Outside Features

Alas, PPP is over, but I thought I'd wrap up this year's race with a few stories.
LEW AND ROGER
On Friday morning before PPP, I was standing in line at the race check-in and Lew Hollander was right in front of me.

My alarm goes off. It's 6:30 a.m. I feed the dog, down a bottle of Frappucino, eat a can of Chef Boyardee Overstuffed Beef Ravioli and three electrolyte capsules, and pull on my race outfit. All my gear is in the van. My trusty support person, Greg, is standing ready on his doorstep as I drive up. The sun is shining. It's a perfect day for PPP.
The buzz at the mountain is electric. I rack my bike, take a couple of practice runs on the downhill course and then head out for a little warmup on my Nordic skis. POP! I look down at my right boot. The lace loops have just busted. I go back to the van, make a hasty repair with safety pins and duct tape and dash onto the lift to get to the start. The wave of women is all chitty chatty and one woman is shooting video with a “titty cam.”

In these days of short money and educational communities wondering how they're going to keep going on what they have, finding teachers getting the best bang for the buck is fantastic! If you were in Bend last Thursday, happened to walk into the theater at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, and took a minute to see and hear what was happening, you wouldn't have left until it was over. Students from around Central Oregon were gathered for one of the most exciting meetings you could hope to find: “Students Speak: A Watershed Summit.”
Every buck spent on that exciting event went into preparing children for their role as mover-and-shakers in the world of natural resource management, or stated another way, “stewards of our Earth.”

Have you seen that hilarious xtranormal cartoon about the Pole Pedal Paddle that made the rounds of the Internet last month (http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6369207/)? If you haven't, then you have definitely been under a rock or on a deserted island without Wi-Fi.
In the video created by JoeBlackCoffee (I'm dying to know who that really is, by the way), a typical Bendite explains the PPP to a long-haired poet: “It is such a Bend thing to do. If you don't compete in the Pole Pedal Paddle, you might as well not live in Bend. I do it every year and I get a mug every year. The Pole Pedal paddle is so sick. It is so sick that you basically have to call a doctor.”

I had just deplaned a 19-hour red-eye trek from Maui to Bend, saltwater in my hair, sunscreen in my eyes and sand between my toes. Kerie picked me up at the airport and we headed straight to 10 Barrel for a coffee porter. Halfway through our beers, she mentioned something about going to Hawaii for the weekend. At least, that's what I heard in my sleep-deprived, porter and melatonin daze. I looked out the window at the late April snow flurries and said that sounded good to me.
“Owyhee” is what she really said. It's actually an old spelling of “Hawaii.” The Owyhee River was named for three Hawaiian trappers who disappeared while exploring the uncharted river in 1819. It is a 280-mile long tributary of the Snake that flows through parched and sparsley populated landscape of northern Nevada, southwestern Idaho and southeastern Oregon. For kayakers and rafters, though, the Owyhee River is a dramatic high-desert float, full of sheer volcanic canyons, dry washes, prickly terrain, rollicking rapids and sweet hot springs.

This is my final column in a three-part series based on Hawaiian values. By the time you read this, I will have traded my Mr. Zog's sex wax back in for Swix yellow. But at least I've replenished my stores of vitamin D and vitamin sea, too.
PO'OKELA [poh'-oh-kay'-lah] – noun. Commitment to excellence
In Hawaii, the ultimate term of respect is to be called a “waterman” or “waterwoman.” He or she is a master of the ocean, excelling at all watersports: surfing, swimming, windsurfing, paddle boarding, canoe paddling, spear fishing, etc. On my first stay on Maui, a friend introduced me to Mary, a small, gruff, pig-tailed woman with bright white sunblock on her lips. She kind of harrumphed and climbed into her Zodiac, which she was piloting as a safety boat for a canoe race.

It seems like half of Bend is “on island,” as they say in Hawaii. I think many of us get a little stir crazy and head to the South Pacific this time of year. You can spot the Bendites by their pasty skin and ski poles. Seriously, I saw a guy pole hiking down the beach yesterday. I don't actually know if he was from Bend. Perhaps he was Canadian.
Wendy Oliphant was last seen riding a bike up Haleakala. The 38-mile road from sea level to the 10,023-foot summit holds the world record for climbing to the highest elevation in the shortest distance. If you want to do it as an organized event, check out Cycle to the Sun on August 21, 2010 at www.cycletothesun.net. If that's not challenging enough, you could run up Haleakala in the Run to the Sun ultramarathon, held each March. Roger Daniels holds an age group record in that event. Sally Russell is in Hana with her daughters and Amy Petersen just celebrated her birthday hiking through Maui's waterfalls… and the list from Bend goes on.

Aloha from Hawai'i! We all know “aloha” as the traditional Hawaiian greeting, but there's much more than a simple “hi” packed into the literal meaning of the word. It comes from the root words “alo” meaning “sharing” and “in the present,” and “oha” meaning “joy” and “ha” meaning “life energy.” Aloha, therefore means: “joyfully sharing life.”
The Aluminum Man Biathlon Series in Maui is exactly that.

Water, what wondrous stuff. Two hydrogen atoms sharing electrons with an oxygen atom. Seventy-five percent of the earth is covered by water. The human body is 60 to 70 percent water. We're supposed to drink eight eigh-ounce glasses of water a day.

This weekend came in like a lamb and went out like a lion, fitting for the first weekend of spring in Central Oregon.
After a gray El Nino winter, I think everyone in Bend went bonkers on Saturday when it was sunny and 71 degrees. It was hard to choose what to do that day, so most of us just tried to cram in as many outdoor activities as possible. I got in a road ride up to Wanoga without my neoprene booties and a run in shorts (exposing my winter-white legs) along the river trail. Bikers, runners and paddlers were scattered all over the place.
By Sunday, a front came through, bringing fresh snow to the mountain and blowing all my over-optimistically unveiled adirondack chairs off the deck. Oh well, that's how it goes, but the signs of spring are unequivocal – the daffodils are blooming and the PPP entry forms are out.