Williamsburg Watercolor

I took this photo at the Powhatan Plantation outside Williamsburg where we usually stay. As ya'll probably already know, I'm a sucker for fog and impressionistic images.
Here I tried re-creating it in watercolors. I haven't viewed them side by side, but as I'm looking at them, I didn't capture the right colors of purple that was in the photograph.
I also felt that I had to make the road more distinct or the whole thing would have been a dark blob. I'm still happy with the outcome. After all, I wasn't striving for photographic realism. It makes for a good excuse, anyway.

Catching the surf after the storm

The two days after the storm passed offered nice waves. The winds veered north and blew pretty steadily overnight, creating nice 4- to 6-foot waves. We enjoyed some good surfing at the beach and rough water paddling where the waves reflected off the end of the pier.

Our friend Keith Wikle has an excellent explanation of when to catch post-storm waves on the Michigan side of the Lake Michigan and why. Check out his post, "How to predict good surfing weather on the Great Lakes," here.

Grit Needed

Is there beauty in this? Some people can find art even in ice, but I'm having a difficult time joining their ranks. When I opened the blinds yesterday and saw the bowed Loquat, it was like a fast punch to the midsection, and I felt myself spiraling down to a very bad place. Maybe living through decades of midwestern ice storms meant that this sight set off a kind of post-traumatic thing, or something like that. Whatever the reason, all I could feel was despair. To paraphrase Private Benjamin - this was not the Austin I'd signed up for. But today, looking at the blog posts by Pam/Digging and MSS/Zanthan has helped. They're not hiding inside, they're taking photos and even putting videos on YouTube, so I went outside, too. And soon I felt a spark of the scientific curiosity lurking in all gardeners. What will defrost and live? What will immediately rot? Will the oleander ever stand upright again? It will be especially interesting to see whether the native plants can take such a prolonged period of imprisonment in frozen rain.

Henry Mitchell said it well, "It is not nice to garden anywhere...There is no place, no garden, where these terrible things do not drive gardeners mad."

But he also said, "What is needed around here is more grit in gardeners."

My Austin friends have that grit - maybe I can summon up enough to go pour hot water in the bird bath and set out some sunflower seeds.

A Hail of A Spring Storm

The garden looked pretty good when the Kitchen Garden post went up on Wednesday morning, but by that evening it was a pitiful sight! Around 6 PM Wednesday a major hailstorm hit parts of Austin and our neighborhood was on the hit list. If you read the comments on the last post you know that some hailstones were 2 and 1/2 inches in diameter. Hail dented my car, destroyed the patio umbrella, did some damage to the house and covered our streets and yards in shredded small branches and leaves. So no catastrophe, just a lot of stuff that needs addressing. An interesting thing happens when you are a blogger - sometimes you can avoid panic in an unpleasant situation by going into reporter mode and picking up the camera. That's why we have video taken during the storm and photos afterward. We made this YouTube so you can share the excitement. (If you can't see a video image to click below, try going right to our YouTube station Kaefka

Pam/Digging gave me some African aloe last year and one pot had put up a bloom stalk. The flower was chopped off and just look at the impact craters on the plant!

The magnolia has lost about 1/4 of its leaves...and some of them now have windows in them.
The tree itself is probably okay but will look raggedy for awhile.
The ground under the loquat is covered in leaves and knocked-down fruit, but the tree itself just bent and blew.

Both Philo and I have friends who were driving home from work when the storm grew strong - several of them had windshields shattered as they drove, which must have been terrifying.
I'm sure we'll all be cleaning and repairing for awhile. Hmmm....the Zilker Garden Festival takes place this weekend in Central Austin - maybe we'd better go there and pick up a few replacement tomato plants.

That Clif Bar Thing

The pizza and wine were good. And it was fun to be around and socialize with so many local cyclists.

But...
Personally, I like to be entertained. And most of these guys seemed like they wanted to be somewhere else (like asleep). I wonder if they got paid to appear?
The lava lamp was a big hit.

Fast Freddie (Predictor - Lotto) was there and he's silly. He always seems to have a big smile on his face. Even when I see him riding locally, he's always smiling and waving hi. And he didn't disappoint. He had some good stories.
Freddie gave me a pat on the back one year after I was pulled from the Albany crit. He was hanging around watching our race. Since then I've always liked him

Let's see if I can remember who was there besides Freddie...
Ed Beamon, directeur sportif of Navigators, Gavin Chilcott, directeur sportif of BMC, David Something from BMC, sprinter guy from BMC, Mike Sayers (BMC) Glen (Allan) Chadwick, (Navigators) Ben Day & Hilton Clark (both Navigators), Ken Hanson (BMC), David Vitoria (BMC) and emcees Dylan Seguin and Dave Towle.
Phew!
Mark McCormack was supposed to be there, but alas he sat stuck on a tarmac somewhere waiting for a plane to take off. He would have been interesting to listen to.
It was cool.

Recent adventures on rock

During the past three weeks, life has been progressively more manic, as is normal in Lochaber at this time of year. Usually in February, the weather gets amazing for almost all types of climbing, and this season has been especially good. Trying to get anything else done apart from new routes is quite a challenge and usually involves late nights and early starts. Maybe the rain will return by March and I’ll take a rest day?!


When I got home from Spain, I was pretty keen to get into the hills. I started off with a day on the Ben with Kev and could hardly walk the next morning. However, my ankle seemed to continue to adapt and I went back up a couple more times. Since both of us were only really able to walk short distances with big packs, we opted for the CIC hut cascades. Kev cruised the icefall.
Next up I went to a ridiculous boulder roof in the glen. It’s quite low to the ground and fully horizontal. An acquired taste maybe - a bit like a darker version of the darkness cave in Magic Wood. There’s 25 feet of horizontal climbing on brutal crimps in there, with three logical starts. The shortest link will be Font 8aish and the full trip looks like solid Font 8b+. I couldn’t imagine doing it at the moment, but I did do about half the moves on my first session.
I’ve also been trying a bit of running with mixed results. I did some trail and hill runs up to 12 miles and was getting on fine. Then one evening I did some short fast sections since it was already getting dark after the climbing. I misjudged the angle of a boulder on the trail and hit the ‘no go zone’ in my ankle hard and let out a yelp. It’s been worse ever since, which is rather depressing. I can’t really do much except hope I’ve not done more damage. Not good.




Ardverikie deer forest. Here be boulders...



The next day I was getting pain even walking which put a downer on an otherwise great day out in Ardverikie Forest returning to a boulder I’d found on a run two years ago. I went to look at a roof that I’d estimated about Font 8b. But to actually try, it felt way harder. I pretty much gave up, although to be fair I wasn't in the most positive frame of mind, and the easterly was biting cold. It was a series of savage first joint undercuts in a roof with microscopic granite crystals level with your head for feet. A bit like doing harder versions of the Hubble undercuts crux about 5 times in a row. Maybe I’ll make a model on my board and try it once more in the spring.

The solid river Nevis today, near Steall.

Dan cleaning new problems, new boulder in Glen Nevis today.
Today saw some great new problems get done after a monster cleaning. I'll take some pictures of them next time. I did the problems almost in the dark since we were brushing for a lot of the afternoon. The boulder has probably 15 problems to do from Font 5 to 8A+ on the usual lovely honeycomb Glen Nevis schist. I hope my arms aren't too tired for tomorrows session back on the Ben. Off to sleep!