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Thursday, May 22, 2008

PICTURES OF SARAH, one day old

My husband Steve was hooting like an owl. Sarah was trying to figure out what this new grown-up trick was.



Sarah with her mommy -- our daughter-in-law Jamie.



And with Daddy, our son Jon.


Jon's hand with Sarah's.

posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 6:13 PM  8 comments links to this post

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

SARAH BRECKEN HAMILTON

Our son Jon and his wife Jamie welcomed their second daughter into the world Monday, May 19, 2008, at 2:52a.m.
Happy parents and new daughter, a mere 2-1/2 hours after Jamie started labor!! Sarah weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces, and was 20 inches long.



When I first held her, the next day, I started crying and kept saying to her, "Is it really you???"




Grandma and her newest granddaughter.





Every girl loves our son Jon, especially when he's her daddy.




In the late afternoon, Abbie came in, brought after school by her Grandma Judy, and I got to hold my two youngest granddaughters together.
Abbie is an "old hand" at being a big sister in this picture, having been the first family member to hold her after Mommy and Daddy the day before.

Abbie chose Sarah's first name, insisting from the moment she knew there was a baby that it was Sarah. She would not entertain the possibility that it might be a boy or that there could be any other name for her. Jon found her middle name. It's Scottish (like the Hamilton ancestry) and means "freckled."

So we now have 4 grandchildren: Collin, 12; Gracie (Grayson), 9; Abbie, 5; and Sarah, now not quite 48 hours old. Then there's Hevan(pronounced ay-vahn): he's the 5-month-old son of Cecile, who came to us as an exchange student from France in 1997 and instantly became our daughter. That makes her husband Joachim our son-in-law, and their son Hevan our grandson.

Sarah. I'm never going to let you go -- I want to hold you in my arms forever. I get to see you every week or two until Christmas. Whatever made me think I might rather have been hiking?

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posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 10:37 PM  3 comments links to this post

Sunday, May 11, 2008

I ALMOST WISH I WEREN'T DOING THIS

SavageMan, that is.


Last summer, in New Hampshire, I put almost all running and biking on hold to hike in the White Mountains, reinvented myself as a backpacker, and my life changed.

I need to keep reminding myself that I have been drooling to do SavageMan since it was first conceived (not even born yet) in 2006. Had it not been for granddaughter Sarah (who is still waiting in the wings, yet to make her appearance), I'd be on the Trail now, but missing out on SavageMan yet again, and also without my friend Sally, who had decided she wouldn't be able to go but has now changed her mind and is preparing to go with me next year. So it's working out that I'm getting the best of everything.


Now, living again near the Appalachian Trail (northern Virginia,) I've got all this biking and running to do when I'd rather be backpacking. Sally is out on a shakedown trip for the weekend with her son, complete with brand-new down sleeping bag.


I couldn't go, not because of training, but because of work. Weekends are, of course, the busiest part of working at a campground. And so far, I haven't been scheduled to have 2 consecutive days off, so I couldn't do an overnight anyway, and biking/running is something I can fit in around my work hours, even the split shifts I have 3 days a week.


So, I have an agenda:
  • Discuss my schedule to get a midweek "weekend."
  • Take an occasional break from training to go backpacking.
  • Remember this is the Year of SavageMan, not the Year of the AT.
  • Go to Harper's Ferry, WV, about 30 miles from here, to the AT Headquarters, to get info and get psyched (as if I'm not already.)
  • After SavageMan, start hitting the Trail -- we'll be here till Christmas!

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posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 8:24 AM  4 comments links to this post

Saturday, May 03, 2008

DON'T STOP TO SMELL THE APPLE BLOSSOMS

APPLE BLOSSOM 10K, WINCHESTER, VA

This is the escort vehicle.... cool, huh?


I had neither expected nor trained for a 10K, but when we arrived 3 days ago at Candy Hill Campground, my employer/young friend presented me with a registration form, all excited and happy: "I got you this, it's a great big 10K and it's Saturday!" So I said, "Great, I'd love to run it, if I can start cleaning the bathrooms a little late that day...."


It was huge. 1000+ runners. The winners were from Kenya and Ethiopia. I've never seen such a big 10K. Here's the starting field, from the back of the pack, but you can't appreciate how many runners there are since it's flat.


It was a 4-lane street, and when the race director asked people who expected 50+ minutes to move to the left lanes, there was this mass migration:













I ran my first mile in 11:05, which was good, since I wasn't trained and planned on taking it easy the first couple miles. Second mile split showed 18:XX on my watch, GACKKKK, I didn't think I'd speeded up THAT much, that's gonna kill me right there. Slow down, kiddo. You're not trained. And you're kicking sleeping pills and didn't sleep last night. And you have a cold. You've run marathons and done Ironman's but you haven't run a 10K in 5 years. Slow down.


5K time: 30:xx by the clock. Jee-minetty, I did a 7:xx second mile and a 12:xx third? This is nuts.


Later I realized, the clocks did not, of course, match my watch/chip times. Watch times:


Mile 1: 9:23

Mile 2: 9:07

5K: 29:08



But I was looking at the clocks, not at my watch, so I was confused and didn't realize what a nice pace I was running, being tired and untrained and all.

Either there was no 4-mile marker or I missed it. At mile 5, I was at 50:26 (watch time.)


Somewhere between miles 3 and 4, I stopped to take this picture, since I wasn't trying for a time or an AG place.



It cost me a few seconds, but so what?


"So what?" turned out to be, it cost me a sub-1-hour 10K. My watch time at the finish was 1:00:12. And it's not even that exciting a picture. I should have left my camera in my pocket. Or in the car.


AG 4/6 (awards only 3 deep though), average pace 9:58. Not bad at all. But I'm not taking a camera during a race anymore. That sub-1-hour would have been very gratifying.


OTOH, it would have raised the dreaded question: What could I do if I trained????

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posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 1:24 PM  4 comments links to this post

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

UNCLE


Sleeping in the tent again last night, my face was cold. With my fleece sleeping bag liner and extra clothes, last night (32*F) I was no longer cozy but not freezing. I had a hat, since my bag doesn't have a hood; my head was warm enough but my face was cold and that made me miserable. Well, no hiker leaves home without a bandana, so MacGyver strikes again with a redneck ski mask. Hey, it worked.


I didn't have my camera in the tent, which is why the background looks so well-furnished -- I took the pic in the camper. (It's a Lance Armstrong Livestrong bandana; the flash washed out the print.)


So last night, night #4 in the tent, each one progressively colder -- it starts raining again (Tyvek rainfly worked great) in the middle of the night, then changes to snow. And I'm still challenging my 40* sleeping bag to keep up with the chill, even though I was cold in it at 50* and have done more things each night to make it work, hoping not to have to buy another sleeping bag.


I think I'm gonna need a bigger boat. That is, a warmer sleeping bag. On the AT in early spring and again in fall, you can expect twenties and teens (or not, but you have to be prepared.) This backyard-camping gig was an experiment to see how I could deal with rain, and how low I could go in my current bag. The bag didn't meet the Garrett County Spring Snow Challenge, so the experiment is finished. I fixed leaks, drips, and solved a variety of problems, but I am not adequately supplied for sleeping at 30 degrees with 98% humidity. Today I took down the tent and tonight I'm sleeping with my husband in the camper.


I'm not giving up on hiking in cold weather in early spring and late fall. I'm just gonna need a 3-season sleeping bag. The one I've been trying to jury-rig for cold weather is a summer bag Steve got for a bike trip a few years ago. I try to make do with what I have, and a lot of my workable gear is homemade and/or put together out of spare parts. But I'm gonna have to get a warmer bag. At least my face will never be cold.

posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 10:13 PM  2 comments links to this post

Monday, April 28, 2008

LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE

Well, 3 nights into my backyard camping expedition, I'm learning so fast my IQ just might be going back up. (Blonde, senior, working all winter with toddlers, I've been losing ground.)


I LOVE that fleece sleeping-bag liner I made. I have been so cozily warm and toasty I didn't want to get up. And for some reason, despite being so warm as to be aware of being warm, not a single night-time hot flash since I've been sleeping outside.


Last night it rained all night. Today all morning, too. It sounded lovely on the tent and I slept beautifully.


However, I have drips, leaks, and a wet tent floor.


Drips and leaks: I'm not sure why this is happening, except that the ties to my rainfly slip a little causing it to loosen. It works like an umbrella, only shedding rain if it's taut. I re-adjusted the ties and secured them better.


Then I made a second rainfly out of an extra piece of Tyvek I have.










The Tyvek sheet doesn't have any grommets or loops to attach guylines to, so I did this:




A little ball of tin-foil, rolled till smooth, wrapped with a rubber band, gives the guyline something to hold onto. Yes, MacGyver here had these little tin-foil balls in her emergency kit, having thought of it all by herself. And the rubber bands. Just for such an eventuality. None of it weighs anything in my pack. MacGyver also had extra tent stakes, although they do add a little weight.

Then I staked out the "optional" rainfly guyouts, intended for windy conditions which I did not have, but I guess I need them in rain, too.



Mind you, I am doing all this in the rain. Because I need to learn how to set up and/or fix problems when it's raining.


Wet floor: this is because part of my Tyvek groundcloth was peeking out from under my tent, and rain falling on that ran in under and pooled, just like all the literature, info and intel say it will. I knew this. I had been careful setting up the tent squarely over the groundcloth. But yesterday, when I noticed some sidewall-slacking, I readjusted the stakeout positions, which caused the tent to move off the groundcloth a little, and I was CARELESS and didn't notice and now I was paying for it.


I debated which would be easier:
  • Pull out the groundcloth, dry it, and move the tent over it,
  • Or pull it out, dry it, and shove it back underneath the loaded tent.

I went for the second. It was a hassle. But I got that done and trust me, NO part of that groundcloth is peeking out now.

The final step: at the end where the running-under was happening, I scraped a little drainage trench. Now, in the wilderness, this would violate the Leave No Trace commitment. But here in the State Park, where tents and campers are only allowed to situate on gravel camping pads, it doesn't matter. I'll scuff it back up and no one will ever see it was there.



The advantage of doing all this in the backyard is that I can go into the camper and get what I need. Like a towel. To dry my wet floor. Which meant moving everything, including my sleeping pad and all my accumulated gear.

My sleeping bag had some damp places where it had been dripped on. This is not a disaster; it's one advantage of synthetic fill over down: it maintains its insulating ability even when wet. So does fleece, although my bag liner was still dry anyway.


The night before last, I was toasty warm with my fleece liner, but my head was cold, and when I ducked it under my bag, I couldn't breathe. Yesterday I messed around with it and found there's enough extra length to pull up over my head and make a hood using the drawstring, although it's not a "mummy" bag. So I did that last night but, the bag not being made for that, it was uncomfortable and I ended up tying my sweater over my head like a bandana.


Tonight I'm wearing a knit hat.











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posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 1:03 PM  4 comments links to this post

Sunday, April 27, 2008

BEAR ON MEADOW MOUNTAIN!!



Our son Jon went running with me on the same Meadow Mountain Trail that I hiked the other day.




Hoo boy, first bear-sighting of the season!! I knew I was right to hang my food while camping out!


Yup, that's a real bear, and yup, we saw him on today's run, and yup, luckily I had my camera in my pocket.


SavageMan triathletes..... this is the trail section of the course. That's why we ran it today -- I wanted to run the SavageMan course. The International Distance tri goes once around the loop, the half-iron distance, twice.


Holly -- Bear alert on SavageMan course!! :-)


BTW, he moved away from the trail, looked at us for maybe half a minute, then turned and trotted away up the mountain.


Jon's GPS only showed a total of 5.7 miles, but it may have done some as-the-crow-flies averaging since Jon had it in his pocket. It showed 65 minutes for that distance, but we walked the roughest uphill sections. Rough = both difficult grade and difficult surface, rough and rocky. But only for maybe half a mile. Most of it is fairly smooth woodland hiking trail, much of it is a gravel road downhill, and the last mile or so paved.


Jon is the child of ours who's waiting for his second daughter, Sarah, to be born any time. I wish she'd be born today.... it's Steve's birthday. It's 8pm now but what the heck, it's a second birth, it could go down in 4 hours or less....c'mon, Jamie, have that baby!

posted by Ellie Hamilton @ 7:37 PM  2 comments links to this post

 

Racing with Journey February 2007