Up, Up & Away

It was one of those days when I wished I'd stayed in bed. I was late leaving for my morning balloon chase, I turned right when I meant to turn left, I seemed to always be in the wrong lane for making a turn, I found myself in heavy traffic on streets I tried to avoid, and my morning shaped up to be one missed opportunity after another.

On the plus side of the equation, I did remember to bring fresh batteries, all my lenses, hot tea and a cheerful outlook, which made my silly mistakes more bearable. In spite of endless miscalculations, I still managed to find a few places to stop and snap some photos. The first two were taken through the open driver-side window while stopped in traffic.





It always makes me nervous when balloons fly so close to wires...




This balloon was especially colorful!




A smiley face balloon followed me for quite some time this morning. Every time I looked over my shoulder, there it was, grinning at me and serving as a reminder to smile, no matter how woeful things seem.


On my way home I came across a balloonist who had just hit the ground hard and was having trouble controlling her landing. The winds were kicking up, dragging the basket and envelope (the balloon itself) toward a barbed wire fence. I pulled over to help and discovered the pilot was someone I'd met last year. (See How To Launch A Balloon.) We averted a minor disaster and kept the balloon away from the fence. She was obviously unnerved by the whole thing and a tad cranky, which is no surprise. Hoping to soften the tension, I looked for the smiley balloon - already becoming a totem of sorts - but it was nowhere in sight.


All in all, it wasn't a bad morning, despite a rocky start. I've some preparations to make today for our very early morning journey to Balloon Fiesta Park tomorrow morning. At the top of the list is finding my gloves, thermals and winter coat. It's COLD at that hour of the day!

Therapy

Hurricane Norbert, now a Category 3 cyclone, is taking aim at the Baja Peninsula. Computer models take this storm across Baja and into the Gulf of California, making a second landfall in Western Mexico, eventually tracking into New Mexico as, quite possibly, a tropical storm. Leaving Florida does not, evidently, preclude being in the Cone of Possibilities. If Wall Street and dirty politics aren't enough to completely disrupt my equilibrium, the threat of a tropical storm is.

I chased balloons today, which is quickly becoming a therapeutic exercise in forgetting global disturbances. Stocks are plummeting, presidential campaigns are in the gutter, but balloons are rising.

Balloons, Balloons, Balloons

On June 5, 1783, a crowd of people gathered to watch the first balloon, fashioned by the Montgolfier brothers, a pair of French paper makers, rise skyward. It was theorized that smoke would lift the balloon and carry it away. It worked, but no one realized it was heat that made it soar over the French countryside, not smoke. After several more test flights, the Montgolfier Brothers decided to send passengers aloft: a duck, a chicken, and a sheep. Then, on November 21 of the same year, physicist Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and army major Marquis Francois d'Arlandes took flight in a Montgolfier balloon. The flight was seen by nearly all of Paris, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. After 25 magical minutes of flight, they landed safely outside Paris with much celebration.

I hit the road early this morning to watch the Mass Ascension from Balloon Fiesta Park. I managed to snap these photos from a parking lot on Paseo del Norte before my camera battery died. I really need to remember to bring ALL my lenses and a spare battery next time I chase balloons.

2008 Balloon Fiesta

It's that time of year again! Weather was just perfect for launching the 680 balloons that filled Balloon Fiesta Park at dawn. The wind gently blowing to the Northwest, today's chase took us all the way to Bernalillo. We passed hundreds of cars parked along the interstate. Lawn chairs were set up all along roadways, while breakfast burritos were being consumed and thermoses of coffee were passed around. It was a beautiful day for balloons. Tomorrow rain is expected and the mass ascension may be scrapped, so we made an effort today to drag ourselves out of the house a little after 7 to follow the balloons.

9/11: A Remembrance

This slideshow, created by me six years ago, represents my own personal journey in the wake of 9/11. It was, in a sense, my therapy, my way of trying to make sense of the senseless and coming to terms with the realities of war. Many of the images are disturbing. The first half of the video is about shock, violence, and grieving. The message in the second half is hope. May this slideshow and the events of 9/11 serve as a reminder that our lives have value and meaning, that peace is a personal process, and that we are all connected.

Los Poblanos CSA

I recently became a member of our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Los Poblanos. Every Tuesday afternoon I drive to the farm, located less than two miles away, to pick up my share of the weekly harvest. I didn't get a chance to photograph last week's harvest box, but this week I managed to snap a photo before some of it wound up on my dinner plate.


This week's box included potatoes, beets, cheddar cauliflower, red onions (very sweet!), Juliet tomatoes, a bunch of beets, zucchini, parsley, avocadoes, pluots, pears, and roasted "Big Jim" chiles (a medium hot green chile). And, it's all organic. Missing from the photo are the beautiful green peppers. I still have carrots, spinach, lettuce and grapes from last week's harvest box, resting comfortably in Debbie Meyer Green Bags in the fridge.

Tomorrow morning I'm expecting a delivery of a new fridge. The old one still works, but the drawers are flimsy and it's just too small. There will be lots more room for farm goodies in the new fridge.

It's great to be making weekly trips to an organic farm again. Last time I did that was in New Hampshire over five years ago, when I traveled to Center Conway each week to work or pick up my harvest bag at the Earle Family Farm. It's always a surprise to see what's included in the harvest bags, which change from week to week.

Eat organic and eat local. It saves energy and the food is fresher. It's also fun.

Ike, Take A Hike

The Atlantic Basin is busy again. The parade of late summer tropical systems have begun the relentless march from east to west. As I watch storm tracks and spaghetti models change every few hours, I'm reminded of the realities of living in paradise. It's been two years since I left Florida, but with loved ones still on the peninsula, my attention is never far from developing weather that threatens the Sunshine State.


Ike, a dangerous major hurricane spinning in the Caribbean, is shaping up to be a very real threat to not only Florida, but the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and once again, the Gulf states. Today's 5pm forecast put the cyclone in the Gulf by next week, headed for storm-weary New Orleans. But the threat to Florida remains. There is simply no certainty to unpredictable storm tracks. Landfall predictions remain a mystery.

Hurricane amnesia has not yet set in for me. I remember watching, waiting, wondering. I lived for the updates from the National Hurricane Center, posted on the web every six hours. At ten minutes to the hour I'd reload repeatedly until the next update was available. During hurricane season, life was on hold. Do I have everything I'll need in my emergency kit? Will I have enough water? Will we lose power? Will I lose clients if I'm out of commission for a week, or more? Should I evacuate? Where will I go? Will the house be OK if we leave? What about looters? Can I survive the humid summer heat without air conditioning?

I don't ask these questions any more, but I worry about friends and family in Florida. I listen to them asking the same questions. There's little I can do to alleviate their anxiety. It's the waiting that's hardest. At least I don't sleep with my computer anymore, waking in the middle of the night to check updates. It's no way to live.

Ike, take a hike.

My New Bicycle

Six weeks ago I bought a bicycle at Fat Tire Cycles. I've been wanting a new bike ever since I sold my inexpensive 3-speed Spaulding with longhorn handlebars and a springy seat large enough to support a baby rhino. It was pretty, but it weighed a ton, produced random vibrations, and generated strange clunking noises that I traced to the pedals. I couldn't get rid of that bike fast enough, but I did put a few miles on it before someone took it off my hands for next to nothing before we left Florida.

My new bike is an Electra Townie, a cruising bike that uses Electra's Flat Foot Technology.

"Simply put, when the rider is sitting on the saddle, his or her feet can still stand flat on the ground, making the rider feel much safer and more comfortable. At the same time, riders can still get full extension when they pedal. [Electra Bicycles] achieved this breakthrough by combining the cruiser frame with some of the geometry of recumbent bikes, moving the pedals forward and the seat back."

The Townie seems to be the bike of choice for lapsed bike riders and (ahem) "older Americans." The price of this beauty was four times that of the electric blue Spaulding, including the high-tech removable basket and the very cool bell that says, "I love my townie."




The French racer I purchased in 1977 set me back $225 - an unheard of amount to spend on a bike, but I never regretted my extravagance. It took months to pay off, and I logged thousands of miles on that 12-speed. By today's standards, the Townie is not an expensive bike, but the price still took my breath away. Some of the bicycles at Fat Tire cost well over $1,000.

Back in the day when I was trim and fit, I biked about 100 miles a week. Weekends were saved for 30 mile bike rides. I crammed my backpack with raw vegetables (tomatoes, carrots, cukes and peppers were my favorites), fruit, a hunk of cheese, crusty bread, and sometimes even a can of Spam that inexplicably became the salty power snack of choice for a 20-something wannabe Olympian. I didn't carry much water, because it was easy to stop for frosty beverages along my route in and around Boston. Ice cold water and apple juice from Mom & Pop corner stores carried me for many miles.

While I've no expectation of biking 30 miles anytime soon, I'm hoping to build my stamina on a daily basis and strengthen muscles and bones. Mostly, though, I hope biking will mitigate my pain, elevate my mood, burn off some flab and energize this too-soft, sedentary body. Albuquerque is honeycombed with wonderful bike trails, especially the nearby paved trail that parallels the Riverside Drain and Rio Grande for many miles.

My beautiful shiny bike has been parked in the fireplace room for the past 6 weeks. My excuse for not riding has been excessive desert heat, but in all honesty, overcoming inertia has been the bigger obstacle. Yesterday morning was exceptionally cool for August, so I got up early and biked to a Chile Festival a couple of miles away. After two blocks of gentle pedaling, my legs burned enough to prompt me to question the wisdom of this possibly overzealous undertaking. It was shocking to realize how miserably weak and out-of-shape I've become. I found a more comfortable cruising speed (the hard part was determining which of 21 gears to use), pushed through the initial discomfort, and made it to the Chile Festival in about 15 minutes. I felt healthy and happy after my brief excursion on two wheels.

The weather seems to be turning cooler already, so I have no excuse for not riding every day, other than sheer laziness. I have to say, this bike is one sweet ride. The gear shifter is smooth as silk and the forward pedal position is very comfortable and less of a strain on my back. It's the next best thing to a far-more-costly recumbent bike. Though it seems a little early for mornings to feel like fall, I won't complain about the cool weather because it's perfect for biking. And, I get to annoy pedestrians with my silver bell. All I need now is a funny hat and a little dog to ride in my basket.

Exploding Food and Other Dangers

Yesterday was one of those days. I woke up feeling less than perfect and for most of the day felt like crawling back into bed. General malaise is my enemy, especially on days when deadlines loom hourly. Hunger set in at 1PM and, in spite of a 1:45 deadline, I raced to the kitchen, opened a box of tomato soup, filled a mug and set it on the revolving glass tray in the microwave. I rarely use the microwave, because of decades-old health warnings, but at times like this, I'm grateful for a quick warming device to facilitate accelerated consumption of food on the fly. Since I generally nuke my soup uncovered, there are the occasional spatterings on the inside walls of the oven. This time, however, I covered the mug with a saucer because I didn't have time to clean up spills.

The intensity of the soup explosion was surpassed only by the spillage. It was a mess of Biblical proportions. The soup was embedded in all the corners, cracks, crevices and tiny vent holes on the walls of the oven. It filled the glass tray and spilled over the sides. This was the mother of all microwave messes. When I opened the oven, the red mucilagenous substance oozed out the door like molten lava, quickly finding its way to the floor. It seemed to have a life of its own.

The thing about thick soup is that it's neither liquid nor solid. Paper towels were useless. After 23 trips back and forth between oven and sink, to rinse sponges, dishcloths, and towels, the nuker was beginning to look salvageable. There was a moment when I thought I'd simply have to trash it. And after all that, I was hungrier than ever.

It was three-quarters of the way through clean-up that I was reminded of the reasons I don't use this thing often. Though spillage was not one of them, in the present moment it topped the list. Then I recalled that microwaving alters the molecular structure of food. There is also evidence that it destroys nutrients and, over time, compromises one's immune system. Over 90% of American homes have microwaves that are used daily in food preparation.

Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, at 3(2): 43, states:

A basic hypothesis of natural medicine states that the introduction into the human body of molecules and energies, to which it is not accustomed, is much more likely to cause harm than good. Microwaved food contains both molecules and energies not present in food cooked in the way humans have been cooking food since the discovery of fire. Microwave energy from the sun and other stars is direct current based. Artificially produced microwaves, including those in ovens, are produced from alternating current and force a billion or more polarity reversals per second in every food molecule they hit. Production of unnatural molecules is inevitable. Naturally occurring amino acids have been observed to undergo isomeric changes (changes in shape morphing) as well as transformation into toxic forms, under the impact of microwaves produced in ovens.

One short-term study found significant and disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwaved milk and vegetables. Eight volunteers ate various combinations of the same foods cooked different ways. All foods that were processed through the microwave ovens caused changes in the blood of the volunteers. Hemoglobin levels decreased and over all white cell levels and cholesterol levels increased. Lymphocytes decreased.

Luminescent (light-emitting) bacteria were employed to detect energetic changes in the blood. Significant increases were found in the luminescence of these bacteria when exposed to blood serum obtained after the consumption of microwaved food.

After reading the above I considered putting the microwave in the trash anyway, even though the spill was cleaned up. And then I came across this:

Ten Reasons to Throw out your Microwave Oven

From the conclusions of the Swiss, Russian and German scientific clinical studies, we can no longer ignore the microwave oven sitting in our kitchens. Based on this research, we conclude the following:

1. Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term - permanent - brain damage by "shorting out" electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].

2. The human body cannot metabolize [break down] the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.

3. Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.

4. The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.

5. Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.

6. The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.

7. Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths [tumors]. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America.

8. The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.

9. Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.

10. Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.

Googling "dangers of microwave" returned 642,000 hits this morning. Much of the evidence is anecdotal, but there seems to be some solid scientific reason for not using microwave ovens, much of it from outside the U.S. It took a cup of exploding soup to remind me that the white appliance sitting on a cart in the corner of my kitchen just might be a weapon of mass destruction. The jury is still out on whether or not I will deep six the nuker. Should I ceremoniously retire the thing, there will be photos.

Hello Dolly

The remnants of Hurricane Dolly made their way to New Mexico on Sunday, devastating the town of Ruidoso with flash flooding sparked by six inches of rain in 24 hours. New Mexico Business Journal reports that most of the town was unaffected by floods, but other sources report 200 homes either damaged or destroyed, one person dead, 13 bridges washed out, and 70 people stranded in Upper Canyon.



Though the Ruidoso flood topped New Mexico's news for several days, there was little national coverage, which I attribute to a world so caught up in the parade of climate change catastrophes that we become jaded to these events. There is no doubt that recent midwest floods eclipse the Ruidoso flood, but I was baffled that national coverage was so dismal. I am also coming to realize that important New Mexico news is often neglected in the non-local media, as if the state isn't even part of the U.S. Sometimes I feel like I live in a third world country within U.S. borders - a country often neglected and ignored. I try not to take this personally.

While Ruidoso was being pummeled, Dolly was kinder to northern New Mexico. Storm clouds and heavy rain moved in on Sunday afternoon. An hour later the sky cleared. At sunset we went for a walk along the ridge. It's always nice to be outdoors after rain scrubs the air clean, but the sticky clay that adhered to the soles of my hiking shoes was another story. As it quickly built up, the clay added two inches to my height. Now I know what it's like to hike in platform shoes.

Monday morning we rose early, packed up, checked out, and drove to the lake for one last dog swim. Tired and happy, the damp dogs settled on their futon in the back of the minivan for the ride home.

On our way out, we stopped at the Heron Lake Dam for dramatic vistas of the silt-laden, cocoa-colored Rio Chama.


As we approached Highway 84, which would take us all the way to Santa Fe, the steep cliffs of Brazos Peak, at 11,286 feet, loomed in the distance.


Just north of Abiquiu we marveled at the multicolored sandstone formations that whispered, "Georgia O'Keeffe country."





We stopped for a picnic lunch at Echo Amphitheater, a magnificent natural sandstone formation that causes people to make weird sounds and speak strange words just to hear them echo. Telly's shrill, loud bark echoed nicely.









After lunch we drove a few miles further to Ghost Ranch, where we took in more breathtaking scenery and considered the dinosaurs that once roamed the area and the geologic significance of the ground on which we stood. Ghost Ranch was bequeathed to the Presbyterian Church a number of years ago and now serves as a non-denominational conference center that hosts retreats. (This week the Center is hosting a conference on peacemaking and non-violent communication, in an astonishingly beautiful setting.)





Heading south, Cerro Pedernal, a 9,862 foot flat-topped butte in the northern Jemez Mountains and the subject of a famous Georgia O'Keeffe painting dominated the distant horizon. Pedernal means "flint" in Spanish. Ancient Puebloans living nearby used Pedernal’s agate and stone for arrowheads, scrapers, knives, and spearpoints. Today Cerro Pedernal is one of the most recognized landmarks in north-central New Mexico.


Several hours later we were back in Albuquerque, where the temperature was close to 100, mountain breezes but a distant memory. This is the hottest time of high desert Albuquerque summer. Our inadequate, too-small swamp cooler is working hard, but the load is great at this time of year. So we sweat and remember happy, cooler times at El Vado.