Another challenge ticked off

This challenge was way too easy, really... just row twice 5000m today and you get a certificate similar to this graphic. No t-shirt, no pin... but that's OK.

I am still waiting for Concept2 to create the 15K challenge for April 15th. After all, they've got a 14K challenge the week before Valentine's Day.

Ever onwards.

Done with one, onto the next

OK, I just met the 100K Concept2 holiday challenge. It's half of what I did in 2007 (200K) but 100% more than I did last year. Better this than not at all.


Now it's onto the next challenge, an easy one, really, as long as I am here by the erg.

Some people decorate the house before Christmas. I seem to end up rowing.

Feast of Thomas potpourri

Now in French, 'pourri,' means rotten so I have always been amused that those sweet cachets of lavender and other flowers have morphed into potpourri. In any event, here is my mixture on the feast day of Thomas, apostle and best known as doubter.

I have quasi been living mentally in Paris (as I did so many years ago), having just bought a fabulous and dense book on the Parisian Métro system (Mark Ovdenden, Paris Underground: The Maps, Stations, and Design of the Métro, Penguin, 2009. It has more maps than one can imagine, an exhaustive history of the creation of the Métro and all manner of trivia... in other words, perfect for a Métro fanatique but probably dull to anyone else. It makes me pull out my Plan de Paris par Arrondissement et Communes de Banlieue... published by A. LeConte. My copy (a burgundy coloured hardback book) is so battered that it is held together by packing tape but now that that tape is 32 years old, it has come unstuck. Even Parisians use this sort of book to get around so I did not feel as though I screamed out, 'tourist,' when I pulled it out of my cartable (bookbag/briefcase). The sad thing I now realise is that I can no longer read some of the fine, fine print (about 4 pt) for many streets. Aïe. I could move back to Paris in a heartbeat (no secret really).

So as I walk through the day, thinking of the solstice of so long ago, je pense à la belle Paris. Perhaps my thinking goes there because I hung in my home office this photograph I took 32 years ago today at about 15h00 up by the l'Arc de Triomphe.

Meanwhile, it was fitting on this feast day first to talk with a college student, totally unchurched, who is doing an anthropology paper on the Episcopal rite of Holy Eucharist. She was FULL of questions because she has absolutely no starting place as a point of reference. In some ways, it is easier talking with someone who hasn't been biased by all the sick theology out there. We spent 90 minutes exploring her questions and raising more. I won't presume that this initial conversation will result in a church-goer but one always can hope.

After her, came talking with the mother of a ten year-old who sings with the Treble Choir of our church. This child wants to be baptised — she saw how her friend, also the same age, also in the choir, was baptised on All Saints' Day so she wants to be, too. We'll welcome her into Christ's body on the Sunday of the Baptism of Christ, 10 January. The mother wanted to know if I spent a lot of time talking about the devil. No. She was relieved.

Home, rowing in a new place. It was so hot in the room where I had it (the room is overheated because it is over the garage and it can get up to 76 degrees which is outrageous; the rest of the house is 60, the temperature at which I keep the thermostat) that I couldn't row. And it just didn't feel right. Last week I dragged the erg into my study and although that inclusion has raised havoc with the organisation of this room, it feels right. So here's the new landscape as I row away. I will make the 100K challenge this year but not the 200K… kind of wimping out but at least I am attempting.


Here is what is in front of me... totally inspiring... two printers and a whole lot of paper but at least I can pretend I am rowing to El Salvador.


Meanwhile, I can look over at the mess on my desk and think of all the work I have to do while considering the photo of the l'Arc de Triomphe, Esther's cross, the certificate I received when I became Canon Missioner in El Salvador and some Guatemalan telas. What the photo does not show is that Young Guy was sitting on my chair, hidden by the computer.

My reward for rowing was fooling around in the kitchen. Try this out as a recipe (it's a variation on 'Fiery Chicken Vindaloo':

skinned chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cayenne pepper
5 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp curry paste
2/3 cup olive oil
small potatoes (as many as you want)

To save time on this recipe which wants you to simmer all the ingredients for an hour, I grilled the chicken and boiled the potatoes first and then threw them into the above mixture. I added in tomatoes, and then let the whole mess simmer for 20 minutes. It is not hot by my standards but the flavouring is good. Next time I will add in some more peppers; I only put in one dried serrano pepper.

Later some feline fotos.

'Tis the Season

Last year I did not even try for the Concept2 Holiday Challenge (row 110 or 200K between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve) and this year I am not setting myself up for failure so am aiming for 100K. I am at 41K and if I could simply FIND THE TIME, I probably could do the 200K. It is pitiful — there already is someone who has rowed 650K and a lot of people who have done 300+. Sigh.

One problem is I cannot read the monitor so can't really tell what my splits are (500m/minutes), which help me tell if I am on pace. My pace has slowed immensely over the years. I used to think a 500/2.17 split was slow. These days, it is good and I seem to dink along at 500m/2.23.

Oh well, better that I am even trying to do this than remain indolent. I am good about doing the Holiday Challenge but then slack off again once it has ended. This year?

It has been two or three years since I have rowed a half marathon and four years since I rowed my one and only marathon (butt breaking).

Techno row

OK, true confessions. I bought some bootleg CDs while down in El Salvador. No excuses here. I did it. Forgive me, musicians, for I have sinned against you.

They're Mp3 collections of music and really they are a pot pourri and grab bag of music. Some of it is total junk and some is decent. It takes a while to sift through 130 some-odd songs and then upload them into iTunes so I chip away at it little by little.

Paradoxically, between Pandora Radio and riding around in microbuses, my musical curiosity has been piqued; consequently, I have delved into other genres of music than what's currently in my collection though Techno and Electronica, as they are called, really harken back to earlier types of music current in the 1970s. The difference is that these more recent forms tend to have a frenetic beat to them.

Last night I pulled together enough songs to have a long enough play list for a short row. I have no idea who the artists are other than most sing in English but there are a few who sing in Spanish (one song I like, Vuela, vuela, which has many, many different versions, I have yet to find the artist). This morning for my row, I decided, sure, I'll do a techno row of 5000m. It'll keep me going.

This decision is also after having read a debate between long-haul exercise and short bursts of exercise. I like the long-haul stuff but a 5000 metre row is faster and there's no reason to poke along.

I started out slowly but gradually woke up and a third of the way through decided to try to drop my splits down and at least break 23 minutes. The music helped because it is so lively (try the song, Ecuador).

To my surprise, I bettered my last ranked time. Oh no big deal; I am in the 16th percentile (84th if you want to look at it the other way) with a time of 22.52.08. I'll never beat the number 1 time of 20 minutes something, but I might be able to shave another 10 seconds off. Maybe, that's not a time I have ever attained. So at least I should drop a couple of seconds off to maintain my ranking.

What an exciting post (not). But, hey, sometimes we need time off from the sturm und drang and just get lost in a techno row.

Row, row, row your boat

Concept 2 has done it again... while I am not sure how positively I feel about the Bejing Olympics (either being where they are or the event itself), I do like the idea of a collective 'row' from Vermont to Bejing. C2 is tallying everyone's distances and adding them up for a grand total that presumably will get us to China.

I did an easy half hour row today. It's manageable since I now have the airconditioner in the window right above the erg. So I can row without totally getting drenched. Rowing is enhanced by these crazy Mp3 files I got in El Salvador. There's some radio station (whose number I don't know), Music World, and they throw together these 15-40 minute mixes. If you can get past the dumb altered voices saying every once in a while, 'Music World,' the music is good for rowing.

Some of the tracks I have not uploaded to my iTunes because they aren't really my taste but if I ever feel the need to pretend I am in a microbus, I will play them (Perrero mix).


Go figure. Normally these two are engaged in mortal combat. But this afternoon, they figured out that it's nice on the floor in front of the box that blows out cool air. That's well and good, but why is one snuggled up against the other?

Day 3

So here is the patient on day 3. He began to scratch at his incision (a sign of healing? perhaps it itches now?) so I took some corban and loosely wrapped it around his neck. He played a little with his tail this morning and his appetite is still good. He will get one more dosage of pain killer tonight and then he has three more days of antibiotics.

He spent the night alone with me — the other two were shut up downstairs. Young Guy is so freaked out that he attacks Orange Guy and I don't want the latter to get further injured while he's trying to heal. YG gets so ballistic that I can't even pick him up; he shrieks so that he terrifies all of us, including himself. Hard to believe right now since he is asleep on the cedar chest in the other room.

Path reports should be in tomorrow. And the blood work for Miss Agatha comes in today.

Meanwhile time to row. Orange Guy will keep me company.

[15.30] For right now there is peace. Upstairs where there are three rooms, there is one cat per room: YG in the back bedroom, La Doyenne in the north-facing room and the recovering feller in the study with me. He has just stretched and I see that he got a pedicure while he was under — all his claws are nicely trimmed. Yes, it is a heck of a lot easier to clip claws when you're not dealing with twelve pounds of squriming fur.

New season

As soon as I got off the erg this morning, Orange Guy jumped into the open window; he'd been waiting for me to stop going back and forth and being in the way.

Given that the rowing season has just started anew (1 May-30 April), I figured the time had come to ask Compa to install the PM3 on my ancient Concept 2 B erg. My father gave me the monitor for Christmas but it has taken this long to decide to bite the bullet. (We'll keep the old monitor as a backup for the C2B down in the garage on the hill.)

My, there are all sort of numbers to distract: the usual amount of time rowed, number of metres left, split for 500m, strokes per minute. But below there is a split for 2000m, how long it is estimated for you to finish and your average pace for a 500m split. Even without my glasses on, I can make them all out.

The one thing I haven't figured out yet is how to get the computer to recognise the monitor. I hooked it up this morning (USB cable) post row to upload the stats and the computer said there was nothing connected. I had had problems with the installation of the software (concerned at first because of huge scratches on the CD) and even after downloading an updated version, am not sure that is the problem. I don't need to connect — it's not as though I am ever going to need verification of a number 1 place row. Still, I would like to see how the software works. (If I knew someone else who has their computer near the erg and can be online, we could race. Ha.

The photo isn't clear but on the second shelf, my books by Desmond Tutu keep me company while I row. Wish I could absorb them all through osmosis.

Granted this is all piddly in the larger scheme of things but rowing does help keep me sane.

Material Gal

Alright, I confess... on Tuesday this week I bought an iPod shuffle (1G — it's reduced because they are just about to bring out a 2G version). The thing is so small and it was only a few dollars more than a full tank of gas ($49). So I have loaded up 190 songs on it and have been using it when I row. It's a total extravagance, I know, but I do like my music gadgets.

It does make me think about the first Walkman I bought back in 1983. It was a tape-AM/FM radio thing that I bought in Hong Kong while on a choral trip. It accompanied me on my first rowing adventures when I discovered the Concept 2 ergs (C2A) at Princeton University. I would row around 7.00-8.00 pm (! after dinner no less) because there was less demand for them at that hour.

So now I have this bitty source of music that weighs so little that if I knew better, I could throw it into my hiking pack. The knowing better is simply recognising that walking is meditational and were I to listen to music, I wouldn't be able to go where I can go when I am listening to the sounds around me.

'We're living in a material world
and I am a material girl....'

Done!

What else is there to do when it's pouring out on a dreary cold day?

It took me from 21 August 2006 to today to row 1M metres. Slow but sure.

Sunday night shuffle

Just because... because it is all I am capable of.

Breaks Co-op • You're My Lady (accoustic version)
Tinariwen • Ikyadar Dim
Deepak Chopra • Oceans of Ecstacy
Bach (JS) • Cantata #4, BWV 4, "Christ Lag In Todes Banden"
The Who • Happy Jack
Howard Jones • Tears to Tell
Anonymous Four • Abbeyville (Come Holy Spirit Come)
Juan Luis Guerra • La Niágara en bicicleta
Bach (JS): Concerto For Oboe D'Amore In D, BWV 1053 - Allegro
Los Guaraguao • No basta rezar

Well, that is about as mixed as you can get. Little Middle Eastern, Far East, Latino, rock and classical. The Tinariwen is super stuff, as I have said before, for rowing if I want a mellow work-out in which I can zone — usually Monday mornings.

BTW, if you click on the photo, you'll get the full effect of the cat's head swinging back and forth. Ditto for my little Sisyphus figure.

Java row

At the December clergy day, we always have a Yankee gift swap. This bag of Peet coffee made the rounds until I glommed onto it and since I was the first and last one to pick from the pile, I got to keep it. I swapped off a fake lava lamp for it.

I don't know why it is so much stronger than the Equal Exchange stuff I usually drink but this coffee gets me revved up. Today I managed to increase my ranking in the 30 minute row from 22nd percentile to 17th percentile (22/132). I am not complaining.

The dining room table sort of has an eclectic combination of Christmas, Simon Pearce, pottery from Palestine and the butter dish that came from my grandparents and probably belonged to my great grandmother.

Doing penance

OK, so I have had five days without rowing, during which I have enjoyed all manner of goodies. I was given a basket full of cookies, fudge and pound cakes for Christmas and so Compa and I have been partaking of those yummies.


So today I decided I would row. It's a different proposition doing it downstate since the erg resides in the garage attic, not inside the house (no way could it fit in the house!). It was about 38 out this afternoon — not too terrible. Above me is a wonderful mobile, next to me a futon covered with a mattress pad so that the mice won't further eat the futon cover, leaning against it, Compa's Bianchi bicycle (funky colour). Two years ago Compa bought the rowing machine (identical to mine) on eBay for $150 and then drove down to Philly and back to pick it up.


But the weird thing is that despite my exercise, my left foot got cold. Even half an hour later, it still is. This blurred photo is to show you that the other one wasn't staged; I really was rowing. I did an easy 10K.

Neither photo is terribly flattering but so be it.

As for the garage, I should say that excepting some help (such as five of us towing out of the way the small shed, heavy excavation equipment to dig the foundation hole, cement trucks to pour the foundation and people to install the standing seam roof, occasional help on raising the rafters), Compa built the entire garage. I can remember Christmas 2000 when we only had the top, i.e., the floor which wasn't even finished, covered with blue tarp. I can remember helping out (by standing on the skroinky, our word for warped and twisted, six-twelve foot boards) on putting in the floor over Christmas 2002, I think. The French doors came from our favourite salvage joint, Vermont Salvage, which we call 'Vermont Salvation.' At the opposite end you can see the matching set. The garage was very much a work in progress, in fact, it still is. Someday, we will get all the siding and facia up and windows in. Someday, we will install the huge Vermont Castings Defiant stove we got for free. No matter, the garage functions quite well as is in protecting our cars and holding all our off-season stuff like bicycles, canoe, and all of Compa's tools.

Halfway there

OK, I am halfway there; I hit 100K today. I have 10 days to finish another 100K; if I do 15K a day (about 1h10 minutes), I can knock it off quickly.

I've got a good collection of bachata music that keeps me entertained while I row.

I am sure you all are fascinated by this and are hanging on my every stroke :)

However, this rowing is a form of prayer and a way of keeping myself sane. The CREDO seminars encourage clergy to engage in regular exercise not only as a way of staying healthy and fit but also as a way of staying centered. It is true — the days that I don't, I do feel guilty and a row reinvigorates me as much as a nap, though I love my naps.

Besides, rowing is a way of allowing for free-thought time. Perhaps it's my pressure-cooker valve that keeps me from completely exploding from anger at the stupidity of the world (like hearing that the senate voted down the farm reform bill) and the sadness and frustration with the current difficulties in the church.

Rowing (i.e., the foot saga continues)

A shot taken in an ancient mirror and intentionally unclear (I don't really want to show off my thunder thighs and piano legs)... taken at only 85K. I've got 115K to go in 12 days. It seems as though every year I lose a week to colds, work, travel and simply losing track of the time. I did row today despite the head cold and did OK.

The left foot saga continues, however. Despite rowing with orthotics and new shoes (as seen on my right foot, Merrills), my left posterior tibial tendon cramps up on the inside of my foot. I know that it has been stretched out but the orthotics haven't strengthened it nor has the nodule in the middle of the arch shrunk any. Given that the arch cramping does affect my rowing, I decided to tape it today. I can't say if the tape helped any.

If I can't row, then I really am up a creek activity wise. I'll keep rowing but it's yet another nuisance.

Cranking up

The Concept2 Holiday Challenge is fast upon us. Barring disaster (such as happened to a colleague's wife who tripped on a guy wire attached to a tree, fell and broke her arm), I plan on rowing the usual 200K between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I have to take into account the days I won't be near an erg and not get too complacent at the beginning. I like to hit the halfway mark distance-wise before the calendar halfway mark. So we're off on that.

Always in search of interesting music to accompany the long rows (minimum 20 minutes, maximum can be 90 or so), I have landed on Tinariwen. Two weeks ago Saturday Morning Edition interviewed them (or the producer, I no longer remember). They featured two songs from the group's most recent album: Aman Iman: Water is Life.

Their music is rhythmic, hypnotic, a blend of Middle Eastern roots, and 1960s guitar riffs. The bass repeats over and over, there is call and response between the lead and the background women's vocals. The group (I hesitate to call it a band in the western sense) is Tuareg (in Arabic: 'abandoned by the gods' — a strange name for an auto as in Volkswagen's SUV, I think). They are nomadic, wandering the Saharan desert.

Justin Adams, guitarist of Sinead O'Connor, produced their first album, the Radio Tisdas Sessions, in December 2000. Electricity was rationed so all the recording took place between 7.00 PM and midnight over two weeks.

This first album is perhaps the most simple and really great for a mindless row. The music flows along at a steady at comfortable walking pace. It's not music to row a fast piece but good for just going along, as though you were out on a river, enjoying the day.

The call-and-response nature of the music reminds me of Krisna Das' music, also good rowing music for long pieces.

So I have just eliminated a few more excuses for not rowing.

First advisory of the season

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST FRIDAY... THE WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST FRIDAY FOR THE GREEN MOUNTAINS OF SOUTH CENTRAL VERMONT AND ACROSS WASHINGTON AND ORANGE COUNTIES IN VERMONT. HEAVY RAINFALL OCCURRING THIS MORNING WILL CONTINUE TO MIX WITH AND CHANGE OVER TO SNOW LATE THIS MORNING AND INTO EARLY THIS AFTERNOON. SNOW WILL ACCUMULATE FIRST AT HIGHER ELEVATIONS...AND GRADUALLY DEVELOP AT THE LOWER ELEVATIONS. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL RANGE FROM 3 TO 6 INCHES BY MIDNIGHT...WITH THE HIGHER AMOUNTS ABOVE 700 FEET IN ELEVATION. AS THE CHANGEOVER TO SNOW OCCURS...WATER FROM EARLIER RAIN WILL LIKELY BEGIN TO FREEZE ON ROADWAYS...CREATING A HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITION...ESPECIALLY AT HIGHER ELEVATIONS. IN ADDITION...SNOWFALL RATES WILL BE HEAVY AT TIMES...RESULTING IN VERY LOW VISIBILITY...ESPECIALLY DURING THE AFTERNOON AND EVENING HOURS. PERIODS OF SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE LATE TONIGHT INTO FRIDAY...WITH SOME LIGHT ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATION POSSIBLE. A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW...SLEET...OR FREEZING RAIN WILL LIKELY LEAD TO...OR RESULT IN SLIPPERY ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES. USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.

Here I am without snows on my car — like everyone else. There's no point in calling the garage, everyone else in creation will be doing the same thing. It shouldn't matter; I am heading out this afternoon for our provincial synod and conference, that takes place at a hotel outside of Boston. I figure I will be driving out of it.

The postal carrier still has on shorts albeit covered up by a poncho. I know it's REALLY cold when I see her wearing pants. She'll wear shorts all the way into January.

[photo from the February 2007 blizzard]

On other fronts, I have just entered a new 30 minute piece on the erg. It now places me 15/89, top 20%. The longer the distance, the better my rankings are. My 10K from May still holds at top 9%. My days of being numero uno long evaporated but it was fun while it lasted.

Row, row, row your boat

While Compa struggled with an ancient lawnmower because the good one is broken, I decided to row for the first time since 16 May. My first-place standings have, of course, fallen by the wayside, but there may be a way to recoup them.

Right now, I have to recoup the lost ground by being away from the erg for seven weeks. It never ceases to astound me how little one activity translates to another. I may have some stamina and better leg muscles from walking 420+km but my weight isn't any less nor is my rapidity on the erg.

Meanwhile, the erg sits in the upstairs of the garage with a lovely view, a great mobile hanging overhead, and where I can look at another toy that needs use, my bicycle.

As a non-sequitor, excepting the standing seam roof and the excavation/foundation, and installation of the garage doors, Compa built the entire garage, including putting up the rafters by herself.

Some day it will have a wood stove (we have the chimney set), and real electricity rather than it coming off the house by way of extension cords.

Hey, I am first!

In the small victory category, by virtue of moving from the 40-49 women's heavyweight category to the 50-59, and submitting a slower time than I did in March, which put me at 17th place, I have moved to first place. I am not complaining. This rapid movement is simply because a birthday landing at the beginning of a new rowing season (1 May of each year).

Since my erg is so old, I don't have the monitor that has a small computer chip within that generates logarithms for verification purposes, so immediately after finishing my row, I jumped off the machine and took a photo of the time. It's the best I can do.

For right now, my brother and I are in the top ten and if my father were to submit something in the 80+ bracket, we'd have a clean sweep.

Row onwards!