The Edge [of all] Journeys

We’re settled in here south of Lincoln City, OR – nestled in a valley that doesn’t have cell coverage (hence no internet), but offers instead a constant supply of beauty: evergreen-covered hills shrouded in foggy serenity, a vibrant-green river behind our home on wheels, mist from time to time for good measure, old soul trees blanketed in moss… almost enough to stave off the connection withdrawals. I’m posting this from the library in town. We’ve just finished our laundry and the kids are restless to leave, so I will have to keep it short.

Our trip from Minot, ND to Lincoln City, OR was the most adventurous yet.

• Spent a few days soaking in the splendor of Glacier National Park… you should see the photos I got… I will have to post some if I remember to bring my photo disk drive with me sometime when I surface to get a connection.
• North of Augusta, MT I pulled over to try to get some shots of an amazing lightening storm not too far to the west. Barely minutes after stopping, the massive storm blew our way and right through our location, pelting us with grape-sized hail… biggest I think I’ve ever been in. We were broadsided by the assault and I felt like looking for the cannons to return fire. Thankfully, the “historic site” pull-over we had taken had a huge hanging sign etched with the story of the place that shielded a section of our trailer. But the exposed portion of our rolled up awning got a bit shredded… still, nothing that a roll of white duct tape couldn’t cure later on.
• Then, at an intersection an hour north of Helena, MT and 45 minutes east of Lincoln, MT we had to make a decision about which way to go with very little info… West was risky – possible crazy mountains and back hi-ways. South went to bigger interstates and cities, but was a far longer route. We decided to go West and had a couple major climbs, stopping at one point to let the line behind us pass while we cooled down, but ultimately we were glad we did it. It was a gorgeous drive and put us way ahead of schedule, getting into Missoula, MT late that evening.
• On the last day of travel, home stretch, finish-line practically in sight, things got really interesting. Driving down the very scenic I-84 along the Columbia River just 10 miles east of Arlington, OR we ran over some kind of metal chunk that I totally didn’t see and our rear, passenger tire on the truck exploded. I’m not exaggerating. I know about the metal chunk because one of those hi-way safety vehicle came up behind us a few minutes later and the driver told me he had just picked it up off the road a few hundred feet back. So, with the trailer practically resting against the guardrail, and just enough room to fit beside the narrower truck, I changed the shredded rubber with our spare. Took a while… thankfully, the safety worker stayed behind us with his blinkers going and then led us into town down the road to a tire shop. We got two new rear tires (for now – though I would have bought a whole set if they had them… I love these new tires, about the best you can get, aggressive grip, 10-ply, best all-round road / gravel / rain tires you can find and very affordable)… and there was a post office in town so we took care of our Correction to Change of Address since that was going to my sister’s who has now also moved… and replaced a fuse I needed at the ACE Hardware across the street from the post office… and several hours later back on the road.
• Had to stop one more time as we started swaying all over the road from the wind (I-84 hills are riddled with wind turbines which should give you an idea) to slap on our sway-control-bar (normally I leave it off because it hasn’t been too bad without it up until now and I prefer the extra maneuverability).
• All told, that put us arriving at 10pm local time at our campground when it should have been like 4 or 5pm. But we made it. And are loving it.

I’ll have to get some of those photos from the adventure posted here… there are some reall great ones. Check back over the next few days – I’ll update this post with them… or maybe just do a new post with a bunch. We’ll see.

How many of you can say that you had the chance later on in life to meet the doctor who delivered you when you were born? Maybe there are more of you than I’d guess, but I certainly can’t. Well, today in a cool turn of events it worked out for Bennah (who just turned 8 a week ago) to meet the doctor that delivered him.

We got a good start departing Winnipeg this morning and got into Minot, ND with plenty of time to swing by the hospital where Bennah was born. We were just going to show the kids the building, but on a whim, I thought – what if Dr. A. F. is still working there? So, I went inside, picked up the phone labeled “Information” and asked the nice lady at the other end. Sure enough! And she forwarded me to OB to check on his availability. So, after 8 years and 4 more children, we got a chance to say hi to the kind gentlemen who helped us with our firstborn. Crazy. And of course, he remembered us too… well, our situation was rather unique afterall – Renee on bed rest for 5 months of the pregnancy, and our request for an 8th-day circumcision, and several other unique things about our story, but I’ll leave it at that.

Then, we went past our old apartment (the second floor of an old house and probably the most favorite place we ever lived… tied with the last house in Alexandria, VA maybe… of course, current “home” notwithstanding, which doesn’t count because it’s way too awesome to even be compared)… anyway, it’s still there and it looks exactly like it did the day we left. Same colors – everything. After 8 years.

Of course, the Wal-Mart in town has moved and been upgraded to a Super Center; picked up some necessary road supplies… but the Sammy’s is still here and pretty much all our original favorite places are intact. Both thrift stores. The coffee shop / used book store. The photolab Renee worked at for a while. Etc. Talk about memory lane. It was so much fun to share this all with our kids, even though they probably just wanted to get out and run around and squirt each other with the new water guns from Wal-Mart…

And as for Bennah – I’m sure he just wanted to try out his new bike seat. He just learned how to ride a bike. On literally his second try. And some friends blessed us with an awesome bike for him (they had extras) but it needed a new seat. Up until today he’s been riding it around the campground with a shoe over the post to act as a seat. After he took a few spins around the Roughrider Campground where we’re parked now in Minot, he said he actually likes the shoe better. But he never actually sat on it I don’t think. His bony bum isn’t very comfortable on the new seat that he can actually sit on… but he’ll get used to it.

Long day of driving tomorrow and I should have been in bed a while ago. But this had to get captured. It was another great day.

The Race Project… OE21G… Adventuring… it has many working titles at the moment. The short version goes like this:

For nearly a decade now, one of my close brothers (of which I have many among my spiritual family) has been teaching an Outdoor Adventuring course at a private, faith-based school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Incorporating the necessary provincial requirements, the course qualifies as phys ed credit for the students and teaches them fundamental survival skills like navigation, fire building, shelter making, team dynamics, etc. They spend a lot of time during the year practicing what they learn. They go hiking and camping in a remote area during the Fall Camping Trip. They build quinzhees and spend a night in sub-freezing temperatures on the Winter Camping Trip. And the year is peppered with biking trips, obstacle runs, urban night hikes, and the like. At the end of the year they have a final written exam and a final practical exam.

The practical exam has evolved over the years, but it has always been modeled after the fine tradition of adventure racing (e.g. Eco-Challenge). The amazing part is that these are 9th, 10th, sometimes 11th grade students completing roughly 100 km / 62 miles entirely self-powered (on foot and bike) during a 36 hour period; including a campcraft phase during which they have to build and sleep in their own tarp shelters. Held at the beginning of June each year in Canada, temperatures can still hover close to freezing. Each student team races against each other and against a veteran team (Bravo) that ran the race as students themselves several years ago and has been coming back for the fun of it since then. They have to navigate their way through roughly 30 checkpoints armed with their compasses, cardinal-based riddle-like instructions, and an appreciation (usually begrudging) for their instructor’s sense of humor. The checkpoints take them through a surprising variety of terrain from urban environments and open road, to bush-whacking through provincial parks, across muddy landscapes, and wading (or swimming) through river-like flood-ways. These are just some of the challenges they face. In addition, the instructor placed several handicaps on team Bravo this year to even the playing field as much as possible (for example, they had two 90 minute penalties, an additional checkpoint, and found all their bikes disassembled at one of the transition points).

A while back another close brother of mine and I got it in our heads that this course (and all the real, bigger than life characters that surround it) would make an excellent documentary. So, for the last year and a half we’ve been exploring how to pull it all together into a coherent project. Part of the exploration has offered me the privilege of chasing the teams through the course in 2008 and 2009 grabbing as much footage and photography as I can on the run.

I’m really cutting my teeth on any semblance of video experience through the exercise and pushing my photography skills as well. One exciting thing for me personally, as I wade through all the material that I collected at this year’s race just over a week ago, is that I am noticing a huge improvement in both the footage and the photos. I think a big factor in this is that I was here ahead of time, which made it possible to help the instructor set up the course. I knew were every single checkpoint was and (more or less) how the teams would approach and leave. Also, having gone through the whole experience last year, I had a subconscious working model that helped me anticipate where great clips or shots might be likely to emerge.

In all this, though, I know that there is a bigger story to tell, and it almost seems murkier now with 2-years-worth of solid coverage. Each class and each year has its own independent theme tying everything together for that particular group of students. Start adding the years together, however, to define something as big as the overall course, and the story-telling challenge grows exponentially with each additional year considered. One area that is significantly lacking in our coverage are the background stories of the students themselves – their families – their other interests – and the events that shape them throughout the whole year in the class. Now that we’re mobile, I’m hoping that we can start to fill in a lot of the gaps.

One thing that bears mention, and I saw this emphasized for me personally this year in a profound way: the efforts and sacrifice of the support teams that make this race and the course itself possible are immeasurable. Renee and the kids supported me being away for several long evenings while we were setting up the course, and then they followed me / drove me around / rode around in the truck for two days straight while I chased the shots. The instructor’s family supports him in similar ways throughout the entire year. And the parents of the students entrust them to a very worthwhile course that has very real dangers. Bennah, my oldest son, also helped take some excellent photos at times and places that I simply couldn’t be all at once. Seeing all of that in a new way this year really impressed on me the desire to make this a significant stream in the documentary’s storyline.

Here are a few of the photos I took from that amazing weekend adventure (see link below for a gallery of many more photos from the 2009 race with details of this year’s story in all the captions):

Here’s a gallery of photos from the 2009 race. [NOTE: The 2008 and 2009 Exam Race galleries are password protected out of respect for the student’s privacy. You can email me for the access codes, or get them from Mr. Dave directly.]

Other fun / related resources:
Here is a Google map of the whole course for 2009.
Here are some of the photos from the 2008 race.

I know things have been a bit quiet around here… and as you might guess – that’s because life has been everything but. Here are some of the highlights from the last couple weeks (not necessarily in chronological order):

• I smoked my first bona fide Cuban cigar and sipped superb home-made wine while hanging out with good friends after a delectable BBQ in their back yard one perfect weekend evening
• Renee and the kids loaned me out for a couple weeks to the Race Project (more on that in a bit)
• We enjoyed a few evenings that were finally warm enough to sit around the camp fire
• There was the epic shopping trip that started out as a Zach / daddy date but turned into the other kids (except Joy) coming along because Zach is such a generous guy he invited them too (he misses them when he does stuff by himself)… of course upon arrival at the store I discovered that my wallet had schemed against me and left itself back at the trailer… and the store doesn’t take checks… but thankfully I was able to scrounge some U.S. cash from my grab & go pack, which they were more than happy to take… trust me, even a horrible exchange rate loss is worth avoiding a full-reset and start-over on a shopping trip with 4 kids.
• We met grandpa at The Forks and invaded the wonderful children’s museum there, wrapping up with peanuts, gyros, and tips to the buskers (street musicians)
• And, among other things, we hoisted the anchors and unfurled the sails and relocated the trailer to be in position for the Race Project.

My conscience has been bothering me for years about my boots. They are big and bulky. Heavy. Probably made in China by grossly underpaid and mistreated workers. I’m sure none of the materials are from recycled sources. And when I walk in them… to think of the scars they leave on the land: the crushed grass, the ruined flowers, the shattered twigs, and the horrendous indentations in dirt and mud alike! Oh the shame. They have no soul… I mean sole left (well, I’ve had them for years and years after all).

No longer!

I am now clad in the closest thing to my own two bare feet that can still get me past those dastardly “no shirt, no shoes, no service” signs! I am as silent as a ninja. I bend scarcely a blade of grass when I glide across the land. It’s marvelous – rocks and sticks practically roll out of the way when I step so that the bare earth can cup my friendly feet. I am wearing Vibram FiveFingers where ever I go now.

These are the most amazing invention of the 21st century. Hands down. Or, feet down as it were. I recommend them without reservation. Unless, of course, you are the kind of person who prefers to check your toes into a normal 5-star shoe resort, letting them bask in a jacuzzi, sip rum and cokes, get pedicures and their hair styled, and sunbathe under the kind of arch support that could suspend the Golden Gate Bridge while pounding heals and knees against asphalt… well, then in that case these marvels of modern technology will not really interest you.

However, if you are anything like me and would much rather feel the mud between your toes, the general texture of each rock – sharp or smooth – on your arches (think reflexology, not coal walking), the water from creeks and streams flowing in and over and through and leaving your footwear, the soft ground soft, the hard ground hard, the steep inclines stable with 10 points of contact instead of 2, the climbing effortless (trees, rocks, and other obstacles like tall buildings), and the land itself – the terrain – the feedback from every chunk of 12 inch ground contacted and passed at a time… then you too would be in a blissful state of trekking paradise in these foot-gloves.

My one main concern was breatheability… Actually, I’d prefer to be barefoot 100% of the time. In fact, but for the aforementioned prejudicial policy many commercial facilities insist on maintaining – and for the tendency of terrain that I like exploring to be more impervious than my own skin – I would be barefoot all the time. In fact, my feet can manage to sweat in flip-flops, so breatheability was a top priority. In this and every other respect the Vibram KSOs have performed flawlessly.

This past week I’ve been helping set-up a 100 Km adventure race course across urban and wilderness environments. With my predisposition for barefooting I experienced practically zero break-in time for these “shoes” and found the course set-up to be the perfect excuse to put them to the test. I have walked, run, climbed, waded, and sparred across pavement, grass, railroad tracks, gravel (large and small), creeks, trails, swamps, forests, mud pits, rivers, trees, rocks, streets, churches, malls, restaurants, basketball courts, and more.

My feet were initially delightfully sore in the way that only using forgotten muscles regularly again can achieve. No blisters. No raw spots. It was as if my feet grew an impervious second sole. There, now I’ve used impervious twice in one post. Your mileage may vary. So far, only two complaints – they were slightly chilly wet in 45 F temp at night. But certainly not as cold as barefeet I suppose. The other problem that is likely not solvable by anyone or any footwear: I managed to stink them up in one week of swamp tromping despite the space-age-antimicrobial-odor-suppressing imbuement the soles are supposed to bear… washing them twice (once by hand and once in the laundry) didn’t even cure them. But I suspect a good soaking in miracle soap would.

So, all that said, I am ready for the course! I will be traveling much more light-footed this year while I’m shooting video and photos for the race, shadowing the student teams as they self-propel their way through the final challenge of the year. And I must close this by saying THANK YOU BEN for barefooting with me and for sending me the Vibram info years ago (it seems like years anyway). I certainly did not forget about it.

Episode 2 of Journeys – a serial, rough-cut documentary composed of Motion Snapshots from our life on the road. June 2009: In this episode we arrive in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, play with friends, and fight with sticks!!!

YHWH is finding favor with us at this campground. He has given us a neat relationship with the owner even though we didn’t really do anything special to seek it out. The family that runs the gas station / campground here is really nice and helpful. With my background in computers I was in a position today to help the owner get his wifi broadcasting from the coffee shop into the campground again (he had an antenna / repeater / booster that was unplugged for the winter and I made sure it was all connected correctly and verified the signal for him).

He’s interested in expanding the range throughout the whole campground, so I went around with my pocket pc surveying the current signal strength per site. After I had a picture of how the layout and foliage affected the coverage I walked around with him and made recommendations as to how many repeaters he might need and what existing structures / poles / etc might make ideal locations for them to cover the rest of the campground.

I was happy to help! And the immediate benefit for us is that WE ARE NOW FULLY CONNECTED RIGHT AT OUR SITE!!!

Actually, this is a huge deal, because I’ve been battling the Autonet Mobile connection for days. Their support team has been excellent, but what we’ve discovered together is that Canada is a problematic no-man’s land of wireless data service when it comes to roaming. We’ll see what the final outcome is, but for now I will be diplomatic and protect most of the guilty with some anonymity. Basically it works like this: Autonet advertises data coverage for the U.S. and Canada because the carrier / provider they use advertises coverage in the U.S. and Canada. Essentially, Autonet themselves are a customer to this carrier on behalf of their own customers. Their carrier in turn has roaming provision agreements in place with Canadian carriers to (in theory) provide data and voice service to their customers. Confusing?

Well, the Canadian companies, it turns out – and I’m thinking of one in particular – seem to be (at the very least) somewhat unconcerned about the data connections of the customers who are on their network via a roaming agreement. In fact, looking at the logs and observing continuous ping behavior, it seems like their network is actually terminating data connections at a fixed interval. This has been the source of our woes.

Autonet is still working with me to get a solution – and they’ve been fantastic. Ultimately, I’m hopeful, however – I’m keenly aware that the reality is this: I’m the customer of a customer of a customer of a service. When you boil it all down, that’s the true picture, and there are a lot of moving gears in the overall scheme of that arrangement. It would only take one uncooperative gear at any level to translate into my service not working reliably.

Also, I’d take issue with the statement on Autonet Mobile’s FAQ that says: “Autonet Mobile is the Internet Service Provider…” I guess this is true from a certain vantage point, but traditional broadband ISP’s generally have their own infrastructure and Autonet does not. To the marketing team’s credit however, the web site has already been updated to correct their ignorance in advertising. The original page pulled from Google cache as of May 7th (which sold me on the service) states: “…to give you the broadband speed and expansive coverage in both the US and Canada.” The cached page also includes a link to a coverage map that clearly shows the US and Canada. The new page, by contrast, states: “to give you broadband speed and expansive coverage over the entire United States,” and includes a link to the coverage map of their service provider.

This might all sound like I’m trying to slam Autonet Mobile. Well, I was quite disappointed that they didn’t deliver the reliable service in Canada that was advertised, since that was one of the biggest requirements I had as I was shopping for service – knowing we’ll be spending a lot of time up here. However, their support has been superb, and I’m still hopeful that they will work something out on behalf of the customers who need connectivity throughout North America. I really hope that they don’t decide to give up on Canada and take a minimize-the-losses approach. The ridiculous state of affairs when it comes to cross-border data sharing and service really needs to be kicked into the 21st century. Maybe Autonet will take the mantle and be one of the pioneering catalysts.

But, for the meantime YHWH has looked out for us anyway – we now have a solid connection through the wifi at the Campground all the way inside the trailer – and for that we are very thankful!!! Thank you YHWH! Thank you Welcomestop! No more packing everything up to go spend a few hours at the coffee shop; no more leaving the laptop at friends overnight to get some bulk uploading done; no more sneaking in email checks and uploads when we’re with family for dinner… and, truth be told, the upstream data rate over wireless here (even with only 2 bars) is actually FASTER than either location that I tried in the city hardwired to a cable connection. Ah… it’s the little things in life.

Ok, back to the work I should have been getting done instead of this little praise/rant before Sabbath sets in.

I hope this post makes it through – the wireless service here outside the city has turned out spotty to say the least and our connections (internet and mobile voice) are very unreliable.

Such a bizarre weather time-warp … just over a week ago we were enjoying 80-90 F weather in Pennsylvania only to get up here (yes, I know it’s Canada but it’s the middle of May for crying out loud) and have some snow. Ok, nothing you could actually play in, but it’s the principle of the thing. Not that I mind really… anything to have more of a challenge. It’s good for us. Puts hair on our chests.

Today was full.

Breakfast and coffee. Registered at the office for a week here (initially, though we’re going to go campground exploring around the city to see if there are better options). Explored the facilities.

Tromped through some of that insane Manitoba gumbo mud with the kids for an hour… you can’t possibly know what I mean unless you’ve had the experience yourself – your shoes end up twice the size and 3-4 times heavier than when you start out. So then there was The Scraping and Soaking of Boots at the end of that, which took the rest of the morning.

Mounted a fruit net holder thing to replace a light fixture we were never going to use and a green bowl that took up too much counter space.

Started working on the kids laptop to get it all set-up and ready for them, which took 8 times longer than it should have since I can’t seem to keep a solid connection going… and that’s still not done.

I did get a couple emails off, although I should have been helping Renee with kid-wrangling-for-dinner at the time.

Tried to switch our cell phones over to the Canada side of Verizon, and finally found the access code I needed ( *228 ) but no success… I think we need to be closer to the city for it to work.

Emergency freezer thaw and spray down wash / wipe / dry and repack due to the fishiness that crept in during those couple days after we unplugged from AC power before the LP mode on the fridge was fixed and our stinking frozen Haddock defrosted enough to stink everything up.

Renee got the kids through school. Did the laundry (5 trips back and forth by the end of the day). Finally got her shower. (I’m still contemplating mine). Made lunch and supper.

I checked in with our finances. Made sure we weren’t forgetting any bills in all the ruckus.

Had another shootout with the Black Tank… there were a couple days when we didn’t have a lot of water to flush down the crapper, so today was more of a preemptive strike than anything else. Nothing as dramatic as the first campaign. But it did require a bit more stretching of ye ol ingenuity.

First impressions of Welcomestop Campground west of Winnipeg where #1 intersects the Assiniboine river: neat place fairly scenic albeit with a bit of a run-down feeling (perhaps due to the flooding and pre-spring barrenness); utilities all fine; thankfully no GFI on the 30 amp otherwise I’d have been trying to track down a new converter all day; muddy (only because kids will go where the mud is); laundry is low-tech but decent and nicely close to our site; store is adequate for emergency purchases; showers are coin-fed so we’ll probably never use them; staff is very nice and helpful… BUT the location seems to be perfectly situated to thwart a constant wireless connection either to the city infrastructure OR the rural infrastructure; they do have free wifi up at the “coffee shop” (a partitioned area in the gas station store); so we’re going to figure out over the next few days how much of a show-stopper this is for us as a reliable connection is obviously important to just about everything we need to do; overall the kids love it here; it will be even more fun when it warms up enough to have a fire outside and put the carpet out and the awning down, etc.

After supper we all went outside for a good hearty run  around the campground (mostly to force as much of the rest of the energy out of the kids as we could). Felt grand. There were snow flurries. The trailer felt too hot when we got back inside… well, to me and the boys anyway. Renee says it felt just right (but she doesn’t know that I turned the thermostat down before she came back from her extended walk with Jaiden).

And then SHABBAT. Sabbath. Rest. Ceasing. What a blessing.