Passed the test

Photo by
Eric Engman, Fairbanks Daily News Miner

Of course, the fact that at mile two, prior to peeing in the woods, I accidentally jumped into a spruce bog and immediately soaked both of my feet didn’t help to contribute positively in any way to my Two-Way Torture experience. And the continuous hill from mile three to mile six didn’t really help either. Nor did the fact that there were only two water stations during the entire 13.1 mile run. Or that the direction I was going around the Chena Ridge meant running on the sunny and hot side of the road most of the the time.

But what did help is the hill work I’d done prior to the race. It made the three-mile hill very feasible and I motored up with focus and a steady pace. I also brought my own water with me so I stayed hydrated. And I started slow, like a tortoise, so that by mile eleven I was basically on fire. And at the end, since he finished 15 minutes before me, my partner joined me for the last 1/2 mile of my race. That really helped. Of course, the best part was when it was done!

So I have earned the right to tell everyone that I passed the Two-Way Torture Test. And now that it’s over I can say that I would definitely do that again, minus the spruce bog. And while I accomplished my goal of finishing in under two hours, I can still walk today. That’s always a plus.

Two-way torture in Fairbanks

The Two-Way Torture Test. Why would anyone want to put themselves through the pain of running a total of 13.1 miles, beginning with a huge uphill climb followed by a bumpy ridge line trek with more hills, then culminating in a lengthy downhill section on pavement? I’m about to find out.

Waiting for the fourth spring

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time, then around here we have all pretty much flown the coop. This craze is mainly due to weather. Spring has shown up three times in the past month, stayed for about a week and then been blasted out each time by a stubborn snow that just doesn’t want to stop. And this whole cycle is simply cuckoo.

During these consecutive springs, the temperature melts most of the snow, and stays just long enough to turn my driveway into muddy ruts. I packed up my skis up a few springs ago, putting them in the basement until next season. Coupled with the little sprouts of green grass that appeared beneath my lilac tree, these were all welcome signs. They show that we’ve made it through another winter and so the expectation is that, naturally, summer should soon take over in full force. But then it snows again, and everyone’s spring fever plummets.

So we are left to play a game of make believe for a few more weeks, or a few more days. Who really knows. We bide our time, waiting for spring to finally get so sick of snow that she kicks him out for good, like a bad boyfriend. Then we can finally wash our mud-crusted trucks, revel in the seemingly mundane chore of raking last fall’s dead leaves, and wear shorts beyond the confines of the gym.

While waiting for the real spring to come out, come out, wherever you are, I scoured the blogosphere to see how others could inspire Fairbanksans through this borderline seasonal disruption. Undoubtedly, this path turned to a theme of food. Maybe that’s because I haven’t eaten breakfast yet this morning and I’m really hungry. Regardless, there is something comforting about a big bowl of pasta during trying times.

Until summer restores our sanity, Food and Paper suggests making a batch of tagliatelle with chive oil and cremini mushrooms. Perky Rachel Ray recommends her spring pea-sto with whole wheat penne pasta. The Wednesday Chef actually draws her food, as in her spring fever risotto. Finally, Luisa Weiss makes a list of things to eat, drink, learn, plant or pick before you go. I find this activity rather hopeful. It suggests that there is something beyond the dingy gray slush of yet another break up. I think my list might be called To Do, To See, Before I Go. Certainly in response to the bleak snow-covered affect found in my present location, it could start out like this:

1. Bake a chocolate torte.
2. Sip malbec while staying at Bodega Salentein.
3. Eat more vegetables from the farmer’s market
4. Learn Spanish.
5. Walk in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
6. Run a marathon.
7. Eat chocolate in Belgium.
8. See Jack Johnson in concert.
9. Bone fish in the Bahamas.
10. Sleep over the water in Bora Bora.

Ice cream makes everything okay

Even though winter is on its way out, spring term isn’t quite over. That being said, I think it is possible to survive and thrive during crunch week, as long as each day leading up to finals is sprinkled with copious amounts of ice cream. That’s why I’d like to announce that Hot Licks Homemade Ice Cream, located in Fairbanks on College Road next to Gulliver’s Books, officially opened again for business this week.

So consider the flavor possibilities of a hardy scoop of apple pie, rich black raspberry, a cappuccino crunch pick-me-up, peanut butter fluffernutter or the ever-decadent white truffle chocolate raspberry swirl. And keep in mind that this means, even though it’s supposed to snow some more tomorrow, it is unofficially officially spring in Fairbanks.

For general reasons of celebration and reflection, today I stopped in to Hot Licks and treated myself to a waffle cone filled with a luscious scoop of macadamia brittle. Deciding between Alaska blueberry, donutella, and the macadamia nut brittle was tough at first. However, in the end the flavor I chose didn’t really matter because I knew that I could return again anytime to test out the others.

A lunch rush

Cross-country skiing is a popular pastime among many Fairbanks residents, and eleven inches of snow during the first half of April (local average is 1.7 inches) created a perfect white canvas for skiers. This post includes my first Soundslides presentation and features a spring skate skier who often spends his lunch break gliding around the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ West Ridge trail system.

Growing my own chianti

Okay, forget the little waltz called spring from last week. Two nights ago a snowstorm with the grace of a clunky giant stomped into town and, with stealth precision, dumped another four or five inches of heavy, wet snow, eradicating every indication of spring.

People everywhere have been thrown into temporary seasonal affective disorder and I even heard someone today tell me they were thinking of moving to the lower 48 for the summer and finding a waitress job, in order to get away from it all. Even though this should melt away this weekend, when it’s expected to be in the upper forties, the snowfall was a truly unwanted surprise for April.

While it may be too soon, in healthy reaction to this seasonal mayhem, I was prompted to plant 24 chianti hybrid sunflower seeds yesterday. I’ve decided to take up planting, rather than drinking.

Last year I planted five varieties of sunflowers in front of my living room window, and by far the most amazing of the bunch were the chianti hybrid. A deep burgundy flower, some with flecks of gold and others a solid mass of deep midnight red, the plant has multiple stems and is the perfect length for cutting. The unusual color of the flower makes it a hit when giving to friends as part of bouquets and at $2.95 for a pack of 24 seeds, starting from seed is a total bargain. My plan is to give some of the plants away to people and grow a bunch more for my own enjoyment.

So if you’re really nice to me, I might give you one when they’re ready. But just in case, you could try planting your own seeds. It’s a rewarding way to make it through the melt until summer and they’re all your own.

Team Soyuz united in victory

One reason I joined an intramural soccer team last month is related to my personal theory of survival of the fittest. In this theory the fittest are not super athlete-types, but those who are thriving in life, rather than simply existing. And as an experiment, this winter I made a pact with myself to try something new every week as part of my attempt at thriving.

So far this experiment has proven to be lots of fun, partly because my Sunday night soccer team is such a motley mix of heterogeneity. Primarily anthropologists, scientists and their cronies, Team Soyuz is sort of a modern-day sociological experiment, with men and women representing Austria, England, Germany, Greece, Kazakhstan and the United States, and everyone falling into a variety of age and skill levels. Overall, we are a lighthearted bunch, really more into the concept of community and camaraderie, than conquering. Regardless, this attitude seems to be paying off.

Since something I’ve never really tried to write about is sports, tonight I will attempt to briefly describe our recent victory. What follows is an example of me thriving, in the least literal sense, as a pretend sports writer. Here goes:

The international roster of Team Soyuz stood strong against the explosive GI’s, representing the Geophysical Institute, this Sunday evening at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Student Recreation Center. Despite the absence of their regular English goalie Martin, and last week’s MVP, Austrian Peter, Team Soyuz emerged triumphant.

Repeated attempts were made to impede Soyuz’ newest goalkeeper, but American Faye was not to be deterred. With the grace of a gazelle, she leaped and lunged, always to emerge clutching the ball. Her goal keeping was truly impressive. Then with three minutes remaining in the second half, Soyuz rallied yet again, after one of their superstar forwards, American Kevin, was relegated to the sidelines due to a sudden knee injury, brought on after a collision with an opponent. The team remained undaunted, including impressive performances by German Franz and Greek Andreas, both playing sans spectacles. Team Soyuz rebuked the GI’s with a final score of 1-0.

A few yogic considerations

The notion of breathing, surviving and thriving should naturally include something about the practice of yoga. And since people of all ages, shapes and sizes do it, this post is meant for anyone considering taking part in a yoga class for the first time.

There are several different styles of yoga. Some use props to help people gradually work into poses. Other styles meet in a hot room. Restorative yoga is meant to promote healing and relaxation. Power yoga classes are more physically challenging to the body. Trying different styles can be useful in discovering which style fits your needs.

In Fairbanks, there are several places that offer yoga, including the University of Alaska (UAF) Fairbanks, the UAF yoga club, and Infinite Yoga. Infinite Yoga is currently my favorite place to do yoga because the space is just so beautiful, with lots of light, aesthetically pleasing architecture, and such welcoming teachers. To find a yoga class in your area, you might visit yogafinder.com or the Yoga Journal’s national directory of studios.

I have heard people say, “I don’t do yoga because I’m really not very flexible,” or “I think I would be embarrassed.” With that in mind, this post is meant to encourage anyone to try a yoga class. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• When deciding what to wear, make sure that your clothes cover you in a way that you will be comfortable in a class of people with whom you could theoretically be stretching and bending together into the shapes of a human pretzels.
• Come to class a few minutes early, especially if you don’t want to be in the front row. Surprisingly, one unspoken rule of yoga is that class begins on time.
• Know that yoga is done with bare feet, but wearing socks and taking them off after a few minutes of warm-up stretches is normal.
• The teacher may make subtle adjustments to your body during class. This is meant to help students more accurately move into the poses and can often be the encouragement needed to move further into a pose.
• Typically yoga students are not encouraged to talk during practice, instead to take in what the teacher is saying and focus on their own individual movements and breath. Of course, questions are encouraged, but yoga classes typically are not heavy in the dialogue department. Before and after class are great times for talking.
• Remember that yoga is a personal experience and a process. Try to steer away from comparing yourself to others in the class. If you can only touch your knee, and the full pose asks that you touch your toes, accept where you are at this moment.
• Staying in the present moment is a large part of yoga. The mind will want to wander to the past and future. Focusing on the breath and the task at hand will help to stay put in the present.
• The basis of yoga is breathing, so during a class remember to always come back to breath—the simple act of pulling air in to the body, absorbing oxygen, and the pushing out what remains.
• If at any time a pose is too difficult or painful, with your mind visualize breathing into the challenging area and you may find that eases the pain. Feel free to modify the pose to fit the needs of your body at that moment. Remember that if a pose really hurts, you don’t have to do it.
• The last few minutes of class usually end with a pose called shavasana, a Sanskrit word meaning “the corpse pose”. During this time the body slows, so putting socks on and covering with a blanket or sweatshirt is encouraged, will help you to stay warm, while also promoting maximum relaxation and rejuvenation.
• After shavasana the teacher typically ends class with hands in prayer position at the heart, a bowing of the head with the spoken word “Namaste,” which means “I honor the spirit within you.” And students typically bow their heads and respond back to the teacher with the same word.
• Keep doing yoga and it is amazing to see how one’s body improves in flexibility and balance.

Grow some equity, plant a dahlia

It’s spring and since some surmise we’re in a recession, this historical combination makes it the perfect time to consider growing a garden. Including vegetables in the mix for sustenance seems practical, but for aesthetic reasons flowers, especially dahlias, are essential. My thought this season is that instead of buying a house, plant a dahlia tuber. Regularly watered, they’re virtually risk-free and, in less than a year, build easy equity consisting of cut flowers and typically, from year to year, a 75% increase in tubers.

Alaska’s plants, with our short summers, often follow the live fast and die young motto, so if they’re not given some extra love inside prior to the official Memorial Day start of the season, flowering can begin late. This is especially true of dahlias. Once started, our long days of continual sunlight create amazing conditions, where sometimes a plant’s growth in one day can visibly be measured on a yardstick. With that in mind, my green-thumbed mother called the other day and reminded me that it’s time to pull my tubers out of the basement, as April 1st is a good deadline for planting dahlias inside.

Dahlias are very economical. At the end of the season they leave a tuber that carries all of the nutrients for next year’s plant, and this can be divided into three or four more plants. Below is a video of a woman from Scotland planting dahlia tubers. She pronounces the word dahlia like dale-ya. Americans typically pronounce the word dal-ya. Dal like Hal. Here she shows just how easy it is to plant a tuber:

After I plant my tubers, I set each one in a sunny window and after a few weeks they sprout and reveal the beginnings of a plant stalk. In early June, I move them outside into a full sun location and transplant them into larger pots, where they’ll grow up to four feet tall, producing many brightly-colored flowers. The dinner plate dahlia varieties are my favorites, with blossoms the size of their namesake. There are also decorative dahlias, great for cut bouquets; cactus dahlias, with petals that curl on the ends resembling cacti; and smaller varieties used for bordering flower beds. Since mature dinner plate dahlias in Fairbanks usually cost around $30 each, I typically treat myself to one greenhouse grown plant per year. Last year The Plant Kingdom’s dahlias were the healthiest in town, and I recently bought a bag of dinner plate tubers at Lowe’s for $5.98.

At the end of the season, after a frost that is hard enough to turn the lower stalk of the plant a dark black brown, I cut off the top of the dahlia plant, about two inches from the bottom of the plant’s stalks, and carefully dig out the dahlia tuber that has been expanding beneath the soil during the summer. The tubers are typically packed densely with soil, so I hose them off, let them sit for a few days to dry out, before dividing. At this time I also attach with string or wire to each tuber a piece of sturdy paper with the color and variety name, for the next season. Then I plop them all in a large tote of cat litter. The cat litter helps them to stay dry and keeps them from mildewing during the winter. They sit in a dark, cool yet above-freezing place until March, when each tuber is planted in its own pot and the cycle of begins all over again.

It’s March 28th. Have you planted a dahlia yet?

Gather ye human birds, enjoy the spring

Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
to some good angel leave the rest;
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
there are no birds in last year’s nest!

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As I stood this weekend amidst a motley flock of human bird impersonators—consisting of an upright oystercatcher, horned grebe, penguin, blue jay, flamingo, greater yellowlegs, common loon, arctic tern, violet-green swallow, and other wannabe wings—I realized this was more than just a costume party. This birthday gathering of feathered fake fowl was a call out, a sentry of sorts. Though we were mostly just mimics, standing amidst a group of bird personae made me think of times past and the possibilities of what’s to come.

While the party attire requested dressing as one’s favorite migratory bird, of course there were some avian fringe in attendance, including a human birdwatcher, a snowbird live from Tucson, and a man with a cardboard cutout around his face in the shape of a hand flipping “the bird”. Their rebel spirits only added to the mix. Even if the mammal blue jay was garbed simply—no beak and just blue clothes, except for the letter J duct-taped to his sweatshirt—the vague likeness of each of these bird portraits still elicited a few vivid memories.

Like the time when I was three, my family and I ate in Denali Park after picking blueberries, and a hoard of stealth camp robbing jays persisted and insisted on stealing anything to do with lunch. And a war-like walk on the tundra once, with my spastic pup Jack and a deranged parasitic jaeger, who dive bombed at us, in fierce protection of her young. Finally, a fishing trip into Pegati Lake where we were greeted in the early morning by a loon couple, obvious mates for life, yodeling and dancing as if they were in their own private bedroom.

More than anything, this group of human fliers unknowingly carried on their imaginary wings a clear sense of hope. They reminded me that the Creamer’s Field bird B&B will soon open its doors for another season of winged visitors. And I think I can hear sandhill cranes and Canadian geese now, the faint graceful swish of their wings freely flapping, as they make their final approach towards summer.