More Better Bikes

We had a photo shoot at last week's meeting after the kids fixed some bikes. Better Bikes is a project that we are starting within TAASC.

We are focusing on community service through offering great bicycles to those who cannot afford them in Asheville.

Here are the three steps to the Better Bikes Project:

1. TAASC students find old, but fixable bicycles (from home, from friends or neighbors, etc…)
2. Each works on his or her own bike project, learning how to fix it up
3. We help students match their bicycles with someone in the community who needs a good bike and cannot afford one.

In addition, the older kids are going to partner with other bicycle advocacy programs in Asheville to do an additional project such as making a documentary.

September Photos

Some bike maintenance.

Some Connor-love.

(Relatives: I'll send you some more photos. I didn't want to have the whole world seeing our family's rendition of Jon Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer.")

A couple of wedding (yes, that one IS in a Howard Johnson).

This is our small airport. It is quite different from the one in Newark, NJ. I took this picture because I was sitting on the curb while waiting for Roomie, and thought about how I'd be run over if I did that in New Jersey. Sass made fun of those sunglasses, but I wasn't being ironic by wearing them. I think that they are rad, really.

Overheard Tent Talk

When students are in tents or tarps, they seem to think that no one else can hear their conversations. Because of the rain and wind on last weekend's TAASC trip, we went into our tents shortly after dinner. Here's part of a conversation I overheard:

Players: S and B, 12-year old girls
Setting: Rain, wind, sleeping bags, etc at a campsite near Table Rock
Prior conversation to this: Included musings about the ages of their parents and the age difference between B's mom and dad, "It'd be like us dating a kindergartner!"


S: Oh my gosh, you know what I just realized?

B: What?

S: You have a brother and two sisters. There are four of you!

B: So?

S: That means that your parents did it four times!

B: Gross!

Lyssie and Tex and Caves and French Toast

I woke up at 5am this morning to see Alyssa and Tex off. Roomie always gets up at this time (and when we looked out the window, Neighbors were up, as usual, too). I never knew how happening this time of the morning could be, and I am contemplating doing it again sometime.

Roomie, Tucker, and I will miss their quips, their insights, their humor, and their dog treats.

Soon after they left, I went to Evergreen Community Charter School to take a fourth grade class on a caving exploration trip in Tennessee. Details about this trip and yesterday's adventure will follow in a later post...

From there, we zoomed over to another school to run a TAASC meeting. The kids made French Toast (or as called in certain circles, "Freedom Toast;" does anyone say "freedom" fries, toast, kiss, braid anymore?). While some of their creations looked mutilated, the TAASC students seemed to enjoy the cinnamonny delight. As an extra touch, Greg and I added a swiggle of maple syrup on their individual pieces of toast, which they brought to us in their hands.

While that last sentence wasn't super clear, I would like to make one point and one tangent stemming from it:

1. A swiggle is a technical term for just a smigen. To all of our parents: I have no idea why your children were hyper when they got home. To the parent who is a pediatric dentist: we brushed our teeth immediately after licking the syrup off of our sticky fingers.

2. This french toast was easily handled in their hands, but I'll never forget a student who lost her bowl on a longer TAASC trip and wanted us to serve steamy mac and cheese in her hands. She stood on line with her cupped hands extended. When we gave her a cooking pot to use as a bowl, she still protested, "It's fine... I don't need it... just serve the mac n'cheese in my palms."

From there:
* home for a run with Tucker to lose the restaurant/dog treat pudge;
* a walk with Roomie to scope out the neighbors;
* a drink with a lovely lady (and then a lovely gentleman, too) to debrief the week;
* an email check to see that no one loves me;
* a blog comment check to feel just a smigen
(swiggle would not work in this case, by the way) better;
* a time sitting and staring at the screen to think of a response
or a comment to add to others' blogs;
* a time sitting and staring at the comments that others posted
on my blog to try to think of a response to their responses;
* some more time staring as one gets super sleepy.

Then, I began this blog entry, just for Rebekka (who can pay me back with free science-like advice when she finishes her dissertation and has a dr. in front of her name) and I stared at the screen some more.

I didn't come up with a comment for tinytim or stupidmommy or even a response to a comment on this blog.

Nothing. Staring.



OH! Here's one: Deb commented about thinking 12:52 referenced a Biblical passage. It doesn't in this instance, but when I googled 12:52, the first website was about a restaurant in Germany, I think (ah, the power of deduction and photographs).

The second one was about Luke 12:52; I skipped the 'merican Bible interpretation and went straight to the King James, you know, so as not to die...

The third entry was about Isaiah 51 and looked like this:
א שִׁמְעוּ אֵלַי רֹדְפֵי צֶדֶק, מְבַקְשֵׁי יְהוָה; הַבִּיטוּ אֶל-צוּר חֻצַּבְתֶּם, וְאֶל-מַקֶּבֶת בּוֹר נֻקַּרְתֶּם.

Okay. That's the best I could do for now. I'm falling asleep.

Finding the Lord... Calvert

On my last post, Lyssie suggested that the Lord Calvert might offer clarity plus a little bit more... (see comments, she's one funny gal).


It reminded me of our older TAASC group's caving trip. While we were in the cave, in addition to entertaining me, one of the students found an empty bottle of whiskey. (It wasn't actually the Lord Calvert, but was something like "ol' twelve o'clock.")

In order to practice proper leave-no-trace ethics (and to make jokes about taking swigs from it), this student packed out the bottle and threw it away when we returned to the school.



The night before our trip, the 8th grade class had a dance at that school, and I guess some of the kids were a little crazy. The administration thought they had the answer when they emptied the garbage can in the boys' bathroom and found the empty whiskey bottle.

The class was interrogated one by one. Finally, when our student was called into the principal's office, he said, "OH, that bottle of whiskey?! That wasn't from the dance. It was from our TAASC trip."

The principal never called us about it, but we had a slew of 14 year olds call to inquire about joining TAASC after this confession. Hah.

Movie Time

Scene: TAASC bus after a blustery and snowy hike. Frozen fingers. Glad to be sitting in shelter of bus. Starting to drive to town to the original TAASC club's climbing gym where we were going to spend the night.

Players: KD, TAASC members (including "J" a funny, tall, and creative boy who is in high school)

KD: Hey, we can get a movie to watch tonight. They have a VCR!

(Without hesitation)
J: Ooooh, can we get The Notebook?

I was the only one who laughed. But I laughed hard.

*By the way, we watched Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

overheard

When: On the way to our caving trip
Where: TAASC bus, seat behind me
Who: Two ten year old boys

Z: You know, before the Civil War, this slave was hiding out and trying to get North. He found this cave that went like 1500 feet straight down and--

A: Well, how did he get into it if it were that steep?

Z: He climbed down. He was hiding. Anyway, he found this whole group of Indians down there who had been living there for as long as they could remember.

A: Whoa. How did they get down there?

Z: They didn't know. They didn't even know they were in a cave that went somewhere else. I think that one guy moved his family there and then they raised all these other people through time. They ate like, things in the cave.

A: Like what?

Z: Mushrooms, and little things that were in there. And the guy didn't go out of the cave. He learned their language and lived with them.

A: Well how do people know about it if he never came up?

Z: He did actually come up just one time. It was a long time and the Civil War had happened already and he followed the cave up. But someone built a church the field that the cave opening was in. So he came up, but then had to knock on the floor of the church! When he got out, people were screaming. And all he said was, "Hi," and then he went back into the hole. And they were so shocked.

A: What was he wearing? The same clothes from when he went in?

Z: No. He was wearing fur because that's what these cave people made their clothes out of. They just had little dead animal fur in there.

A: Really?

Z: Yep. I read it in a book.




Now, while I think I read this story when I was 10-ish as well and was equally as mystified, I think that Z took some liberties with the details in order to be able to answer his friend's questions. It was like having a Wikipedia expert in the bus.

Rescue me.

Here are some photos from the last few days. We are practicing first aid/evacuation techniques in TAASC. I asked the kids to be purposely blurry so that I could post them on my blog. One does show some faces, but I love the perspective and how Connor (our canine friend) is on the picnic table. That is pretty normal.

It's been an interesting week so far.

I flew through the air during a run and landed on my face and knee (below... it looks and feels a lot worse...);

Check out the moon boots in the photo. They are one of the best gifts ever. Notice that I'm talking on the phone in the one below and wearing leisure wear.the kiddos carried some litters with small and large people;

They are tootsie rolling someone through a tight space between two tight trees above...

While doing the litter carries, some students weren't listening to their peer leader. In frustration, she said, could you PLEASE pass this litter through the trees? One 8-year old responded, "Could you PLEASE not micromanage us?"

Other things aren't so easily captured by my little camera:

the lunar eclipse crept clay red like cave dirt; I reminded myself that I am content when alone; I blatantly lied; I joined the economics club's stock trading contest (mostly as an experiment); I commiserated with a close friend who is feeling frozen in a couple of ways; I felt nostalgic then realistic and hopeful then skeptical; the daffodils peeked out only to freeze back into the earth. Tonight I feel like tucking into heavy covers.

Munchkins

One of our TAASC students named the group of 8-year old boys, "the munchkins." They have a similar size and tone of voice to those of the Wizard of Oz Munchkins, but they are a bit more spastic.

Four of them scrunch into a 2 person tent; three sleep in a row and one sleeps at their feet. Very cute. They are like puppies wrestling when they tackle each other and the older kids. We are training these puppies to sit and listen when necessary, and they are training us to be crazier when running around and playing.

We camped on an island on a fall canoeing trip to Lake James. Here's a photo of the kids waiting for "seconds" of mac n cheese. I pretended they were orphans in Oliver Twist when they lined up for more food, and insisted that they say, "Please sir, may I have some more?" to Greg. I told them, "Look sad and hungry for the picture!" Here's the result:
Sad, but you can do better.

Before dinner, though, the kids ran around the beach, caught guppies, swam, and set up tents. At some point during this fun, a mop-like dog who was camping with his family on the other side of the island came over to visit. The munchkins darted around with this dog and yelled things like, "Hey Johnny! Look at this!" while trying to impress each other with stunts.

At one point, the "Hey Johnny!" turned into, "Hey Katie! Look at this!" As I turned, he added, "Katie, look how this dog LOVES us! It's hugging my leg!" Of course, the "gg" in "hugging" should be replaced with an "m" and a "p." I chased the dog off of the munchkin and said to him, "Hey, don't let that dog hug your leg anymore."

Here are a couple of other pictures from the trip:

Leaves Be Gone

Lowlights and highlights from our road clean-up day with Morganton TAASC:

*The 16 year old "project manager" saying to a 12 year old, "Do you think you're too pretty to work? I beg to differ."

*One of the older high school kids eating the best things out of one of our 8th grader's lunch.

*Finishing the entire project.

*Spending the day outside after a night of camping in chilly air.

*Talking with Freya, who is one of my favorite Asheville TAASC kids.

She is spunky, honest, and thoughtful; I enjoyed hearing about the Key School students at the Carolina Day School being drilled in Scrabble; her dogs, cats, and brothers; and her love of backpacking.

* Seeing our quirky/kind/slightly lazy kids around the cliquey/macho/cool Morganton kids.

* Finally, meeting a little kid who is called "Subway" because, in his words, "My dad owns all of the Subway restaurants in Burke County!"

Pato

We have a TAASC trip tomorrow (working with the Morganton "old school" kids) cleaning out ditches in the national forest and camping. The founder of TAASC (who is "old school" himself) suggested tools for our 12-15 year olds to bring such as rakes and leaf blowers with ear protection. I told them about the trip and gear list at our weekly meeting tonight.

One of them gasped, "You mean we get to bring power tools?"

I think I replied something like, "We can do that when we go on trips with the Morganton kids."

(I'm trying to get them to like those other kids before we even meet, obviously to prevent gang wars between Asheville and Morganton.)

**Sidenote that will hopefully make sense a bit later: Pato means duck in Spanish. When I was studying in Venezuela, my nine-year old host sister made me some pictures of different animals. I think she thought that I needed all of the help I could get. Below is the pato picture. She put a pata (girl duck) on there, too. She signed the top, Alice Rojas, but it's a bit hard to see.

I think conejo, which means rabbit, could also be a bad word if you call someone it. I don't know if pato is also a bad word, but I think it should mean something like wimp or wuss.***

If so, when those sweet TAASC kids asked about the power tools (or when they complain about minor discomfort), I'd add, "Don't be such patos! What will the Morganton kids think?" A little cool kid peer pressure is great. I read it in some education textbook somewhere.

Later in that meeting, we started watching Touching the Void. As we were talking about crampons, ice axes, and summiting "alpine style" throughout the movie, I asked some of them if they'd like to do a mountaineering trip. They replied, "Do you see how cold that is?!" As if to say, "Why would we do that when we can sit here and watch a movie about it?" Ahh, the fine art of armchair mountaineering. Be careful of the altitude sickness, patos.

This movie is rated R for the language. Don't worry, parents, I sat with my hand on the mute buttom for when one of the climbers falls and his leg snaps. He drops the f-bomb a lot. But really, parents, would you be screaming, "Dang! Ouch!" if the bottom part of your leg rammed up into the top part?

When the kids saw the rating, one of them asked, "Are you allowed to show us this?"

I replied, "Whateva, I do what I want." As long as they don't tell their folks about it...

I'm a pato, too.

Here are some more of my host sister's pictures. The conejo isn't the bad conejo. Sapo, which means toad, is on the same picture with the girl and boy frogs. I think sapo should mean sucker... like someone who is easily duped. She even drew the sapo to look like a sucka. These are all rated G:

Oh, Baby

(In case you didn't read the previous post, this is about one of our TAASC adventures...)

One of our 12 year olds, Adrian, had to tend to his baby, CJ, during one of our weekend trips. He wasn’t a pre-teen dad; in fact, the home economics assignment that landed him the tot-watching gig was designed to thwart teenage pregnancies.

Unlike the bag of flour that I had to carry for health class, these five-pound dolls cry loudly when face down and at random times. To quiet the baby, students need to turn the key in a slot in the baby’s back and hold it there until she cooed, which was anywhere from five to fifteen minutes.

Adrian’s teacher thought about some ways kids would avoid doing the assignment. For instance, she attached his key to his wrist with a bracelet—like the ones people wear at concerts or festivals—that could only be removed by cutting. And for the students that might be tempted to leave the crying baby in the trunk of a car or in a closet for the weekend, she would grade him based on an electronic tally in the baby, which shows how many times he neglected or rough handled the child.

While my once-in-a-lifetime Outward Bound students wouldn’t bring a baby on course, a once-per-month Asheville TAASC student would not question bringing baby CJ (who was originally named “Lefty”) camping with us for the cold October weekend. CJ donned a smile with her onesie while the other students huddled in their down jackets. Like Adrian, CJ sported a bandana and a quiet, calm demeanor. Unlike Adrian, CJ cried often.

On the second morning, Adrian rolled out of his tent and said, “She woke me up at 12, 3, and 6 this morning. My arm was so cold when I had to hold that key.” CJ was fine in her onesie, though.

When it was time to take down the tents, Adrian’s tent-mate, Jules, complained, “Adrian, you need to help me with this. I’ve been doing everything around here!”

Adrian replied, “I need to take care of the baby! Just chill!”

I could hear that home ec teacher admonishing, “Right here, you see, is an important lesson. Even if you think you are in love with your boyfriends or girlfriends, it’s not easy running a household and raising a baby together.”

We went on the Outward Bound ropes course that day and CJ didn’t have the appropriate helmet to go up into the course, so she had to stay on the ground. Adrian went up and trusted someone on the ground to watch his kiddo. All was fine until he was about 60 feet up on a difficult element called the grapevine. Basically, you walk across a cable (while clipped in with short ropes called lobster claws). To help you balance, there are short ropes that hang vertically down from a top cable. They are spread out thirds, so as the first rope is coming to the end, you can reach out and hopefully grab the second one… (I had a great picture of this with a linebacker trying to reach for the second one, but it wouldn't copy for some reason...).


Here's a real photo of it. This person was clipped in to the top cable with lobster claws, but fell and is trying to get back on the bottom cable. He was balancing by holding onto those vertical ropes to get across. (This may be foreshadowing Adrian's story...)

Okay, so CJ was on the ground and Adrian was in the sky (concentrating, by the way). Check. About halfway across, CJ started wailing and Adrian fell. (See picture above.) His lobster claws caught him of course, but he was below the bottom cable and needed to pull himself back up on a wobbly cable that was 60 feet up and suspended between telephone poles.

At this point, the kids on the ground were yelling, “Adrian, we can get CJ up to you!” They decided to hoist her up with a rope that I had attached to my little platform on a telephone pole at the end of the grapevine; I had it there to haul up my small pack of water and snacks while I sat in the high observation seat. (I'm actually in that picture, on the upper righthand side...)

Happily, the kids got to practice their knots with this exercise and tied an excellent noose onto the baby’s neck. (Relax… we don’t really teach them nooses… and if we did we’d teach them much more effective ones than they tied on little CJ…jk.)

They did tie the rope around her neck, though, which worked well for hauling her up to the platform. That baby cried so much that I felt tempted to drop her right back down to the ground. jk. When Adrian finally got over to me, he wrapped his arms around the telephone pole and turned the key in CJ’s back. Although he looked exhausted, he still managed to say, “It’s alright, CJ. Daddy’s here.”