A Very Good Week

Monday started off with the bestest news that Initiative 16, a citizen initiative created by animal rights activists that would have ended animal agriculture in Colorado, was struck down by the Colorado Supreme Court on the grounds that it did not satisfy the single subject requirement of an initiative and would have proven confusing to the general public. The vote was a decisive 7-0. The proponents can and likely will come back with another initiative but they'll have to start the process all over. Such a relief, at least for now. There were a couple few groups that formed to fight it and I'm going to see if there's any interest in having an initiative that would require initiatives that change the state statutes to have signatures from all of the states 35 senate districts in order to make the ballot. Oil and gas succeeded in getting this passed for the state constitution because they got tired of fighting citizen led anti-fracking initiatives. Applying this to the statutes would prevent the urban Front Range from dictating policy to the rural areas of the state which dominate in land mass but not in population. It would also make it much more difficult for any crazy legislation to make the ballot. I'm sick of the extremism from both sides of the fence and I think I'm not alone on that one.

And today I woke up to partly cloudy skies and a break in the interminable heat wave we've been having for weeks now. I was even able to go for a run and make some good progress in setting up the next round of cow pastures. I have some friends coming for the next 4 days so I want to have everything set up as best I can so I can go play. Then tonight we were treated to a full half hour of unpredicted rain. Such an amazing thing. The drought here is historic. I really should be fretting over this and not stupid vegans trying to destroy the state. I guess I have plenty of angst for both.

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I was hoping to get that post done before my house guests arrived but it never happened, oh well. I had a fun but tiring 5 days of guests, some good mountain bike rides. It's good to see people again and have them stay over but poor Tess was beside herself. It's been over a year since we've had people stay and it's already not her best thing. It didn't help that my friends showed up with a 'stray' dog that they'd picked up on my street. I see loose dogs on the country roads all the time and I almost never do anything because likely the owners have just let them roam and they'll find their way home. I hate that people do this, they did it in Boulder too and I finally gave up returning loose dogs to owners because they were almost always annoyed. Sometimes you can tell when a dog is truly in trouble and if that's the case and I can do something, I will. But these friends didn't really know any better and picked up a loose dog on my street and Tess went out of her mind with it in the yard as well as strange people. Her worst nightmare. We eventually found a neighbor to take the dog off our hands and as luck would have it, the owner lived practically across the street from the neighbor and dog and owner were eventually reunited. But it was a stressful few hours getting it all sorted out and I got Facebook involved and ugh. It all worked out but Tess was extra stressed out with the strangers in the house. 

I have more guests coming this summer so hopefully she'll continue to improve and at least get back to where she was before COVID.

I had a fantastic hike to the high country a couple of weeks ago. Very difficult, super steep and it starts at 10,000' elevation, but so beautiful at the top. 

Despite a historically low snow pack there were still some white bits here and there.

Lizard Head

We had to cross some snowfields on a steep pitch, always a bit unnerving. This part of the trail was o.k. but some parts of the trail were covered with snow on a steep angle like the snow shown below.

 

The San Juans never disappoint.

More Lizard Head. Just because.

 

Another wonderful thing last week was my return to the outdoor pool. It was shut last year and had a delayed opening this year due to staffing issues but finally, finally, I was able to swim again. 

It wasn't pretty but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I've gone 5 times now and I'm starting to feel some of my stroke coming back. There's a sprint triathlon in Durango in September that would be a perfect goal. And really, Xterra Nationals might not be too ridiculous of a pipe dream. I swam 600 meters non-stop as a little test to see how my endurance is and it was no problem, I could have easily gone way longer and Nationals is 1500 meters. The question is can I get up to that distance and still have some speed. Because right now my 'speed' is non-existent. I'm focusing more on getting my form and endurance back and then I'll start looking at the pace clock. Which thankfully they don't have at the outdoor pool, I have to go by my watch which is much easier to ignore.

Biking and running are coming back too. I'll see how the summer progresses. Next I'll have to get back to agility training. We've got a break in the weather, I'll have to find a little exercise to set up.

Da Baby

Update/Disclaimer: The title of this post has nothing to do with the similarly named supposedly homophobic musician (rap star?). I'm far too old and out if it to know who he is and he only just popped up on my newsfeed 2 months after I posted this.

I have a new addition on the farm, a little heifer calf. So excited. She's 3 days old in this photo.

She popped out right on schedule at around 7:50 a.m. on the exact day she was due. Jonny looked out the window and said, 'Lily's been pushing the other cows away, I'll bet today's the day'. I looked out the window and said, 'Yeah, more like right now's the time, she's absolutely in labor'.  Because somehow I've reached a point in my life where I can tell when a cow is in labor. Thankfully all went smoothly and I suspected she was a girl because she was up and nursing fairly quickly. Supposedly the boys take longer and that's been my experience so far. I left mama and baby alone for a few hours before I went out to put in her ear tag and confirm she was indeed a she. She's way smaller than our last batch of calves because her dad is a Lowline Angus which is a smaller breed than the regular sized Angus I have right now. I'm trying to breed down the size of the cows I have so I'm beyond thrilled to get a female especially out of mama Lily because she has the most awesome temperament and this is the first female I've gotten from her. I'm planning to keep this little one as part of my breeding stock provided she has a nice temperament. So far she's pretty awesome. Lucy, my other mama, is a fantastic mama and good cow in general but she's a bit skittish and her calves have all been skittish so far so I'm not keen to keep them for breeding. They don't have bad temperaments, just a little more difficult to manage than Lily and her babies have been. And Lily is smaller.

The little bug gave me some worry for the first few days because she seemed to be sleeping an awfully lot but now 2 1/2 weeks later she's up and rocketing around. Phew.

I'm finally feeling recovered from my vaccine side effects. A whopping 9 weeks later. I kept thinking I was better after 2 good days then I'd relapse and be dizzy and tired again then another good day or 2 and so on for 9 weeks. I've finally had a full week of feeling reasonably normal and feeling like I'm able to push a little harder on the bike and get some strength back. I'm probably a few sessions away from being back to normal with my weight lifting and my heart rate is nearly back to what it should be for various types of efforts on the run and bike. The outdoor pool opens next week!!! SO excited about that. I haven't been in a pool in maybe a year and a half. I'm hoping getting a reserved lane won't be a problem. Once I feel confident in the pool I'll start going back in the open water as well. Not sure about Xterra Nationals this fall, it doesn't feel feasible at the moment but you never know. I'll see how the swimming goes. I bought an e-bike which I don't think I wrote about, more about that later but in short I think it'll really help me with my hill climb bike training which has sorely been lacking since I moved out here. Xterra Nationals bike course is a point to point course with a net elevation gain, it's all about the climbing and then being able to climb some more on the run. I'm so not prepared, especially after 9 weeks of being on and off the couch, but I'll see.

Now that my brain fog is gone and my head feels more or less back to normal I'm hoping to write more. The past few weeks felt like such a struggle to sit down and string thoughts together in a coherent fashion. Not sure I'm there yet but hopefully this all made some sort of sense.

Come Closer and See, See Into the Trees

I'm three weeks out form my second vaccination and still getting sporadic dizziness. Yesterday was perhaps the best day I've had since shot number 2, had a good bike ride, starting to feel a little feisty, then today was one of the worst days I've had in a couple of weeks. When I started back to riding a couple of weeks ago I noticed my heart rate would be way too high for the exertion level I was putting forth. I'd have a day where I could ride, then need to take the next day off, each cycle having some improvement in heart rate until finally yesterday I was feeling maybe 90% of normal. Then woke up at 4:00 this morning with my world spinning around again. A few days ago I finally had the idea to check with the Slowtwitch Forum because those triathletes are crazy data nerds when it comes to training. Sure enough there was a huge thread full of people experiencing exactly what I'm experiencing. They also gave me the great idea of checking my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which is a measure of overall stress to your body. Many folks were reporting huge off the charts spikes in stress values right after their vaccines and also in training afterwards. I checked my HRV today using my Garmin and it was 89 on a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being the highest stress mark. This put me in the High Stress zone. Yikes. So on this beautiful perfect spring day I'm inside typing away, thankful that the fog finally cleared enough for me to be able to string sentences together. Sort of.

Many on Slowtwitch speculate that athletes are struggling more because our immune systems are stronger and are mounting a more powerful response. I'd like to believe this is true but I have no idea how true this is. I've also heard that women are struggling more, presumable a hormone thing. I think we're still in far too experimental of a stage to have any good data or science on the matter but I dunno. At least I know I'm not crazy or lazy, so many days of this I felt like I was slipping into laziness. I'm going to keep better tabs on my HRV and cut myself a little more slack.

Last Sunday I went to a tour of an area that was logged in a similar fashion to what is being proposed for Boggy Draw. Many different officials were there - several Forest Service guys, some from Dolores Watershed, etc. Many experts. I think more experts than civilians. Most of the civilians were bikers/hikers concerned about the trail system. The purpose of the tour was to show the public the type of work they're proposing to do at Boggy Draw. And this was thanks to all the people who left comments, thanks so much if you left a comment. Thanks to all the comments they're going to take more care with the Boggy Draw area, re-routing the trail where they can, trying to keep it open as much as possible, trying to preserve the aesthetics of the area, etc. Or so they say. We'll see what really ends up happening. I'm skeptical at best.

Anyway, here's an example of untreated forest. Again, this is an area called Chicken Creek, not Boggy Draw or even very near to it.

Now I'm no forestry expert but even I can see how this forest is both unhealthy and dangerous from a fire danger point of view. This isn't nearly as bad as what you commonly see on the Front Range but still the trees are very dense and all the same age and roughly the same size. This area was clear cut back in the early 1900s so the trees all grew back as a monoculture. I've not noticed Boggy to be this bad, in fact when we moved here I was amazed at how open the woods at Boggy were and others who have come to visit me from the Front Range have noticed the same thing. But for sure there are areas that are too dense.

This is an example of the logging they did at Chicken Creek to thin the forest.

They'll eventually burn the slash piles when weather permits, probably in the winter.

Forest Service did say that this is still not ideal and they'd probably take twice as much at Boggy primarily because they have industry that will do it. For the logging shown above they did not have the industry in place (ie a large sawmill) that was willing and able to do the work so they couldn't do all that they wanted to. But this actually looks really good to me, I find really dense forests to be unnerving and uninteresting. They're a huge hazard for those explosive mega-fires and it's boring when you can't see very far into the woods. They also allowed that Boggy is different so this isn't a direct comparison but does give one an idea of the spirit of the work. And I'm totally fine with this, I think this is actually  a really really good thing. I've always been in favor of this type of fire mitigation and if they'd been clearer about their intentions when they first announced this I wouldn't have become so worried. I'm still not thrilled, it'll be a huge disruption to the forest and the work is supposed to last 10 years though not at the recreation area for that whole time. The poor people of the town of Dolores will have terrible logging traffic tearing through their town and we'll have to contend with the logging trucks when we drive up the narrow mountain roads to get to the trailhead. Though the bike club did get the go ahead to build a trail from the town of Dolores to avoid the road and Jonny is currently at the first trail building session so I'll get a report on it later. 

When Forest Service did fire mitigation on the popular West Mag trails up from Boulder they clear cut huge sections of hillside and left a terrible mess of giant slash piles, stumps, debris. It was heart breaking. When they announced the Boggy logging project there was mention of clear cutting and that's why I became nauseous. However I asked the Forest Service guy point blank if they were going to clear cut at Boggy and he said absolutely not. I remain a bit cautious and skeptical and still not thrilled but I do see value in this project, at least for now.

Initiative 16 goes before the Colorado Supreme Court on May 5 I think. We'll see what happens. But at least I can sleep a little better knowing my beloved woods aren't going to be gutted. Hopefully. Thanks again to all who left comments.

The Old Familiar Sting

I struggled for 2 weeks with on again, off again bouts of dizziness. I had a few good days on my bike interspersed with some days spent napping on the couch. I went back and forth about whether or not I should go through with the second shot but by the time the date came up for it I was feeling mostly o.k. Unfortunately the volunteer had written down the wrong date for the second vaccination clinic on my vaccination card and we showed up at the casino 2 days too late. Fortunately I was able to get 9:00 a.m. appointments for both of us at City Market the following day. 

About 10-12 hours after the 2nd shot the dizziness set in again and I had a bad 24 hours of mild chills, mild nausea, fatigue and terrible dizziness and pressure in my head. Maybe a headache? I don't usually get headaches so I'm never sure what they feel like. Mercifully the terrible pressure in my head went away after 24 hours but the dizziness and fatigue persisted for 3 more days and I pretty much spent those days drifting in and out of sleep on the couch. I was able to walk the dogs for about 1/2 an hour and walk around the yard a bit here and there but that was about it as I'd then have to hit the couch to stop my world from spinning. Yesterday I was seriously doubting whether or not I'd made the right decision but today I feel significantly better and the only reason I'm not out on my bike right now is that the septic tank is being pumped. I'm hoping that's all it needs but I'm not optimistic. It's a pretty new septic system too. Life in the country.

I went running the day before my second shot, didn't feel too dizzy but also didn't feel awesome and tripped about 50 minutes into a 57 minute run. I landed pretty hard on my hip, hard enough to set off the emergency alert service on my Garmin which I thankfully managed to turn off before it actually alerted anyone. I fell heading downhill so I slid across some sandy slickrock for a bit as well. Miraculously I managed to escape with only a small abrasion on one knee. I never even got a bruise on my hip. My other knee and palms were covered in dirt where I'd skidded across the rock but somehow my skin remained intact. Back in my 40s or even my 30s there's no way this would have happened, I would have been covered in road rash and bruises and it would have hurt like hell. Because vegetarian diet. I'm not saying I'm currently bullet proof but thinking about it I've taken a few falls both running and hiking in the past few years and they've barely left a mark. I'm not sure why I fell, whether it was because I was mildly dizzy and didn't realize it or because I simply tripped on a funny shaped rock and lost my footing which happens to me from time to time. But it does have me concerned about hitting the trails again too soon.

The other odd thing was that my knee barely bled. And I wonder if this is something to do with the vaccine and the clotting issues some people are having. Hopefully my blood hasn't turned to sludge. Hopefully I just happened to not get a very deep cut. Still, it was weird to have road rash without a stream of blood running down my leg.

The skin under the dirt was scraped up, just didn't bleed through the dirt. Very strange. Being a guinea pig is fun!

Initiative 16 had its rehearing with the Title Board and they spent several hours tweaking the language but nothing significant changed. The problem is that it's intentionally written to deceive but not in a way that the Title Board can call them out on it. The objecting coalition will take it to the Colorado Supreme Court but I'm not optimistic, I think we need to assume this will hit the ballot. I have more to say about it but the outdoors beckon. I've been sitting on my ass for far too long.

Spinning On That Dizzy Edge

I woke up last Wednesday at 3 am with my head and the room spinning round and round. It was a bizarre sensation since I was lying down and had no other symptoms. I figured maybe it was dehydration, got up for some water and eventually made it back to sleep. I woke up feeling a little off but didn't think too much of it. When I attempted a weight workout that afternoon I found it more difficult than I thought it should have been, the weights felt heavier, definitely not motivated. Again woke up dizzy at 3 am and was still dizzy when I woke up and had a weird taste in my mouth. Walked the dogs then spent most of the day on the couch. I wasn't exhausted but I felt tired and unmotivated, just brain foggy enough to not want to attempt much. The trails were a mudfest anyway from 4" of snow the day before. No other symptoms. I finally suspected maybe it was a latent reaction to the COVID vaccination I'd had 2 weeks ago and sure enough, Google confirmed that people are having dizziness and a strange taste in their mouths 2 weeks after their first shot. Weird. And a week later the brain fog persists on and off. At least I'm not dizzy. Mostly. The fog lifted briefly on Monday and I thought I was through with it but it seems to be back with a vengeance today. Got all my dog and farm chores done and spent another day on the couch. Hopefully this post comes out somewhat coherent. Not sure if I should go through with shot #2, I guess I see how I feel next week. I do know someone who had actual COVID who had brain fog for months afterwards.

Thanks to the Pause Initiative, now called Initiative 16, I've been learning a lot about the initiative process in Colorado. Apparently not all states have this, the opportunity for any citizen to put any crackpot thing they want on the ballot as long as they get enough signatures. And the amount of signatures isn't all that much. I hate getting involved in politics and I struggle with ways to be effective in my involvement. At the moment Initiative 16 is still at the Title Board phase and a group of ag groups have formed a coalition to fight it. There are many hoops the Initiative has to jump through with the Title Board before the proponents can start gathering signatures and the coalition hopes to get it completely thrown out during this process or at least get the language toned down or changed. The Title Board only addresses certain aspects of the language of the Initiative - does it address only a single topic? Does the language convey the meaning/purpose of the issue that the authors are trying to address? They don't address whether it's constitutional (a part of it isn't) or legal or destructive or batshit crazy.

The initial objection from the ag coalition is that the Initiative addresses more than one subject, that it contains deceptive and incomplete language that doesn't convey the intent and meaning of the initiative and that it contains political catch words. The hearing for the objection is next week. The authors can re-word it and come back if the Title Board agrees with the objection. It's a long, drawn out process that will likely take until the end of the summer and there's not much anyone can do in the meantime other than financially supporting the ag groups. I'm already a member of one of them. So I guess I can save my panicking about it until them. There also seems to be a lot of initial opposition to it, of course the ag community has lost its mind over this but there are initial signs of opposition from Front Range, non-ag folks as well. Fall should get interesting. Hopefully it won't come to that though I imagine they'll try to get something on the ballot because what do they have to lose?

Activist groups are interesting, I've been to a few meetings over a few causes and never got involved beyond that. Because it almost always seems to be more about the egos of the people involved. They're social groups as well, sort of, with really weird dynamics to them. Animal Rights especially so. Because people who truly love animals donate their time and money to groups that directly help animals - rescues, shelters, vet care for low income people, cancer research, etc. They also don't care what their fellow humans eat. A lot of people involved in Animal Rights don't even have pets or particularly like being around animals unless it's part of their activism or a publicity stunt. And I don't get the whole thing of wanting to inflict veganism on everybody else, worrying so much about what other people eat and their values. It sounds exhausting. 

If this does make the ballot I'm interested to see how life for the authors will pan out. One rents a room in a vegan co-op in a multi-million dollar house surrounded by multi-million dollar houses in one of Boulder's toniest neighborhoods. Also Boulder is a smaller place than it seems. As it happens a friend who's coming down to visit this summer knows him. Many people are already irate about this, the effects will be huge and far reaching, and I suspect life may become unpleasant for these guys. Or maybe not, I don't know. I guess we'll find. out.

I'll leave with some photos from a week ago Monday. I stopped to share a moment of whimsy with Mesa Verde before dropping into the awesomeness of the Rib Cage. It was a wonderful, cathartic ride and I was finally done with worrying about Initiative 16. Then I got back to the car to the news of the mass shooting still in progress in Boulder. What can I say other than that I'm not surprised and that it was surreal and unnerving seeing such a familiar place on the news, crawling with SWAT. Even more upsetting was seeing the footage on YouTube of the bodies lying in the parking lot and inside the store and hearing the shots ringing out while the guy with the camera stood in the entryway. Because somebody actually posted this and I actually watched it because I didn't know what I was clicking on. I lived walking distance to that grocery store for 6 months and even after I moved to the opposite end of town I still popped in there on the way back from the mountains or after going to the Indian restaurant around the corner that we often frequented. No words.

Mad World

'We drove through the hills with the moon in our eyes
We bought a house in the country where we could lose our minds' - Nick Cave

I moved out here, the middle of nowhere, for a quiet life. All I want to do is raise as much of my own food as I can and ride my bike. Play with my dogs, run, hike. A simple life. A very human life. We evolved eating meat and moving around in the natural world and I'm trying to mimic these things as best I can while navigating the Zoo that humans are currently inhabiting. These things don't seem that unreasonable, in fact they should be inalienable rights as humans if human health and living our best lives was the goal of humanity. But unfortunately it's not. Having the woods taken away is a terrible blow. I'm not sure how to fight going forward but I'm going to fight. And now I've become aware of a 2022 ballot initiative that would shut down animal agriculture in Colorado. I'm not exaggerating. I wish I was. Two animal rights activists, one from Boulder and another from Broomfield (a Boulder suburb) have created the initiative and it's couched in the language of preventing animal cruelty, which it will not do, but the intention is to shut down animal agriculture, which it absolutely will do. And because it's an amendment to the Colorado statutes and not the constitution they only need 124,000 or so signatures to get it onto the ballot. And those signatures can be from anywhere in the state, they don't have to have a certain amount from each county or judicial district, meaning they can stand outside a few coffee shops in Boulder and Denver and probably get all the signatures they need in a few afternoons. Because who isn't in favor of ending animal cruelty and exploitation? That's how they'll present it to people but that's not what it is. It's beyond incomprehensible that two vegan transplants who've lived here 10 minutes can bring the whole state to its knees so easily. I would like to brush it off, to say there's no possible way people here would allow this. And if we were talking about Colorado 10 years ago this would be true. The state's very ethos is (was?) Live and Let Live, there's no way folks would fall for this. But the state has been inundated with newcomers, one of the main reasons the Front Range has become so intolerable, and they narrowly approved a measure to release wolves back into the wild here, something I NEVER thought I would see in my lifetime.

How do you fight a ballot initiative? I'm not into politics, I really loathe politics, I just want to live my life, I'm not interested in influencing other people. If someone wants to be vegan, whatever, I truly don't care what someone else puts on their plate for dinner. But vegan activists aren't happy enough to live their lives, they're driven to force their beliefs and agenda onto anybody and everybody. Vegan activism is a cult and the people involved are deeply entrenched. Trying to reason with them is pointless and boy do they love the sound of their own voices.

Thirty years of vegetarianism was a FAIL, I'm not going back to an even worse diet. But I don't know what to do. Arguing with vegans is pointless and aggravating, I won't do it and it gets nowhere. The majority of the public are not vegans. How to make them understand what they're voting for? I don't know. As a side note, artificial insemination will also be illegal for dogs so dog breeders are effected too. In fact, artificial insemination of all animals, domestic pets and livestock, will be re-categorized as a sexual act with an animal, a felony. I can't even make this up. For some reason AI really really infuriates the vegans. This could be the end of spay/neuter in Colorado as well. There is no exception for it and anyone could interpret the law to include it. 

The effects of this are huge, rural life in Colorado will be lost, a multi-billion dollar industry shuttered overnight. The economic effects of this will be felt state wide. Widespread unemployment, hunger, food shortages, skyrocketing food prices, I can't fathom it. This will have a ripple effect in other states, especially on food prices and availability. As meat becomes a luxury for only the super rich, folks will turn to the soy kibble fake meat products and those prices will soar as well. I'm not exaggerating. I wish I was. If the pandemic has taught us nothing it's that we need MORE locally produced food, not less.

Never mind how they're going to enforce this. 

This is video that explains everything pretty succinctly. Spoiler alert, she bursts into tears at the end. The animals matter, absolutely, but the people matter more. I'm crying for Colorado right along with you Rachel. I hardly understand the world anymore.

The Needle Tears a Hole

It's turning out to be a mostly happy and productive week. We arrived at the Ute's free COVID vaccination clinic an hour early and there was already a pretty good line going but they decided to start a half hour early and everything went very quickly and efficiently. All told it took about an hour twenty minutes plus 35 minutes of driving. SO grateful to the Utes for sharing their excess vaccine with the community, I was probably 4-6 weeks from being eligible for a vaccine never mind when I actually would have gotten the shot in my arm. The Utes accepted all comers 18 and over so this was a great opportunity and the community took full advantage of it. The woman in front of me in line had come all the way from Telluride, about 2 hours away. When I left at 9:48 (clinic was supposed to start at 9:30) the line snaked around the parking lot seemingly forever. So glad we decided to go early. I hope everyone who wanted a shot got one eventually. 

Huge thanks to the Utes for their wonderful generosity.

By the afternoon I was feeling feisty so I decided to go for a short, easy run just to stretch my legs and get some sunshine. But my knees felt good and the music got me a little carried away so the run ended up being harder than I was intending. I wasn't tired or sore but about 20 minutes after I got home I had multiple rapid fire sneezing attacks which were very strange. I've never sneezed so violently and so many times in succession. At first I thought maybe something had crawled into the crawl space under the house and died and I was allergic to it. I do have seasonal allergies sometimes, especially since I've moved out here, but never with sneezing like that. I had several bouts of sneezing attacks throughout the evening and a couple good sneezes this morning but now it seems to have passed. Had to have had something to do with the vaccine and maybe also with the run lowering my immune response. I had no runny nose at all which is something I always have with my seasonal allergies. Very strange but thankfully seems to have passed. Other than that I had a mildly sore, achy arm, not too bad compared to how sore my arms get from weight lifting, and no other symptoms. Jonny had more severe arm pain and is woozy this morning. He had a good nap this morning after our not very long dog walk. I'm going to take a rest day today even though I'm feeling feisty again. I go back in a month (this was the Moderna vaccine) for the second shot and after that one I'll absolutely have a rest day or two.

I'm looking forward to going back to the pool. It'll be mid-April until I have full immunity but I may not wait until then. Our local infection rates seem to have stalled and the pool is taking good precautions so I think I finally feel good about going back, at least for very short swims to get back into it. I may enter a race in June in Arizona, I'll see how things go. Base training for biking and running feels good but the swimming, ugh, that's going to be a long haul.

I also managed to finish getting my tax info. together for the tax preparer. This is always a major stressor for me, I hate that kind of paperwork. And I finally managed to write a comment to the forest service about the logging slated to take place at Boggy Draw. This has been very nauseous making for me for the past month or so, keeping me up at night and worrying me throughout the day. My beloved Boggy Draw is slated to be logged as part of a 10 YEAR logging project. Awful. Nauseous making. Those woods and trails are one of the main reasons we moved here. I can't believe it. But here we are. The Forest Service is taking comments, this is National Forest land so anybody can comment. If anybody is inclined to comment you can do so here, it's very easy: https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public//CommentInput?Project=57671

The bike club has a lot of information about the project and the issues in this post: https://www.facebook.com/swcocycling/posts/3924110237610920

In short, the main issues are that they are going to open logging roads that will cross the trails, bringing heavy logging traffic right through the recreation area and destroying the trails. They're also going to log in the recreation area, forever changing the scenery. The area will be closed to the public due to logging as well. If they were going to do the right thing they should leave the whole recreation area out of the logging plan, preserve the trails, re-route the logging traffic around the recreation area. There are other issues but those are the ones that keep me up at night. Comments are due by this Friday, March 12.

 

In happier news I took a little day trip to Hovenweep over the weekend. Such a beautiful, special place. And they allow dogs. Ruby was pretty happy but Tess, well, she sees Dead People everywhere that isn't home.

I better publish this post before I run out of Mediocre Internet and enter the realm of Hillbilly Internet. I just found out there's a virtual public meeting tonight over Boggy Draw and I need to save those gigs.

Hope Unknown, Part 2

At the start of the week I'd pretty much decided that triathlon racing would be out of the question this year. Somehow I thought I'd be vaccinated by April easily but then Biden said end of May for the regular folks and that's just too late for me to start swimming from scratch and be ready for even Xterra Nationals in September. But I found out the Ute Tribe had a vaccination clinic for everybody over 18 a few days ago and they plan on having another one next week! So I'm going to try for it. Not sure how long the lines are, we're going to go early and hope we get lucky. I could go back to the pool any time, it's open and they're being careful from what I hear, but I've just not been comfortable with it. The pool is usually nearly empty when I go but it seems poorly ventilated and stuffy. And I have plenty of other ways to exercise, the pool is a luxury. The break from the harsh pool chemicals isn't a bad thing either, my hair is doing so much better. But I miss it and it's good for me, physically, mentally. So we'll see. Trying not to get my hopes up too high in case it doesn't work out. A few more months isn't the end of the world and another summer without racing is no big deal. But it would be nice to have a goal of sorts. I've been feeling a bit not anchored lately, perhaps drifting a bit too far out to sea. Along with everyone else.

In the meantime this isn't a bad way to get in a good workout. Sand Canyon seldom disappoints. The lizards were out in full force so perhaps spring is nearly here.

I did hear a meadowlark the other day which is a good sign of spring. When the vultures return I know we're there for sure. Though I don't mind winter.

I saw 4 bald eagles flying over the house the other day, so very cool. Not sure what it was about and the crows chased them off pretty sharpish. The crows around here don't stand for much in the way of interlopers.

I suppose I'd better formulate a rough training plan of sorts. Just in case.