Ragnar

So a few months ago, my son sent me a message, asking how "not interested" would I be in running on a relay team in the Ragnar New England Trail Relays? Well, I've run on relay teams before, and had a good time, though that was mostly in my youth. I followed the link he sent to see what it was all about. https://www.runragnar.com/event-detail/trail/new_england_ma

For those of you not familiar with the Ragnar "brand," they are best known for road relays. The one I had heard about was from Yale (New Haven, CT) to Harvard (Cambridge, MA). They've organized these races all over the country. The road relays consist of of 12-person teams, require 2 vans for transport, and are run overnight and into the next day. The New England Trail relay is 116 miles with an 8-person team, and is run over 3 different trails, all very hilly, and is also run through the night into the next day. The runners camp out at the site, and each runner runs all 3 trails. Now I have run an overnight relay before. It was the Oahu Perimeter Relay, about 140 miles total, on a 7-person team. Back in 1981; I was in high school. So it's been a while. I would need to up my training, fit in some trails and hills, bump up the mileage, but I thought I could probably do it. And what a challenge! And, of course, a weekend with my son Jeff, whom I don't see very often because he lives in Boulder, CO.

Yes, of course I said I'd do it. Ragnar is a tough one, so I'd also get bragging rights. Luckily, the other team members weren't too worried about speed. I figured I could tough out the hills, but couldn't guarantee pace.

I trained. We planned. I pulled out headlamps and sleeping bags, borrowed some camping mattresses. Found a hotel for the night before the race. I was so ridiculously nervous. Jeff flew into Boston the night before the race started, I picked him up, we battled Boston area traffic, and drove up to the hotel. Neither of us slept well. Then we killed some time the next morning driving around the area before driving up to the camp site.

view from Shelburne Falls hiking trail

obligatory selfie

As we were setting up camp (our illustrious captain, Randy, had brought tents and more camping gear for the group) I got ready to lead off with the first leg that afternoon. That first leg was a bit of a shock for me, even though I knew, theoretically, what I'd be up against. I knew there would be a lot of elevation gain, but the actual running of it, whoo boy, took my breath away. I hung in there, it was the shortest leg, through the mud and the rain, and finished up. At least then I knew, more or less, what I was in for on the rest of the course. I passed off to Jeff. The rest of the team trickled in throughout the rest of the day (only 7, so the 3 hot-shot runners each took an extra leg). It was a bizarre kind of race, with the camping (I didn't sleep much between my legs, though I tried!) and the nighttime running. My second leg was the longest and highest elevation, and at night. I wore a headlamp and carried a second light, which was very helpful. I could focus the second light right down at my feet so I could see the roots and rocks. Running trails in the dark reminded me of the old Mario Kart game called Rainbow Road (I think). All I could see was the small portion of the trail that was lit up right in front of me. It was unlike any race I had run before. I have to admit that I walked a lot of those steep (and not-so-steep) uphill sections. There were even a few downhill sections where the trail was narrow and full of roots and rocks when I had to slow to a walk so I didn't turn an ankle.

My last leg was at dawn; not quite full light at the beginning, but much easier to run in than total darkness. By the end of it all I was feeling every muscle and then some. I had strained my left ankle during my second leg, from all the slippery roots, but not a sprain. I just had to be very careful on the downhill portions of my last leg, to make sure I didn't land badly and cause some damage. My ankle was definitely feeling the strain after the race, but no worse. I iced it for a while after that last leg. We finished the race in under 24 hours, thanks to all our fast runners like Jeff.

Jeff finishing up his last (4th!) leg

Here's the team just after the finish.

The Mountain Goats

Took a few days and a good massage to stop hobbling up and down the stairs, but I survived! I can't help but think that Dad would have been so proud of us, and he'd have wanted to hear all about the race, and he'd have been especially proud of Jeff's speed and the way he tackled those hills.

Can't finish up without a little knitting content. I've been working on an exciting new project that involves some designing, or more specifically, reworking an existing pattern to keep the general shaping but change the gauge and lace pattern.

When Jeff and Julie announced their engagement, I decided I would really like to knit Julie a shawl for the wedding. I had no idea if it was something she would like or not, so I asked her, making sure she knew that my feelings would not be hurt if she just wasn't a shawl kind of person, or it didn't appeal to her. And I think that Julie is an up-front, tell-it-like-it-is kind of person, and would give me her real feelings on the issue. Happily, she liked the idea. We spent a little time when she was visiting in January looking at different shawl styles to figure out what she liked and didn't like. The end result was a Faroese shaped shawl (with shoulder shaping), a bit of lace down the middle back, a little horizontal lace band near the bottom, but not a lot of lace and no big holes. But the very most important part for Julie is the feel of the yarn. That girl has expensive tastes. Cashmere is definitely a favorite, alpaca, silk, anything soft and luxurious.

Finding the right yarn took longer than I expected, but I "forced" myself to persevere, petting lots of different yarns to find just the right one. I finally ended up with a luscious sportweight teal yarn, Shibui Dune, at a new-to-me local yarn store in Old Saybrook called The Knit.

I'm basing the pattern on a free shawlette pattern from Interweave Knits that I had knitted years ago in a heftier worsted weight yarn. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/summer-shawlette-2. I reworked the numbers for the sportweight gauge. After a few false starts and tweaking of the pattern as I went along, I have a beginning, and have charted the lace and written out at least the first half of the pattern. I'm not too far into it, but now that I've worked out the numbers, I think the knitting will go fairly quickly. My goal is to have it finished by the end of July. That gives me a buffer in case something isn't right and I have to reknit part or all of it.

Julie's Wedding Shawl; starting at the back neck and knitting down

I'm really quite happy with it so far, and this yarn is just heaven to knit with. The light green markers are for the shoulder shaping, and the lace is a leafy pattern that continues all down the back of the shawl.

There's one more event I'd like to mention. Jessica graduated from Wellesley in May, on a chilly, rainy day. My Mom, Dan's Aunt Karen, and Jeff flew in for the occasion. We were only missing Jason, who was in the first week of a summer internship and felt it wouldn't be appropriate to ask for time off so early. Jess worked so hard to graduate in 4 years, despite that fact that Wellesley only accepted a percentage of the credits she earned at UMass before she transferred, and she still managed to fit in a semester abroad. I have to admist that Jessica and I set up an Excel spreadsheet in order to figure out how many credits from which source fulfilled different graduation, major, and minor requirements. She is now the proud owner of a Wellesley College Bachelor of Arts!

Happy Graduate

the Graduate, with assorted family members

Jess, my Mom, and me at Wellesley greenhouse: can you tell we're related?

Shelley in CT

Catching Up

I always look forward to the summer as a time to relax a little bit, ease up on the busy schedule, and get a few big projects done. And then it never happens. We always have some type of travel on the schedule, as we have family on both coasts and are usually visiting one side or the other. Now that the kids are older they are taking trips themselves. It feels like we're racing to prepare for a trip, then catching up from the trip after the traveler returns, then starting to prep for the next trip. I keep waiting for the downtime. Sigh!

I have been remiss with the blog, and not written anything since before I went to Germany, in March! I'll never catch up with everything that happened between then and now, so I'll give a brief summary and then pick up current events.

Germany was beautiful but cold and snowy. I'll try to throw in a few pictures in a later blog.

I came home to a construction project that was still not completely done, so I had to pick up the final details of that, some of which took forever. But it's done now and the work is beautiful.

We had a brief visit from dear oldest son for a week and a half  in May, in between finals (and his trip to Costa Rica to visit a "friend") and his internship this summer in Boulder, Colorado.

Dear daughter had a rough time getting through the end of her classes and the very few final exams she had to take, but she made high honors and had a beautiful day for graduation. Great Aunt Karen flew out from California for the occasion and we all celebrated.

The family at Graduation

Great Aunt Karen and the graduate

On to summer vacation, and dear youngest son and his attendance at a Cosplay convention in Hartford, and my construction of his costume. I had promised to sew him the costume for his birthday, last September, and then with all the construction and general busy-ness of life (and the fact that my sewing machine was not easily accessible for many months and had to be "dug out" after all the construction), I put if off until the last minute and had to really scramble to get it done. Sheesh! After yelling at the kids to plan ahead for all these years, you'd think it would have sunk in to my old brain. I had not taken into consideration all the time it takes to construct the patterns, and I always underestimate sewing time. I did manage to finish up, with mere minutes to spare. Whew!

youngest son is in the long red wig and pink vest

The next hoop to jump through was to prepare the very same youngest son for National Flight Academy camp in Pensacola, FL. He applied for and won a scholarship to the program so all we had to do was fly him down. Frequent flier miles came in very handy. Got him all packed up, with name tags sewn in to all of his clothes, and he had a very good time at camp, and got home safely, despite flight delays.

Next in line was preparing dear daughter for a trip to Japan to visit Aya, the exchange student we hosted the previous year. In addition to packing, she had to bring gifts. That's what's expected in Japan, and we didn't want to offend anyone, and we wanted to express our appreciation to Aya and her parents for hosting our daughter. So in addition to buying some American candies to give to the family and any other people dear daughter met out there, we sent along a bottle of our homemade wine, and I sewed some bags.

this bag is made out of my husband's old jeans

patchwork zippered bag

machine embroidered name

cute cat fabric that Aya will like

pencil bag

the whole set

I've made the wide-mouthed zippered bags before, using an online tutorial. Here's the link again:
http://www.noodle-head.com/2012/06/open-wide-zippered-pouch-diy-tutorial.html

I found the tutorial for the pencil bag online too. http://terriesandelin.blogspot.com/2010/07/pencil-case-tutorial.html

I sewed my "an original by Shelley" tag into all of them and hopefully they will enjoy the bags. I had fun picking out fabric to use,  but again, it took longer to sew them all than I had planned on.

Dear daughter has now safely arrived in Japan. Aya met her at the airport and they took a bus back to the house. She said she slept will the first night and with any luck she'll recover from the jet lag fairly quickly. She will be there for 2-1/2 weeks.

Last but not least, we are already starting to prepare for the next trip, out to Denver, CO for my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. That's in just a week and a half, but while there we will be celebrating all the summer and early fall birthdays on that side of the family, 8 of us! So, it's back to the sewing machine to make some more gifts.

Timing is working in our favor for a change, and dear oldest son's internship ends the day before the Bar Mitzvah, so he will be able to join us for the weekend. We'll help him move out of his summer apartment, he'll stay at the hotel with us, and then he'll fly out to visit my parents in Oregon for almost a week before he has to fly back to Texas for school. Dear daughter will be flying home from Japan the same day we fly back from Colorado.

I'm excited that the upcoming travel plans actually include ME this time! I'm not really exciting about the flying, since we are flying out of New York, and it's a 2-hour drive down to that airport without traffic, and summer traffic in this area is horrendous! But once we get there, we'll get to visit with relatives (on my husband's side) from all over the country. Many of them we've only seen recently (in the past few years) at funerals, so I am going to enjoy the much happier occasion. We'll all be staying at the same hotel and I won't have to cook! Woohoo! Hopefully I'll be able to get all the gifts pulled together well ahead of time and the trip will go smoothly.

Well, I think that's more than enough for now. Happy Summer!

Shelley in CT