Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Skeleton Dolls

Sarah, my sister, makes skeleton dolls. She calls the Dolls From the Bone Yard. The skeleton is plastic but the rest is all handmade. She sells them at farmers markets and craft events in and around Las Cruces. If anyone is interested leave me a comment with an email and I will get back to you. Shown here are cowboys, Mexicans, witches, Cap'em Jack from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, nurses, and fancy ladies. She also does Doctors, angels, brides and grooms, hippies, solders, and fisherman. I couldn't get over how cute they were. She sells a lot for the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead which is about the same time as our Halloween.







































































Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Mt. Rainier, Lower Nisqually Glacier






Foursquare Mountaineering took a trip up to Mt. Rainier to have some fun and hone our mountaineering skills. We set out to find the biggest, baddest crevasse on the lower Nisqually Glacier. We found it! It had deep vertical walls made of hard ice. It was topped off with a layer of last winter's soft snow. We spent the day rappelling, ice climbing, prusiking and setting up a z-pulley rescue system.



The first thing we did was set up a few bombproof anchors and safety lines. Dan, Dennis, Jim and Caroline.




Dennis, Jim and Doug watching Dave finish his climb up from the bottom.



Jim rappelling into the abyss.




Dan moving up the rope with ascenders.



We even managed to find a snow bridge on the way out.




It was good to spend the day up on the mountain with friends. Now some of those harder routes on Rainier seem just a little bit easier and if one of us falls into a hidden crevasse, we will all know what to do.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Cycling and Flying

As mentioned earlier, I am leaving for Europe again and will return at the end of the month. My schedule will be very hectic this time, so there will be less posting. I want to thank everybody for reading, for the friendly messages, and for the helpful advice. If you've sent me an email and I have not yet replied, I will get to it as soon as time permits.

For now, here are some more gratuitous shots from our velo-travels. Appropriately, on our last trip we watched the airplanes land on Castle Island in South Boston.

If you click to enlarge this picture, you can see the cluster of tiny white lights in the distance - the airplanes waiting their turn.

And there one goes - landing right over the water.

People say that cycling feels like flying. Well, maybe if you are the airplane, but certainly not if you are sitting in one. I would rather cycle than fly any day.

See you soon!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Dark Clouds Overhead

Storm clouds have moved in towards late afternoon each of the past few days. Sometimes rain falls, sometimes it doesn't. Southwest Montana July 12, ...

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

This Is the Day...

We've been talking about doing something like this for a while, and now we finally are! Didn't want to write about it earlier lest I jinx it; details to follow. Have a good weekend!

Netted Dress Guards

I love the look of netted dress guards, so while I am in the EU, I decided to stock up. Here are some lovely options from reliable online sellers:

[ Kleiderschutz; fits 26 und 28" tires; 5.95 €; image from fahrradsaturn.com]

The model above is the one I bought for myself. I think I will install it on my Pashley Princess instead of the one it comes with standard-issue. The prices are not typos; these dress guards really are available for under 10 Euros! Many of the sellers allow payment via paypal and some will ship to North America.


[ Kleiderschutz; fits 26 und 28" tires; 4.99 €; image from fahrrad-bike-shop.de]

One nice thing about the netted dressguards, is that they go with bicycles of any colour and they break up the space in an interesting way. I would love to find a truly gorgeous filigree-style set of dress guards, with a paisley or fleur de lis pattern, but have not seen one so far.


[ Kleiderschutz; fits 26" and 28" tires; 9.95 €; image from radhaus.de]

To give you an idea what a netted dress guard looks like on a bicycle, I include an image of the stunning Skeppshult "Ladies Nature" in Vanilla:

[Skeppshult bicycle, Sweden ; image from skeppshultbikes.com]