Friday, May 30, 2008

An Interrupted Hunt

Cheryl is off riding horses in the Cascade Mountains with a friend so I am on Daddy Duty for a few days. No big deal it's great time for the three of us to bond and celebrate "Boys Club". this usually means some sort of BBQ'ed beef dinner followed by wrestling in the living room until the rug burns stop the action or dad gets tired. After school the boys were delighted to spend a few hours at a friends house chasing frogs and playing games. I stopped in and loaded them up for the ride home. We covered the days events in typical boy fashion, "How was school?", "Good.", "Wha'ja do today?", "Stuff.", "Any homework?", "Nope, can we play video games when we get home?", "Nope." End of conversation.
I turned off the road onto our gravel drive, rolled along slowly doing our usual check of the field for deer, when all of a sudden a HUGE bird swooped in front of the car, his mottled brown and white wings blocking the windshield. He pulled up as if to pounce on his prey, tucked in his wings and with one powerful flap shot straight up to light on a cedar branch not more than fifteen feet in front of us. I was thinking, " I wonder if he sees the big green shiny thing following him?"
We had interrupted a hunt. That's him in the center of the shot, not the best image but the best I could do at a moments notice. He seemed content to hang out for the photo opp. I think all birds of prey know they are cool looking. We have a couple resident owls in the nearby woods. We hear them often, their hoots are an eerie romantic sound that oftentimes will stop a game of catch or "drown the ants" or "hide from Gabe" so we can listen, smile and revel in the wildness of the moment. But to be this close, to see him in flight, to interrupt his dinner, this was a treat and became the topic of discussion for the night. the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds we quickly found and an identification was established; EMPEROR PENGUIN! "No sorry Gabe, I think you have the wrong book" Of the sixteen to choose from it came down to just two possibilities: a Hawk-Owl or a Spotted Owl. Now, the Hawk-Owl (Surnia ulula), who's name implies an identity issue, has wings roughly similar to a short-winged hawk, sports yellow eyes and tends to roam the Canadian portion of North America. His Spotted brother, or cousin (Strix occidentalis), sports dark eyes, is "dark brown with spots above and barring below" and has a much larger wing span. So here we are staring at the critter that, in this neck of the world, has been the controversial icon of anti-logging protests spurring such things as T-shirts with Spotted Owl recipes, small cans labeled "Smoked Spotted Owl", and various other trinkets communicating displeasure with the decision to force commercial logging to stop.
Gabe lets out a, "Shoot it dad!" Not this one little buddy we best leave it be and enjoy the moment. Besides the Audubon Society says they keep the rodent population down and mom will like that idea better than having a protected species in her freezer.
"Don't you have homework?", "Nope.", "Right...let's go get dinner started".
Tony

Thursday, May 29, 2008

All Comers 2008 Meet #1

My apologies, I have been sick for a few days… Here is last night’s story: Last night was the first of many All Comers Track and Field meets to be help at Shoreline Stadium in North Seattle. Last night I had the privilege to officiate the javelin throw. The competition included 16 throwers: two athletes attempting to qualify for the Olympic Trials (they were both very close but did not reach the mark and will attempt to make it the next two weeks), one gent who threw in the Munich Olympics and a collection of others including a 72 year old Decathlete and a High School kid who knew nothing of the company he was keeping and being assisted by. The tension inherent in an Olympic year brings out the best of the best for official competitions of this nature. Evidenced by the passionate but controlled “discussion/argument” I was embroiled in with one of the top throwers. In a standard meet competition throwers get three attempts to qualify for a final round of three more attempts: Prelims and Finals. This happens in the javelin, discus, shot put, long and triple jump events. But this is an All Comers and we have limited officials and time, and thus our meet format is a 1 hour open pit where every competitor get four throws (or jumps), in no particular order; “throw when ready, pit closes in an hour”. The Top thrower was not aware of this and when he signed in did not glance at the sheet of paper he was signing on that had the meet format diagramed out. Well….you can imagine how “upset” he was when after his third throw I let him know his next throw would be his final attempt. Here is the humor for you-all my friends; a sort of David and Goliath moment. I am 5-6 160lbs with the average body fat of a 40 year old recreational runner. Mr. Top Thrower guy, 20 years my junior, is 6-2 190ish with .032% body fat and, well, very “angry”…at me. With an 800 gram polished aluminum spear white knuckle gripped in hand he almost allowed his testosterone to override his manners and with a lot of control he explained to me how a meet should be run and that he should have two more throws. I said I would gladly allow him to have two more unofficial throws after the competition had concluded and then allowed him to view the sign in sheet I was recording the competition on. The sheet, which explained the format of four throws and no finals, the same sheet he had signed in on. Even more “angry”, he glared at me, then without turning his head panned his eyes to his coach and, with Fabio like drama, whipped his golden locks around and stormed off muttering under his breath. Frank, the guy who threw in Munich, was my guardian angel. I also had a trump card. The man announcing the meet down on the track (time to name drop), a close family friend and college roommate, a man who has permission to discipline my boys and teases Cheryl about marrying me, Bill Roe, is the President of USA Track and Field. Bill is the man who has not only coached me for years but signed my certification to officiate and will without a hesitation will back up my decision to follow meet format; a format established by forty years of All Comers meets. I stood there, looking up at this specimen of God’s creation, chuckling inside thinking, “I wonder if he will pass his urine analysis test to make it in the Olympic Trials.” Not the best of thoughts but it, and my back up plan, who’s voice was booming over the PA, helped me deal with the confrontation. In other meet news: My Jonathan, at 8 years old, ran his fastest mile ever, clocking a 7:44!!! I did not actually see it happen and still wonder if he ran only 3 laps, but all the officials claim he ran the whole thing. We’ll see if he can back it up with a similar performance next week. Tony

Friday, May 16, 2008

Oops posting error

Somehow the draft of the last post "What Do You Remember" was dated May 9 instead of today, May16, and posted physically below the prior post. Tony

Monday, May 12, 2008

Five months in.

We are five months into 2008 How are your resolutions going? Or did ya back out and do the "I won't make any resolutions resolution"? I have, in the past few years started committing to annual resolutions that progress gradually through the year. For 2007 I decided to 1) try and get my weight down to 155 by July 7th, my 40th birthday (didn't quite make it, 160 was the best I could do), 2) run 1000 miles (finished with 1034, for a life total of around 16,735 (yes I keep track, it's a geek runner thing (wait...how many parentheses go here...))), and 3) read the entire Bible (got it). It was a good year. This year, since I am writing more, I have decided to stick with reading one "real" book per month. So far I am a bit ahead of schedule having read "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder, "The Shack" by William P. Young, "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri, "Deadline" by Randy Alcorn, and "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebeow. Now I am reading "The Sacred Romance" by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge. On to happines...http://www.newsweek.com/id/96107 I was chatting with a good friend the other night about nice people, hope, happines, and family. He found it interesting, as Raina Kelly discovered, people who have Faith are happier than those who don't. Faith in God, family, hope for the future, and a world view that helps and includes others, unlike the folks in Moldova. I guess that would be tagged onto my 2008 reading resoultion: to be happier by deepening my faith. Now for a story: Poho and the Burning house in CA When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade my folks sponsored a Cambodian couple. For some reason only the husband was staying with us. I think I found out years later he came ahead of her to establish a job and find a place to live. I didn’t understand why this man who barely spoke English was staying in my room and I had to sleep in the living room. Poho was interesting to the point of being a scary unknown to me. In the morning he would wake and do funny slow dancing stuff, waving his arms and bending over while he would breathe kinda loud. I remember peaking through the cracked door and watching him, how odd. No one I knew did this. He was different so I was frightened. He stayed with us until he found work and could support his family and bring them over. It was only a couple months. During his visit with us an amazing event unfolded next door. The group of young people living next door to us was friendly and mostly kept to themselves until the night their house caught fire. I remember being woken up by mom and taken outside in case a spark caught our house on fire. The dry hot Southern California summer cultivated perfect conditions for a fire, everything was bone dry. We had experienced a series of Santa Anna winds blowing from the deserts. These winds quickly parched all the grass in the vacant lot down the street and heated the blacktop at the school yard, softening the soles of our shoes and making it hard to run and play. Our roof was a perfect place for a wandering spark to light. Dad was funny looking as he sprayed the roof and side of the house with the hose, jumping to reach and soak every part. This was the first time I can remember seeing him scared. He was frantic. The flames inside the neighbor’s house were visible through the dark smoke in the windows. I kept trying to get a better look but mom would hold me back. All the people came running out and the rest of the neighborhood supplied blankets and clothes. I could hear the wood creaking and breaking and glass shattering as if the house was screaming in pain. Black smoke rose violently from the house and blocked our view the peaceful twinkling stars. The fire ate the house from the inside out. Soon the roof gave to the hungry flames and collapsed in thundering defeat. The heat rushed from the house and slammed into our bewildered faces. I had to turn away to escape it. Now the fire celebrated its victory, by throwing two-by-fours into the sky, big ones. At least they were big to my 8 year old eyes. It amazed me, and freaked out Poho. I remember him standing frozen in the orange glow of the fire’s heat just staring, right at the fire. What was going through his mind? What thoughts and memories froze this man? I was young and knew nothing of the Vietnam War or the political unrest that part of the world was enduring. But now I wonder, “What images were passing through Poho’s mind that night?” And was he more scared than I? The fire burned through the night, contained by a crew of firefighters, and the neighborhood smelled like burnt wood and plastic for days. Life continued and we went back to our normal summer kid stuff, peaking over the fence every now and then to look at the pile of burnt house parts. One day Amy, my little sister, was playing in the side yard with a friend. Two sweet little girls just being kids in the side yard, unaware of the huge rattlesnake under the trash can lid inches from them. You see, the neighbors collected snakes, and what is a good snake collection without poisonous snakes, big poisonous snakes. Well this was some collection of snakes, and a few escaped the fire. Amy and her friend somehow disturbed the creature and it let them know with its normal warning, rattling its tail. It must have been loud because the two of them didn’t touch the ground until they were safe on the couch in the living room. These two little girls found the first of many deadly snakes wandering about on Palmbark Street. I remember watching at least three being caught, but I head about more. Maybe the number grew with the stories, don’t know. I wonder what Poho thought about the snakes? Tony

Friday, May 9, 2008

What do you remember?

Every now and then I like to get out the old photo albums and just stroll through. I was sitting with Jonathan, my eight year old, the other night looking for photos of my platinum bond hair. Yes, at one point I did indeed have hair. In Southern California it was easy to be blond, and boy was I. The top left is Kindergarten the middle is first grade the top right is second grade followed by third to sixth grade. The family move to Washington State had a dramatic effect on my hair color in fourth grade as it was no longer being bleached out by the California sun. Jonathan is now in second grade and growing out his hair. He looks like a little surfer boy, much like what I looked like around that time. There he is above with a friend he made in Haiti and again below handing out toothbrushes. As we flipped throught the photo album he got a real kick out of seeing what his dad looked like when he was a boy and then seeing Dad's report cards from school.
So on we search as my brain wanders back to those early years...
These are memories of a third grader and they are foggy at best, and yet I can recall summers, there were three in there, of camping and the YMCA sponsored Indian Guides events and Vacation Bible School. The summers were a time of exploration in the vacant lots being prepped for construction. We would dig large holes in the ground and cover them with scraps of plywood and have secret tunnels for entrances. The top of the fort would be covered with dirt and grass for camouflage. I remember stealing these weird oil filled plastic “wands” from a man down the street and taking them into the fort and holding them up to the splinters of light allowed to sneak in for us to see. The glitter and sparkles would slowly flow from one end to the other reflecting light and sending the colors dancing around the fort. I spent many days at the end of Palmbark Street in that vacant lot with my friends. Mom was at home during the day and keenly aware of where we were via the network of neighborhood moms on the lookout, but every now and then we would allude the dragnet and venture out to the uncharted waters of the other side of Palmbark and the world of the bigger kids, it was scary and exciting. Those forays to the “other side” were few and far between and we would always return via the vacant lot to make it look as if that is where we had always been. One hot day a recall sneaking into a friend’s back yard and plummeting down his back hill covered in ice plant. If you have never slid down an ice plant slope you have not lived. Ice Plant is a succulent that is used as a ground cover. It has triangular shaped “fingers” that are filled with slimy goo that has the wonderful ability to aid in sliding. The Tough Skin pants we wore were the perfect outer garment to aid in the sliding. The goo would stick to the pants and form a protective outer shell of lubrication. We would run to the edge of the hill and dive onto the Ice Plant smashing the fingers and releasing the goo. Every dive would result in more goo and longer slides. We didn’t care much about the mess or the destruction we were causing, this was the peak of fun, and well worth the tongue lashing we were going to receive at the end of the day. I can still remember the smell of Ice Plant. Many more memories of Vista, CA swirl through my head. Like the time Frank rode his skateboard into a parked car and broke his collar bone. Mom was not sure what was wrong so she made him raise his arms and pulled his shirt off. As he did his shoulder collapsed in toward his neck as the collar bone overlapped. Or the time I was late coming home from an adventure and missed the family as they left for McDonald’s. I have memories of some kind of summer camp where we made sand candles at a local park and VBS at our church with the courtyard round about. I remember getting in really big trouble for throwing a cactus at a girl I liked. She had barbed thorns in her for a few days and I got a spanking at school and when I got home that day. I remember the small Alligator lizards we would find, Amy, my younger sister, would call them “Screwdrivers” but I can’t remember why. We would hold them by the tail until it fell off. They have the ability to just allow the tail to detach without dying; it is some kind of escape mechanism. I remember the smell of eucalyptus trees, and peeling the bark off Madonna trees. I have many memories of hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Sometimes with all of us and then a couple times with just the kids and Grandpa. I remember stealing my first candy bar from the little store down near the highway. I remember Jamie my first “girlfriend” in third grade; she had really cool blond hair. She was just like Jamie Summers, the bionic woman. I remember moving to Washington and not being able to say goodbye to Jamie, leaving my giant stuffed paper fish hanging from the ceiling in my classroom. I remember the really nice neighboor man who's wife had the coolest cactus garden, he would throw oranges and other fruit he grew in his yard over the fence to us kids. I will never forget the old blue station wagon we had. It had backwards facing rear seats, was really stinky, absolutely huge and never really died it just seemed to vanish one day after we had moved to Washington. There are any other memories of trips, events, smells, sights and sounds rambling around in my mind someday I'll get them all down on paper.
Tony

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The Burn Trailer

Sultan Fire Department, Snohomish County Dist. 5 As part of our weekly training we have the opportunity, a couple times a year, to use a converted semi-trailer for fire suppression practice. It is a very effective tool in demonstrating what it can be like entering a burning structure. As we train we discover the difficulties and challenges in making entrance, working in low to no visibility, supporting each other, communication and safely exiting. Oh yeah, and did I mention the heat? For those of us who do not get the opportunity to fight live fires very often the trailer is a valuable experience. My team of three stands atop the trailer, in front of us is a large black metal door, its surface steaming as the heat from the internal fire turns water to steam. Smoke escapes and billows around the edges. We are running a scenario simulating a basement fire. We will be descending a flight of stairs to find and extinguish a fire. This is a very dangerous scenario as we will be entering into the fire from above, essentially the ceiling, where all the smoke and superheated gasses go in a fire. The plan is for us to first descend the flight of stairs through the layer of heat and gasses, regroup at the base, asses the situation and then extinguish the fire. I will man the nozzle, the second person will guide and support me and the third will feed and control the hose. I test the hose; opening the gate to release any air trapped in the hose and to assure the nozzle is set to spray the water in a very wide pattern of heavy mist, called a fog pattern. Chief opens the door and we step into the wall of heat descending the stairs into the darkness. A faint orange glow can be seen from the back of the structure. Fire! The first few steps are awkward as I catch the rhythm of the stairs. I am wearing full bunker gear: jacket, pants, boots, gloves, SCBA, mask and helmet. In all it totaled about 60 lbs of lifesaving gear, heavy for sure, but also very bulky making walking on a flat surface difficult and descending stairs a real chore. I open the gate on the nozzle and a full fog pattern cools the air and stairwell protecting us as we descended. The air at the base of the stairs is a not so cool 350 degrees compared to the 600 or 700 degree air, steam and smoke billowing up the stairs. When we make it safely to the base of the stairs I adjust the nozzle pattern to about a 30 degree stream to fight the interior fire. We drop to our knees and advanced, making a 180 turn to the left around the stairs, to the middle of the trailer. The fire is climbing the back wall of the structure and rolling over the ceiling spanning the 30 feet to silently vanish just above our heads. Time seems to stand still as we assessed the fire. The orange yellow flames climb the back wall with deliberateness. Although we know the walls are metal and fully contain the inferno, there is still an edge to the situation; a feeling that we are in an environment where things could go very wrong in a hurry. The heat is engulfing. It has a feeling of pressure to it like the squeeze feeling of diving deep under water. I reopen the nozzle gate and hit the seat of the fire slowly working the stream up to the ceiling and back down to the floor in a waving pattern to extinguish all the flames. And just like that in a matter of seconds the fire is tapped. Then the real heat hits us. The heat created by the blaze was converting the water into steam, a heavy dense penetrating steam. Within seconds the steam fills the trailer fogging our masks and seeping into our gear reaching our skin. The temperature seems to scream up inside our bunker gear with the introduction of the wet air. This is when the heat feels the worst. We radio to Command that we have a tapped fire and we will be making our way out. As soon as the transmission is received and confirmed by Command the back and side doors of the trailer are swung open releasing the super heated air. A huge plume rises from the trailer in a perfect mushroom cloud climbing 100 feet into the cool night. It all took only three to four minutes from entrance to exit but the fire, heat and steam made it feel like a lot longer. We were the eighth of eight rotations in the Burn Trailer. So as our evolution is complete we spray water on the walls and ceiling to cool the entire rig down as we were done for the night. Sharing stories and insights into lessons learned in a fire scenario, we pack the hoses back onto engine and make our way to the station. Another drill night complete. Tony

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Here is life in the afternoon of a five year old with dads camera Self portrait... Above... the toothbrush spitting cobras happy meal monsters Brother's geko T Ball team...Trenton Thunder lizard under my finger Tube shaped paper airplane and a lego guy...legs only