Activities to avoid if you are Coordination-Challenged. A true story.

escalatorfail

I've been a runner for the majority of my life. Aside from the wonderful mental clarity I get from a really good cardio-intensive run, I love the simplicity of the sport. No matter where I am, as long as I have my running shoes (and a fairly supportive undergarment), I can run and workout. It's a beautiful thing.

Last summer, my husband encouraged me to "diversify" my workouts. He said, "You are not getting any younger and your back is not going to put up with you marathoning year after year and neither I, nor the children, will want to live with you if you cannot workout and blah, blah, blah." (Ok he didn't really say the last part but it was implied and is probably a legitimate concern.) And after six+ months spent in a perpetual pain and running injury spiral, I begrudgingly admitted he might be right. So he got me a starter mountain bike and encouraged me to ride. I found out quite quickly that I really love climbing hills (Feel the burn baby! The burn is good!), but was absolutely terrified of riding down the same hills I had just climbed. I mean, irrationally white-knuckled-ride-the-brakes-petrified. I learned that I am most definitely an endurance junkie and not an adrenaline junkie.

I have tried to be good and get out on the bike here and there but admittedly, I still try to avoid it and rationalize the reasons why I should just run instead. Fast forward to this past weekend... Some dear friends invited my husband and I up to their beautiful home in Vail for a day spent together hanging out and mountain biking. My husband is a very good rider, so the plan was for he and his buddy to go on a hard-core 6 hour climb while my friend and I were going to go on a more mellow ride. She is also fairly new to mountain biking but is still light years ahead of me and my downhill neurosis. My friend was very encouraging and reassuring and told me we were going to do a mellow climb up to Beavercreek Resort, then take our bikes on the gondola and ride the rest of the way to the top of the mountain and bike the entire way down. Aside from my involuntary panic of riding all the way down the mountain, it was a good plan and the weather was picture perfect.

We set off on our ride and all was well. We arrived at Beavercreek and got off our bikes and navigated our way to the escalators. Beavercreek's motto is "not exactly roughing it."  One of the ways they do this is by escalator, which gives their guests the luxury of not having to climb a bunch of steps with all of their gear. My friend asked me if I had ever been on an escalator with my bike before and I told her I had not. She warned me that it could be tricky and told me how to do it, and then proceeded to gracefully ride up with her bike. "Easy enough!" I thought. I pushed my bike toward the escalator and put the front wheel on first and turned it so it would rest on the step, then stepped on with the rest of the bike. For one blissful split second I thought I had successfully accomplished the Bike-on-Escalator maneuver but it quickly became apparent I had not. The front of the bike continued to ride up, but my back wheels continued to spin and pull the bike downward. Brilliantly, I tried to hold on to the front of the bike hoping it would move me and the rest of the bike up with it even though gravity (and common sense) dictated otherwise. I ended up falling down the escalator tangled in my bike. My friend was horrified. I was embarrassed beyond measure. She helped me up and I was relieved to see there were no other witnesses to my epic elevator fail. Worried, my friend said "How about we just take the stairs instead?" I gladly agreed. I wanted to get away from the scene of my most recent gracelessness as quickly as possible. 

I ended up with two fairly deep gashes in my leg and some sizable bruises. Since bruises and cuts make you "legit", ordinarily I would have been proud to call them mountain biking injuries had they actually occurred ON the mountain bike and not underneath it on an escalator.

PS: After getting patched up by the Lift Operators we were able to have a very lovely remainder of our ride and an even nicer dinner that evening. All's well that ends well (provided you stay off the escalators).


 

Thanks, Chronicle!!

I recently found out my pug drawing was one of three winners in Chronicle Books 642 Things Monthly Creative Challenge. WOOHOO. Not only did I get a nod on their blog (http://www.chroniclebooks.com/blog/2015/07/20/642-creative-challenge-draw-a-seashell-or-write-a-haiku/) but they are sending me a cool little creative care package. SWEET! I'm a huge fan of Chronicle Books, so this makes me very happy. 
 

 

I Used to Think Big Thinks

bigthinks

Back in my youth, I used to spend every free second I had drawing, painting, writing and generally just MAKING. I had so many ideas for stories and drawings oozing out of my pores, it was almost overwhelming, this need I had to create. When I wasn't actually writing/drawing/painting I was thinking about what I would do next. I had the mental dexterity to think it all at once. I used to think BIG Thinks. 

When I am training and doing three hour long runs, I can compose entire stories, complete with illustrations all in my head. But then I come home and POOF! The idea has escaped my mental hatch. I would like to think this is not merely a result of growing older, but rather a growing laundry list of tedious but still important day-to-day thinks. Who needs to be at practice first? Which child has a doctor's appointment? Why does the house smell like burnt plastic all of a sudden???!!! The older I get, the more I realize I have limited mental bandwidth and can only entertain one idea/thought at a time. I call it mental triage. So now when I have a Big Think, I know I need to literally write it down lest it fly away into the atmosphere.

Guest Artist: S. L. J (age 7)

Construction and Demolition

My youngest child is an artist. His desk is literally right beside mine. While I am working, he is usually working. I told him he could be my guest blogger sometimes and that I would post some of his art (which made him beyond happy.) So here is my first guest blogger post from S.L.J. If you look closely you can find smiling clouds, explosions, demolition and an ornery chihuahua (to name a few). I don't know about you, but I think this kid's got a future in the graphic arts! ;)

“the place needs demolishing and building they don’t like what they made so far. and there still painting it.”
— S.L.J

Adventure!

adventure

This illustration is my submission to this month's SCBWI's art word prompt..."adventure". 

I spent the better part of my early years crawling around a barn floor chasing after pigs and chickens and cows. One of my favorite things to do was to hang out in the henhouse with my tape recorder. I would wait patiently for Abner, our rooster, to crow and when he finally did, I would tape him and play it back. Since roosters are territorial, Abner would go berserk and frantically run around trying to flush out the other rooster he had just heard. It provided hours of entertainment and at the time, I thought I was conducting "important behavioral scientific research" (Don't judge—farm life could be boring and I had to find (make!) my entertainment where I could). So it is totally reasonable for me to believe the animals could get equally bored with farm life, and find (make!) their own fun too.
 

I want to go (back) to there.

Kauai

Kauai....sigh. We just left and I already miss it. Every day I would look around and think, "Is this place for real??!" Flowers, fruit, mountains and turquoise beaches everywhere you look—a mind boggling amount of natural beauty abounds. Between the surreal flowers and vegetation of the botanical gardens to literally snorkeling right beside green sea turtles, I'm feeling all sorts of inspired to get back to work.

PS: If you've ever been to Kauai, you know the locals warn you are not supposed to take rocks home—so fear not! The heart shaped coral or rock pictured here was placed right back into the ocean from whence it came. 

Getting Crafty

The other day while not sleeping at 3 am, I had the brilliant idea to make my kids some handmade t-shirts. I thought it would be SIMPLE! and FUN! to quickly draw up a couple of quickie graphic sketches and put them on some bright t-shirts. My first brainstorm came in the form of using bleach to paint out my sketches on fabric. I spent the better part of 30 minutes, using bleach to ruin a perfectly good t-shirt. No matter how fine a paintbrush I used, I didn't have the kind of control over the bleach that I wanted and the bleach didn't whiten the fabric but made it a grosser shade of its original self. And oh yeah, it was pretty darn toxic.

Not to be deterred, I ran back to the friendly neighborhood craft store and found some fabric markers which I thought would afford me better control. The markers, even those with the finest tips, still were chunkier then I would have liked and seemed to pick up cotton fibers from the shirt every time I drew, but it got the job done.


Behold, two quick, cheap, one-o-a-kind boy tees. The boys were happy with them (i.e. not embarrassed to be seen out in public wearing them) and that is all that matters. I think next time, unless I can figure out a way to cheaply screen print from home, I'll just use a Sharpie and save myself the aggravation. 

DomoArigatoMrRoboto
“Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto”
beawesome.jpg
“Be Awesome”