Reflections Along the Way

Earlier in the summer, my favorite mother-in-law Beth offered to come up for a couple of days to help me with any “projects” I might have going on around the house.  Now, Steve and I are not really known for projecting around the house.  I feel like we’re not even really in our house that much to make it worth the time and effort.  However, upon further reflection, I realized that there indeed were many things that could make for a nice day and a half project. (translation= things that desperately needed to be done)

The "Zen Room" in an anything but zen state

The Back Porch - note the bar area with the swivel screen to the left

Beth came up last Tuesday around lunctime and we plotted our course (Thank you Manuela for getting me hooked on “Greek Fiesta”…)  Our plan was to attack the back porch/screened in porch area.  The screened in porch used to be referred to as the “Zen Room,” b/c when it looks nice, it is a very relaxing and peaceful place to hang out and have breakfast, read, nap, etc.  But when it does NOT look nice….it feels about as “zen” as lying down for a nap in a fire ant nest!  The problems start by the fact that the screen goes from floor to ceiling.  For many months out of year, the white tile floor is tinged an ugly shade of yellow-green from the pollen that is blown in to the room, but unfortuantely b/c of the screens, cannot be blown back out.  It’s really hard to keep it clean, and its easier to just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist until the one time of year that we actually use it – my birthday party in August…

No more screens, but still some rotten, dingy, wood that needs to go!

After surveying the porch and getting a vision for what we wanted the end product to look like, it was time to go get some furniture.  I didn’t realize this, but evidently August is the best time of year to get patio furniture, b/c everything is on sale!  We checked out Target, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Pier 1, World Market, and Home Depot, but ended up getting some fantabulous deals at Lowe’s.  I found 4 wrought iron chairs as well as a table, and 4 tan patio chairs (they were only $12.50!!!)

Open Sesame!!! Good time for a lunch break!

After Beth helped me figure out the things I liked and didn’t like about the porch area, and we decided to make some drastic changes.  For starters, we took all the screens OFF completely.  It is now merely a “covered” porch.  Secondly, we totally destroyed the bar area, which used to have a cute screen that flipped up with the idea that folks on the screened-in side could hi-five folks on the back porch side, but functionally, it wasn’t much more than a bunch of rotten wood.  That took a lot of hard work, let me tell you.  I would bet my paycheck that we took out close to 100 screws a piece – ALL by hand, many of them being bent or rusty.  When we finished, we had a nice open space, connecting both porches, making if feel like one giant porch!

The new view from the back porch looking in!

At this point we began putting furniture together and hosing off the 3 inch layer of pollen from the tile floor.  We managed to make a mess of catastrophic proportions that I’m still trying to figure out the best way to get to the dump – but at least we moved it all to the side of the house so its not in plain view anymore!  Our grand finale was the most brilliant idea of all – we took the vertical rail pieces from the demolished bar area and fit them in to the empty slots where the two doors used to be – unless you knew otherwise, it would look like it was made that way! 

The new view from the Zen Room looking out!

I think the new set up will be a lot easier to keep clean and will be a lot more practical and functional.  I can’t wait to have folks over for my birthday party in a couple of weeks to test it out – we’re doing a cookout of course to encourage everyone to linger outside   Beth and I both worked really hard and were completely wiped out when we were finished – we may not have been the most efficient Demolition Divas, but we certainly got the job done! I realized later that the only thing we forgot was to take an after picture of how WE looked after working all day!  Beth – thanks so much for your wonderful ideas and for being in charge of the saw   Everyone else – feel free to stop in and have some tea on the back porch!

Notice the beautiful new rails where the doors used to be!

No this is not about the mid-90′s TV show of the same name (although I did LOVE that show…)  It’s about my latest adventure with my dad.  So for the past year or so, my dad has been bugging me to take him camping, and I have been dragging my feet, not sure whether or not he was serious about wanting to go, or just trying to talk it up to see my reaction.  A few months ago, I turned the tables on him and invited him to go on a camp/bike trip with me over the summer when I was off from work.  Now, to really appreciate this story, you will first need a little background about our Father/Daughter trips in years past.  Our first one happened in 2000, while my mom was on a mission trip to Belgium for a couple of weeks.  We took a day trip up to Galax, VA, intending to bike from Shot Tower to the town of Fries, a 25-30 mile roundtrip.  My dad insisted that our road bikes would be more than suitable for the fine-gravel terrain we would be riding on, and even refused to bring along a pump just in case…needless to say my dad got a flat tire somewhere around mile 13, about as far away from our vehicle as we could get.  We had seen a couple of highschool boys fishing downstream about a half mile back, so we walked our bikes back to them, and convinced them to give us a ride back to our car (which by road was about 25 miles down US 52).  The boys had a pick up truck, so my dad and I squashed ourselves in the truckbed, along with our bikes, two tackle boxes, a can of worms, and a cooler of stinky fish, all the way back to our vehicle at the Shot Tower entrance.  That was our first trip.

Packed up and ready to go!

Evidently it took many years for us to get brave enough to go for it again, b/c our next trip wasn’t until 2006 or so.  This time around we took another day trip – to the Virginia Creeper trail in Damascus, VA.  Our goal was to bike 17 miles along the trail from Damascus to Abingdon, then ride a shuttle back down to Damascus.  First of all, it took WAY longer to get there than either of us had anticipated.  I had pre-arranged the shuttle before we left, and we even checked in at the bike shop when we arrived in Damascus to confirm our meeting time and place in Abingdon.  After the last fiasco, my dad had gone out and bought a hybrid bike with beefier tires, and I had brought my mountain bike this time.  The ride was going smoothly and according to plan – we had stopped to eat at a cute little General Store, had great weather, and weren’t even feeling that wiped by the end of the ride, arriving at our shuttle pick-up point a full 20 minutes before we were supposed to be there.  We were fine just relaxing, eating wild mulberries, and enjoying being outside, that we didn’t mind that our shuttle was late until about an hour had past, and we realized that it was 40 minutes late…At this point we had ran out of water, and were in danger of arriving home late for dinner, which would not have been pleasing to my mom…We were starting to get agitated, especially after we realized that we didn’t have phone signals to call the shuttle company.  After about 10 more minutes, a shuttle from another bike shop came by to pick-up their clients who had arrived at the rendezvous spot only minutes before.  I suggested to my dad that we try to once to hitch a ride from people we didn’t know – so we asked if there was enough room on the shuttle for 2 more people and bikes.  Thankfully, there were, and we arrived back home late, but not late enough to get in trouble.    On a side note – as we were pulling out of Abingdon, we saw the shuttle that was supposed to pick us up pulling in – we just waved and moved on…

Dad enjoying his breakfast

Fast forward to 2009.  We started planning our trip in May or so, and my dad informed me that he would be in tip-top biking shape by the end of July.  I told him that I would take care of camping reservations and equipment, breakfast, and trail snacks – all he would have to do is drive his truck, and pack whatever kind of sandwich he wanted for the trail (my dad and I have VERY different tastebuds…)  When we started packing up the car, I asked my dad what was in the giant cooler, to which he says, “My lunch.”  I said that seemed a little overkill for a sandwich, and he informs me that he is not bringing a sandwich, but a tub of potato salad, and a tub of cole slaw.  I asked whether he planned on strapping the cooler to his back, or trailing it along behind the bike, and he went back upstairs and made a sandwich.  When we were finally in the car and ready to roll, one of the first things my dad says to me is “I really haven’t been biking that much…maybe only a couple of miles a week around the neighborhood.”  It was at this point that I started to get a little apprehensive about what we had gotten ourselves into yet again.

My mom wanted a tent picture for the Christmas card next year...

It took us a little longer to get there than originally anticipated, since my dad insisted upon using a different route than what the GPS suggested, but we arrived in one piece just in time to grab dinner at the Libby Hill in Galax before setting up our tent.  Putting up the tent was surprisingly uneventful, although my dad refused to believe that Steve and I could put it up in 5 minutes or less.  We spent the evening throwing rocks into the river, counting the deer grazing near our campsite, and even took a short 3 mile ride in the opposite direction of where we would be riding the next day.  We found a farm with 3 friendly horses that came up for some petting.  So far so good.

Taking a break at the halfway point in Fries

I slept pretty well (although I was appreciative that my mom had insisted I take her earplugs…) but evidently my dad slept horribly and was awake most of the night.  I guess camping is not very comfortable if your not used to it.  His mood brightened however, when he woke up to scrambled eggs and cheesy grits for breakfast.    After a leisurely breakfast, we broke down camp, got on our bikes, and headed down the trail.  So far so good. 

Lunch break at the big bridge at Fries Junction - no more rain!!!

We ended up biking from our campground along Chestnut Creek, to where the creek fed into the New River at the Fries Junction, then along the New River to the town of Fries, then back the way we came, for a total of 29.2 miles.  Aside from getting rained on for miles 5-15, nothing out of sorts happened.  We stopped to eat lunch on our way back, and were entertained by watching a couple of country folk yell at all the bikers that came by, telling them to stop b/c their horses were afraid (then DON’T take them on a bike trail…) 

One of many different types of butterflies we saw on our trip

Me playing "The Butterfly Whisperer"

Another funny thing is that my dad got into the habit of stopping at the random benches along the trail for a rest w/o telling me he was stopping, leaving me to figure out a quarter mile down the road that I was biking alone.  After backtracking a few times, I started asking him if he needed to rest before we passed a bench.  It would usually go something like this – (me) “Dad here’s a bench coming up, do you need to rest?”  (dad) “If you need to rest we can” (me) “I’m fine.  But if you want to stop, let me know.”  (dad) “Yeah, I guess we can stop.”  My mom told me the next day that when she asked how he felt on the ride he said “I’ll tell you what, I was keeping up with her.  She kept asking if I needed to rest, but I think she wanted a break more than I did!.”  …  

On the way back

I will say that my dad appeared to have gotten a burst of energy at the end, suggesting that we keep biking for an additional .8 miles to round our total out to an even 30 miles.  I found out later that the 30 mile mark was important b/c that meant he had beaten his previous highest mile day that he had done with a friend sometime last year.  With 30 miles under our belts, we rested our sore bums on my dad’s cushy truck seats and headed back to Winston-Salem, where my mom was waiting for us, with baked ziti, garlic bread, and cucumber salad. 

The victory pose at the finish!

And the verdict?  Even though it took several tries to have a nice, relaxing trip with no major mishaps, Father/Daughter Trip #3 went off without a hitch!   Although I doubt my dad will be bugging me about going camping any time soon, I think he really enjoyed himself and I know I had a great time.  My dad is not one to say more than a couple of words on the phone, and I don’t get to see him very often, so it was nice to get away and spend some quality time together.