Where Have I Been?

I know...I've disappeared for a long time. I can't help it. Hedonism was just so much fun. A week in Jamaica at a swingers' convention...who wouldn't go? There was this brunette with the most perfect breasts I've ever seen, and the things she could do with a harmonica, Panera cinnamon bagel, and three golf tees (different colors)...well, I'd let you imagine it, but you'd probably forget to include the throat singing that ended in three part harmony, the cup of iced coffee, and what Pooteewheet can do as a side kick given three quarts of mint ice cream and a funnel.

Or, I could haver been on RAGBRAI, riding my bicycle across southern Iowa. Only to come home to flipping a side on the duplex, including breaking up enough left behind furniture with a sledgehammer to fill a 15 yard dumpster, and tackling painting, cleaning, drop ceilings, and the like. My typical day lately is 10 hours at work starting at 7:00-7:30, 30 minutes of driving to Richfield including finding beer, 3-4 hours of work at the duplex while drinking said beer (but not playing with power tools or anything especially sharp), and 2-3 hours of remote work from home. When I have a bit of free time, I've used it to label and upload photos so I can write about the ride this weekend. It was a doozy, exercise wise, so you'll get to hear me talk about how difficult it was compared to the flat ride in 2007.

My first day back at work, I got this treat from Outlook. Apparently I was gone much longer than I thought. I generally enjoy my job, but if I'm still working there in 2478 and still intend to catch up on migration resource meetings that are 24,444 weeks overdue, you have my permission to give up on me. I'll be beyond redemption.

Game Crafter

I read about Game Crafter in a TechCrunch article. It allows you to design and build your own personal board games. An interesting idea. Maybe I can use it to build Mean Mr. Mustard another game celebrating his heritage that he won't play.

But more importantly, Kyle, I believe it is up to you to design a game that allows alliances, but only at a severe penalty to the players in the alliance. I suggest calling it Chickenshit! I'll play it with you before I critique it.

Pete and Sarah poo-pooed my idea for "Sexy Pete: a Mystery Date Expansion" and "The Furries", despite me finding a Sarah card on Palinoscopy they could use for one of the date pieces. If I'd had a bit more foresight, I could have made a few dozen "RAGBRAI" games (I suppose I'd have to license the title...sigh) to take to Iowa for the purposes of funding my cross-Iowa ride.

She Says Links to Animal Porn

She Says has a link up that I don't think my friends should miss that the Slate wrote about animal masturbation. She's right. Don't skip the video.

For Ming: Durian Puke

No, not me eating durian candy and puking. But a very special video from YouTube of a couple of guys drinking a durian shake.

Bit of a Sleeper Vid

From a friend of my sister, Doctor Dave. This is why we have kids...Ben at 6 Months:

SFW/NSFW

I saw the first of these on Flickr and went looking to see if it was part of a set. It was. So here are a bunch of safe for work photos that may not seem so safe for work when they're on your computer screen with your boss looking over your shoulder.

Dirty Minds

Arboretum Bicycle Trip

Yesterday, in order to have some semblance of preparation for RAGBRAI, I biked up to the Minnesota Arboretum in Chaska to meet Pooteewheet and Cookie Queen and the kids. The nice part about the ride is that except for the last few miles, which are on a very scary Highway 5, it's pretty much trails all the way. There was a problem with having to cross a triathalon route numerous times, but it was only an issue in part because I stopped to have coffee at the Nokomis Coffee Shop, putting me in the thick of the race.

I'm glad we took She Says and husband on their long, hot trip across too much of Minnehaha Park to see our signature falls when we did, because there's not much flowing at the moment. I don't remember ever seeing it dry.


I don't know how far the trip was because I LOST MY SECOND ODOMETER! Damn it. I'm going to start super gluing them on, because the batteries last about three years, and at the moment I'm getting about one year per odometer. I think I went about 40-some miles. 18 to the north end of Calhoun. 17 on the Northern LRT. 5 miles in between? Couple miles to double back from Victoria to the Arboretum. I bumped into my sister near The Depot coffee hut in Minnetonka. She was out doing a 72 mile ride.


When I made it to the Arboretum, the gate guy just waved me through. The $9 charge is waived if you're on a bicycle. I didn't mention I was going to load it onto a car within the confines of the park. It should count anyway. Not having my weight in the car must have saved at least a little gas.

The Arboretum theme for the weekend was water conversation. We saw a strange play about California strawberries by the Heart of the Beast puppet theater, and a bunch of art centered around conversation. This one tries to show water use by country. The U.S. is off to the right and is represented by about as many cylinders as all these countries put together. Not surprising. We bathe. We manufacture. And we export food.


But I was a bit disturbed about the message around the Democratic Republic of Congo. It seems that if you really want to conserve water, you should have multiple civil wars, millions of deaths, a complete collapse of the public health system and lots of HIV, AIDS and malaria. Sounds fab.


Bike art! It represents microscopic water animals.


Eryn and Conner played trash golf. That's not Conner. All I had was a picture of his butt. Cookie Queen will have to wait for Pooteewheet to put her pictures on Facebook. Trash golf is extremely difficult given the 4x8 plywood all sits on slopes and the holes are never in the corner. It's more of a push game than a putting game.


According to the giant leaf in the learning center, Democrats Suck. Meaning those of you who aren't Democrats are vandals. Congratulations.


The real reason we went to the Arboretum. To pay honor to Michael Jackson's passing by hanging out in front of the Thriller plant.

"It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed

'Cause this is thriller, the thriller plant..."


She Says and Cookie Queen lost in the maze.


Eryn and Conner in the maze. They didn't know I was there. It was hot in the maze, which didn't seem to stop them from asking me to go into it over and over again.


What's this? A spreading yew? Shame on yew! Yew're very cheeky.

Experiment

Ice cream + sweet mead. Not so good. The mead is sort of overpowering, particularly in the alcohol notes, and quickly melts the ice cream into a soupy mess.

Ice cream + sweet mead + blackberries, crushed. This is good. It becomes a smooth blackberry and mead shake with just a hint of the sharp taste of the alcohol after the taste of the blackberries and before the final sweet taste of the ice cream + blackberries. Maybe I need to take a flask to the State Fair to dump in my Dairy Barn shake.

Four Acquisitions

I own some new things! Item one, Ming finally picked up our Randy's Pizza Challenge t-shirts that proclaim, "I can't believe I ALMOST ate the Whole Thing!" I can now show off that I'm a loser because a.) I took a huge pizza challenge and b.) because I couldn't complete it.


Ming brought me some coffee from Malaysia. Notice the word "mixture"? It scared me. I was worried it might be full of secondary civet food or something. But I looked up the words for the additives and they translated as margarine and sugar, and that seems safe enough. This morning I brewed up the first batch and it tasted pretty much like Folger's or Maxwell House, but a little bit better. Probably because of the margarine and sugar.


Also from Ming. Durian candy. I haven't been brave enough to try one yet. But here's a fun vignette.

Eryn: "Dad, do you have candy?"
Me: "Yes, honey. I do. Here!"
Eryn, pops it in mouth: "I don't know what this is. What is this? ... Oh. This is BAD."
Me: "At least it wasn't ranch dressing."


The bicycle chain snake my wife bought me at the Mall of America while She Says and hubby were in town for JACL and to visit us. Ssssss..... I think Eryn calls him "Wormy". Very cool use of old bicycle bits.

Slippery Jim

The bicycling parts of the silent short "Slippery Jim" are downright peculiar and almost Monty Python-ish in nature. Apparently it is not the same as "Slippery Jim's Repentance", staring Maurice Costello, who is the great grandfather of Drew Barrymore, entered films with Thomas Edison, and discovered Moe Howard (of the Stooges). Something you can throw out when mixing at parties.

http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu/PY/250/see-the-film-slippery_jim

And while Slippery Jim isn't a euphemism for anything, a Slippery Kenny is and isn't safe for work, but is also a useful party tidbit depending on who you're partying with.

Dirt

Eryn and I spent yesterday after work moving dirt at the duplex. Ah...it seems like only yesterday that I was moving the leftover clay from the front yard to the weeded area in the dog pen to cover up the waist high weeds. And now I'm moving it from the area that won't even grow a weed to the open-sided shed in the back so that I can plant grass for the new tenants. I wonder when I'll have to move it from the open-sided shed to somewhere else?

Actually, in this picture you can see a weed or two, but they weren't faring well. The roots from all those trees, on the other hand, were doing fabulous! Every shovelful was an exercise in wood cutting.


I tried to get Eryn to measure her scoops and beat herself with each wheelbarrow, and then explained that was part of managing people. Then I challenged her to a most scoops contest and explained that I was able to claim 10-20% of each of her scoops as it was my project. I'm hoping this convinces her to be her own boss when she's older.

Watermelon Ride

On the 4th, Eryn and I once again rode the Watermelon Ride. She's been doing it pretty much as long as she could first get strapped into a Burley, although the last two years she's been riding the tagalong. We did the 15 miler. I know my mother in law said they were thinking of doing the 25 this year, but she claims I'm making it up. I'll have to get in writing for next year.

My father in law posted a cute compare of Eryn last year and this year with the same tree at the Watermelon Ride rest stop on Facebook. I'm posting this picture because we had an added rider, Fable the Unicorn. Fable was quiet most of the time, but I suspect that horn caused our flat at the rest area.

Dim Sum

Over six hours (not two, Ming) after Ming took Kyle and I to Dim Sum in St. Paul, and my stomach is finally starting to calm down. I came home, got on my bike to do a few hill laps, went about half a block and a grinding stomach cramp nearly took me down in the middle of the street. Many Tums later, the twisting in my gut is settling down a bit. I suspect there's something in one of the dishes I should not be eating. I've never had anything I've eaten keep me off my bike before, and a Chipotle burrito with red sauce is a normal mid-ride lunch for me. Don't think I'll ever be doing that before or during a ride again. At least I'm prepared in the future.

(But thank you for lunch, Ming and Julie [and Logan]). I appreciate getting introduced to someplace new even if it had a bad side effect.

Cannon Falls III: Combine Demolition Derby

After bicycling, the sculpture garden, and tubing (what, this isn't what you do on a typical vacation day?), Eryn and I changed out of our stinky river clothes and met up with Pooteewheet and Kyle at the Cannon Falls bicycling lot, where the Cannon Valley Trail starts. They'd been checking out the winery and the swans, and at least Pooteewheet stopped by Little Oscar's to have the hashbrown-laded Caboose Burger (sooooo good). I asked her if she'd seen $100 lying around.

Everyone was meeting up so that we could go to the 2009 Cannon Valley Fair. I had heard from my boss that there was a combine demolition derby that took place during the event, and it seemed like something that had to be seen to be appreciated. We wandered the fair (poor Miss Minnesota whatever year she was - she was just wandering around the fair grounds with her chaperone and no one asking her for a picture) and checked out a few of the rides and the food and animals. Then we spent several hours watching combines, pickups and compact cars smashing into each other. I think I have the consensus of my fellow watchers when I state that it would be exciting to see a combine/compact car combination demolition derby.

The videos are below the photos if you want to jump to the live action.

Each combine has a theme and does a circle of the demolition area to show off. Here we see a beach theme. Beach balls fly out of the hopper. Following combines tried to run over as many beach balls as possible to prove their superiority.


This combine sported a General Lee Dukes of Hazard theme. There was also The Incredible Hulk and a ladybug.


This is what happens when a combine takes a solid hit. According to the rules of Cannon Valley Fair Combine Demolition Derby you can get pushed back up once by the forklift.


But getting tipped over seems to have an impact on your ability to retain important fluids. See the missing wheel on the back? That's the #1 bit of damage in a combine demolition derby. You'd think that would stop them, but they just keep going, even without the back wheels at all in some cases. Particularly if they're those big John Deere monstrosities. It was amusing to watch the big John Deeres in the ring with the tiny old ladybug combine. The ladybug would run around letting the big combines duke it out and then every once in a while run into a combine in tandem with another with a great big, "tink".


Combines at play. You can see a few of the John Deere combines and the ladybug.


And here's a plethora of video. Pooteewheet seems to have shot everything in 30 second or less segments, so you have to watch in incremental pieces.

Extended demolition:


Combine gets its tail crunched:


A big hit...


Tipping over:


A combine tire bites the dust:


A pickup pushed through the retaining wall (not by a combine):

Cannon Falls II: Tubing the River

After our bicycle ride and tour of the Anderson Center, Eryn and I hurried back to Welch to go tubing on the river. There's a tubing/canoing/kayaking outfit in Welch, and they'll haul you up river either 1 hour by tube or 4-5 hours by tube. I'm pretty sure it was the part of the day Eryn was most looking forward to. We had it all planned out to get there by noon so that it warming up a bit - it was pretty chilly at 9:00 a.m. - and we could do the 4-5 hour stint which Eryn was keen on, rather that a few one hour laps. It was perfect until we opened up my backpack to pull out the $100 in cash I'd picked up at the local ATM that morning. And discovered it was gone. Not in the backpack. Not on the floor. Not under the seat. Not tucked in a pocket. As tubing is cash only, it was a serious letdown. I hope I left it at Little Oscar's, because at least then there's a waitress with a great big smile on her face instead of some bicyclist with a tricked out machine that doesn't really need it. What had me most worried is that I hadn't seen a real gas station with an ATM on the way to Welch (and there's not much in Welch besides tubing and an ice cream store), but fortunately the bar at Miesville, which was hoppin, had an ATM and was only ten minutes down the road. So we were an hour behind schedule, and I was worried about our timeline for meeting up with Pooteewheet and Kyle in Cannon Falls, but we threw caution to the wind when we saw the long tour was running 3.5-4 hours.

Make sure you hang on to closer to the end for a special tree.

Here's our floatmates. Three couples, four men, two women. Eryn and I got to hear a lot of stories about Pride, bear attacks (in the context of Pride, not the woods), drinking escapades, how many mosquitoes a bat can eat, and a good one about how one of the guys was high on weed and couldn't remember playing tennis at all, but his coach congratulated him on his best damn game ever. Eryn didn't seem to care too much about the running commentary, although she snickered when they swore.

There are a few bikinis way in the background there for my more salacious friends. You'll be disappointed to know that I got Eryn in the water and a quarter mile downstream before the 21 year old barely dressed girls could get their s*** together. A few pot and Pride stories don't worry me, but I was concerned what Eryn might be subjected to with a dozen young 'uns floating next to us.


Ah...so peaceful. It was too bad about the clouds, because we got cold on and off. Eryn had a blue lips a few times until I demonstrated how to move your arms around a bit to allow the tube to capture heat.


That was foot cam. This is hairy leg cam.


Eryn, obviously happy afloat on the river.


And it's a good time to practice your "granny lips" tongue thrust exercises.

This may be shortly before we bottomed out. There were a few places on the river where the rapids brought the rocks up within an inch or two of the surface. That doesn't fly for a big guy like me and I got a few bruises on my bottom before I could get up and drag us somewhere deeper. Eryn thought it was pretty funny until she hit a rock once herself. I'm glad we were wearing shoes so we could navigate the shallows as necessary. After we made it through the first set of shallows, we heard this about five minutes later, "Ouch. Ouch. OUCH! Damn it!" Followed by the sound of women giggling. "Damn it! Ow!" Laughter getting louder and louder. "Turn around. Turn around. This is NOT the way to go through the rocks!" Followed by raucous laughter. Apparently our floatmates were getting a little bit of ballknocking action.


There were mating bugs all over the place. This is the blue one. But we saw red, green and black as well. At times there were four or five on each of us.


Very happy.


Spotted as we got closer to the end. This tree has wood. Eryn thought the fact that a tree had a penis was hilarious.

She also thought peeing in the river was hilarious. She had to go bad after about an hour and I pointed out that there simply wasn't anywhere to get out and do her business, and she was just going to have to do it and be done. She bounced all over the place for 15 minutes then calmed down, noting, "Ah...that's warm." After that she didn't hestitate and announced loudly every time she couldn't hold it and went. I pointed out that the going wasn't a real problem, but the announcement certainly was.


As we pulled into Welch, we were treated to a golden eagle overhanging the last set of rapids, watching for fish. A great trip, despite a bit of bruising and a slight chill.

For the parents, here's some video of us tubing:


And a few seconds of one of the canoes following us bottoming out. I only caught a bit of it, but the grinding noise went on for quite a while and could be heard bouncing off the river valley walls.

Cannon Falls I: Anderson Center

Eryn and I went bicycling in Cannon Falls yesterday, among many other things. We hit Little Oscar's on the way to Welch for breakfast, then pedaled toward Red Wing and back from Welch, indulging in picking wild raspberries by the Bald Eagle area (Eryn won't eat raspberries from the store, but she loved picking a few wild ones to eat), and finally, after many rides in Cannon Falls, following one of the trailside signs that indicated there was an attraction nearby.

We were dubious, because there was a little clearing with a bicycle rack, and then a hike into the woods that led up this big series of steps. On our way out much later, a jogger saw us coming out of the woods and doubled back to see what was so interesting. I warned her about the steps, but jogging was working for her (she was 3 miles from the nearest trail entrance I knew of, and she looked good in her jogging outfit - not one of those rail thin joggers), and she thanked us and took off up the steps. Eryn was surprised anyone was willing to jog up stairs that required several rest stops on her part.



At the top, we found Anderson Center, a sculpture garden, as advertised. But it wasn't just a few sculptures nestled away in the woods by some crazy guy, which is what I was expecting. Instead there was a huge field with a variety of species of trees and a whole series of sculptures. Eryn was particularly happy to find the sculptures after our climb to the top of the river bluff as she has almost as much of a thing for sculpture gardens as I do.


The Anderson Center is an artist retreat and display area near Red Wing. This is the complex. The tower is called Tower View. I recommend the history page for the center, which states that Alexander Pierce Anderson is famous as the inventor of puffed rice, "The Anderson Puffed Rice Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quaker Oats, was set up in 1901 and continued until 1941. Alex worked from a laboratory in Chicago and puffed rice was introduced publicly in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair. "

I don't know why there's a giant rubba duck on a trailer. It must be for artistic purposes yet to be enacted.


Jaime Barber's Snark Tank. I think it should be called Viagra Spider. It reminds me of the Maman Giant Spider sculpture at the Tate.


Andrew MacGuffie's "When It Rains". I'm not sure I get it, but Eryn thought it was cool you could see up inside it. She was pretty sure the piece overhead was a bird. I think it catches rain and then rains on the sculpture separately.


Zoran Mojsilov's "Moby Dick". This was neat to see, because Eryn and I had been talking about Moby Dick a few times recently, so she knew it was supposed to be a whale from a book. However, I don't think she made the connection between the weasel in Ice Age 3 and Moby Dick today, so it hasn't been a perfect education.


My Bilbao by Andrew MacGuffie. Bilbao is a city in Basque Spain, so I'm not sure what that has to do with this sculpture. I thought for a moment he meant billabong, as in a small lake, and that it was a metaphor for a place to get away. But obviously not. Bilbao is known for giant flower dogs and, hey!, the Guggenheim Spider. I sense a theme.


The GREAT A'TUIN, cheyls galactica! He carries all of Discworld on his back! What the f*** happened to the elephants? The statue's actual title is "Keya Tanka Lucie", which has no hits on Google, so I don't know what it means.


Michael Bigger's Honda Blue. Only amusing because I'm currently working with a server called Honda at work. Now I will picture this statue every time I have to work with it. If I had physical access, I'd put a picture of the sculpture on the side of it.


Eryn near Sam Spiczka's "Birth of a Martyr". An interesting piece. I'm not even sure it needed the base, but it does add to it.


It's much more photogenic close up.


Untitled by John Turula and Russ Vogt. Eryn and I had this conversation.
Eryn: "What's it called?"
Me: "It doesn't have a name, it's untitled."
Eryn: "But that's a name."
You know where it goes from there. I was a little worried she was yanking my chain just to have some fun. It's not like that behavior has been thoroughly role modeled.


A close up of Untitled. The pink ceramic pieces looked like two hands on opposite ends of an arm covered in blood. I'm not sure if that was the intent, but it drew both Eryn's and my's attention.


This sun dial had a plaque that talked about the solar system nearby and how far apart things were. I wasn't entirely sure why. Later, on the trip back to Welch, Eryn and I found a stone on the side of the trail (so about 7 miles from this sun dial) that said "Neptune". I suspect there are stones about as far away as the planets should be from this sun dial if it were the solar system, but I can't find verification of the fact on line.


Standing Time by James Borden. This sculpture is kinetic. If you push that weight it will make everything slowly start to turn. Eryn's cup of tea.


And pretty when viewed as a looming tower.


This sculpture was supposed to make you feel the pressure of the walls.


"A Chair for Copernicus" by Andrew MacGuffie. I felt it was good karma to put Eryn in a chair meant for Copernicus. Because of his brains, not because of his treatment by the Catholic church.


Eryn sitting on Peter Lundberg's Kamas. Which is a town in Utah, or a set of pointy martial arts weapons.


From further afield, in case you want to see the whole thing.


And one more. This was before we started taking pictures of the nameplates so we could identify the sculpture in our digital pictures which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the greatest benefits of a digital camera. Eryn looks happy, but she was annoyed with the deerflies. They kept dive bombing us, only to lose acquisition when we walked through trees. If they were Gold Five Squadron and we were the Death Star, they'd have failed miserably.