Doo Wop Rally 2008

As some of you may know, I was up in Washington this past weekend for the 20th year of the Doo Wop Rally. Heidi also made it up Saturday morning to get some spectating in. Unfortunately, there wasn't much spectating to do, well not much of our car at least. Saturday had 3 stages, all on the same section of road, with two run in one direction and one run in reverse. We started the first stage and were trying to get used to the car, the conditions and the new helmet and intercom that I was using. Unfortunately, not even half way into the stage, we had a bit of an off. Dan couldn't quite hear me calling the turns as well as he should, plus the surface was slick and snotty. The end result can be seen in the video below, we're the white and blue RX-7 at the :50 mark.



There was a bit of damage to the front end of the car, but after some work (see picture of Joe at the top and below of Dan, Doug and I) we felt we were ready to go for Sunday. We worked on the intercom issue and felt we had a better, but not ideal solution.



We started Sunday with high hopes of making it through the day, the stages later in the day are amazing. Unfortunately the rally gods had other plans for us. The first stage was a pavement stage that we made it through without issue, car felt good, intercom was better, and we were ready to do it again. Part of the way through the transit back to the beginning of the stage we lost all drive in the car. Initially we felt the clutch had possibly gone, but after some side-of-the-road diagnosis, the rear end seemed to be the culprit. With the engine running, the car in gear and the clutch engaged, the only thing turning was the drive shaft, not the rear axle. Upon some further looking it was clear we had bent the rear axle again. We were done for the weekend. We loaded up the car, ate some lunch, played spectator for a stage and headed home. Such is the life of a rallyist sometimes.

-G

Weekend Getaway

For the long holiday weekend, Heidi and I headed out to L.L. Stub Stewart State Park. We rented one of the cabins that are at the park. The weather was so wonderful, we could have camped in a tent, though we had no way of knowing it since we made the reservations months ago. As you can see, we took the bikes to explore the trails in the park. Let me just say that the weather being dry doesn't mean that the trails are going to be dry. We were a muddy mess by the time we got back to camp. The clay soil out there is impossibly slick when it wet, so it made for an interesting adventure.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing, and one of us nursing a nasty bruise from the bike ride. We played games, of which I lost all of. We watched a couple movies and a few episodes of Heroes. Pretty much just took some time to kick back and do nothing. The most stressful time of the weekend was trying to figure out how to cook dinner on Sunday night. We had a plan to cook some teriyaki chicken and some rice. The only problem was that someone had forgotten to turn off the burner on the stove she was using at lunch time. We were getting ready to cook dinner when this was discovered. We weighed our options and decided to try to get a fire going. I scrounged up some wood, and with some work we got just enough of a fire to cook our chicken and boil some water for the instant rice. We almost ended up eating bread and butter or a yogurt for dinner.

The park is nice and new, but somewhat uninspiring. I imagine we'll make it back there to check out the trails in the summer, but probably won't camp there again.

-G

Tragedy

On Monday, one of my former students (I had him in 8th grade) was killed in a bike/bus accident. This article and this video are about the accident. I didn't feel quite ready to share this yesterday, but I think it's important for us to all keep his family in our thoughts. They are going through an incredibly painful experience loosing Austin. I can't even begin to truly feel the pain they are feeling right now. My heart just aches for them. Austin was such an amazing person, so full of potiental. What a terrible loss...
-h

Slow Cooked Comfort

And by slow, I do mean slow...All tolled, there is about 4 hours that went into this meal. And that's not even counting going out shopping for the new dutch oven, which we had to have. This is the smoky beef stew from the latest Sunset magazine. It turned out absolutely amazing, completely worth the time it took to make. The longest step was the initial browning of the meat. It took at least an hour to brown all the cubed up beef, but I guess there is no way around this step. You see, the browning meat goes through the maillard reaction, giving it amazing flavors. It's also the reaction that barley goes through to become malted barley so it can become beer. All in all, it's a great thing, though time consuming. Things go pretty quickly once all the meat is cooked off. Then comes two bottles of wine for the meat to braise in with the onions and bacon.

In the oven it goes for an hour and a half, a long time to wait with growling bellies. Once it's out it goes back on the burner and the carrots and potatoes go in.

They cook until tender, and then it's time to eat! Top it with blue cheese crumbles and chives and serve.

-G

Visit to the Capitol

The field trip to the State Capitol yesterday went amazingly well. All of my nightmares of children misbehaving, or getting left behind, were for nothing. The kids were great and the day went perfectly.
I don't think the parents liked eating lunch outside at the park. It was cold and windy. But the kids sure needed it. There were like 20 of them crawling all over the merry-go-round. Those are definitely the kids who wouldn't have made it through the day without some time to burn some energy. I was glad we did it, but I couldn't feel my hands when we got back on the bus.

Even though the trip was great, I still had a pounding headache when we got back to school. It was probably the hour long bus ride with 40 8th graders that did it. I meant to get this picture up yesterday but it just didn't happen. This is from the front entrance of the capitol looking up to the top where you can see most of the Gold Pioneer.
h

I'm behind on my "homework"

I guess I have some work to do this weekend. First of all, I'm taking my 145 8th graders on a field trip to the sate capitol on Tuesday. That takes all kinds of crazy planning. I've been using all my prep time this week to get that taken care of and not planning lessons. For example, yesterday I spent 45 minutes calling parents who are going with us.
Second, we are doing a school wide reading program at my school. Everyone in the entire school (yes, everyone...kids, teachers, custodians...everyone) is reading the same book this month, Cryptid Hunters. The month ends with the author, Roland Smith, visiting our school and talking about the book. On Monday we're all suppose to be to chapter 11. Well, I decided to fess up to my 2nd period class and tell them that I haven't even started it. In reply I got several confessions that kids were only a few chapters in. On his way out, one of the boys said to me: "Don't worry Ms. West. You're really busy. We're just lazy." How honest. And it did make me feel a little better. I guess I better stop blogging and get reading!
-h