Adventure Memories

Last year at this time, we were living in Mexico. It was Halloween at the kids’ school and with American friends, and Dia de los Muertos everywhere else. We had an incredible family adventure, and I find myself thinking back about it a lot lately.

This is Dana and her friend Danae dressed as a squirrel and a fox for their class Halloween play. Their friend Maura was a witch, and I had to check my assumptions when I talked to her mom about costuming. I asked if they wanted to borrow a black shirt, and the response was, “Black? Oh no, a witch is colorful!”

The memories make me homesick for being there, only I’m not sure what you call it when you’re not missing home but another place. I think about the school Dia de los Muertos altar, pan muerto (bread of the dead, shaped as a skull), wandering the alters all over town, and the community of remembrance we got to be a part of for awhile.

It was an incredible adventure. You can read more about it in my Traveling Simply blog, if you’d like to stroll through our adventures back when we were making those memories.

Mount Baker Hill Climb

While Noah and I camped out on Table Mountain (see previous post), his sister and dad slept 24.5 miles down the road. On Sunday morning, they lined up on their tandem bicycle with hundreds of other folks who were generally not on tandems. For a race. Uphill. 4500 feet of elevation gain.

While Noah read a book at the finish line, I scrambled down a trail and intercepted the road. Then I walked it chalk in hand, writing messages. Some directly for Tom and Dana, some for other friends riding, some general you-can-do-it type messages for everyone, and a few comments on others’ messages. “Podium girls ahead!” someone wrote. So I added, “Podium boys too!”

Two switchbacks from the top, I heard my name. I turned to find Tom & Dana cranking up to me, she smiling, he sweating hard. I ran alongside for a bit, but then they went on. By the time I got to them at the finish, they were accepting congratulations from people and fruit from the snack table.

My favorite tandem team finished in two and a half hours (faster than Tom had thought they’d be) and as far as I saw, Dana was the only girl involved in the event.

It was a beautiful day, an impressive challenge, another incredible Mount Baker Hill Climb. And I was just a little tempted to try it next year.

Headlamp Hiking

Getting outside with my now teenager seems to involve a little more cajoling to interest him in an adventure. The weekend of the Mt. Baker Hillclimb (his sister and his dad tandem bicycled that), I proposed a mother-son overnight on a little mountain above where the hill climb would finish.

He was skeptical. Complained some. But eventually packed his backpack.

I made sure I had cider mix and good breakfast food, back up warm clothes, and enough water since it is a dry camp. But this time I made sure that he was carrying his share of the weight. And I promised him it was a short hike, but a supercool spot.

And it was.

Due to dropping off the hillclimbers to camp at what would be their start the next morning, we hit the trail after sunset. This turned out to be a highlight. Hiking with a headlamp makes a simple hike into an incredibly different experience. We felt our way, reached the top appreciating the trail with our remaining senses, and searched for a tent site by arcing the headlamp in circles around us. Did I mention I’d only brought one?

We saw millions of stars, I listened to him chatter in the tent while he skimmed Popular Science, and we awoke to a beautiful sunrise the next morning. Headlamp hiking is definitely to be repeated and the mother-son overnight was a success. He thought so too.

Family Book Club

Books have been on my mind. In the last few weeks I was lucky enough to win Jane in Bloom by Deborah Lytton through Cindy Hudson’s Mother-Daughter Book Club site and two writer books from Christina Katz’ Writer Mama site. Thanks gals!

I also got my copy of Cindy’s Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs. And in thinking about her perspective on sharing books with daughters, I reflected on our family’s book sharing.

On our bicycling trips, each person gets to take one book in their pannier. So after someone finishes their book, we often trade. Then we can operate as a family book club, discussing what we’ve read in the tent at night or over peanut butter sandwiches at lunch. I like reading the young adult literature my kids have read – I get to know more about what they’re experiencing, I read books I would not have ordinarily picked up, and we have interesting discussions.

When we lived in Mexico we shared even more books, because English language books were hard to come by. We packed 40 books along with us, then shared many of them. My son even made a calendar and filled in when he would read each book, so as to make them last the length of the trip (didn’t work, he sped through the books and we had to start trading with other families).

How often do families read the same book at home? For us, the Harry Potter books, but not too many others. But on a trip where space and weight dictate condensing our book possibilities? Family book club happens.

The Sign for More

This incredibly cute bicycle traveler is my friend’s son, Alden. Funny how I just wrote a Family Bicycling article, and was remembering my own family wearing out our bike trailer. All the photos of my own kids at that stage aren’t digital – times change. But I think introducing kids to bicycling at a young age is a timeless good idea.

Think of how much more fun bicycling is for kids then riding a in a car. Kids get to see the world at a pace they can notice the color of leaves or the pedestrian’s fedora. They can smell the blackberries, and lately, apples. They can feel the breeze or the raindrops. They will get smiled and waved at by other people, see their parents modeling fitness and healthy activity, absorb safety lessons about helmets and looking before turning. They will likely be excited about riding their own bike in a few years, and family adventuring by bicycle. Fun and fitness for everyone.

Start young, and you will likely see the sign for more – even literally like Alden is giving it. See him touching his hands together in the American Sign Language sign for “more?”

Blueberries

Late summer and autumn hiking? It’s blueberry heaven out there. We picked cupfuls to have in pancakes or on cereal for breakfast, and everyone participated.

We had blue fingers from picking, and blue tongues from eating, and a certain girl in our party had blue lips from constant blueberry consumption. We wondered how bears eat blackberries. Do they aim for the berries but end up eating a mouthful of leaves most of the time? Do they somehow run their teeth across the plant stem, loosening the berries but not the leaves? Do their mouths turn blue too?

We didn’t see any bears, but we did see some very blueberry-influenced bear scat. There was an abundance of blueberry plants, so maybe the bears were working some other area. Like in the old children’s book Blueberries for Sal. I certainly thought of “kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk” from that book (the sound the berries made dropped into Sal’s pail), even though that wasn’t really the sound of blueberries dropped into my plastic cup.

Mostly we picked while wandering near camp, but of course on the way out people stopped even with their loaded packs on. No one even tipped over. Just touched up the blue on their mouths and fingers.

The Well Filmed Trip

Once upon a time, my kids journaled when we went adventuring. We have notebooks of their words and drawings on our shelves, and I love how those can take us back to a trip as the kids experienced it. Nowadays, my son is completely into filmmaking, so it is camera and tripod, not pencil and paper, that travel with us.

On our last weekend-long backpacking trip, his equally into filmmaking friend came along. This led to the rest of us feeling rather well documented, as the boys each had a camera. And they spent a great deal of time with one filming, and the other calling out director notes.

This backpacking trip, on the heels of our 12-day bicycling trip which also included the son’s video camera, are getting me used to adventuring with a film crew. I suppose I need to modify our packing lists now, to include his video equipment. Or maybe I don’t. I doubt he’ll ever forget to pack it.

Smiles Per Hour

The fall issue of Adventures Northwest magazine is out and about now, chock full of inspiring writing and good looking photos. My article on family bicycling, Smiles Per Hour, details how we’ve been cycling together over the years – starting with one kid and a trailer of diapers, but eventually becoming a family of four on parent & child tandem bicycles. We have pedaled thousands of miles, a number of different countries (USA, Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg), and up to six weeks on a single trip (the US Pacific Coast). We sure have had amazing experiences together.

You can even read the article right here if you don’t live where you can pick up a copy of the magazine. Let me know what you think, or if you have questions.

Calling all Writer Mamas

As a writer mama, I have learned from and been supported by Christina Katz’ Writers on the Rise, then Writer Mama, and most recently Get Known Before the Book Deal books and websites.

This month, for the third year in a row, The Writer Mama, Christina Katz, is giving away thirty books in thirty days. All you have to do to enter is answer Christina’s question of the day. At the end of each day, a winner will be randomly chosen from those who posted responses -and there is no limit to how many days you can enter. You don’t have to be a mom, of course, though the event is created with moms in mind. Stop by, be inspired, and maybe even win a book!

The Weighty Truth

The kids’ backpacks were packed and weighed while I was at work. Then the parents not working on Friday hit the trail first with the girls and the two of us who worked that day came later with the boys.

Thus I did not know until I met up with my husband at camp that my son’s backpack only weighed 16 pounds. Funny that the son did not volunteer this information. Knowing that, I gave him the tent (another 6 pounds) to carry on the way out, bringing him up to 20% of his body weight.  Looks like we need to buy him a bigger backpack so he can take on a share of food and group gear. After all, he weighs 110 and is growing fast.

At age eleven, Dana carried 12 pounds, again lighter than I’d expected. She doesn’t weigh 90 pounds yet, but could still carry 17 pounds, if we stick to the 20% guideline. More important than the numbers however, is the fact that they didn’t seem weighted down. They picked blackberries, moved well on the trail, didn’t seem tired, and hiked for over an hour with water breaks but no pack-off-sit-downs.

Two families plus a friend, weather that held, great swimming, beautiful mountains. What a weekend.