Debut album

Cailan has always liked to listen to music. Ever since he's been able to identify numbers, he likes to watch the CD player as the CD plays and see the number of each track as it starts up. He can recognize many of our CDs by hearing just the first few seconds, though his names for the albums wouldn't be recognizeable by anyone else. He labels them by their cover art, leading to things like "Red Eddie" and "Clouds guitar" and "Blue George Winston." He also has memorized most of the songs on CDs that we listen to a lot, but what he remembers is the track number, not the actual song name.

Today, he wanted to play the guitar, so Chris got it down off the high shelf and helped him play. Cailan started making up different songs; he gave each song a name and a number. Here is the track listing for Cailan's CD:

1. Ollie the Olive
2. Clipboard
3. Zucchini
4. Light
5. Pictures
6. Ceiling Fan

***

Although he played the guitar, he prefers percussion. It is amazing how much of my day can be spent discussing all the things in the house which do NOT make good drums. For example, the glass-plated French doors to the sunporch do not make good drums. The speakers are not good drums. The newly-installed wood floor is not a good drum. However, the kitchen trashcan is a good drum, the step on the porch is another good drum, and of course the bin for the set of big Legos, turned upside down, is a fantastic drum.

***

We unpacked a box in Cailan's room and found, among other things, his toy phone, which has been missing since we moved. He was very happy to have it back and spent a long time playing with it on Sunday. He said, "I am going to push the button on my phone to make music. Then I will pretend to be a cat dancing to the music."

Last weekend in September

On Saturday we hiked again. We went to Flume Canyon, which is just one canyon to the west of Devil's Gulch. Overall, Devil's Gulch is a more scenic and more interesting hike. A lot of the trail on Flume Canyon out in the open (read as: hot) and very sandy. There were some interesting balanced rocks and some sandstone cliffs with pockets and stalactites sculpted into them. Cailan rode on my back for most of the 4-mile hike, and he seemed a little tired and grumpy. Within the first 15 minutes he said, "I want to go to a different hike that has more shade." He kept talking about finding a good place to stop and have a snack in the shade. So we stopped a couple times, once for cheese and crackers, and again for dry CinnaBunnies cereal.

The terrain got more interesting when the trail actually dropped into the canyon, following a dry creek bed for awhile. At one point, the dry creek bed turned into a dry waterfall: the creek bed spread out into a wide, slickrock formation than ended about 40 feet above the canyon below. The canyon down there was very narrow and looked interesting, but we couldn't get down into it. Maybe next time we will start from the bottom end and hike up to that point from below.


On Sunday, Lindsay came to play with Cailan, and Chris and I went biking. We went back to Mary's Loop, but we took our single bikes instead of our tandem. For me, the trail was much more challenging, riding on my own bike and having to do such things as brake, shift, and steer, than it is riding on the back of the tandem. For Chris, I think the trail is easier on single than tandem. At any rate, we had a great ride!

The letter A

Cailan is learning how to write letters. Sensibly, he has decided to start with A.

Epilogue

So after the ride, and the fabulous pizza at Amica’s (formerly part of the Il Vicino family), and sitting in the hot tub at our cabin looking at the stars and listening to a little stream, the stomach bug hit me at midnight. Enough said.

Monarch Crest Trail

This is such an amazing ride. We had done it twice before, once on our single mountain bikes, and once on the yellow tandem that is now living at Grandma and Grandpa’s house; today we rode it on our big red tandem.


The trail STARTS at about 11,000 feet, at the top of Monarch Pass. We had to plan our start time carefully – too early of a start and it would be freezing (or below) at the beginning of the ride, but too late of a start and we’d still be above timberline in the afternoon when thunderstorms start rolling in. We decided to start at 9, which seemed to be a popular decision, as there were several other groups of riders gearing up in the parking lot when we got there. We quickly unloaded our tandem, put on our jackets, gloves, helmets, and shoes, and waved good-bye to Bobbie and Cailan.

It was cold when we started riding. Neither of us were wearing full-finger gloves, so Chris and I both had cold hands. The sky, however, was completely cloud-free and the sunshine warmed us some. So did the climb – from the start, it is a gradual but continuous climb for about 6 miles, with a few steep pulls that left me gasping, until it tops out at about 12,000 feet.


This first 6 miles is spectacular – the trail crosses through meadows of tiny alpine plants, there are peaks and valleys arrayed in every direction, and at this time of year, the aspen stands on the mountains around us were bursts of gold and orange. The trail itself isn’t that hard – it’s narrow but has just a few rocky sections, and most of the time it’s easy to see what’s coming up. There are places where it’s unnerving, as the trail clings to the side of a steep ridge, with the downhill side dropping away for what seems like miles.


After the first long climb, we had a couple miles of rolling trail, settling down below treeline and into the forest. In this section, we crossed a big talus field and heard pikas. We didn’t stop for long to watch them, but I did see a couple scurrying about on the rocks. Then comes the first big descent – the first bit on a rocky trail that I found jarring but Chris found to be great fun. Then the trail widens into a dirt road that is less rocky but has many dips and rises where ditches have been cut across the road to direct water off it. We took these pretty fast, and on some of the rises I could feel the back wheel of the bike jumping off the ground; that’s not a sensation I get very often on the back of the tandem!! This section is nicknamed “Collarbone Alley” but Chris navigated all the bumps quite nicely and we didn’t go over the handlebars.

We met up with Marshall Pass road, a moderately-travelled gravel road. We joined this road for a very short distance before turning off on the trail again. This section of trail is common to both the Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. At this point, we had definitely left the alpine environment and were riding through a thick evergreen forest. We also started climbing again, gradually at first but getting steeper. I remember this part of the trail, about 13 miles in, from the other times we’ve ridden it, and this climb is always one of the hardest parts for me. I think it must be when my breakfast has worn off and I haven’t yet had enough trail snacks to sustain me. We finally finished the climb, had a quick scoot downhill, and stopped at the intersection where we turn off on Silver Creek trail. We stopped here to eat and rest a bit, and to put our jackets back on for the fast descent. Clouds were gathering all around, threatening us but not actually getting us wet. Yet.


The trail descends very steeply here. First it was a smooth, but somewhat loose, dirt trail through a meadow. There were several switchbacks here, and we managed to guide the long bike through all of them. The next mile or so was very rocky, and we ran into a bit of a problem… We were flying along quite fast, bumping over lots of rocks and taking advantage of our dual suspension, and Chris said “Maybe I should be a little more careful.” Just at that moment, the rear wheel slammed a big rock and pinched a hole in the innertube. I could hear the air hissing out and the near-empty tire flapping around as we slowed to a stop. We had an extra tube so Chris had that installed in short order, but our pump was acting up and didn’t want to make a good seal around the valve, so it took a bit to get the new tube inflated. We talked to several other bikers as they passed, so it wasn’t an unpleasant stop. We got back on the bike and rode on for maybe another mile, now going more slowly though the rockiest section was behind us. Then there was a “Whomp!” and I felt the rear wheel bounce to the left and once again the tell-tale hissing of a pinch flat. We didn’t have another spare tube, so we started fishing around for patches. We unearthed 2 patch kits, both of them empty! Fortunately, this is a popular trail, and in a few minutes a young man who was better prepared than us gave us a tube.


Once again, it was a pleasant stop, in a valley with a stream just below us and vibrant yellow aspen shimmering all around us. The two flats in rapid succession also gave me a nice chance to rest up for the remainder of the trail. We had a tricky section where the entire trail surface was covered with steep gravel, then a creek crossing on a very narrow (just one board) bridge that freaked me out, and then we rode pretty much in the stream bed till we came to a junction with a road. We had to make a choice here – take the dirt road and a relatively easy coast to the end of the ride, or take the Rainbow Trail, a singletrack that would add a couple miles and several hundred feet of climbing. Was there really any choice?

The Rainbow Trail is really very fun. Sometime I would like to ride it “fresh” and not start it after 20 miles of intense riding. It winds along the side of a ridge in a dry-ish pine forest (some Ponderosas, I think). It starts out very rocky but after that is mostly smooth. The challenge is that it crosses maybe ten drainages coming down from the top of the ridge. At each of these drainages, the trail drops to a creek-crossing with a hairpin turn at the bottom and a steep climb up on the other side. Sometimes these climbs are short and fairly easy; a few are quite long. There was really only one where we had to stop and push to get up the climb. There was another where the back end of the bike didn’t quite make the turn coming out of the creek and we got discombobulated. Overall, I was pleased with how well we were able to ride this part. We passed several people and only got overtaken by a couple.


The trail goes on for 9 miles of this, sometimes topping out at the top of the ridge to give a great view of the mountain we’d descended from, the dirt road we could have taken way down below us. At about the 8th mile I started listening very closely for the highway that would signal the trail’s end. But we had one last, exhausting climb before it, and then an insane descent on crazy switchbacks to get down to the road. We turned on to the highway and zoomed for five fast miles to the town of Poncha Springs, where we found Bobbie and Cailan and several of his animals playing in the sandbox.

Thanks so much, Bobbie, for shuttling us and for playing with Cailan!! We were so happy to ride this trail together again.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday night, we spent several hours awake with Cailan while he was throwing up. Poor kid. Luckily, I guess, he’s not very experienced at it yet; that means no going to the toilet or even using a bowl for him, just me right beside him with a big pile of cloth diapers trying to catch everything that comes out. By the morning he seemed fine: bright-eyed and full of energy, though Chris and I were worn out not sleeping. We speculated that maybe the milk he’d had had gone bad…

Last night, I went to dinner after work with some of my co-workers. At the restaurant, I got a call from Chris “Can you come home please? I feel really, really bad.” So I came home and gave Cailan his dinner while Chris huddled in a miserable ball on the bed. We started thinking that a stomach bug is going around, and I feel like a ticking time bomb.

But this morning, we’re all feeling okay, so we are loading up the Subaru and heading to Salida for a long weekend. We have to get out of the house, because we are getting the white carpet in the dining room (such a bad idea with a 2-year-old in the house) replaced with a hardwood floor to match the kitchen! The crew tore out the carpet and installed the subfloor yesterday; over the weekend they will put in the floor, sand, and finish it. We’ll stay in a rented cabin with Grandma Bobbie, and on Saturday she’ll play with Cailan while we ride the Monarch Crest trail. Woo-hoo!

Spell check

Cailan likes to type. We open up a Word document and let him at it. He’ll ask us to make the letters bigger or smaller, or to change the font, or to make the letters different colors. Some of the colors he likes are magenta, orangey-brown, and blue-with-a-little-silver-in-it. He will often type the alphabet, slowly and in order. He also likes to type the numbers in order and then use the shift key to type all the symbols that are above the numbers.

Today as I was leaving for work, Cailan was asking Chris if he could type, and Chris said they could do that. Cailan asked, “How big of letters do I want?” Chris said, “I don’t know, Cailan. How big do you want the letters to be?” Cailan said, “I want colossal.”

So first Chris checked his email on his Gmail account, and then they typed for awhile. Chris went to start a load of laundry, leaving Cailan at the computer. When he came back, Cailan said “I typed Gmail.” Sure enough, on the screen:

GEMAYL

Weekend wrapup

We had a good weekend. The weather is starting to cool off. It’s still sunny with highs in the mid-80s, but the mornings and evenings are close enough to chilly that I’m putting on a long-sleeve shirt for biking to work or taking the dog for a walk.

On Saturday we went to the Trail through Time, a short hiking trail near the Utah border, at the site of a dinosaur quarry. We saw fossils of diplodocus and camarasaurus and an unidentified sauropod, as well as some Jurassic plants. Cailan was not impressed by the dinosaur bones embedded in rocks, but he liked the pictures of dinosaurs on the interpretive signs all along the trail. We also saw many lizards on the trail and the rocks.



On Sunday morning, a babysitter came over so Chris and I could go for a mountain bike ride. Cailan was a little hesitant when the sitter Lindsay first arrived; I think he was expecting it to be Brit or Amy from Tacoma or a teacher from his new daycare. Lindsay is a music ed major who recently took the percussion methods class, so she and Cailan had a lot to talk about. When we left he was showing her how he plays the tympani on his train box.

The ride was great. We went to Mary’s Loop just outside of Fruita, which we have done numerous times (even before we moved to GJ), but it’s very close and very very fun. There are some challenging sections, a few places that we will never be able to ride, and a lot of trail that’s just fast and fun. There are also gorgeous views of the Colorado river winding through shallow canyons. We were riding the big red tandem with a new suspension fork that seems to work much better than the old one. We got to one section of rocky drop-offs that we have never cleared before but Chris had figured out a path through them. We were both so focused on that that we didn’t see the tree just to the right of the rocks, and I whacked my head on one of its sturdy branches. My helmet did its job and my head is fine but my neck and shoulder are a little sore.

That was the only mishap; otherwise we zoomed along having a great time. There were lots of people out riding, so we stopped often to chat: most people are a little surprised to see a mountain bike tandem so it draws a lot of comments. One nice man agreed to take a picture of us:



We brought the GPS along to record our trip. We don’t have perfect agreement between the Garmin, which recorded 14.4 miles, and the cyclometer, which recorded 15.3. Here is the elevation profile of the ride. It looks like there are some big climbs and descents, but the intervals on the elevation axis are pretty small, so there really isn’t that much change.


Here is a plot of the trail, laid onto a topo map. It’s kind of hard to tell from this, but we essentially rode an out-and-back trail with two excursions onto side loops.



When we got back home, Cailan and Lindsay had a lot to report. They had played all of Cailan’s instruments, they had been to the park where Cailan played kettle drums on the picnic tables, they built dinosaurs out of Legos, they played the hiding in the pillows game… Lindsay was impressed with Cailan’s vocabulary, and Cailan was exhausted. He didn’t nap right away, but later in the afternoon we were eating a snack at the kitchen counter. I was skimming through a magazine while Cailan slowly plowed through some melon and cheese. He’d been quiet for awhile, and when I glanced over at him, he had fallen asleep on his plate.

The Peaceable Kingdom

Cailan has a lot of stuffed animals, a really big pile of them. He's been into playing with them lately. He especially likes to play on mommy and daddy's bed, which is easy right now since we still don't have a bed frame, so he brings his animals from his bedroom into ours, one or two at a time.

A few days ago, every time he brought one in, he would say something like "The frog is very happy to see his friend the plaid bear. He is going to give the bear a kiss." Then he would line the two animals up and bump their faces together for a quick smooch. And after that, another pair of animals. "The penguin is happy to see his friend the guinea pig. He is going to give the guinea pig a kiss." I thought this game was very sweet.

Today he made a nature center on the bed. He lined up the animals in two long rows and fenced them in with pillows. Then he and I looked at all the animals in the nature center. He played a different game with Chris, though. Cailan had brought in a stuffed elephant and a plastic frog and was holding them face to face. Chris asked if they were friends, and if they were talking to each other. Cailan said, "No, the frog will be the elephant's snack. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!"

More Cailanisms

Some of the highlights from Chris and Cailan's day:

"It makes me happy when I see the number three."

"Bottoman rhymes with ottoman."

"I'm going to get big so I can learn to play the snare drum."

Camping on the Uncompaghre

This weekend we finally got out for a camping trip. We headed south of town, through a canyon, and then up a gravelly road through many switchbacks to get to the Uncompaghre Plateau. Our first stop was Big Dominguez Canyon. There was a nice shady picnic area at the trailhead where we ate our lunch, then we set off on a hike into the canyon. Cailan said he needed a hiking stick like Mommy and Daddy have, so we found one for him. I was glad for my hiking poles on some of the loose, rocky descents, especially when I had Cailan on my back.



We saw lots of lizards, but the highlights for Cailan were a praying mantis (he spotted it on a rock before I did) and the cryptobiotic soil that was abundant all along the sides of the trail. We hiked about 4 miles into the canyon, then decided we needed to start back so we could find a place to camp before dark.



It was only 30 minutes on slow bumpy roads from where we hiked to where we camped, but the terrain was completely different. We camped in a valley that was covered in sage and tall grasses at the bottom, with aspen and spruce and a few ponderosas covering the tops of the hills. We set up our tent in a small grove of trees, with this as our view:



It started getting cold and dark, so we had to scurry to get our tent ready and then fix dinner. Cailan became cold and overtired before we were ready for bed, but Chris took him on a little walk to look at stars and that cheered him up. We could see soooo many of them, and I saw a shooting star. I put Cailan in long underwear and sweats and he seemed to stay warm in his new sleeping bag.

In the morning, we went biking. Chris took Cailan in the trailer to go look for cows; Cailan was very interested in the numbered ear tags the free range cows were wearing. I rode a singletrack trail that followed a little creek upstream - this was great for Utah, giving him plenty of chances to get a drink and to cool off. The trail was narrow and seldom used, and my legs got pretty scratched up by all the grass and sagebrush encroaching on the trail, but it was fun. After that, Cailan and I had lunch together while Chris took a turn on a trail.