Reflections on the Past Year

When I began my 40 New Adventures challenges, I must admit that I was a bit concerned about taking on such a time-consuming task. How would I fit all these new activities in to my already packed schedule? It wasn’t until a friend emailed me saying how great he thought it was that I was finally taking the time to do something for myself that I started to look at it a bit differently. All my fellow busy moms know that we don’t take time for ourselves nearly enough. Suddenly, this whole undertaking took on a new flavor. Not only was I getting to experience new things, but I was making time for me amidst all my responsibilities to other people. That was a cool revelation.


And you know what? One of the early lessons I learned during my year is that my family’s world won’t grind to a halt if mom excuses herself for a few hours to go have some fun. They managed quite well during my absences and nobody ended with up missing limbs. We moms get so accustomed to being the ones who run the show all the time, that we tend to forget that the show can actually run on auto-pilot at times. That’s a nice realization.

I’ve heard it said one can discover their passions by answering this question: “If you won the lottery and didn’t have to work, what would you spend your time doing?” Well, I’ve decided that another way to catch a glimpse into your interests is to challenge yourself to trying new things. What type of activities routinely surface? The answer provides some insight into your interests. I’ve reflected on this idea several times during the year, and the answers for me don’t surprise me one bit. I LOVE to travel. Quite a few of my new adventures took place outside the boundaries of Colorado Springs. Had I had more time and money, I would have enjoyed other adventures all around the country. I also like artistic undertakings, and I consider baking a form of art. Look at my “creating” type activities: glass fusing, making a fondant cake, painting a Bob Ross picture, making crepes, bean cake and sushi. As a very young child one of the highlights of my summer was the Arts and Crafts classes taught by the local community activities group. Art class in school was a favorite of mine. Some things simply don’t change with age. Finally, I like a good adventure. I like to engage in physical activities. Cattle branding, curling, snowshoeing, wakeboarding, indoor skydiving, hiking—these all fall into the adventure category for me.

Another advantage of this type of challenge was totally unforeseen by me. I had many people suggest adventures to me for which I was able to answer, “I’ve already done that. “ That prompted me to take a look at some of the amazing things I’ve already done in life: hiked the Grand Canyon, hiked Pikes Peak, piloted a helicopter, went scuba diving, swam with dolphins, etc. I’ve done some really neat things in life, and this challenge caused me to pause and reflect on those a bit.

This past year was fantastic, amazing, exciting, fun, adventurous, inspiring, unpredictable---you name it. I am incredibly thankful that I took on this challenge. I made great memories with my family. I experienced a treasure trove of new activities. I learned a good deal. I spent time with many friends that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have seen during the year outside of our normal environments. Having a sense of urgency allowed me to move many items from my “Gonna do that someday” column in life to the “Been there, done that” column. I know I would have eventually gotten around to completing some of them anyway, but why wait for someday? I learned to turn “someday’ into “today.”

Several people have asked me what my favorite adventure was. That is, obviously, a tough question. My family and I have discussed it at length. It is hard to compare indoor skydiving to watching My Fair Lady. They’re not quite in the same category. I feel like the politically correct gym teacher who says, “You’re all winners,” when I say that all the activities were meaningful to me. However, if I had to choose one single activity which I thought was the highlight of my year of adventure, I would have to say………insert drumroll here…….cattle branding. It lived up to the word “adventure” in every way. It was exciting, challenging and dangerous. We shared the day with some great friends which made it even more fun. We were helping to complete a real life task, so there was a sense of accomplishment. And, it was certainly not your run-of-the-mill new adventure. How many people in this world can say they’ve assisted in a cattle branding?

Do I think this past year has changed my outlook on life? Yes, I do. I believe that I will be more inclined to go and “do” rather than “plan to do it eventually.” Whether it is something simple like eating at a new restaurant, taking a different road home from work, or something larger like traveling to a new state, I will be more inclined to say, “Let’s go----NOW.”

I encourage each and every one of you to challenge yourself with a similar undertaking. Pick and year and pick a number of new experiences to tackle. You will NOT be disappointed. I sincerely hope that my kids and husband all choose to do this at some point in their lives, and I can’t wait to be a part of their new adventures! Go carpe some diem!

#40 - Showshoeing

What a bittersweet post: #40. I can't believe it is over. However, I will summarize my reflections on the past year in a separate post, and I'll save this one for sharing my snowshoe experience.

I decided to try snowshoeing at the suggestion of a co-worker.  Upon checking into whether snowshoe rentals were available on base at Peterson AFB, we were happy to learn that they not only rented snowshoes,  but they also offered guided snowshoe trips. That seemed perfect for a bunch of novices like us.  As it turned out, the entire roster for today's trip consisted of our family (Victoria could not join us due to an existing obligation.), so we basically had a private driver and coach.  Mariano was our guide. He is majoring in Outdoor Recreation at a college in Vermont, and he's here at Peterson on an internship. He may have only been in Colorado for four weeks, but he was a fantastic guide, and we really enjoyed his company (not his driving quite so much).

We arrived at Peterson AFB at the appointed time of 6:45a.m. (the only downside of this adventure) and Mariano issued our snowshoes (one size fits all) and poles and then drove us to Old Monrach Pass. For you Coloradans, that's right next to Monarch Ski Resort.  We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day.  I was concerned about being cold, as the high in Monarch was predicted to be only 29 degress. However, as soon as we began our hike, it became clear that I would worry more about overheating than freezing. 

We started off on a groomed tail. The snow was packed and easy to walk on . After a few hundred yards, Mariano encouraged us to try walking off the trail on the fresh snow.  We stuck our poles into the snow to gage the depth, and we could push our poles all the day down.  The snow accumulation was probably 6 or more feet.  While we still sank several inches with our snowshoes, there's no doubt we would have sunk past our knees without them.  After hiking maybe a half a mile on the trail and getting the hang of walking on the fresh snow, Mariano guided us completely off trail. We were hiking right through the woods, headed to a mountain peak just adjacent to Monarch Ski Resort.  Let me summarize snowshoeing in a very simple terms: IT KICKS YOUR BUTT!  Wow, was that a workout!  I really enjoyed it, but my heart and lungs were working overtime and I was sweating like it was an 80 degree day.  And I fell....a lot.  It is rather easy to lose your balance while snowshoeing---at least it was for Craig, Hunter Seok Ho and me.  Despite the hard work, when we finally summited the mountain, I was glad that Mariano had pushed us. The view was incredible.  We took a lunch break on top of a beautiful peak, and then we all eagerly anticipated the DOWN journey. Here's the approach to the summit and the summit itself:

Going down was awesome, although it went too fast.  It was so cool to be in pristine, untouched snow on the side of a mountain.  We saw cross country skiers and evidence of other folks having passed through the area, but there was still something thrilling about being the first person to plow down through your own little private path of virgin snow.  After we were down the mountain, we spent a good half hour hiking fairly horizontally through the woods back toward the van.  At this point I was really feeling the fatigue. I pretty much feel once every 100m or so. It was getting harder and harder to lift my feet.  I spent a good deal of time wondering how sore I will be tomorrow!  When we made it back to the road, I was thrilled to have had the experience, but equally thrilled to be done. All in all we spent about 2.5 hours of actual snowshoeing.

It was great to share this experience with the family. Aubrey and Joshua were amazing. They were like the Energizer bunny - going and going and going.  To me the best part of the whole trip was hearing Aubrey, who just a day ago was grossly unhappy being a part of this family, say that this trip reminded her how much she liked our family hiking trips, and that we really need to make an effort to go hiking more often.  Wow, that was quite an endorsement.

Josh is already looking at snowshoes on Ebay and Craigslist. He has pretty much mandated that we need to each get a pair so that we can snowshoe more often.  I don't think anyone in the family would complain about that. We had a great time today, and I think it was an awesome way to wrap up my 40 new adventures (sniff, sniff).

# 39 - Crochet Lessons

Shortly after announcing my quest to have 40 new adventures, my 2nd-cousin-in-law (at least that's what I've determined our relationship to be), Janea, offered to teach me to crochet.  This appealed to me immediately, I believe, because when I was a child, my mom attempted to teach me to knit but threw in the towel when she realized she had no idea how to teach left-handed knitting.

Janea was living in Arizona at the time of my 40th birthday, but she expected to move to Colorado this fall.  The move happened as planned, but our crochet lessons just didn't seem to have the same luck.  Twice we scheduled get-togethers only to have them both postponed due to various issues.  I absolutely still plan to connect with her, but when a co-worker learned of the delayed lessons, she brought a mobile crochet lesson to me at school so that I could fit it in before my 40 New Adventures clock expired.  Sue assurred me that learning the basics were easy (and I decided I've lived in a right-handed world long enough that I would tackle the project right-handed). Sure enough, in just a few minutes she had taught me several simple stitches.  Learning is easy: perfecting will take time.

 I am becoming familiar with the nuances of the stitches such as how tight to  make them and how to make each stitch the same size (or at least in the same ballpark).  I've been doing a lot of stitching, tearing it out (it is actually rather depressing how easily it comes out!) and restitching--making nothing in particular, but just practicing. I'm far from proficient. Have you ever watched someone crochet who has been doing it a while?  They can talk while stitching, watch TV while stitching, heck, I bet they could cook dinner while stitching.  I can almost stitch while I'm stitchin. Almost - not quite even there yet.  Each stitch requires a good deal of concentration on my part.

However, I am improving.  I got confident enough to go ahead and start what I decided would be my first crochet project:  a Steeler-colored baby blanket for my first grandchild---which, I should stress, has not been conceived yet, nor do I hope he/she will even be conceived for a good number of years yet.  However, I thought this would be a good project for a couple reasons: 1. if you're going to raise your grandchild to be a Steeler fan, you might as well get started right out of the womb, and 2. who better to not notice how bad, uneven, lumpy and asymmetric the baby blanket will be than an infant who's only going to puke on it anyway!  Of course, I didn't get any type of pattern before starting this blanket. I just started it. I'm going to wing the whole thing.  It may turn out to make a better potholder or dust rag than a baby blanket, but we'll have to let it unveil itself as I trudge along.

 I'm enjoying my crochet experience so far--at least sometimes--at other times I want to scream and throw it in a corner.  Yet, it is a new challenge, and a skill that I think could come in very handy during all the hours that I'll spend in bleachers watching football, basketball and track over the new few years. 

Did you notice I'm through #39?  Yep, that means just one more new adventures. That's actually very sad.  But, I'll save my reflections for later.  Tomorrow I head off to tackle #40. It's an adventure about which I'm quite excited.

#38 - Zombies, Wizards and Mummies

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit my best friend in Orlando, Florida. Carol was with us for new adventures #1, since she flew out to Colorado to be part of my 40th birthday.  Based on the plans we had made for the weekend,  I initially didn't think I'd have any new experiences while in Florida. However, it turns out I had several new adventures.

Carol's 19 year old stepdaughter, Stephanie, has always had an interest in special effects type make-up.  Last fall she worked at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, and this solidified her interst. For Christmas she received a make-up airbrush set. I didn't even know such a thing existed, but as soon as I learned that it did, I wanted to try it out.  Steph said that the Universal make-up artists used airbrush for all teh zombies' makeup for Horror Nights.  She showed me the basics, and I tried it out on her. Of course, I had no idea of what creature I was attempting to transform her into; I sort of made it up as I went along, and as I got the hang of the airbrush.  The end product pretty much revealed that I had no idea what I was doing.  We decided that, maybe, she looked a little like the plant from Rocky Horror Picture Show.  After I finished her make-up, she took a shot at me. I think the pictures below show that she is a bit more skilled with the airbursh than I am. I looked like a pretty convincing zombie.  It was a fun experience overall, and I was pretty intrigued by the technology of it.  The airbrush uses a ridiculously small amount of paint. 

Steph still works at Universal Studios and was kind enough to give me a guest pass. This allowed me the new adventure of  visiting Universal's newer park, Islands of Adventure. The most popular attraction is the Harry Potter ride, which just opened last summer.  Set in in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the ride is billed as having the latest, greatest ride technology.  We arrived to an expected wait time of 90 minutes, which actually isn't too bad for Harry Potter. In only 65 minutes we were ready to board.  It was definitely thrilling.  It is a combination of twisty-turny rollercoaster with IMAX type movie shots that make you feel like you're playing Quidditch or just flying on your broom among Dementors.  It stayed true to the Harry Potter books and movies.

After riding Harry Potter, we headed over to the original Universal Studios park. I have been there before, so visiting the park was not, it itself, a new adventure. However, the original King Kong ride has been replaced with Revenge of the Mummy. This also happens to be the ride where Stephanie works. So, we headed over to say Hi to Stephanie and to give the ride a whirl.  It is a fairly short ride, but it jolts you around quite a bit.  I know I'm getting older, and I can't decide if it is my age or the fact that rides are more extreme than in the past, but after Harry Potter and Revenge of the Mummy, I was feeling a hint of nausea. As soon as we got off the ride, Stephanie informed us that she was on break, and as an employee, she could walk us past the line and directly back on to the ride. Who wouldn't pass up a behind-the-scenes trek up to the front of the line? So, while my stomach was wondering if it was a good idea, I immediately said, "Sure!"  Back on the ride we went, and after surviving a second go-round, I decided I would decline if she offered another fast pass!  It was certainly fun, but I am not able to ride such rides at this stage in life without feeling some physical effect. Bummer!

I had a really great visit, and I considering it a bonus that I was able to check off another new adventure (or three).  While I'm excited that completion of my 40 new adventures is imminent, it is also sad to watch this whole process near its end.  It has been such great fun that saying goodbye to my 40 new adventures is the ONLY reason that I'm not looking forward to turning 41.

#37 - A Shift at the Local Transfer Station (a.k.a. the Dump)

The above pictures shows the task we faced yesterday.  While it may look like a truck full of garbage, it's not.  It is recycling. Semantics??  Maybe.

What the heck am I talking about anyway, you ask?  Here's the scoop. Aubrey's choir class has a trip to Orlando planned for April.  We were contacted by a local garbage company with a super simple fundraising opportunity.  They needed to determine the break-down  '(by % of total weight) of their recycling by material type: glass, plastics, cardboard, newspaper, etc.  To do this they were looking for about 25 able-bodied individual to spend a Saturday morning literally sorting through tons of recycling and depositing each item into the appropriate dumpster.  Who couldn't say no?  Seriously, it was a great opportunity for the students to earn some easy money for their trip.  Except that, in our case, the student actually had a basketball game in Denver, so mom and dad inherited the "opportunity" to earn money for her.

It was actually a fairly interesting project.  Bit by bit they would dump a pile out of the truck and we would sort it.  We had individual dumpters for glass, plastic #1, plastic #2, plastics #3-7, steel cans, aluminum cans, cardboard, newspaper and other papers.  Remember that I said this was "recycling" and not "garbage?"  Well, apparently many people take a very liberal approach to recycling.  We quickly decided we would hold a contest for the most interesting item found.  Among the contenders were: a butane lighter shaped like a mini M16 rifle, a pair of boxer shorts, a Blackberry holder, and a half-eaten corn dog. We decided that the winning item was a pair of handcuffs!  Additionally, it was fun to look through some of the legitimate recyclables: old day-planners, lots of Christmas cards, student's school work and an empty IV bag. Here's a shot of us at work.

The kids and parents all had a great attitude. The weather was wonderful, and we all learned a bit about recycling. Here are a few tidbits I learned:

• The big money in recycling comes from aluminum. A dumpster full of aluminum cans nets about $800-$900.
• Brown glass is worth more than any other color.
• The most common recyclable, by far, is cardboard. We filled a dumpster to overflowing and hand to start another one, while the glass, plastics, steel, and aluminum weren't even close to being a quarter full.
• The recycling is normally shipped to Boulder to be sorted.  However, the company is building a new facility in Colorado Springs which will sort the recycling automatically.
• In Colorado Springs the two most popular beers are Coors Light and Bud Light, and Coke is more popular then Pepsi.

Now, as if sorting recycling isn't exciting enough as a new adventure, buckle your seatbelts....guess what else I got to do?!?!?!  I got to drive a skid steer loader!! How cool is that?  As I brainstormed in the past about my 40 new adventures, I often thought that it would be awesome to drive a heavy construction machine. However, I don't know anyone in the construction field, so I figured that would an experience that would not come to fruition this year.  You can imagine my excitement when they pulled out the skid steer loader yesterday to scoop us loads of "other paper" after everything had been sorted out of it. I explained my 40 new adventures goal,  the owner (did I mention we went to church with him for years), graciously let me take her for a spin.  It was kind of like driving a souped up grocery cart (well, at least the way the steering worked was similar to a grocery cart).  I successfully backed up the loader (wow), hauled the load to the designated dumpster, raised the "scoop" and dumped it into the dumpster.  I then lowered the scoop, and drove the loader back to the recycling pile.  My driving was about as smooth as Victoria's driving on a stick-shift, but hey, I didn't crash!  It was a blast.

We worked for 4 hours and we didn't still didn't get the entire truck sorted. Still, they were able to get a good idea of what their break-down is.

I have "stay tuned" story that, if it turns out the way we hope, is worthy of a newspaper article.  I will give the Cliff Notes version. We noticed some rolled up posters in the "other paper" dumpster. We sent Craig dumpster diving to pul them out. We unrolled them, and they were some nice posters of whales.  I thought maybe one of the other school teachers would like them. I got home and realized they were signed Wyland posters!  http://www.wyland.com/ I looked on Ebay to see what a signed Wyland poster goes for. There were two listings for such---one with a Buy Now price of $299, and the other for $500!  Wow!  How could would that be if our posters were worth anything near that. I am going to call a Wyland Gallery on Monday and see if we can get a quick estiamte of their value. One is from 1985 and the other from 1990. It would sure be nice to make a few hundred extra bucks to donate to the trip fund. BTW, there were also posters of Bo Derek and the classic Farrah Fawcett poster!   It just goes to show that the old saying is true: "One man's recycling is another man's treasure!"

#36 - Wrestling Tournament

Our visit to Craig's family in Akron, Ohio brought the opportunity for another new experience. Our nephew had an all-day wrestling tournament.  Since we miss most of our nephews' sporting events, we were glad to get the chance to watch him. I must be honest that, while I've never been to a wrestling tournament before, I have seen snippets of wrestling, and I strongly suspected it was not "my thing." 

The tournament pretty much confirmed that! It was great to visit with our family and to watch our nephew in action, but overall I'm really happy that my boys have not expressed an interest in wrestling.  Still, it was a learning opportunity for me. I learned the very basics of scoring; the ref wears one red wristband and one green wristband. Each wrestler is assigned one of those two colors, and they wear their colored band around their ankle. As the wrestlers score points, the ref raises the appropriately-banded hand, with his fingers indicating the number of points earned.  I also learned about the wrestling world's equivalent of a bat boy. I had no idea that this vital position existed at all.  A boy around 8 years old carried what looked sort of like a giant Q-tip. It was a wooden pole about two feet long, with a padded end all wrapped up in duct tape.  When the time of the match was running out, he would run up to the mat and stand behind the ref. He would watch the clock, and as soon as the time ran out, he would tap the ref on the back with the padded end. It let the ref know to signal that the match was over (because he was busy watching the wrestlers and not the clock).

Our nephew was 2-2 for the day. We spent about 2 hours at the tournament, while his mom had the "pleasure" of spending over 9 hours there! That would be just be too much wrestling for me.  Next time I'm freezing my butt off at an autumn football game, I'll remind myself that I could be spending 9 hours in a smelly gymnasium watching wrestling all day!

By the way, adventure number 36 means that I'm 90% done with my adventures.  It looks very promising that I will indeed accomplish all 40 in my birthday year.  However, being this close to completing my goal brings mixed emotions. It is actually quite sad to be wrapping up this project.  I've had such a great time, and I hate to see it end.  I have 3 of my remaining 4 activities identified. Time and weather will determine if all 3 can be accomplished in January.  If anyone has any great ideas for the remaining unidentified adventure, send your idea my way!

#35 - Various New Adventures in New York

It's pretty much impossible to spend time in New York City and NOT experience something new.  But, rather than count multiple new experiences, I'm going to lump them all together as one.  We arrived in New York City on December 20th, and we spent three days in the city before heading up towards West Point to have a couple quiet days for Christmas.  Even the quiet days in the country provided a new experience for me (see below). 

Even though I have visited NYC several times in the past, there is never a shortage of new things to see and do in the Big Apple. Here are some of the new experiences I had, along with my impressions:

• Drove past Carlos' Bakery (of The Cake Boss fame): would have LOVED to go in an sample something, but there was a line that stretched down to the next block.  Christmas is their busiest season, and none of us was in the mood to stand in line in freezing cold weather for hours.
• Ground Zero: very emotional. It is hard not to get overcome by emotion as the images and feelings of that fateful day reply in your mind.  I was also struck by the abundance of construction workers who are hard at work on the new buildings. As a military wife, I am often thanked for our family's service. As I looked at all these workers, I felt that they, too, are serving the country. They are literally rebuilding the hopes, confidence and pride of uncounted Americans as they rebuild Ground Zero.I, for one, appreciate their service to this country. 

• St. Patrick's Cathedral: magnificent, extraordinary, stunning! It reminded me of an old European cathedral. I'm such a sucker for stained glass windows, and these were simply amazing.
• New York Public Library: second in magnificence only to Library of Congress in DC. If you haven't seen either of these libraries, get to one at some point in your life.

• Completed a 2,000 piece puzzle: Yes, of course I have done puzzles before. But, a 2,000 piece puzzle?! No way--never even had the desire to try one.  My sister had been given on as a gift a few years back, and she felt that having 8 bodies in the house for several days posed her best shot at ever completing it.  She was right, although it was pure hell.  It became an obsession, especially since we were working with limited time. If this is the only 2,000 piece puzzle I ever do in my life, I will have done one too many!  Still, it was thrilling to finish that beast.