Crochet

 

If you don't know how to crochet, learn.  MaryJane has excellent instructions in her Stitching Room book.  

She does have excellent instructions, but I found I needed to watch a video rather than compare my work to stills to reassure myself I was doing it correctly.  If you are similarly wired, Bella Coco has you covered and her series is blocked out in short videos for easy digestion if you are leading a frequently interrupted lifestyle.  

If you are learning how to crochet, start with a simple straight scarf.  If  you already know how to crochet, pick a simple project...   There is a 3 hour minimum time investment.

I am a beginner, yes, but we live in a place that barely has sweater weather and my utilitarian aesthetic would not let me embark on a scarf.  I have since read Edward Gorey's Doubtful Guest and could be persuaded to make a scarf for my newly-shod-in-Converse Young Cultivator as a very obscure allusion.  

Instead, I settled for a pumpkin with plans to send it along to a friend as seasonal sistermail.  This is pretty much entirely "half double crochet through the back loop only" undertaking and gave me an excuse to buy ombre yarn which was fun to watch color change as the rows slowly spooled out.  An experienced crocheter(?) crochetier? would probably be able to knock this out in under 3 hours but I was following along with Bella Coco at half speed, and "frogging" frequently (undoing your work, because you rip it-rip it-rip it).  In fact, the abandoned first draft is stuffed into the center of this project in lieu of polyfil because the yarn got so snagged I was unable to completely undo it by ripping.  I eventually landed on the strategy of counting every row I finished (en espanol) to determine I had the requisite veinte stitches.     

Even with a stuffing stimulus, my orange tube was looking pretty flat.  I consulted with my Young Cultivator who in turn consulted with her 40 stuffies but returned with bad news.  No one was ready to donate their body to stitching and crafting.  Not even the Happy Meal toys which were well past their expected lifespan.  A giant husband backrest pillow, "Doggy" was willing to consider a more modest transfusion but I was not sure I would be able to stitch her up in a way that would hasten a speedy recovery rather than a slow deflationary decline.  So I corralled all the flower fabric scraps YC had been using to make her "hospital gown" fashion line for the stuffies (lots of ill-fitting smocks secured with staples that still exposed teddy bear derriers) and stuffed the pumpkin with that as a sort of reverse nod to Cinderella and her fairy godmother's outfits.  This was a satisfying way to punctuate the lulls of a few days and after a bit of practice, I felt competent enough to take it on the road and be seen in public working on it while YC learned gymnastics and piano.  

Put Me In, Coach!

 

Cut out TV time by joining a sports team for a season or taking lessons in baseball, soccer, horseback riding, karate, bowling, or tennis.

Fallon has built a foundation in the 4 basic strokes through 4+ years of swimming lessons and was looking for fun ways to apply those skills.  This year and last year, we explored water polo/splashball.  Our part of the country has a reputation for fielding very strong players.  Higher education institutions also have a reputation for providing more generous scholarships for decent players of this niche sport.  While her parents had no water polo experience, we figured, "When in Rome..."  

Last year, Fallon participated in splashball with an organization that emphasized learning the "egg beater" kick and dribbling the ball across lengths of a deep, chilly high school pool.  While this was a great way to limit screen time and accrue "PE minutes," Fallon quickly let her parents know that this wasn't a particularly fun way to spend 3 evenings a week.  Besides, it significantly cut into our parallel project of having more sit-down dinners together as a family.    

This season, we focused on "rediscovering the fun" and found that Blue Buoy followed an abbreviated season (4 total sessions across 1 month).  They packed a ton of learning and fun into each session.  The ratio of instructors to players was much higher (1:3) and the experience level of the instructors was sky-high.  The coach pictured above is a water polo Olympian!  The pool they met in was heated to 90 degrees and was mostly shallow.  This allowed the beginners to touch the bottom rather than egg beater and focus on scrimmaging to learn where to move to be open, block, and pass and catch one-handed.  The abundance of coaches kept the 3 player teams balanced and fun for differing ability levels.  The time seemed to fly by.  Fallon had so much fun she recruited her dad to do extra practice sessions in our home pool.  We can't wait for the spring season!

Languages/Culture

"Choose a culture to research and learn more about.   If they speak a different language, research that language.  Learn how to count to 10 in that language and say a traditional greeting. "

Me voy a aprender sobre la cultura de Sudamerica.  La mayoria de esos paises hablan Espanol.  Puedo contar a veinte porque estoy aprendiendo hacer crochet tambien y si no conto las puntadas, tengo problemas!  Cuando caminamos en las calles de California sur (o Alta California, dependiente de tu punto de vista), puedo dicir, "Buenos dias," "Buen'dia," "Buenos'" en la manana.  "Buenas tardes" es mejor despues del almuerzo.  No estoy fuera despues de atardecer para decir, "Buenas noches."  Algunas veces con mi amiga, digo, "Que tal?" o "Hola!" pero esos son un poco informal por extranos.  

How did I do?  Let's see what google translates... 

I'm going to learn about South American culture. Most of those countries speak Spanish. I can count to twenty because I'm learning to crochet too, and if I don't count the stitches, I'm in trouble! When walking down the streets of Southern California (or Alta California, depending on your point of view), I can say, "Buenos dias," "Buen'dia," "Buenos" in the morning. "Buenas tardes" is best after lunch. I'm not out after dark to say, "Buenas noches." Sometimes with my friend, I'll say, "Que tal?" or "Hola!" but those are a bit informal for strangers.

Farmgirl Shutterbugs

 "Research the following terms and how they relate to photography...."  

Exposure

Correct exposure is determined by the combination of aperture (f-stop), shutter speed, and ISO.  

f-stop:  f stands for the focal length of the lens the slash means "divided by."  So if your lens is 50 mm and the f-stop setting is 1.4 = 50/1.4 =35.7mm diameter actual lens opening.    The full f-stops are at f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, etc.  Each step down from one f-stop to the next full stop, you half the volume of light entering the lens (i.e. going from f/4 to f/5.6).     

shutter speed: controls the amount of time the light is allowed to stay on the media or film in the camera.  Every full stop down on your shutter speed doubles the volume of light on the film (i.e. going from 1/500 sec to 1/250 sec).  

ISO (film speed): ISO is like worker bees or horsepower.  Higher ISO means you can use a faster shutter speed and/or smaller aperture to get the same result.  This can be helpful if you want to convey motion in your photo by using a longer exposure (then use a lower ISO).  If your subjects are mostly stationary, you could use a shorter exposure (and higher ISO).  

Depth of field:  Area of sharpness within a photo.  You can increase the depth of field by using a smaller aperture/larger f-stop to let less light in (sort of like pouring paint into a can using a funnel is tidier than splashing it in with a "wide open" aperture).  But you might sometimes want a small depth of field and a "messier" look that is achieved with a larger aperture/smaller f-stop to encourage your audience to focus on a small area and blur a distracting background.  

(sourced from Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson)

Composition

Framing: using elements in the foreground, middle ground, or background to "frame" around the main subject, directing the viewer's eye and adding depth and interest to the image

Rule of thirds: don't just put your subject in dead center, imagine a 3x3 grid of 9 equal over your photo and place the main subject at one of the 4 intersections or along one of the lines to balance the subject with negative space and make a more dynamic and aesthetically pleasing photo.  

Leading lines:  elements within the photo which guide the viewer to a specific focal point (i.e. roads, fences, rivers).  

"Take at least 20 photos that demonstrate how you are living the farmgirl lifestyle and share them..."

Intermediate Level

"Look up some famous photographers and find one whose style you prefer."  

(curators speculate Vivian shot this in one take through the window of a moving bus!)

Vivian Maier Developed:  The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny.  At first, I thought I could relate because my "career" this season is also as a nanny (of my own kid).  I also aspire to choose quality possessions over quantity.  Vivian has arresting photos in both color and black and white.  She has alpine landscapes in her portfolio but where she really shines is urban street photography and portraiture.  I love her sense of humor, capturing a generous derrière precariously perched on a too-small park bench.  I love her social commentary in capturing the simmering racial tension in the streets of New York and Chicago and memorializing the sentiments of the era by photographing graffiti.  I love the sweet moments of storytelling, elderly couples holding hands, a little girl swinging between the handholds of two nearly identically dressed women shot from the back.  Her experiments with using reflective surfaces or lighting to capture herself in distorted, duplicated and shadow form are a trip.  

I envy Vivian's reputation for quickly seeing and capturing the shot without much set up or a learning curve.  No one divides her work into early "rough around the edges" era and her mature work.  Perhaps because it was all munged together, undated, in storage repo auction crates?  It seems like she was born an intuitive photographer and I want to believe that I can grind my way to competence with 10,000 hours of practice and a lot of crappy early work.  But am I willing to grind it out to achieve this particular style?  I wouldn't cut in lines or jump in front of a motorcade to get a good shot of a celebrity, I wouldn't break into crime scenes, stalk mourners to capture their grief, or approach strangers and snap their portrait at close range with no preamble.  I also wouldn't fill my living quarters with a hoard of newspapers, engage the services of storage units, or allow myself to routinely lapse into past due on those bills if I did.  I am a far more entrenched people-pleaser.  Yet the author weaves a story connecting all these less desirable behaviors to a singularly traumatic childhood, which I also did not have to compensate for.    

"I couldn't believe it when the horse showed up.  It looked like Arnold.  Arnold's thigh in those white pants looked like the horse's thigh."

Annie Leibovitz At Work

The thing about Annie is she has a 40+ year career with very little of it in obscurity because she of her early notoriety of getting in at the ground floor of Rolling Stone.  In reading her autobiography immediately after Maier's biography, it struck me that while some of this was luck, a lot of this was being a flexible, reliable operator.  This came to the fore in her segment about taking the queen's portrait "I'm rather proud of being in control of a complicated shoot," she begins and proceeds to regale her audience with 9 pages of detail about how little autonomy the queen's handlers afforded her.  In her 10 most-asked questions, she refuses to dish about people who are a pain to work with, "I'd be crazy to name them.  You can't be indiscreet in this business."  40 years of experience allows her to comment on how the technology has evolved from black and white, to color, to digital.  She is more of a collaborative learner and planner than Maier.  Describing her formative years at the SF Art Institute, "Since the prints were washed in communal trays and everybody's pictures were lying there with everybody else's, you tried hard to come back with something good."  Because of her process, you get a short list of other artists and photographers she respects and what she considers admirable about them, Arbus, Avedon, Helmut Newton to expand your own education.  

The areas she broached that I am still chewing on are the idea of using digital to add subjects or change backgrounds asynchronously.  I understand that this is a powerful advantage of digital and allows for flexibility when working with subjects who are celebrities, but I couldn't help thinking back to her critique of the photojournalists on war fronts rearranging the guns for a more dramatic shot on a slow day being disingenuous.  I also found myself wishing she would have pushed a bit further into commenting on video vs. stills, how the landscape has changed with photography technology available in phones to amateurs, and what if anything she would do to be a more agile photographer.  It seems even with culling the variety of films, lighting apparati, and tripod that she is still a bit of a maximalist in terms of the equipment she packs.  While I love that she seems to have a growth mindset philosophy toward photography skills, they are something you can work on and develop, I was then disheartened to learn that she felt being photogenic was innate and that some of her success was in working with people who are arresting no matter who photographs them.  With that in mind, maybe my place really is better behind the camera than in the frame!      

   

Is this social commentary?  Pinning NRA "We do our part" sign to a cigar store Indian.  

Ansel Adams 400 Photographs

Landscape photography isn't particularly intriguing to me, even if it is beautifully executed.  Paging through this book in a day only made matters worse-- another picture of Half Dome, another of El Cap -- all the while realizing Ansel had taken these shots years apart.  There is admiration that he probably had to hike into these snowy redoubts, that he didn't have strobes and was likely capturing even his moonscapes with just natural light, that he probably didn't even have much immediate feedback on how it had all gone until he got back to his dark room.  I wonder if it struck him as cruel at any point to be taking black and white photos of rainbows in the mist or rock formations called Painted Lady?  Maybe that was the point, to leave the viewer slightly dissatisfied and motivated to go out and see these monuments for themselves, or at least support their conservation.  In a way, our family has.  We have a framed without glass map of the Sierras we mark with dates of our camping trips as we accumulate them.  

An advantage to swallowing an entire career of work in a few hours is that I began to appreciate symmetries in the close up and long views of nature.  A zoomed in shot of a creek could have ripples that could have been plausible as an elevated shot of a canyon.  Chunks of dead trees and their grain looked like uncanny rock formations.  I also admired his portraits, as they were often other famous artists and it made it feel like there was some sort of American Bloomsbury club that got together and shared ideas.  Oh, he's hanging out with Georgia O'Keefe and who is this Orville she looks so amused by?  Wasn't there another photographer that was in love with her?  Scandalous!      

Hold Still Sally Mann

I was gobsmacked with Sally's verbal acuity in this "memoir with photographs."  Every page was riddled with interesting vocabulary and wry sense of humor.  Part of me is tempted to go back through and highlight each ten dollar word to relish them again.  But a larger part of me has no interesting in wading through images of scantily clad tweens frozen with eerily worldly expressions and dangling candy cigarette butts or the end pages of decomposing bodies just to gather these verbal pearls.  I also wish Sally had consulted with Annie Liebowitz about how pictures render differently on different paper types and textures and made some better presentation choices to make it easier to see with full force what she described so beautifully in text.  The effort felt a bit reminiscent of a rough punk rock 'zine without a redeeming cultural call to action.    

But presentation aside, I admired that here is a philosopher photographer, sharing her observation that photography seems to unwittingly rob us of high fidelity memory of the subject, yet ironically, how a singular surviving picture might be uncharacteristic of its subject and yet still come to stand in for their entire personality when that is all that survives.  

Without knowing much about her, I first judged her initial two works harshly as the sort of sensationalist content that would make a fitting cover for Nabokov's Lolita.  Hold Still, such a fitting double entendre of a title.  Could it be a triple entendre if you also factor in the morbid interest in aging and death?  Eventually, I mellowed into the view that these were shot pre-pervasive internet and the ramifications it has for the photographed subjects, however willing they might be at the time and that this sort of material is not worthy to aspire to now but shouldn't be judged too harshly with the benefit of some hindsight.  While I wouldn't say this is a style or subject I aspire to, this has been the most thought-provoking photography book I've read so far.    

Her-story: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo

Let's take a moment to admire our southern neighbor, the first Mexican Presidenta, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and her outspoken advocacy for human rights to health, education, and environmental protection.   

In response to accusations that she was a "Bulgarian Jew" from political detractors during the presidential election, she released her birth certificate, establishing she was born in 1962 in Mexico City, the same city she would eventually spend a half decade serving as the head the government.  Her parents were leftist faculty whose families had immigrated to escape WWII conflict.  She followed in their academic footsteps, abandoning ballet for a degree in physics and going on to earn a Ph.D. in energy engineering while at Berkeley Lab, in California, where she had relocated for 4 years with her husband and two kids.  

In 2000, she was appointed by Obrador (AMLO) as Secretary of the Environment, originally tasked to decrease urban air pollution, she was also roped into improving mass transit infrastructure in Mexico City when AMLO began a public works project constructing a "second floor" to the perimeter highway.  She also found time to collaborate with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), writing a chapter of the report which went on to win a Nobel peace prize.  All the while, worrying as a mother of two about childcare pickup and drop off logistics.  When Obrador narrowly lost his bid for the 2006 presidential election, Claudia further endeared herself to him by assembling a team to use her mathematical skills to investigate how the electoral fraud was accomplished.  Then she returned to her research post at her Mexican alma mater (UNAM), publishing what would eventually amount to of over 100 co-authored articles and 2 books about energy, the environment, and sustainable development.  These publications centered on the value of mass transit and investment in human rights to healthcare and education.    

When Obrador's 2012 presidential bid was also defeated, he formed a leftist splinter party which Claudia joined, canvassing door to door.  In Sheinbaum's case, the acronym for this new party was particularly fitting, "Morena" literally signifies a dark haired female.  It can be a pet name or term of endearment and generally has neutral connotations.  Morena the party nominated Claudia for mayor of the Tlalpan borough of Mexico city which she had called home for the past 30 years.  She won and held the position for 2 years before resigning to run for jefa of the whole city.    

In 2018, she took office as the first elected female head of government in Mexico City.  Yet that may sound like more of a victory for feminism than it really was.  Five of the 7 candidates in the race were women and they collectively carried 86% of the popular vote.  Nineteen years prior, Rosario Robles had also held the position for 14 months, but she was an appointee and became embroiled in her party's corruption scandals causing her to sit out the subsequent election rather than win by popular vote.  This paved the way for AMLO to hold the position; presiding over Mexico City until he moved onto his 2 failed and third successful presidential bids.  

With Obrador presiding over the country, jefa Claudia extended the Mexico City projects she had begun 18 years prior under his appointment, following the guidance of the research articles she had published.  She introduced a unified mass transit pass, extended and electrified mass transit, introduced bike lanes, bike sharing.  She aspired to reduce air pollution by 30% during her term, plant 15 million trees, ban single-use plastic, build a new waste separation plant, bring water service to all residences, and install solar panels and water heaters.  

Meanwhile, she nearly halved the homicide rate in Mexico city during her term by encarcerating corrupt cops, empowering the police and enhancing their coordination with the district attorney.  Her cash for firearms program took 6,500 weapons off the street.  She created a hotline and 700 km of safe corridors to improve security for women in public spaces.  She also worked toward a universal basic income for pensioners.  She showed her support for LGTBQ as the first head of government to participate in a pride march and by mandating gender neutral uniforms in state schools.  She further established scholarships for 1.2 million students and established two tuition-free colleges which enroll more than 55,000.  She also established pilares or community cultural centers in marginalized neighborhoods which helped level the academic playing field between rich and poor which earned a UNESCO award.  Not bad for 6 years in office, don't you think? 

Her track record with governing Mexico City was so strong that as AMLO reached the end of his single term limit as the president of Mexico, her party nominated her to take his place in 2024.  Once again, she became the first woman elected to the position (although the nation seemed more ready for it than us Americans, her strongest rival for the position was also a woman).  But Claudia won by a landslide, carrying 31/32 states and 60% of the vote which is the highest percentage ever recorded since free and fair elections began.  

Her platform ran on expanding the successes she had achieved in Mexico City more broadly.  Homicides dropped 25% in the first months she was in office and she shrewdly noted to American leadership that 74% of those reclaimed cartel weapons were sourced from the US.  Her empowered national guard confiscated 178 tons of narcotics including 3 million doses of fentanyl.  These efforts and savvy negotiation tactics enabled her to indefinitely delay US tariff threats.  Domestically, she committed to extending train lines and modernizing ports, to devoting 1% of the military budget towards reforestation, and lowering oil generation targets by 10% while increasing state control of electricity generation enterprises.  She is increased school investment across the board and innovatively called for additional retraining opportunities for women in their 60's.  She also spearheaded house-to-house healthcare services for the elderly and disabled.  From her own term-limited position, she pushes for single term limits on other elected positions and advocating that judges be selected by popular vote rather than appointment to address concerns of political corruption.    

While Claudia is wise to downplay her personal life, what little that is published inspires me.  Imagine becoming a stepmother at only 20 years old!  Yet somehow she managed to stay on such good terms, even after the marriage (of 30 years!) dissolved, that she was informed by her stepson that she would soon be a grandmother.  How sweet to then reconnect with a college sweetheart and embark on a second marriage after a 7 year engagement.  To get a better sense of this legendary lady, or just to brush up on your Spanish, I recommend the 40 minute Youtube documentary, Claudia.    

Maybe when she reaches her term limit in 2030, she can share her expertise to make life a little better up here in Alta California!  

Leave It Better Than You Found It

 

Why is stewardship of the Earth important to you?  

My brief career as an Insta influencer was spent documenting the items that materialized overnight on our sidewalk with the hashtag "trashfairies."  The thing about trash fairies was the quicker you responsibly disposed of their treasures, the less likely they were to leave you extra.  Stewardship was initially an act of self-preservation, lest we take a peek at our sidewalk one day and find a Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout-sized berg leaving us no hope of driveway egress.  Now that I'm a parent and deadpan insisting that the tooth fairy doesn't pay as much for teeth with cavities, I find Earth stewardship has broadened into a general concern about legacy.  Last I checked, our short-term odds for planetary egress weren't that great.  I want my epitaph to read, "She left it better than she found it."  

Why is it important to keep our highways, public places, and outdoor recreational areas litter free?  

My top 2 reasons for keeping areas litter free are:  

(1) Litter eventually ends up the ocean where it contributes to all the microplastics floating around in the continent-sized garbage gyre, poisoning wildlife and eventually poisoning ourselves. 

(2)  No one wants to spend time in ugly spaces.  Research says spending time outside makes us healthier.  Why not do everything we can to Make Outside Attractive Again?    

What adverse effects can the presence of litter have on the environment and wildlife?  Tell us about these problems in three different areas of the world, such as roads, nature, waterways, urban spaces, etc.

Urban:  Provides harborage for pests.  Mosquitoes can lay eggs in the amount of water pooled in a discarded soda cap.  

Roads:  Litter can block storm drains and increase the risk of flooding.  It can also create accidents if it causes drivers to swerve to avoid it.  

Waterways:  Litter that washes out to the ocean can harm wildlife.  Plastic bags look like jellyfish, a delicacy for some turtles.  

Waste Removal Sorties:  (intermediate level)

1.  

2. 

3. 

4.

5.  

70.3 Oregon '25

Logistics: 

We waffled on fly vs. drive and what that would mean for our hotel reservation dates.  This was driven by concern about how to get the bike there.  Tri-bike transport was no longer operating and it looked like a road trip to see all the parks on the way would be a substantial detour.  

By mid-March, we couldn't find any hotel rooms at any price in Salem.  We found a peaceful lavender farm on Airbnb a scenic 30 minute drive away outside Silverton.  Fri check in, Mon check out.  If I were going back, I would try to reserve the tiny home on the property for a night in addition to the guest house because sleeping in a tiny is on my bucket list and it could let me get into an even more reclusive monk mode since my sherpa entourage (Jens and Fallon) stay up later and don't need to wake up as early.  

We flew (LAX-PDX, Fri AM-Mon mid-day).  We lucked out in that Coach Ingrid had a soft-sided Scion bike bag she was willing to lend.  Wayne had experience with it and helpful tips to ensconce it in pipe insulation/pool noodles and remove the derailleur and even shared his packing material.  Sherpa Jens elaborated on this approach with zip ties vs. painter's tape (don't forget to pack something to snip them open).  He used dynema string to rotate the derailleur into a safer spot within the bike frame and ziptied it secure without needing to remove it.  Bike went through oversized luggage undamaged both directions.  The gear bags that came with it and wedge into the frame are slick, I could fit my entire transition kit in there.  If you fly and there is a Fearless contingent driving, see if they can bring your co2 cartridges for flats ($5/ in expo).   

Group check in was an unexpected upgrade.  14 Fearless training buddies "flash mobbed" race check in at 4PM Friday and a helpful volunteer captain was able to assign us numbers next to each other so we would be bike rack neighbors.  I was worried I wouldn't be able to find my transition Ikea Bag because everyone on Fearless would be following the same Ingrid tip, but it wasn't an issue.  Saturday morning, Fallon ran an Ironkids half mile while Jens assembled the bike (too bulky to fit in a Subaru Forrester rental car fully assembled), did a test ride to check the shifters left it in low gear, and staged the gear bag.  It turns out they want you to tie your transition gear to the bike/rack bar overnight but thankfully, the Fearless teammates who came through later in the day could get my bag off the ground.  

I wanted to see the swim start, so I walked there.  It took almost half an hour each way.  If I were new and doing it again, I would suggest biking over to look at it to save time.  Some folks were actually swimming the whole route as a preview.  If that is you, find one of those high viz swim buoys that doubles as a dry bag so you can drag your phone/minimal gear with you.  You will swim it faster than a sherpa friend will need to walk your stuff back.  People were also doing check out swims off the dock that is the end of the swim.  The current isn't ripping too badly to swim against there.  If I were doing it again, I would make sure to have water, a good sunscreen base, and/or Judene's parasol on hand.  It was surprisingly hot and sunny and I got a little cooked and dehydrated during the race setup.  Saturday, my crew headed to a Salem board game cafe for lunch and entertainment in the shade.  I'm glad they didn't serve coffee because I would have partaken and had trouble going to sleep that evening.        

25:10 Swim  get up at 4AM, shellac self with Zealios sunscreen, choke down a muffin/cold coffee/chocolate espresso beans, leave Silverton 4:30 with a frozen water bottle for T2, sunglasses and my running shoes.  Get to transition at 5:15, fill my aero waterbottle, wiggle into a wetsuit.  I didn't pack Trislide because I thought aerosols weren't allowed on the plane.  Untrue.  Probably could have borrowed from a Fearless neighbor if things were really tight.  I wore sacrificial socks for the walk to the swim start with a partial water bottle and a honeystinger.  Worked great-- my toe was peeking out a new hole right around the last call trash cans and I didn't need to use/track down a morning clothes bag at the end.  One thing I hadn't appreciated is that the seeded time sign people left transition at 5:45 and if you don't immediately attach yourself to "the fast group" per Ingrid instructions at departure, you are going to need to hot foot through the gravelly shoulder to get to the front.  Not advisable in bare feet.  Fortunately, Julia, Diane and Tony were in a similar predicament and we ended up in the 37-40? min group together.  It did create some confusion for the rest of the race-- seeing Fearless and not knowing if they were 40 minutes deeper into their race or behind you based on where they had ended up in the swim line up.  Swim itself was fast.  We dropped in in groups of 4 and were spaced so far apart I only bumped into one person.  There is kelpy stuff toward the finish and I climbed out feeling a little bit like swamp thing.           

3:34:02 Bike  My fueling plan was an aerobar bottle of water, and an entire 11-serving box of date coconut rolls (should hit 250 cals/hour target and I need to eat 1 roll every 20 mins or so).  I don't have a power meter and Ingrid gave me basic instructions (stay over 13mph, HR in low 140s).  Course was straightforward, not too hilly.  Outside of a little stress about whether I was drafting and some TMI issues (wishing I had tied on the bandana for discrete snot management, Coeur shorts generous liner helping a lot with chafe but not completely eliminating it past mile 40 and should I have reapplied vaseline/buttr after the swim?) this was smooth sailing.  I remembered the race reports from last year emphasizing wishing they had fueled more on the bike and was feeling pretty proud of myself having finished everything about 10 miles from the bike dismount.  If I were doing this again, I would practice grabbing bottles out of the cages, refilling aerobottle on the wing, and passing/throwing out stuff at a simulated aid station.  I had experimented once in training with tailwind in a bottle but the logistics of managing two hydration systems without being confident grabbing stuff out of cages was too much to bother with.  I skipped the aid stations and biked self-supported.      

2:23:56 Run We were lucky this year and it stayed relatively cool/overcast compared to the previous day and previous year's race stats.  Overheating was still my main concern.  I grabbed an oversized sport top bottle we had stashed in the freezer from my transition bag to start the run.  I drank what I could of the melt and bowled the remainder to Jens and Fallon shortly out of transition.  I like Ingrid's idea of chugging Pedialyte to start the run ("you are a raisin and you want to be a grape") but I hadn't trained with that and I wasn't sure what its freeze-thaw properties would be.  I had a dry pack of LMNT I carried as emergency salt (and ended up licking some off my hand to break up a side stitch at mile 12).  I tried to reach for the race day electrolytes (Mortal) at the first couple aid stations but went easy because I hadn't sampled these in training and even so, things got a bit sloshy/burpy.  I was delighted to find the aid stations had ice and my routine settled into filling the shelf bra of my Fearless top with ice and then crunching a cube on the walk breaks.  Generally, I had trained at 1:30 run, :30 walk but the course felt congested at the start and with athletes running two loops.  I ended up running through "a handful" of 30 sec alerts (2:30)  and walking :30 to just not feel like I was constantly passing people and then walking in front of them.  This worked for the most part for 11 miles, but if running is not your happy place, I wouldn't recommend this experiment.  I was delighted to stumble across Stephanie as we entered the finisher chute.  I had no idea she was so close (the confusion of the staggered swim start) or I would've pushed myself a little harder to catch up with her earlier on the run.  The run was largely in Minto Park so it was a quiet-run-through-a-cathedral-of-trees sort of vibe, not the sort of run where there is music blasting at you for the duration to keep your spirits up and your mind distracted.  Company for some of it would have been good.        

6:37:11 Total  This surprised me as it was 58 minutes faster than the Santa Rosa time I posted at my last half 8 years ago (pre-kid) and which I had been carefully avoiding looking up lest I feel disappointed that I finished but not as fast.  It wasn't all the swimming with the current.  I took 16 mins off the bike and ran pretty much the same pace (54 seconds slower).  I am super happy with this and the great coaching guidance I got following Ingrid's plan.  Now to find fun ways to maintain the gains for the rest of the season without another race on the horizon... Although Elsinore '26 on summer solstice is a stone's throw from Sweden and sherpa Jens has fond childhood memories of celebrating Midsommar he might want to recreate with Fallon...