Wisconsin in October Part I

After polishing off 8 or 9 cheap beers on Sunday afternoon in Jeff's garage on his semi rural property outside of West Bend, Jeff and I decided that it was time to start carving some pumpkins. He reached into a drawer in his workbench and pulled out the tool we would be using, a short barrel .38 Special. He went back in the house and came back with a box of hollow point bullets. This is widely considered to be the best ammunition for most pumpkin carving jobs. Sometimes a standard smaller caliber round is what you want if you are doing more detail work, but since I was a beginner at this I decided to stick with what we figured would get us the best results under the circumstances.

Jeff fired off the first set of rounds from a crouching position about 50 feet out from the gourd we were working on. He took careful aim, pulled the trigger taking out a large chunk right off the top. I took the gun and tried it from the same distance. Squeezing off the first round when firing a handgun is always a little bit of a shock. It's louder and there is more recoil than you'd ever think from watching people shoot on TV and in the movies. Nevertheless, I gave the effort great concentration and emptied all the chambers on the revolver, missing every time. I didn't even come close. That's another misconception from the movies I think is that it is easy to hit a target with a pistol. It is not. Not even after several beers which I was sure would have calmed my nerves and help to steady my hand thereby improving my aim.

I kept having to walk back into the garage to get more ammunition as I was getting frustrated by my lack of success. I considered putting a few slugs into the chicken coop or some other object that would have provided an easier target. After a while Jeff went to get a scuffed up old .25 cal. semiautomatic from Michelle's bedside table. Jeff and Michelle never bother to lock their doors, even if they are going to be out of town for a while, but ironically she likes to keep a semiautomatic within easy reach when she crawls in bed at night. Rather than point out the irony I instead hastily took the gun back outside with a pocket full of bullets and a fresh beer and got back to blasting.

After a while Jeff offered to take us for a walk down the road to visit his neighbor Gary the Farmer. Gary was a stereotype of the quintessential Wisconsin small farmer. He said he grew up about 11 miles down the road in Saukville and that out of all the kids in the family, he was the one who had moved farthest away from home. He had a weathered looking face that did not betray very much emotion. We watched him pull a hopper full of grain with his old 1950's tractor into the lower level of the old barn. The grain was unloaded onto a conveyer belt that carried it into a large trough which a group of a dozen or so black and white steers would come and eat from. I thought I liked the look of some of the cows as they gazed back at me with that gentle, curious cow look, and I asked Gary if it ever bothered him to take any of the cows to market. He looked back at me like it was a really stupid question and answered "Well.......I ain't had a complaint yet." Gary must have liked us ok because he came back over to Jeff's garage with us later for some beers. Jeff speculated that all the farmers like to come to his place for beers because their wives don't let them drink at home.

I liked Gary and actually came to respect him a great deal. He knows that there is no way he could make ends meet just by running the farm, even with the extra acreage he is leasing. So he works at a factory as a machinist putting in upwards of 40 hours per week before coming home every evening to do chores around the farm. He said that if he won the lottery that he would just buy as much land as he could possibly farm. That's all he really wants to do, aside from some hunting and plenty of beer drinking. He was a very honest sort of character and is an example of someone who is helping to preserve the old, honest lifestyle of the small family farmer. It's more of a labor of love for Gary, but without men like him, small farms would disappear.

By the time we got back to Jeff's, Jim had arrived and was sporting a bigger, shaggier beard than I had ever seen on him before. It was something that had clearly taken a lot of time to cultivate. We were glad Jim had made it out that afternoon, although by this time it was running late, I was getting pretty loaded, and my wife was starting to think about heading out. She had been there, not drinking, and for the most part watching Rachel all day and was starting to think that maybe this was too much of a good thing. All the cigarette smoke billowing about in the garage wasn't helping things either. Before we left, she asked me to change Rachel's big 'ol poopy diaper. Trying to be a good husband I readily agreed, and took her upstairs and laid her out on a blanket on the kitchen floor and went to work. I remember it being a terrific mess and feeling pretty miserable at the time as Rach cried and carried on while I struggled to get her cleaned up while doing my best not to get poo all over Jeff's kitchen floor, but we finally got it taken care of. After a long series of goodbyes, we set off on the lonely country highway heading back for my mom's house. I could tell Bree was a little miffed, but overall we had had a good time that day. It's always fun when to go out there for a visit and when we do we can always expect to get some new and entertaining stories told with humor and enthusiasm. Unfortunately we had not been there the next weekend when they were going to be throwing their big Halloween party when they would be serving an an entire pig that was to be roasted while stuffed with bratwurst and saurkraut (a Wisconsin favorite) and Jeff would giving hay rides around the property on a trailer he would be towing with his 1950 Ferguson tractor.

Back to Work

The moment my wife and I have both been dreading has finally arrived, although we have been dreading it for somewhat different reasons. Last night Bree went back to work. After over three months off on maternity leave, Bree finally had to go back to the VA Hospital to her job on the lock down psychiatric unit. She has not wanted to go back to work partially because she has not been liking the job particularly, and because she does not want to leave the baby. I don't want her to leave the baby either. She is wonderful with Rachel. Our daughter responds to Bree like nobody else and it is a beautiful thing to witness. While Rachel seems to like me a whole lot more than most strangers, she still does not seem to like the idea of spending more than a few hours alone with her daddy. Although she finally is eating from me a little bit, especially when I break out the rice cereal, she has a hard time going for very long without crying hysterically.

Trying to sooth a crying baby isn't any fun. Often the only thing that works at all is to hold her in my arms, facing out, and walk around. Standing still won't do. Rachel isn't happy unless she is on the move. Sometimes I will cradle her in my arms and pace up and down the block. She seems to like the cool night air, it shocks her into not crying anymore, at least for a little while. As an especially nervous daddy and even on those rare instances when she does fall asleep, I often sabotage it by grasping her and or her foot to make sure that she is alright.

Most of this evening has been pretty rough on both of us, but for a while just now, we lay on the bed together playing and talking. Rachel was very responsive and seemed to be in especially good spirits. I hope that much more of our time is like that in the nights and weeks to come, as
Bree will be spending most nights away, either working or at class. I'm sure that our dogs, Oscar and Masha feel the same way. I think we would all like a little bit more quiet around the house right now. I'm sure things will get easier, though, and I look forward to coming home and seeing this little baby every night. Despite all the abuse to my eardrums, I thoroughly enjoy the privalage of being able to be a father again.

Mount Shavano

A couple of weeks ago Louis Morton and I endeavored to climb Mount Shavano, in the southern Sawatch Range. At 14,229 feet, it is the 17th highest in the state of Colorado. Those of you who follow this blog will remember Louis Morton from a previous entry when I wrote about our ride from Boulder to Ward. Climbing up one of these peaks is never easy but Louis is usually game for just about anything. Plus, it had been a while since either of us had climbed a "14er", which seems to be a bit of a shame, since I live so close to all of those fine mountains.

We drove up the night before and stayed at my aunt and uncles house just outside of Buena Vista. They just moved here from Florida and seem to be perfectly happy in their new surroundings which consist of 40 acres on the lower slopes of Mount Columbia (35th highest). We were going to take a motel in Salida, or even camp, but since we were going to drop off Masha at their place anyway and they had extended the offer, we decided to spend the night. This turned out to be a good decision, and we had a very nice visit.

I was up by 7 the next morning, not bad by my normal Saturday standards, but not nearly as early as I would like on a day I am planning a climb. Even though it was the end of September, and the summer monsoon season should really be over, it is still best to get an early start. To make matters worse, so to speak, it was bitterly cold in the morning and my aunt and uncles hospitality made it hard to get out of house until we had had several cups of coffee and some delicious bran muffins made with Grandma Betty's old special recipe.

After we finally got on the road we still had almost an hour to drive to get the trail head, which is down near Poncha Springs at the southern end of the Arkansas River Valley. The morning weather was gorgeous, and it looked like we were going to have a fine day out on the mountain. To make things even better, the golden fall colors of the aspen trees were in full bloom. This was surely one of the nicest times of the year to be up in Colorado's mountains.

We were in good spirits when we started out on the trail. Although the morning air was still very brisk, we soon heated up as we began the long uphill grind. I got so hot that before long I even took my shirt off, which is not something that I have felt especially comfortable doing lately after putting on a little extra blubber. Those additional pounds weren't exactly helping my effort at getting up the mountain either, but I wasn't doing too badly. In the meantime, Louis was going like a bat out of hell.

The lower part of the trail follows part of the Colorado Trail. This was a pleasurable stretch where the grade was not too steep and we were often walking through brilliantly colored aspen groves. The going got much tougher as we turned left on to the Shavano Trail itself. Unfortunately for Oscar, this is one of the few mountain trails I have hiked in Colorado where we didn't cross any streams, so I had to let him drink from my own personal supply which probably did not give him quite as much as he otherwise would have liked to have.

Once we got above timberline, the views were exceptional looking back toward the southeast. The long valley below us was full of the color of thousands of aspens. Beyond that stretched the golden plain of the Arkansas River Valley. To my dismay, however, there were clouds that appeared to be building fast. While it was only 10:30 or so, the sky was already showing some ominous signs.

I have a long ingrained fear of getting struck by lightning when I am high on a mountain, away from the cover of trees so I was watching the developing weather with great trepidation. By this point Louis had opened up a sizable lead on me and although I could see him up ahead, I knew he would be listening to his I Pod and would not be able to hear my calls for him to hold up for a conference. So we went on and on, climbing toward saddle high above where the route would lead to the summit ridge.

By 11, I was starting to see bolts of lighting flashing from the black bank of clouds hovering over a mountain several miles to our south, but it was still not looking too bad where we were headed. After another half an hour, though, some very threatening looking clouds started billowing over the ridge for which we were headed. I passed a few people heading down who had obviously gotten a much earlier start on the trail than we did. They all said that things didn't look any better on the other side. Louie had found a comfortable rock to sit on while he waited for me to catch up. He was actually looking a little concerned also, as we were beginning to hear the occasional distant rumble of thunder. We went on a little further hoping for some miraculous clearing, but it the thunder only got closer. He and I finally decided to turn back. We figured we had reached about 13 thousand feet, easy striking distance of the summit, but Shavano would have to wait for another day.

Somewhat despondent, we made our way back down the mountain. This part of the day seemed to take a very long time. Descending is never my favorite thing anyway, its much tougher on the knees and feet than going uphill. After reaching the bottom we had an early dinner at Amica's in Salida and drove up to Buena Vista to pick up Masha and say goodbye to Debbie and Jerry. By the time we got up to their place, the weather was really bad. there wasn't lightning, but a front had definetely moved in and it was cold, windy and an icy rain had started to fall. According to Jerry, Masha had sat by the front door all day looking out the window. I'm sure she felt bad that she wasn't able to come with us. Old dogs never understand their limitations.

Inability to Post

Yesterday Bree was gone all day on a field trip of sorts for her herbal medicine program. She left early in the morning to go high up in the mountains of Boulder County to harvest osha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osha) with her class. Although I was somewhat dreading having to look after Rachel all day by myself, I anticipated being able to get caught up a little on some of the things which I wanted to write about in this blog.

It turned out to be an especially exhausting day and I couldn't get myself to shift gears away from focusing on my fussy little girl even for a few minutes to do any of the writing I had planned. Instead I carried her around the house while she screamed and watched over her nervously during her brief naps. Rachel still has a strong aversion to taking the bottle, but has shown some interest in eating runny rice cereal mixed with breast milk from a tiny spoon. Although this type of feeding is very time consuming and incredibly messy, I think it is all that got us through the 9 hours or so that mommy was out of the house.

I fell asleep almost as soon as my wife got home and am still tired and out of sorts at work today. Rachel and I are not looking forward to next week when mommy goes back to work and will be gone most evenings. Perhaps things will start going better for Rachel and I and I will be able to handle a few more posts. We are keeping our fingers crossed.