Mt. Stuart, West Ridge

We finally climbed the West Ridge of Mt. Stuart. It ended up being our last big climb of the year. Mark and Doug were the only two climbers. Since it was going to be a one day climb, we got up early and left Yakima at 3:00am and hit the trail at 5:00am. Our plan was to go light and fast. To accomplish this we decided to climb it without a rope. The forecast was good, so we were able to go light on clothing too. We made good time up to Ingalls Pass and then on to Ingalls Lake. After the lake we walked up a ridge and across a rockslide to get to the base of the climb.


We started climbing at 8:00am. The going was real easy and fun. My daughters would have had a ball climbing this lower section.








Glacier Peak in the background.













The West Ridge.














It turned out that we would not have used a rope if we had one. Most of the climbing was real easy. There were only two short sections that required any rock climbing skill and these were in safe areas.
We made it to the top at 11:00am in perfect weather. After spending about an hour there, we started the long descent, followed by the ascent up to Longs Pass and the descent to the parking lot. We got back to the car at 3:30pm and home in time for dinner. Thanks Mark, for leading the funnest rock climb I have ever done. I especially enjoyed the freedom of going light and only carrying items that we knew we would use. It was a great day exploring a special part of God's creation. Chalk up another one for Foursquare Mountaineering!

Clermont FL to Summerton SC

Today was Aric's first official travel day. I think I was more excited than he was about that. We drove from Clermont to Summerton, South Carolina. We are staying at a very nice ROD park. Since we had a somewhat long driving day, we ate dinner at Cracker Barrel.

It is so nice to be back on the road again!

A Year Gone By :: in Review

Well, the year .. is almost history. It's been a great year for me for research, though not so much for blogging. With only 112 posts published, it's been the "worst" year since I started blogging. In fact, this is my first post for December! No excuses, really, but what I've "discovered" is that when I get involved with a project (be it actual research, transcribing documents, or simply standardizing my database) I tend to get really involved - to the point of doing little else until "that project" is completed. I must admit, I have missed the blogging...



January found me traveling westward from Louisiana where I had spent the holidays with extended family. Highlights for the month were a short stop at White Sands National Monument, a meetup with a blog reader who turned out to be a distant cousin, a two-week stay at Lake Havasu City where there was a hot-air balloon festival and where I developed a naming scheme for organizing my digital files.






An Arizona Sunset. January 12th.


February was spent in Salt Lake City where RootsTech was on the agenda. I must admit, I was a little disappointed with the conference but enjoyed seeing old friends again. Of course, there was The Library that was calling my name for the entire month! Among other things while there, I began writing the series on the Hoffman-Huffman family of Ohio and Pennsylvania.



After a few days in Death Valley I made one final stop before heading back to Indiana in March. May came all too quickly along with the NGS Conference in Cincinnati, which was absolutely fantastic. The sessions were (for the most part) outstanding, and being with like-minded friends was priceless.






The Grand Canyon looking north from Desert View. March 15th.


A short sojourn into Kentucky looking for the land of my Bray ancestors, then it was back to Indiana for a few more weeks. In early July I was notified that a seat had opened up in Thomas Jones' class at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh - I had been put on the waiting list in February when I was unsuccessful in registering - and was asked if I was still interested in attending. Of course, my response was a definite "Yes!" and I was shortly on my way to G.R.I.P. and what a "trip" it was - one of the most challenging yet exhilarating experiences of my genealogy journey!



I had thought that I might spend a week in Pennsylvania doing on-site research but after a week at G.R.I.P. my brain was fried. Instead, I returned to Indiana for a few weeks to assimilate what I had learned and to prepare a bit more to research those Pennsylvania Ancestors.



In August I spent about 10 days in Huntsville, Alabama helping a cousin who was recovering from surgery. While there, plans were made with another cousin for spending a few weeks in Maine. A couple days of research in Pennsylvania on the way there, a few more days afterward, a visit with my aunt and cousin in Maryland, then a few more days in Pennsylvania and I made it back to Indiana just in time for the Midwest Geneabloggers .. Fall Meetup (link to Tina Lyons' post) on October 13th.






Northern Maine. September 25th.


Since then I've been looking for more Hoffman and Switzer and Rupert descendants, and found quite a few of them too! But most of the last month has been spent on "cleaning up" and standardizing my genealogy database in preparation for uploading it to ancestry.com or some other online tree site. It's been somewhat tedious and very time consuming. Sources still require a great deal of work and I'm beginning to think that this "clean-up" work could go on for ever!



It has been an interesting and rather satisfying year. A mixture of travel and research and a little of both combined. What could be better?

Dolphin Fun

I just realized while catching up on reading blogs, that I never came back and posted the dolphin pictures. I guess with all of my new computer fun and a visit from Aric, it completely left my mind to blog. The completely leaving my mind seems to be happening more and more lately but that's a story for another day. Back to the dolphins. When we got to the pier, I could hear there was some hype over something in the water. You can never tell just what that might mean with the ocean. So it was a happy surprise to see that it was dolphins that were visiting.



This is one of those times that I'm so glad I am the weirdo that brings her big camera to the beach with her. While everyone else was using their phones to get pictures, I got some decent shots with a real camera.



It was interesting to watch dolphins here vs somewhere like Sea World. They were just doing their thing being dolphins instead of doing tricks to get treats. Pretty cool. The only downside is they didn't surface much so we couldn't see them that well. Again, they were just being dolphins and weren't worried about us in the least so that is understandable. Then someone went to wash their fish at the fish cleaning station and the water trickled down below.



The dolphins seemed to love this and they fought to get underneath the water from that point on. This is where the real life dolphin show became a blast for us humans that happened to be there.



It turned this into one of my best beach days ever.



We stood there for a very long time. I snapped hundreds of pictures. I murmured things like this is so cool, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is awesome! over and over. I told Nathan later that it was right up there with whale watching because we were so close to them. He smiled at me in that way he does sometimes like he is amused at my simple mindedness.




That's ok. He didn't read Island of the Blue Dolphins 433 times as a child like I did. And he laughed non-stop at a movie recently that I am pretty sure was made for ten year old boys. So we're even!




It was way awesome. Just ask the dolphins!

Memorial Weekend

In the course of 24 hours, the park went from being fairly quiet to being a little city in itself. Almost every site was taken, and there were families everywhere. They had lots of fun activities and the beach was packed, so it looked like people have a great time.

Taking It Personally or Taking It in Stride?

When drivers behave rudely towards us, we tend to perceive them as being "hostile to cyclists". But what I wonder sometimes, is whether this is a fair assessment given how drivers behave to one another.



Consider that...

Drivers honk at each other all the time.

Drivers cut each other off.

Drivers roll down their windows and shout "learn how to drive, you moron!" at one another while making indecent hand gestures - even if they are the ones at fault.



Is driver behaviour towards cyclists really worse than their behaviour towards other drivers? And if not, should we just take it in stride, rather than taking it personally? One could make that argument.



Of course, the big difference between intimidating other drivers and intimidating cyclists, is that cyclists are considerably more vulnerable - something I am highly aware of when a driver plays "chicken" with me while turning left at full speed as I am trying to go straight through an intersection, on a green light. Bike lanes and protected bike paths do little if anything to solve this problem if there are no cyclist-specific lights at intersections. It is difficult to take things in stride when the competition is stacked against me both in terms of speed and in terms of safety. But I try to remember not to take it personally.

Choosing an Upright Saddle: Brooks B72 vs Brooks B66

The Brookssaddles most typically fitted on upright bicycles are theB72 and the B66 (the B67 is the same model as the B66, only made for modern seatposts). Having ridden on both, I like each of them very much and cannot say that one is "better" than the other. For me it depends on the bicycle - or more specifically, on my experience of the bicycle.

I had a brownBrooks B66 S ("S" indicates the shorter, women's version) on my previously-owned Pashley Princess, which I rode for over a year. And I recently bought the same saddle for my vintage Gazelle.

I haveBrooks B72 saddles on two of my current bicycles: a brown one on my Royal H. mixte, and a black one on my Bella Ciao 3-speed. (I have also owned several vintage B72s, but will leave those out of this discussion).

[image compiled from brooksengland.com]

To get a good sense of the differences in dimensions, I've compiled the specs from Brooks into a single chart. You can see that the B72 is very slightly wider than the B66 models (though a 4mm difference is negligible). The B72 is a unisex saddle and does not come in separate male and female versions; its lengthis in between the male and female B66.The B72 is lighter and has less height to it, because its springs are tighter and smaller than the springs on the B66. Unlike the B66 models, the B72 is available in black and brown only.

In terms of experiencing the saddles, the main differences are the springs, the shape, and the texture. The B66 has large springs that provide quite a bit of suspension. The texture of the saddle's surface is pebbled. And the edges - including the sides and the nose - are rounded. To me, these features make the B66 particularly comfortable on a bolt-upright, heavy city bicycle. The substantial springs provide excellent cushiness when most of my weight rests on the saddle. The pebbled texture keeps me from sliding around. And the rounded edges make it easier to slide off the bicycle when dismounting - which is convenient when making frequent stops in the city. On the other hand, when I try the B66 on sportier bicycles (with lower handlebars and steeper geometry), I find some of these comfort features distracting: The springs are too much and the pebbled texture is annoying when I am always shifting on the saddle.

In comparison to the B66, the B72 seems like a more versatile saddle to me. The B72's springs are tighter and smaller - still providing suspension, but not to the extent that it interferes with a more forward lean. The surface of the B72 is smooth and the edges are squarely tapered - which I find more comfortable for long distance cycling, during which I slide around on the saddle more, but get off the bike less frequently.

While both saddles are great for upright bicycles, for me the B72 works better on the more sporty variety, whereas the B66 works better on the super-relaxed ones. As they say, your mileage may vary. If you have tried both models and have a preference for one over the other, please share your experiences.