Make Good Choices!

Do you ever have a phrase that runs through your head in a specific person’s voice? The one that’s been stuck in my head all year is my sister saying, “Make good choices!” Specifically, in the exacerbated tone she uses to remind her 10-year-old to make good choices. It pops into my head whenever I get lost hiking or have some terrain to negotiate scrambling or a line to pick skiing. Now I say it to my friends when they leave somewhere they’ll be making choices.

For the record, we make great choices!

During my recent trip to Hawaii I had to remind myself to make good choices constantly because solo vacationing is mostly just making choices. Where to sleep, what to eat, how to avoid crowds, what to do, how to get to the places to do things… I’m grateful I got a vacation, but, damn, so many choices.

Rainbows on the slopes of Mauna Loa? Awesome!

The literal high point and emotional everything point of my trip was summiting Mauna Loa. I figured summiting the 2nd tallest mountain in Hawaii via the 12-mile summit trail from the weather observatory was a great way to not celebrate Thanksgiving. And it was really great! I got to pee into a crevasse I couldn't see the bottom of! I saw so much cool lava rock! I added 8 miles to my day because I spotted so cool rocks on a different trail! I saw the best sunset of my trip that was full of great sunsets! I spent 8 hours above 12,000 feet! I tripped and fell hard enough I thought I broke my hand! I cried, sang, and talked my way down the mountain for 2.5 hours!

So, some good choices were made along with some sub-optimal choices. 

You might have been tempted to detour for this lava rock, too

I couldn’t fully grasp the enormity of Mauna Loa or the Moku‘āweoweo caldera until I saw the summit. Mauna Loa rises 13,681 feet above sea level (more than 100 feet higher than Utah’s highest point), but then the volcano continues below sea level for another 16,000 feet and it’s so massive that the ocean floor is depressed 26,000 feet, bringing its total height from top to bottom to 56,000 feet (way bigger than Everest)! The lava produced by Mauna Loa is more flowy than other types of lava, so it spreads out farther creating a shield volcano: it’s tall but doesn’t look it because it’s so broad.  Average slope is 2-3 degrees, so I got 20 miles of hiking in but only 3,000 feet of elevation gain.

It was kind of exciting packing a down jacket and gloves along with my snorkel gear

Mauna Loa is very young and still changing. The oldest flows on the volcano are 200,000 years old and it's most recent eruption was in 1984. For comparison, the granite at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon is 32 million years old, and that’s young for Utah rock. While not actively spewing lava, things are still happening on Mauna Loa. The week I visited the summit was ‘inflating’ and there were 110 small earthquakes. I even saw a steam vent in the caldera, which indicates the rock there was at least 900°F. Eruptions of Mauna Loa have played a constant role in Hawaiian history, disrupting battles and obliterating cities. During a 1942 eruption the Army Air Force actually tried dropping bombs on the lava flow to change its path away from a city!

Moku‘āweoweo caldera - this was once a lake of liquid hot magma!

The path across the lava flows are marked by ahu: rock stacks. I love the care that goes into building these signals across the landscape. With no plants or soil to cut trails through, the only way to know where to go is to follow the ahu. Seriously, I went all day without seeing a single plant and only a few spiders. 

Ahu + Mauna Kea

As I got to the summit I had to have a serious make-good-choices heart to heart with myself. Due to my detour, I didn't reach the top until sunset. It would be hard to follow the ahu in the dark, and it would only get colder. I’d been above 12,000 feet for several hours by then and it was hurting my head and I still needed my wits about me to negotiate the downhill terrain. I was already stumbling a bit, perhaps due to fatigue or hunger or elevation, so I sat down for a victory beverage and some sardines with crackers. Also, selfies.

I tried summit yoga, as I like to do, but was unable to stand on one leg for any period of time

After my snack, I started speed walking back at dusk repeating, "make good choices" specifically referencing my foot placement. An old back injury I neglected for many years has weakened my right leg, so I trip a lot on my right foot and have to constantly remind it to do it's job. But also there was an amazing sunset to view! And Mauna Kea was looking good as hell! So it was a distracted hustle.

Just before tragedy struck

There I was, alone on the most massive volcano in the world. Making an intense move where I shifted my weight from my right foot to my left – you might call it a step – when out of nowhere this gnarly piece of basalt grabbed my right foot and sent me flying through the air. I hit the ground hard and it hurt so much! I got up quickly because there was no time to waste (and what if Pele saw) and it happened again! At which point I stayed on the ground and sobbed.

I literally yelled, “This is stupid!!! Why am I even doing this?!?!” And sobbed very loudly because there was no one to hear me.

All I wanted was some company. Someone to validate my pain and tell me that I don’t make terrible choices. But I was as alone as I could possibly get. None of the text or video messages I’d sent from the summit had gone through. The only person who even kind of knew what I was doing was the guy I was dating and we weren’t at a point where he could know whether I wasn’t texting him because everything was fine and unremarkable or because I was mortally wounded on top of a mountain 3,000 miles away. And I’d said I would be going on a gentle, not-steep, 10-mile hike. That was a bad choice (the failure to leave details like a trail name and start and end time; it's fine to not develop telepathy in the first weeks of dating).

I sat there on the mountain for several minutes sobbing before I was able to make good choices. It went something like this:

• Quick head to toe WFR check to make sure everything was fine. Right hand and left knee hurt like hell - still do - but they were probably not broken.
• Turn on the headlamp and plug in the power brick. Good job, Becka! You were prepared there.
• Look at the ground, dummy! Once the sun finally set, I was able to focus a little better on my foot placement.
• Sing! When I am most scared, the only songs I can remember are the church songs of my youth. I am bad at singing and only bust these songs out when I’m scared, so it’s pitchy and shaky. Unfortunately, it’s been a while, so my playlist was brief:
• I Am a Child of God (x7)
• The Spirit of God (x3)
• The Army of Helaman song (can’t remember the name, so just once)
• How Great Thou Art (x1.5. Oof. That song makes me feel things)
• Joy to the World --> Silent Night --> Deck the Halls (when did these become one song I can’t remember all the words to?)
• I had ‘Alexander Hamilton’ from ‘Hamilton’ stuck in my head all summer, so I thought I could recite it on my own. I got a few lines in before the mumbles took over.

• Once I ran out of things to sing, it was time to talk. Despite the previous wailing and singing, I feel really self-conscious just talking to myself out in the wilderness. But there’s no better way to get your mind away from freaking out about all the scary things hiding in the darkness than to dissect all the things that have and could yet go wrong in your dating life. I think I made some good progress. I talked through some recent devastating conversations and my experience with the current dating person. I talked through applying what I’ve learned from therapy and books to future decisions.

Full moon was bad for star gazing, great for night hiking

Eventually the weather observatory came into view and I made it back to my car. One of the things I love about a long hike is that I come down a different person than I was when I started.

Unfortunately, on the drive down to Hilo (at sea level), I passed through a cloud of something I was very allergic to and turned into a snotty mess. Then I had to wait for 30 minutes before I could finally get into my hotel room and blow my nose. It was the most painful nose blow I’ve ever had. My skull hadn’t fully repressurized because of all the boogers. And it took three blows before I cleared everything out. I was once again curled up on the ground crying, but this time I was quieter because there were people around to hear me scream, ‘Ohmygod! My sinuses!’

My very fancy, kind of cold Thanksgiving dinner after the summit

When things calm down, I highly recommend a visit to Kona. It has everything a science nerd could ever want. Geology, botany, history! Holes into the dang Earth! And the things they can cook in banana leaves… drool… Try the Lau Lau plate.

Until then, you can still check out what’s happening on Mauna Loa here: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mauna-loa/volcano-updates

All By Myself

(I hope you sang the title in your head)

Solo adventure - December 2008

The other day a friend who is plotting a big solo trip asked how you deal with fear on solitary adventures? Such a great question! In the last couple years my anxiety has spiraled out of control with many things, but with solo trips it’s been alright. Anxiety aside, I think fear plays an important role in safe adventuring because it keeps you aware of potential dangers and allows you to determine if you have the skills to address them. Fear, unfortunately, can easily keep you from stepping out the door at all, but in the best case scenario, a healthy level of fear lets you leave the house with a Plan B for when things go wrong. See an abridged list of my fears below.

Helpful Fears

• Wind – the worst at foiling plans
• Lightning – the second worst
• Dumb deer – seriously, why don’t they run away from headlights? Why would headlights ever be an ok thing?
• Cliff edges – everyone trips, I trip all the time, so be careful
• Driving accidents – people are the worst
• Contaminated water – fecal coliforms, Giardia, brain-melting amoeba… choose your water carefully
• Bears
• Drowning

Unhelpful Fears

• Murder deer in the woods – not a thing, but I still worry about them
• Vagina bugs in the water – also not a thing, go ahead and skinny dip
• People creeping through your camp to murder you in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere – if someone wanted to murder you they would do it faster than that (direct quote from my mom, who is probably right)

Since I could use a good laugh, here’s a list of some of the things that have gone wrong on my solo adventures.

Should have used that time to develop my artistic side

1. I had to be rescued by the Park Service on my first solo vacation. Thirty minutes into a kayaking excursion on Lake Powell the wind started blowing hard and never stopped, so I spent 5 hours alone on a beach I couldn’t paddle away from. I through the guide book I packed several times (Birds of Western North America) before I swallowed my pride, called 911 (the only way to get hold of the park service in that primitive area) and was rescued by a boat with flashing lights. I can still taste that humble pie.

   

   Big ole sunglasses hiding my tears

2. Hit a deer and totaled my car. Driving back from a solo trip to Capitol Reef, where I went to just cry for a while, I hit and killed a deer and it disabled my car. I was stuck in Bicknell, UT in November for an extra 24 hours and it felt like I had to ask everyone in Wayne County for help. I couldn’t have gotten to my rental car without the help of a whole fleet of people and am eternally grateful for their help. It restored my faith in humanity, but I maintain that driving is the most dangerous thing we do on any adventure. And mule deer are the worst.

   

   It's hard to capture fear in a landscape picture

3. Cried and ran away from lightning in the Uinta’s. Thunder-snow is terrifying. Everything around you is shaking and electrified. Running for my life was not an appropriate response to lightning (should have squatted on the balls of my feet, being as small as possible) and slipping on slick rocks while crying (literally) made me feel like a spazzy dumbass. Something like that seems to happen every time I get a little cocky. Monsoon-seasonal thunderstorms are expected at high elevations and I’m really glad I bagged King’s Peak before it came in. The next night it snowed enough to collapse my tent. 

   

   I spend a lot of time looking for cool poops. This bear poop is the coolest I've found

4. Carried around a bear-bonking stick while hiking in the Abajo Mountains; kept losing my bear-bonking stick. Situational awareness (noticing important elements of your environment and what they mean for your safety) is as important as starting with a good plan. Noticing both the bear warnings at my campground and the bear poop on the trail helped me be alert to the potential to find a bear. I can’t verify that bonking sticks are useful, but it made me feel safe. Unfortunately, I lost my stick every time I bent down to take a picture of flowers. Not the most peaceful hike I’ve taken. 

   

   Top of the Henry Mountains - home to the scariest deer in the world

5. Cuddled with a hatchet or pepper spray in my sleeping bag more than once. I once had to sleep in a rest stop in rural Washington because I was going to fall asleep in a snow storm if I didn’t pull over, so I slept in the cab of my truck snuggling a keychain pepper spray. A year later I threatened a bunch of deer outside my tent in the Henry Mountains with a gun; I had no weapon and they did not understand the threat. After I caught a deer licking my car in the LaSal mountains I spent the rest of the night with a hatchet next to my pillow, just in case. 

   

   Pretty. Not great camping conditions though

6. I visited Bryce Canyon around Christmas instead of going to St. George as planned. Bryce Canyon is at 7,000 feet and was under a foot of snow. I couldn’t get a fire started so fed myself by warming up Clif Bars on the electric heaters in the bathroom. An ice crust formed on the outside of my sleeping bag and crunched every time I moved, which I interpreted to be someone creeping across the snow outside to murder me. I did not sleep.  

Hopefully it’s clear that the fear never leaves, but is sometimes helpful. After more than a decade of solo adventuring, I do have some advice in addition to my anecdotes.

• Make a plan for what you will do with each day but also expect things to go wrong.
• While planning be explicit about the risks that are present and if they are acceptable. Getting lost is an acceptable (probable) risk for me. Free solo climbing is not.
• Have a check-in person who knows where you’ll be and when to expect you back in cell service.
• Check the weather and understand the effects of elevation on temperature and precipitation. We live in a magical time of smart phones with radar apps. Use them when possible.
• Pack carefully. I like to bring reading and writing materials for long, cold nights or days I am stranded. Having something comforting, like a hatchet, when I am scared is a bonus.
• Develop deer-eyes that check for deer on the side of roadways. And don’t drive through Wayne/Sevier Counties at night.

Solo trips give you the chance to peep wetlands without any mockery or impatience.

I’m a big believer in the solo vacation if it’s something that has ever piqued your curiosity (but it’s not for everyone). It definitely requires an honest assessment of you capabilities, but really, you’re more capable than you give yourself credit for. I tend to feel all the things very strongly, from elation to regret, while I’m out alone, but I think that’s one of the best parts of solo adventures. I guess what I’m saying with all of this is to expect a least one thing to go wrong when out of solo trips, but it will be alright.

I read this quote in a Banff Film Festival magazine years ago and I’ve put it in several blogs because it’s still the best summation of solo adventuring I’ve read:

The line between badass and dumbass is not only fine, it is a grey, wavy line, and in a different place for each individual. It’s hard to recognise, easy to miss, and painfully clear when overstepped. It’s the concept of pushing hard and not giving up, balanced against blind ambition and getting in too deep. Basically, when you start to get really scared, you are probably approaching your line.
-Leo Holding

The Salad Bonk

Gosh.  It's been quite a week.  I finally got over the flu, skied the best powder of the entire season, then found myself firmly in the bottom of the academic Valley of S*** .  Does any of this PhD nonsense even matter?  Condition is a ridiculous word to describe a wetland and it always reminds me of "Big Lebowski" (watch the video if you'd like to understand my angst - how can I make wetland condition seem that cool?).  There have been some tears at unhelpful times, which has me flashing  back to another ridiculous time I cried due to nothing but low blood sugar. 

The Time I Cried About Salad

January 2012 was busy.  I was transitioning from intern to graduate student.  I submitted my first paper for peer review.  My brother got married in San Diego.  The holidays happened.  Amidst all the stuff going on, it was critical that I fit in a climbing trip with my friends to Red Rocks, a massive climbing area outside Las Vegas.  The climbing in Red Rocks is great, even though its right outside a city I don't like to visit, but there are over 1700 routes at Red Rocks (the guidebook is about 400 pages long) so even choosing a crag was difficult. 

Red Rocks is great.  I should give in another chance.  

 During Day 1 at the Sandstone Quarry crag our four person climbing group was having a hard time.  Brent had been really sick prior to coming, sick enough I wasn't sure he'd make it.  Karina's fingertips came off on her first route (literally peeled off), then she stepped on a bee and we knocked her out with a heaping dose of Benadryl.  Emma was climbing like a champ, but had fit this trip in between working a real job and visiting friends in Vegas.  I was a disaster, tired from driving and working and family time; definitely in need of an introvert day.  The first and only route I tried to lead climb was a 5.9 sport route, well within my climbing ability.  However, I had no idea what slab climbing was until I was stuck on a slab shaking and confused.  I bailed, cried, and entered a shame spiral that would consume me the next day.

Seriously, what do you even do here?

The next day, very humbled, we chose to climb in the Willow Springs Area, a fun but tragically shady crag.  Going back through my pictures, it's clear there was a lot of fun to be had. 

Calm before the storm - enjoying the hammock on Day 2

Smiling and climbing

One of my favorite pictures, taken shortly before the Salad Bonk.  

The climbing was interesting and challenging, but I was cold and lost my Nutella somewhere in the bottom of my climbing pack.  By the end of the day I was barely hanging onto my sanity, I actually started crying watching Brent figure out a difficult route because I was convinced he would fall and die (I guess I had lost grip on my sanity by then).  I desperately wanted to feel the sunshine and eat something.  A new friend, Allison, joined us part way through the day and since she knew the area we let her lead us to dinner in the city.  The closest burger place was closed (the beginning of the tragedy), so one of us told Allison, "Follow your heart to a place for us to eat dinner."  And as she followed her heart through the twisty, turny Vegas roads I panicked.  Every time we passed an open restaurant that looked like it was serving something warm and meaty the weight of the tears in my eyes got heavier.  One thousand stop lights later we pulled into the parking lot of a Sweet Tomatoes and I died.  "This is where my heart led me," Allison said with humor I couldn't appreciate.  I was skeptical, because I don't think of tomatoes as a meal, but didn't completely reject the notion until I walked in and saw it was a salad place. 

Salad was the most devastating meal imaginable.  I was so cold and hungry, lettuce would just hasten my depth by actually making me colder and hungrier.  What is even in salad?  Just fiber, right?  After two days of showing no leadership in any of the decisions we made, I became the commander of dinner, declared my hatred of salad, and marched us over to the Appleby's for something like steak.  That move was sheer desperation, I know the food doesn't come quickly at places like that and I think those types of chain restaurants reek of awkward first dates.  The hostess told us it would be at least 30 minutes before we could sit down and I burst into tears.  As we wandered back to the Sweet Tomatoes I sobbed to my very confused friends, "I. Just. Hate. Salad."  Literal sobbing with copious crocodile tears, tomato face (the color my skin turns when I cry), and noises. 

The crying didn't stop inside the Sweet Tomatoes.  The salad bar attendants were confused at the adult woman sobbing like a toddler while I angrily threw spinach and croutons at my plate.  My friends were in a terrible bind: they were hungry too and had no way to console someone crying about salad (and they were caught in public with this baby-like adult person).  Every salad option made me cry more.  The UN brings hearty beans and grains to starving 3rd world countries, not radishes, blue cheese crumbles, and eight types of cold salad dressing.  Salad is stupid.  I was sure that moment was the saddest I had ever been in my life and that I would never be happy again because of the salad.  I cried all the way to my seat.  I ate that salad like any small, irrational child approaches a meal they don't like - begrudgingly and with tears of injustice falling down my face.  I just hate salad. 

I wish I could say this is all an exaggeration.  It is not.  I was miserable and crying about salad in public while my friends tried to enjoy their food.  I felt all alone in the world and desperately morose.  And hungry.

What a Salad Bonk looks and feels like.  

Then the glucose from my food made it into my blood stream and my whole life got infinitely better.  I was inside a restaurant with salad, soups and pasta.  There was even hot cocoa and the heating was on.  I was fine.  But also terrible because I had cried at a new friend about salad.  The relief brought by my rebounding blood sugar was accompanied by shame that I had been so upset about salad. 

The next day we went climbing at Calico Basin.  The sun was shining and there was abundant, challenging climbing.  It was a great way to end a stressful trip. 

Killing it at Calico Basin - clockwise from top left: Emma, me, Karina, Brent

There's an important lesson in this disaster: eat stuff when you are doing things outdoors.  Plummeting blood sugar sends the brain into survival mode - desperate for food, not willing to sacrifice any energy on maintaining rationality.  This phenomenon is known as bonking and  happens to climbers as well as endurance athletes.  Bonking is completely and easily preventable.  Eat food all day long, more on cold days when the body works harder to thermoregulate.   

   

So very grateful for my climbing friends, here at the end of our Red Rocks trip.

We still laugh about the Salad Bonk.  Well, I laugh.  My friends might still be uncomfortable about the whole thing, but they're willing to climb with me, so I'm OK with it.  I've met Allison a few times since then and she's been forgiving about the whole episode (I'd have never hung about with a salad crier again, but I'm working on being more forgiving).  In fact, I'm grateful we had her to ferry us through Vegas.  I still panic when there is a salad bar option with any meal and have flash backs to how angry the spinach made me (I love spinach, so the flashbacks are confusing), but I can usually recognize that salad is not the worst (unless there are water chestnuts).  

March 2016 - our lives have changed quite a bit since 2012, but we still climb a bit and I love it.  

Another Deer Story

This weekend I fled to the desert to think and cry some place different than my apartment and office. Due to an unfortunate deer encounter, I've been given a bonus day of thinking. It's been thankfully free from crying and given my a lot of perspective into things I'm grateful for.

I always seem to visit Capitol Reef when I'm fleeing.  The first time I visited the park was in 2008 after a misguided winter camping trip to Bryce Canyon (too cold in December).  I fled again in 2010 following the deer encounter in the Henry Mountains and a failed summit bid for Mt. Hilliers.  Just this summer I found myself desperately racing for Capitol Reef after a successful bid at Mt. Ellens, hoping to beat a thunderstorm.  But this weekend's trip was just to enjoy Capitol Reef and I did.  I hiked new trails and spent all day in an entirely new-to-me part of the park: the Cathedral District.  When I rolled into my camp site Saturday afternoon I noticed the in the orchard next to my site did not care about me at all.  I took it as a sign that the deer knew they had a good source of food (apples) and no threats, as there is no hunting in the Park.  But I see now it was an inauspicious sign of bad things to come.
 

Vacation Success! 

By 4:00 pm Sunday I declared the trip a success - I did a lot of thinking and some crying and I was ready to go home.  Getting back to the freeway I was about half way between Hanksville and Torrey, thus halfway between taking the Fishlake route west to I-15 or the Highway 191-6 route east to the freeway.  I hate the drive between Green River and Spanish Fork, so I opted for the Fishlake Forest Route.  Things were going well for an hour -I got back into cell service and let my dad know I was safe, Florence and the Machine and Bright Eyes kept coming up on my iPod, I was alert, the 4 hour drive was going to be alright.  I love driving through the Wayne County towns outside Capitol Reef, they're small but seemingly vibrant.  I could really see myself happy in Bicknell or Torrey.

Happy at the Temple of the Moon 

The climb out of Loa into Fish Lake was alright until there were deer everywhere!  I hit the breaks and swerved around one...  Maybe clipped another... Why were they always in groups of three?  Why were they hanging out in the middle of the highway, people were driving 65 mph down that road?!?!  I slowed, wondering how fast I could safely go when a big deer came up and just stood there.  I honked and hit the breaks, but was still going upwards of 45 mph.  There were so many thunks and popping noises.  It was just awful. 

So much carnage. 

I pulled over to assess the damage, thinking maybe I could just call Highway Patrol and keep driving because it looked like just my headlight was out.  Then I noticed the hood was pretty bent.  And there was steam coming out of the bend in the hood.  And there was blood.  Oh, Phyllis!  Oh, deer!  I called my dad to make sure I was supposed to call 911 about such things (my life wasn't in danger....) - yes, call emergency services after you demolish a deer and your car.  I didn't know it, but the dispatcher put a call out to a tow truck and to the Highway Patrol.   I got all my cries out walking down Highway 24 in search of any big pieces of my car (there were mostly small pieces).  I called my dad, who found the number for my insurance company (because it seems I've used all of my insurance ID cards as kindling), I called the insurance company and got a claim started (a first for me, I've never had a collision I could cover with my insurance), then the tow truck showed up and started putting Phyllis up on the truck.  Things went astonishingly smooth given the number of times I said "I don't know, I've never done this before.  Am I calling the right person?" 

Do you know what was happening during the 30-45 minutes between impact and Phyllis getting on the truck?  Everyone driving down Highway 24 stopped to make sure I was alright.  It was a little frustrating in the middle of it all, when I was just trying to explain to the insurance company what had happened.  But mostly it was so nice.  The tow truck guy took me to a hotel near their shop, the hotel clerk was super nice, even though I was filing a report with UHP while trying to check in.

The Aquarius Motel - not bad at all. 

I had a nice warm place to get cleaned up and sleep.  Monday morning I called the insurance company and against all odds, found a rental car place in the next county over and there's an adjustor coming out to Bicknell to survey the damage. I put a call out on Facebook for help and ended up scheduling a ride out of town within an hour.   (Well, the ride was scheduled, but I had 5 hours to kill in the meantime.) I got an office set up at the library and a place to store all my stuff.

Maggie the Bike and my cooler of snacks have a whole auditorium. 

 It sucks that I hit a deer, but I've undoubtedly got more to be grateful for.  I know, Thanksgiving is just a few days away, do we really need one more gratitude post?  Yeah, I just demolished a deer in the one of the more remote parts of the state and everything turned out alright - I should be grateful.  So here is everything that fell into place today -

• I hit a deer within a mile or so of losing cell service.  I was close enough to Loa to be able to call my dad, 911 and my insurance company.  (It seems so many people pulled over because everyone in that part of Wayne County has hit a deer during the winter and knew it was possible I was freezing in my car with no cell service. 
• I spent all day today out of cell service on dirt roads or winding highways with no shoulder.  I hit a deer during the 8 miles of driving that were safe for me to pull off the road. 
• Hopefully I just damaged the radiator and the body.  My airbags didn't deploy (which could be a problem, but I'm happy about it), my tires and windshield are ok, and I'm just fine. 
• I got immediate offers from my family to come get me and tow my car home.  At 7:00 on a Sunday night. 
• I have adequate insurance on my car. 
• I always pack an extra pair of underwear when I go camping (I afraid I'll fall into a stream and get hypothermic due to wet underwear) and plenty of munchies.  So I've got clean clothes to change into and food to eat, despite the fact that Bicknell was shut down for the day (or season) when we rolled back in.
• There's a hotel open during the shoulder season in Bicknell and it's pretty nice.  Deep bathtub, doors that lock, a little coffee maker. 
• I have really, really great friends who helped me out in a pinch and did so quickly. 
• Strangers are also great. Everyone has been helpful. People are just good and it's nice to remember that. 

I didn't really want to have another night to think about things, but all in all, everything is fine.  I'm pretty upset I slayed (slew?) that deer.  And I'm really upset about the damage to poor Phyllis the Forester, but I've just got to be happy that I've got a warm bed to stay in a plan for tomorrow.

Gypsum Sinkhole is cool. But you and I are stronger than gypsum. When the pressure of life (or sandstone) bear down, we don't collapse! 

Should anyone of you wonder what to do when the local road conditions are "Deer Storms," here's what I learned tonight:

• Slow way down.  You can't stop on a dime and those deer aren't going to move.  Something about "Deer in the headlights." 
•     -Don't try catching up to that car 0.5 miles ahead and hope they will flush all the deer away, just slow down.
• After colliding, pull your car safely out of the roadway.  Maybe make sure the deer is also off the side of the road (or let the generous locals help you with that)
• Call 911.  They can dispatch a tow truck and get Highway Patrol involved, you'll need to file an incident report. 
• Keep your current insurance cards in your car.  They make handy kindling when car camping, but their more important function is proving you've got insurance and keeping important information, like your policy number and important phone numbers, at your finger tips. 
• Think about avoiding driving through the forest at night.  Deer seem to come out in the roadway more often then and it's harder to see them. 

Capsaicin

Why, you might ask, am I blogging at 12:30 at night?  A valid question, I've had a full day of work, several hours making salsa, and I'm going to get up at 5:30 a.m. for a bike ride tomorrow.  Despite all of this, I'm going to stay up for at 30 minutes more so I can keep rubbing a mixture of baking soda and milk on my face in an effort to prevent my skin from bursting into flames.  Tonight I had an adventure with Capsaicin.  

What, you may ask, is Capsaicin?  Capsaicin is the chemical responsible for chili pepper's spiciness, it's what makes them both delicious and dangerous.  I knew a bit about capsaicin before this incident; for example, I knew that it caused both tastiness and pain reactions in the body's receptor cells, and that it is better neutralized by milk than water.  These facts will come back to haunt me shortly, but I'd like to share some newer fun facts I learned about capsaicin tonight.  

1.  Capsaicin is present in highest concentration in the white pithy material pepper seeds are attached to.  These are the membranes most salsa recipes recommend you remove.  

2.  Capsaicin is hydrophobic, that's why water doesn't alleviate the burning pain.  In order to treat the pain you need something that acts like a detergent to bond with and carry away the capsaicin molecule.  Or bread, bread and rice do good.  

3.  The heat from peppers is measured on a Scoville heat scale.  According to Wikipedia's Scoville scale, the Cayenne peppers I was chopping tonight are rated between 30,000 and 50,000 Scoville heat units, far above the Jalapenos the recipe called for, on the same level as Tabasco peppers (but above Tabasco sauce).  

4.  A quick Google of the word "Capsaicin" reveals that medically, capsaicin is used as a topical pain reliever (most often in arthritis creams), in the treatment of cluster headaches, and as a way to improve circulation.  Capsaicin can be found in bug repellents and it is the primary ingredient in pepper spray.  Also of note, animal reproduction studies have shown that capsaicin poses no risk to fetuses if pregnant women are exposed to it.  

More practically, I've often heard you should peel and chop peppers with gloves on so your fingers don't start to burn.  Just two weeks ago I was making salsa and repeatedly touched and burned my face after chopping peppers.  But it wasn't terrible, just a little uncomfortable.  Then tonight I made salsa with my really spicy peppers, not the garden salsa peppers.  My fingers were pleasantly warm throughout the effort, and I could tell where I had touched my face because there were warm spots, but nothing terrible.  Then as I went to go to bed I itched my nose real good and it nearly caught on fire!  

The offending peppers, before they ripened, carefully protected under bird mesh.  

I tried breathing through my mouth, putting a pillow over my head, crying "Why me?"... Nothing worked.  I'd been washing my hands regularly, but knew that I'd likely just have to wait for the pepper residue to wear off because it is hydrophobic.  Another quick Google, through watery eyes, suggested a few treatments that included milk; milk and baking soda; milk, sour cream and yogurt; vasoline; aloe vera, toothpaste with menthol, and rubbing alcohol.  I dislike milk in general.  I'm fond of it on my cereal and mixed in with other things that make creamy sauces, but I do not like milk by itself or on my skin.  So first I tried applying rubbing alcohol to my nose and upper lip, but that didn't seem to make things better or worse.  Next I tried Sooth-o-cain (lidocaine + aloe vera), and that felt worse.  Immediately after that I tried rubbing the Sooth-o-cain off and applying A&D cream (because I don't have any Vasoline), and things didn't get any better and now I couldn't breathe through my nose at all.  In desperation caused by my burning face and hatred of milk,  I took a cold shower, hoping that my hippie, oil-based soap might do something or that the temperature would at least cool my burning face.  But that just made things worse to the point I was jumping up and down in the shower (as quietly as possible, because it was midnight) cursing my luck.    Defeated and crying, I left the shower to make a paste of milk and baking soda, which I applied tentatively to my left ear (because it burnt the least), and things got better.  I spent several minutes caking my face, ears, parts of my inner thighs, and my right arm pit in this wonderful new solution, and it looked like this:

And it worked, my face feels a little dry, but generally great and absolutely pain free.  Now I think I will sleep the sleep of someone who's had a hard days work (or my dreams will be haunted by long, skinny, cayenne peppers chasing me down why I run like molasses, unable to scream).  If anyone has a hankering for some really spicy tomatillo salsa or pico de gallo, come over to my place because I'd be happy to share.  Also, along with the fun facts I've shared about capsaicin, remember this: process peppers with gloves on, do not touch your face while making salsa, and definitely do not pop an ingrown hair with salsa hands.  

Humble Pie

My friend, Vanessa, once told me I was the dumbest smart girl she knew.  Around that same time my family coined the term "Poor Dumb  Becka."*  Both memories were running through my brain today while I faced my biggest challenge this month: installing a bike rack on the roof on my car.

I owned a truck for almost 10 years and everything about it was awesome.  But would you have guessed that the most awesome part was being able to throw everything in the back of my truck and secure it with a bungee or two?  Well, believe it, that was the most awesome part.  In October 2011 I admitted to myself that after breaking three Toyota engines three different ways maybe I shouldn't drive Toyota's anymore.  Then I began thinking about how great it would be to get more than 20 miles per gallon on a very good day, and decided that maybe a car was the way to go.  Shortly after this, my heart led me to Phyllis the Forester.  While I love her, we've had some troubles.  Someday I may get over the catalytic converted and radiator troubles that the dealer took care of (and if you're interested in hearing about a Subaru dealer you should definitely avoid, let me know), I've learned from the clutch troubles, and I'm working on fixing the tire problem.  But the thing that just kills me is the fact that I had to buy a roof rack to hold more than one bike on my car, or to hold both a bike and my camping stuff.

Phyllis

Brent started me on the path toward bike rack ownership with his Christmas present, and I had some extra money come my way so I was able to buy two top-of-the-line racks.  Once they arrived the trouble started. Before I could put the rack on, I had to figure out the Mighty Mounts that would get the racks on the factory rack that came with my car.  Last week I spent a really unfortunate half hour sitting on the scorching hot roof of my car putting together the mounts according to the instructions, only to find that I actually need to attach the mounts to the rack, then to the car.  This of course was after I had an I-can't-ever-get-anything-right-ever hissy fit out in my drive way because I couldn't figure out which direction to turn a silly little knob of the mounts (I blame all the sun).

Thumb dials, the source of last week's frustration.  Lefty-loosy, right-tighty is difficult to figure out when the object being turned is upside down and the sun is out.   

I got 2/3 of the way through attaching the rack to the mounts before giving up because a bolt wouldn't fit where it should.  The bike rack wasn't going to be on for a weekend ride and I had bigger fish to fry: apparently I'm also too dumb to properly replace a tube on my bike.  So I gave up for the week and had a truly delightful time biking Blacksmith Fork Canyon and climbing at City of Rocks (which I'll totally blog about later).

Fast forward to today.  I was feeling smug, really smug.  I had finagled myself a whole week of awesome vacation.  Monday I did a little work, but not a lot.  Tuesday I did some field work in the Willard Spur, a new place for me, and I recalled how much I like doing field work when I'm not in charge.  Today the only thing on the agenda was getting the roof rack situation figured out, and maybe making salad dressing.  I spent most of the day going on walks and catching up on my periodicals, it was the perfect summer vacation-at-home day.  Then I decided to conquer the roof rack and my smugness disappeared.

Such a happy, cushy, field day, full of SAV, nutrient experimentation, and shade.  I may start lugging around an umbrella for my field work, because it was sure nice to have.  

After finishing the final third of the rack-to-Mighty-Mount attachment, I spent 30 minutes attaching the rack (via Mighty Mounts) to Phyllis.  I spent this whole episode thinking "I don't have a degree in bike rack mounting."  Then chiding myself because no one would celebrate my degree in bike rack mounting, as such an endevour comes with [conflicting] instructions.  This was followed by despair because I'm pretty sure that I should be able to get good grades in school and be able to assemble things with instructions.  After that I went on to think about all the important life skills I wish they'd teach class about (i.e. gift wrapping, following instructions, programming things like phones).  All the while I was grumbling the following thought (in my dad's voice): Curse this car and name brand bike rack, it costs me just as much to mount my bike as it did to buy the damn bike.  [I have a cheap bike and bike racks are kind of expensive.]

After adjusting everything just right (which really did take 30 minutes), I tried to get my bike up there, just to make sure it worked.  In a fortuitous and overly-humbling moment, I attempted this lift while a neighbor was in the driveway.  It was awesome that she came to help me stabilize the bike, but overly-humbling that I couldn't get the bike up there myself.  After figuring out which of the three adjustments it would take to keep the bike in place, I then had to figure out how to get the kayak up.  45 minutes later, the bike and kayak were up on the roof, I got over the "That's why you can't have nice things" rant in my head, and I was free to go about finding my car keys while loosing my new bike rack key.

The finished product: a car ready for adventure.  

If there are any lessons to be learned through all this they may be that:
1.  Smugness is always followed by a heaping dose of humble pie
2.  You can do hard things, but only after swallowing your humble pie and remembering to breath and follow the instructions you were given.
3.  Owning a truck is one-thousand times better than owning a car, at least when it comes to easily carrying lots of things.

And now I'm off to vacation with Brent's family, where I will use both the bike and kayak I've worked so hard to get up on my car.

*Both Vanessa and my family hold spots close to my heart, that's why they can mock me like that.

Winging It - The Time I Failed

All of my thinking about successfully winging it has gotten me thinking about a less successful time I went forth without a plan.  I call it "The Time I Got Lost in Phragmites."  Phragmites australis, or the Common reed, or Phrag, or That Awful Tall Stuff is an invasive, perennial grass.  Around the Great Salt Lake if forms dense stands that are literally swallowing the lake.  It's horrible.  I'm currently the only student in my lab not studying Phrag, but I still find it nearly everywhere because it has been so successful around the lake.  Here are some of the reasons it's so successful:

Prolific seed production, in addition to the ability to expand via rhizomes.  

It grows 10-15 feet tall.  

It expands rapidly, quickly out-competing the native species you see growing in the foreground.  

Through rapid growth and growing so tall, it effectively excludes all other species, form monotypic stands.  

It also grows very dense, making travel through it exceedingly difficult.  

One day, last year, I had a really traumatic field experience in the Phrag.  If you haven't been able to tell, I'm generally a woman without a plan.  This has made an entire summer of field work kind of difficult, because I have 50 sites and last year I needed to visit each site twice.  I really winged it the entire summer.  While I had a well thought out protocol for gathering data once I got there, I was figuring out which site to go to on a daily basis.  This not only made it so I didn't sleep well, as my dreams were haunted by semi-conscious field day planning, and I used more gas than perhaps I needed to.  One day I had a plan to work more efficeintly by visiting a field site along with another errands I had to run.  This story proceeds as a series of bad decisions I made on the fly.

Bad decisions #1: making field work part of a day I wanted to get anything else done in.  Field work needs to be an all-day thing, you start in the morning and end before the hottest part of the afternoon.  One day toward the end of the field season, I was having a really traumatic day and I think that set the stage for all the poor decisions that followed.  It was a Sunday evening early in September and I was taking Brent to the airport, where he would be catching a flight to Houston, Texas for three weeks, or three months.  I was unhappy about that uncertainty and already missing him.  Since I was already going to be at the airport, I thought it would be an effective use of time and gas to jump on over to one of my nearby field sites.  This was not a good time to "just" make a field visit.

The field site I intended to visit is located on the beach near Saltaire, and it's a really cool site where all the saltiness and weird water patterns have lead to some really cool plant communities and soil properties.

Parts of the site are dominated by salt grass, pickleweed and alkali bulrush; three of my favorite species.  

Proximity to the Great Salt Lake itself makes it a super salty site.  

Bad decision #2: Accessing field site from the wrong side of the Phrag.  Unfortunately this area has some really large, vigorous stands of Phrag.  The easiest way to access this site is from the marina, but the gate to the road out there was going to close at sunset and I didn't want to get locked in.  So I parked at the nearby concert venue, on the other side of the beach (read: the other side of the large Phragmites patch).  In the beginning, my walk across the beach was awesome, it was a stroll across sand and short plants, temps were starting to cool and I was feeling productive.

I've heard this smoke stack is taller than the Empire State building.  When visible, it provides a good bearing toward my site.  

I said it before, the sunsets on the GSL are the best ever, and they tend to make the western mountains look a bit like Mordor.  

As I neared a large stand of Phrag, my GPS told me the site I was aiming for was about 550 meters away  due southwest; basically I was almost there.  I made sure all my pockets were zipped and my stuff all safely stowed away from the Phrag's prying grasp, and began to push my way through.  As I mentioned early, Phrag is difficult to walk through because it is very dense.  Its nearly impossible to walk a straight line through, this patch was even more difficult because there was knee deep water and seeds were being released.

The point of no return.  Or the point at which I should have returned.  

After a minute of pushing through I realized that it would be impossible to push my way through while holding onto my GPS/compass, so I took note of the orientation of wind blown stems as a way to orient myself and pushed on with both hands.  This strategy quickly went bad, as the stems weren't all blown in the same direction and I was being pitched back and forth a lot.  Further complicating matters, I am pretty severely allergic to Phrag and could not breath well through all the mucus my body was producing.  Here is what my journey looked like:

Journey overview.  All together I had a 2 mile round-trip walk.  I completed 1.85 miles of it. That bright green area between the beginning and destination is all Phragmites australis.  

My path through the Phrag.  I began in the south and moved clockwise.  

Bad decision #3: Not checking in with anyone.  After 15 minutes of pushing through the Phrag, pulling the GPS out to check my progress, and continuing to push through I came to the following conclusions:

1. I could not maintain my bearings anymore, I was just walking in a circle (literally).  After 15 minutes of dedicated work, I was only 17 meters closer to my site, but still more than 500 meters away.  
2. The sun was setting and I was standing in water that had been shaded all year, it was cold.  
3. No one knew where I was.  

This last one really distressed me.  When going into the field by myself I usually check in with Brent, but he was on a plane.  I could have checked in with my field technician, which I have also done, but I didn't want to bother him on the weekend.  And now I was too scared to pull my phone out of the ziplock bag I stored it in because I would inevitably drop it.  Plus, who was I going to call?  I knew my position on the globe because of my GPS unit, but I didn't know how anyone would get there.

View to the north

View to the east.

The south. 

The west.

Phrag face. 

These are silly excuses for putting myself out in the field without anyone knowing, but that's a result of hindsight.  At that moment, I almost started to hyperventilate, but I was too full of snot and Phrag seeds to breathe regularly. Because I couldn't totally freak out, I calmly decided to bail.  The point I bailed was really, stupidly close to the point I started in, so I could find my way back to the channel, back across the beach, and to my car.

The lost in the Phrag experience was very humbling to me.  I had already known I have a poor sense of direction, but I've felt confidence in my field sites because they're flat and I can see the Wasatch Front to get my bearings.  None of this matters in the Phrag.  I knew I was a crier, prone to tears at a change of the wind, but it seems I also make even poorer decisions when upset.  Finally, it seems I had to learn the always-leave-a-note lesson for myself, despite having read Aron Ralston's book about not leaving a note.

While I will spend the rest of my life generally without a plan, I will not ever go into the Phrag by myself, and I will never start a field excursion after 1:00 pm.  And if you're a field monkey, you too should learn from my lessons and don't put yourself in the Phrag alone.