A Work in Progress

This lightpole in Portland is more staples than wood.

View from the top of Mt. Tom in the white mountains. The same view, one minute later.

Lake Champlain. Burlington, VT

Fire hose, again.

Every tiny drop.

Memorial day bike team action!

Some baby ducks to brighten your day! Some baby ducks to make you forget that I posted this two days late! Some baby ducks that I didn't exactly take a picture of on the 24th. But they're cute, right?

I have a brand new structural firefighting helmet for work. I'm not sure why. I wish I could put better stickers on it. Sorry the picture of the day is pretty boring today. Sorry that my writing today is like that of an eight year old. I'll try to add more describing words in the future. Helmets are fun. This helmet is red. It has a number on it. It will protect me if a ceiling caves in. The End.

While mountain biking yesterday I had an awesome time and marked my second proper crash (in which I sustained no injuries) But before my pedal caught a root and launched me into the grass, I was making a hard effort to get up a tricky hill. Here, on a particularly vibrant upstroke I managed to squish my foot soundly between my pedal and a protruding root. Immediately I jumped off the bike and proceeded to go into what I like to call a "pee-pee dance" where basically I dance around yelling and breathing like I'm in labor. Almost immediately my toenail turned a lovely shade of lavender. Driving home was tricky as pushing the pedals sent me into bouts of hyperventilation. It's better today although after a night of working and a day of PALS refresher, I took it home and gave it some ice. I will continue to ignore doctors' advice of heating up a paper clip and jabbing it into the top of my nail. There is no way that is happening.

Lovely singletrack.

Six bucks for the Homestar runner figurines. I do it ebay!

My kind of road biking. Bonus deer pic.

Swing time.

We had a weekend of airway class (which kind of explains the absence of new pics of the day.) The coolest thing they had was a feedback program for BVM ventilations. It was amazing how easy it was to over-bag. It would be great to have this in every CPR class. Too bad it costs $10,000.

We have a lot of forms of communication at work. Unfortunately, none of them work consistently. And, if we get any more, my pants will fall down.

Fire Hose.

The obligatory picture of kitty.

Okay, so nothing very exciting happened today and I was too busy watching lost to think of something to take a picture of. So here's a good one courtesy of C. It looks really cool in full size.

On Friday I took ACLS refresher. It was unrelated to the rest of the weekend. When I got home in the afternoon I rode the bike about 14 miles and up two of my greatest nemesis hills. On Saturday I slept in and in the afternoon C and I kayaked about 10 miles. It doesn't seem like much, but it is a long way in a kayak. In fact, I hadn't done that much in one session in probably two years. It was a beautiful day for it. We had been following a canoe of three people and a little trolling motor. They headed back to the put in about 10 minutes before we did and we arrived back right before they did. This was a great source of consternation and amusement for all of us. It felt awesome, and afterward we had a very nice and unexpected dinner with some old friends. On Sunday we got up early and drove to Shenandoah National Park. We hiked the 8.8 mile loop to the summit of Old Rag (3291 feet) which includes a "strenuous rock scramble" to get to the top. Of course, he f...