After doing a little nonfiction reading at school learning about early humanoids (or hominids or something....) he was telling me about how interesting he found the 'netherandals'. NOT the Neanderthals. The Nether-andals. Like these people came from the land of Nether. It took me the longest time to figure out what he was talking about. Now everytime he has a new mispronunciation, we just say something like, "Oh, and what did the netherandals think about this?" His latest was that he had been reading about a person who was an 'inso-maniac' and how horrible it must be to not be able to sleep and how the word fit so well. We agreed. I just wonder what percentage of netherandals were inso-maniacs.
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