Weekend Adventures

Well, with the start of school and Scouts, fund-raising can't be far behind. And having procrastinated for about two weeks, I thought it was time for Hobbes and Calvin and I to make an attempt at selling some delicious Trail's End popcorn! So we headed down to the center of, uh, town (such as it is) and began the difficult task of selling popcorn. Why is this so difficult? Because we don't actually have the popcorn to sell; it's order-based. So since most of the foot traffic is tourists, they're not too keen on ordering popcorn that will be delivered to us on the island with no good way of getting it delivered to them. And also many of them come from communities that have Cub Scout Packs of their own and have already purchased popcorn. And then there was that large group of Indian Guides that didn't seem too keen on supporting a rival organization (okay, actually they were preoccupied with fishing). But we did get some people who sent snacks to the troops overseas and a few people just made a donation to the Pack. It was a good lesson in the practical difficulties in selling anything to anyone.

In the afternoon, we went to Shark Harbor for the first time in a while. The tide was way out, which gave Sweetie an opportunity to take some pictures of intertidal critters. The waves ranged from 1 to 4 ft, but were coming straight in, so the whole wave would crest and curl at the same time all the way across the beach. So not optimal for surfing (body, boogie, or otherwise), but we had a good time jumping around in the waves. Hobbes got his first lessons in body surfing and had some success. Calvin got tumbled once and popped back up immediately, but he was a bit more wary of the waves after that.


Sunday was soccer day. Calvin's team won handily again, but there were two events worth noting. First, the Yellow Team finally scored. They were pretty excited, as were most of the parents from both teams. Second, Calvin scored! I managed to miss the event, being on the far side of the field at the time and couldn't see through the mass of kids. He was happy, but pretty nonchalant about it. We had some celebratory ice cream afterwards.

As we crested the last rise before the descent into Two Harbors on our way home, we saw this enormous ship in Isthmus Cove. I mean, it must have been about the same size as Bird Rock. It was huge! It was some Navy vessel, I think, but not one that I could readily identify. (I know 'aircraft carrier' and 'battleship' and 'submarine' and this was none of those.) So we took a quick bike ride out to Lion's Head point to get a better look. I'll have to ask about why it was here at work tomorrow. (There's always someone who knows in a small town.)

Activities

Well, you'd think that being stuck on the lonesome end of an underpopulated island, where there's only a one-room schoolhouse and 7 kids, the activities would be rather limited. Fortunately (?) in Avalon (a mere 20 miles away over dirt roads) they have more kids, and thus we have Calvin signed up for youth soccer, and both Hobbes and Calvin signed up for Cub Scouts. I have agreed to be the Tiger Den Leader this year, as well. On top of being PTA President, I'm starting to feel, not over-extended yet, but perhaps fully-extended.

Soccer games are Sunday at noon. Avalon has enough U-8 kids for two teams, Green and Yellow. Calvin was quite reticent to play when we first approached him about it. There was a lot of whining about not wanting to drive across the island, but it was something else that was bothering him. Since we had already signed him up, we told him he would go week 1 and see how it goes. So we get there and the first thing that happens is Calvin gets his uniform, including shin guards, and he's told he can keep them. Calvin is now sold on youth soccer. He is very excited to play. Now this being Southern California, a large majority of the kids there are hispanic, and a large number of them (for, I guess cultural trend reasons) have their hair slicked up into fauxhawks. Calvin stuck out like a sore thumb on the pitch because 1) he's the smallest one out there, and 2) he's blond. Well, after some practice kicks, the coaches arrayed the kids across the pitch, the ref blew the whistle, and amoeba soccer (props to my friend Mary for introducing the term to me) began. Hobbes has never been interested in competitive sports, so this is our first experience with it. It was an odd feeling, watching my boy out there on the field: pride, anxiety, excitement. For his part, Calvin was so excited to be out there in the action. Huge grin, running around after the ball, kicking it a few times, getting knocked down and, one time, getting hit "in the tenders" (his words) by the ball. Hilarious. Afterwards we had lunch and drove back to Two Harbors. Calvin slept hard the whole way.

We ended up driving back across the island Monday for Cub Scouts. Two days in a row is kinda hard, but it looks like we may be doing it many weeks this winter. We've got 4 in the Tiger Den right now. I've been realizing/remembering that being a Den Leader means you have to organize meetings. So I found my files from when I was Hobbes' Tiger Den Leader and I pulled out Hobbes' Tiger book and started planning out some meetings. The Webelos I leader (Hobbes' group) said she thinks that they're going to try to do most of their advancement work during weekend campouts once a month, rather than weekly meetings. We'll see how that works out. It would be good to get more camping in. The Pack in Avalon is probably 25 kids, and the Scout Troop is about 15. They meet together once a month. The program has only been going on for about 7 or 8 years, I think. The oldest Scouts are just now getting to the upper ranks (Star, Life and Eagle) [Speaking of which, can anyone explain to me why the Scouts switched to those drab beige rank patches? I liked the old ones much better.]

Tonight we also had Back To School Night. The new Ms Frizzle is great; she's got a lot of energy, and has a strong background both educationally and experience-wise. She explained the structure of the school day and then the kids showed us some of what they'd been working on. The mornings are all about math and reading/grammar. Then in the afternoons they have "enrichment", which can be PhysEd, Art, Music or Science. She has everyone, even the first graders, learning cursive. Both Things are enjoying school, although there are the usual complaints about the usual things.

Okay, I'm going to try to load some video now. We'll see if it works. Okay, apparently I need to fill up this disk before I can get any video off it. I'll have some killer stuff when I do. Well, at least I have some pictures, thanks to Sweetie.

These pictures are from week 2 of soccer, so Calvin is sporting his very own fauxhawk. Here he is getting kitted up:


During warm-ups, his shoe came off. Classic.


And now the action shot - Calvin goes in for the strike!

Underwater adventures

First, an aside: Driving into the lab Sunday morning I saw a large bird flying. I thought it was a great blue heron, until I realized it was carrying something, and then I thought "that could be an osprey." Sure enough, the bird landed on top of a power pole. I ran up to get the small binoculars I have in my office and then climbed to the third floor to get a better look. It was an osprey with a big fish, and he warily started pecking away. Apparently the fish didn't like this, because its tail was flapping around. Ten minutes later, the fish's tail was still flapping around occasionally. Ugh. Some days it's better to be the osprey, huh? (But it's always better to be the birder.)

So I've been taking SCUBA lessons. This whole thing started in July and has now managed to stretch into September. I've done training dives both Saturday and Sunday for the last two weeks, and I've passed the swimming, diving and written tests, so I am now officially a novice diver. The training dives were quite fun, although on the first two I think I spent more time trying to figure out how to dive, rather than enjoying it. The first two dives were in Big Fisherman Cove, which is where WMSC is located. We dove 20-30ft down to sandy bottom and saw bat rays, skates, a sanddab (flatfish), sheepshead, kelp (calico) bass, and along the rocks near the pier, some garibaldi and spiny lobsters. This weekend we dove in kelp forest. Saturday was Chalk Cliff Cove. That day we saw some abalone, a horn shark and an octopus, along with much of the stuff we saw previously. Kelp forest was cool to dive in - like swimming through bushes. We also hit a thermocline. It was very interesting to see the visual distortion caused by the differing densities of water. Sunday we dove Pumpernickel Cove, which was also kelp forest. Here we saw some green abalone, bunches of snails and large sea urchins, garibaldi, lots of kelp bass, some really big sheepshead, lobsters, and a kelpfish. A fun couple of weekends, but exhausting. Diving is hard enough, but do it in cold water and you're pretty much done for the day.
The Dive Master at the lab (who taught the class) is very enthusiastic about having some more resident divers, so maybe Sweetie (after she re-certifies) and I can get some good diving in while we're here. There's certainly a lot to see down there.

Foreign Policy

Today at lunch, the Things and I (Sweetie) started talking about wars in which the United States is currently involved. Hobbes was confused about which war was which... He knew the two countries involved were Afghanistan and Iraq, but not the rationale behind why we invaded each of these countries. I explained the different situations to him and reassured him that this was a common source of confusion in the minds of many people, not only nine-year old boys, but also those who should know better.

We talked about the attacks of September 11, 2001 and who was responsible and why we invaded Afghanistan in response to those attacks. I showed them the pages from my scrapbook that included newspaper clippings and my personal account of that day and the days that followed. Both Things were surprised by the ferocity of the terrorist attacks and wondered why anyone would do such a thing. This led to a discussion of repressive religions and how they prey on the poor, disenfranchised, and uneducated members of their society, creating an environment in which flying airplanes into buildings seems like a reasonable way to get one's point across. Both boys were amazed to learn that education was forbidden most people in the Taliban-led Afghanistan, including boys, but especially girls. I was so proud when Hobbes pronounced this "Stupid." The Things asked why the Taliban attacked us and I said that they thought that the Americans were bad people and that the United States was bad. Calvin piped up with a gem: "Dude! Don't they know? We've won, like, a thousand soccer games." [Eds note: That's my boy!]

Ms. Frizzle is a girl!

So, this is the first post by me, Sweetie. Mr. Life in TH says that I can post anytime I want, but I've noticed that he hasn't given me the password to his blogspot account... I think he's planning to maintain editorial control of this blog.

Anyway, I wanted to share a funny story about one of the Things and his view on gender:

Calvin came home from kindergarten one day and we were sitting on the couch in the living room, watching something on TV. He turned to me and said, “Mom, can boys turn into girls?” I was a bit startled by his questions -- I really wasn’t sure about where this was going! But I have learned not to panic at off-the-wall questions, but first to find out what they really want to know… I answered, “Well, not really.” Transgendered folks out there might balk at my response, but, you know, he was five years old. I didn’t think he was ready for a conversation about how sometimes one’s gender and anatomy don’t match. He looked at me, satisfied, and said, “I thought so. So Ms. Frizzle is a girl.” (Ms. Frizzle was his kindergarten teacher.) I made some noise about how, yes, Ms. Frizzle is a girl. Calvin continued, “She just has short hair.”

Peculiarities of living in Two Harbors

I've got two little things to relate today. One is a hazard of living in Two Harbors, the other is just local color.

Last night, Hobbes and Calvin and I went down to the General Store for some ice cream for dessert (Sweetie is teaching right now, so she was still at the lab). As we sat at a picnic table and ate it, a pair of young boys started playing a game at the volleyball court - not volleyball, of course, but one in which the older boy was making up the rules to the younger boy's detriment. When my boys finished, I suggested that they go see if the other boys wanted to play a bit, since we don't have much chance to play with kids around here. This lead to me meeting the mothers of the children. Now this is a common occurrence around here. Having a lot of visitors, you meet a lot of people in passing, and many of them are very friendly and interested in the fact that you live on the island, etc. One of the women was very talkative. She was a middle school teacher from somewhere in the LA area. We talked about sharks - she's terrified of them having witnessed a shark attack when she was younger (a girl lost her leg), so she was trying to overcome her fear of the ocean by coming out to Catalina on her friends' sailboat with her kids. She also said she wanted to instill in her boys a sense of an adventurous life. Apparently, she used to do adventurous things with her dad when she was a kid, and now she was trying to pass that on. We talked for quite a while until it was nearly dark. The boys didn't mind; they were playing in the sand (oblivious to the other children about). I guess there's no real point to this anecdote (in my fraternity, they referred to these as "Cheese stories", since my nickname was Cheese), just that this happens all the time and is a nice benefit of living in a tourist destination. (Well, this tourist destination, anyway.)

On our way back to the house, we saw the local insane cat sleeping in the middle of the road. For some reason, this cat likes to curl up in a little ball on the dusty, hard-packed road surface. Usually, it's just off to the side, where it's only about 10% likely to be run over, but on this evening, with the light fading, it was dead smack in the middle of the road. The first time I saw it, I thought it was one of the feral cats that are all over town, but this one, despite its matted coat and odd behavior, has a collar with a tag. The owners have even gone so far as to put out a traffic cone with a sign that reads "Caution Lazy Cat". I've got to get a picture.

Life in the TH, baby.

Exhausting weekends

I've recently decided that my weekends were too restful, and I needed to really start over-exerting myself. So I've had a variety of weekend activities over the past few weeks (since we got back from vacation). Last weekend was digging out the backyard slope for a retaining wall (we're slowly trying to get our backyard to not be a dust/mud bath), and hiking out to Ben Weston. This weekend it was dive class Saturday morning, more digging for the retaining wall Saturday afternoon, bike maintenance this morning, cleaning the house in the afternoon, and more bike maintenance.

The dive class was pretty fun. The waterfront officer at WMSC occasionally offers an open water (basic) dive class. This go 'round I decided to sign up. (Of course, then we went on vacation and I missed half the classes.) Having finally got my physical, I was allowed in the water this weekend, but I had to stay at the surface since my blood work isn't done yet. I'm not exactly sure what they might see in the blood work that would suggest imminent danger that wasn't apparent in the EKG or chest x-ray, but whatever. So we learned how to examine and handle an air tank, how to attach it to a BC (that's buoyancy controller), how to attach the regulator and test it and how to inflate and deflate the BC. Curiously, when you're diving and you have all that gear on, you still need weights to actually achieve negative buoyancy in the water, so we got weight belts and trundled down to the water. We learned how to gear up, how to enter the water, how to breathe through the regulator (all pretty basic stuff, yeah?). Then we got into some of the basic emergency stuff: what do you do if your regulator falls (or is pulled) out of your mouth, how do you clear your mask of water, what do you do if you lose your mask, and finally what to do if you run out of air. The other person in my group then got to practice all this at a depth of about 10 feet, but I had to stay at the surface. :( All that took about 4 hours, so it was lunchtime when I returned to the house.

Having "wasted" the morning, I thought I should work on one of my house jobs in the afternoon. I attempted to finish the kitty cage - this will go on top of the shed, with an entrance from the bathroom window so our indoor kitties can enjoy the outside. This was a no go because the shop at the lab was locked, and I couldn't find any scrap 2x4s. So I returned home thwarted. This meant I had to go back to work on the retaining wall. Sigh. Nothing like digging in the brick-hard clay to make you appreciate a desk job. I did manage to get the last of the digging done, though, and I moved all the stones we have (about 1/3 of what we need) into the yard and build part of the wall. Even unfinished, we can see how much better the yard will look with it.

The Sunday bike maintenance was prompted by my troubles with my front derailleur. I ended up breaking out my new bike tools (thank you Hobbes and Calvin), and pulling and cleaning the chains from my bike, Sweetie's bike and an old bike of Hobbes' that Calvin is inheriting. Calvin's bike has been sitting for a while, so it needed some work. I swapped the seat with Calvin's current bike because this one was cracked and didn't hold its angle. Then I had to try to loosen up one of the pedals - not sure we have a permanent solution there; we may need new pedals. And then I removed the cable to the front brake since one of the connectors was bent. This bike has the pedal-backwards friction braking, so the hand brakes are redundant. Now it was time to tackle the derailleur. I watched a few videos on YouTube before I started to increase the chance I was doing this correctly and then got to work. After fiddling around with it for about an hour and a half, I can now get the bike to go into low gear (which it wasn't doing before) and into middle gear, but it can't quite get into high gear. I'm not sure what the problem is. Could it be related to chain stretching? Maybe I need a new chain.

Tomorrow: work! A day to rest. (Actually I have a grant that's due, so I'll spend the day collecting paperwork and editing the proposal. Sigh.)