Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home
Your house is on fire and your children are gone
All except one, and that's Little Anne
For she has crept under the warming pan.
In Medieval England, farmers would set fire to old hop vines after the harvest in order to clear the fields for the next planting.
My first hut-to-hut mountain biking trip was 18 years ago in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado and the La Sals of eastern Utah. The seven-day, six-night, 215-mile trip from Telluride to Moab stuck in my mind as one of my best adventures ever. But, I hate to do the same thing twice, so I never returned. That is until two years ago, when the San Juan Hut System (www.sanjuanhuts.com) opened up a second route from Durango to Moab. As soon as I learned about that, I signed up and recruited a game group of friends from Bend, Hood River, Ashland and Taiwan.
San Juan Hut Systems' slogan is “Adventure Without the Weight.” They provide route directions, food and accommodations for do-it-yourself kind of people. Each hut is equipped with food, water, propane cook stove, cookware, and bunks and sleeping bags for eight people, so all you really need to lug along are some small panniers with clothes, a sleeping bag liner and personal items you can't live without. The routes follow mostly dirt roads from the high alpine tundra of the San Juan Mountains to the canyon country and desert slick rock of Utah.
Alas, summer is coming to an end. The signs are all here – the kids are back in school, the floaters have dwindled and cyclocross season has kicked off.
I don't hear from my pal, woodcarver, caver and photographer Brent McGregor as much as I'd like to, but when I do, he knocks my socks off. The photo above is an example, and the note with it also hit my funny bone: “My little buddy was in the mood for more pictures today. I'm teaching him to stand up rather than (hanging) upside down, and I think he likes it: notice the smile on his face!:))”
As I sat there laughing at what appeared when Brent turned the bat photo upside down, the sex of the bat changed from “him” to her. If you can imagine a lady bat doing a fan-dancer routine, then you can see what I see, including the beguiling grin on “her” face.
At the end of his e-mail, Brent went on to say, “Jim, this is the same bat you came out to see years ago and did the story on for the paper.”
There is no doubt that this is the same bat, and I'll tell you why. Way back in the '60s and '70s when I was working with OMSI, Portland Zoo, and later on, Sunriver, I was banding bats throughout winter in the lava tubes (caves) southeast of Bend. I wanted to see if we could discover the bats' whereabouts and travels during the summer, and to see who came back to the same cave the next winter. That experiment took me down paths I never dreamed of.
At that time, Boyd Cave, with its literal hole-in-the-ground entrance and rickety ladder, wasn't as popular for cavers at it is today. Consequently, there were two species of bats using it as a hibernaculum: Townsend big-eared bats and a group of sweet little myotis I didn't know.
If you're up for it, consider taking on these events.
SUNRISE TO SUMMIT
On Saturday September 5, the 12th Annual Sunrise to Summit starts at 10:30am from Sunrise Lodge at Mt. Bachelor. Run three miles from the lodge up Marshmallow to the top of Sunrise Chair and then follow the trail up to the Summit. Total elevation gain is 2,595 feet.
The event also includes the Bend to Bachelor Duathlon/Relay that starts at 9:30am at the Seven Peaks Elementary School. Cycle 20 miles from the school to Sunrise Lodge and then run to the summit, either individually or as a relay team.
New this year is the Mt. Bachelor Hill Climb Time Trial that starts at the Seven Peaks School at 10:00am and ends at the Sunrise Lodge parking lot. It is an OBRA sanctioned event with a time trial format with starts at 30-second intervals. Total elevation gain is 2,770 feet.
For more information, visit www.mbsef.org/events/sunrise2summit.
I'm sure you've heard the old idioms for years, “Ants in your pants,” “Bats in your belfry,” or “Bee in your bonnet,” and such; well, how about this when my phone rang…?
“Jim, this is Karen Kassy.”
“Oh, howdy Dear Heart,” I answered, “what's going on?”
“I have something strange going on in my love seat.”
Now a guy can have all kinds of fun with that opener, playing around with the birds and bees, risky as it is, and Karen's a great one to kid around with; after all, I've known her for years, and she's an intuitive – but I didn't want to end up in the dog house, so I thought I'd best play it straight as a string.
“So what's wrong with your love seat,” I asked, stifling a laugh, but knowing full well I should keep it on the straight and narrow.
What Usain Bolt did at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin earlier this month, breaking the 100 and 200 meter world records while capturing the bi-annual event's sprint races, is, well, insane, simply off the charts, the sports story of the year.
Bolt won the two races in record times of 9.58s for the 100 meters and 19.19s for the 200, breaking marks the Jamaican sprinter set at last summer's Olympics in Beijing.
In events where the difference between first and fifth can often be as minute as a body lean or a slightly askew stride, Bolt is putting visible distance between himself and his competition.
You know how, when you go for a bike ride, your mind goes on a ride of its own as well? Two weeks ago, I joined some friends for a 40-mile ride from Sisters up and over McKenzie Pass and back. I thought I'd share my train of thought:
Cool. I'm finally riding McKenzie Pass for the first time this year. I can't believe I waited until the highway re-opened to motorists, but oh well. Whoa, check out all those Harleys!
Four million bucks and three years. Let's see what they accomplished. I hear the new pavement is Land O'Lakes buttery!
The legs feel a little tired today. Probably because I put in almost 200 miles this week. I'll never be able to keep up with David Blair.
Memories from a baseball season as the play-by-play announcer for the Bend Elks on 106.7 KPOV:
The most horrifying, sickening sound in baseball is the contact of a baseball with a face.
“Sixty is the new forty.” Hillary Clinton made the line famous last year when she celebrated her 60th birthday during the presidential campaign. Woodstock celebrated its 40th anniversary this past weekend and the Joan Baez concert at the Athletic Club on Sunday night was brimming with Bend's Baby Boomers.
It seems like friends have been turning 60 all around me this summer and, if there is any place with an aquifer of youth, it must be Bend, Oregon. The women I know are not wearing black and throwing in the towel. They are celebrating – and I'm not talking about little old lady tea parties.
They grew up and went to school in the pre-Title IX days. (Title IX, now known as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, became law in 1972.) Dani, who turns 60 in October, recalls, “When I was in school they wouldn't let me take auto mechanics class. They said I would be a distraction. I could take home economics.”
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