Pinewood Derby tests woodcrafters' mettle

I’ve been spending the holidays with my sister’s family in Atlanta, and we're now entering into the phase of Pinewood Derby competitiveness -- on the adult males' part, that is. See, six-year-old James has to make a Pinewood Derby car for Cub Scouts. Basically, they give you a block of wood and some wheels, and the kid is supposed to carve it into something resembling a race car, which is then raced. Now, when I was in the Cub Scouts my car won first place in the Pinewood Derby, but it was a hollow victory because my dad did all the work, while I just watched. So, now is Pinewood Derby II, The Next Generation.

First off, my sister’s husband Alan has been more or less written out of the equation. He has no skills whatsoever. Every now and then my dad and I let him kind of stand over James as he sands something, but we don't let him touch tools – he has no idea what to do with them.

I'm surprised my dad let me have any business with this at all; perhaps he realized he had taken over way back when? After all, I didn’t exactly turn out to be a carpenter, as anyone familiar with my experience at Flatiron Mandolins can attest to (I was fired after two days, after destroying several expensive mandolins-to-be).

Anyway, yesterday I helped James with the design and cutting of the block of wood. It's pretty easy to take over, actually, mainly because James is six and it's the first time he's ever used tools like a coping saw, plane, and file, so he's not very good at it yet. But I definitely gave him a lot of file time, and I asked him a lot about how he wanted it to look (he pretty much just said the design I drew was fine, but wanted it blue and white with #53 emblazoned on it). My dad was upstairs working on some other fixit projects, so he pretty much kept out of it, except when he didn't. Like, he'd pop in to the workshop to look for some tool, and say, "Make sure James sands it," or something equally asinine.

It turns out I really enjoyed designing the car, so instead of taking over the whole project for myself, I ended up designing another car on a piece of scrap wood we had been practicing on. I painted this one myself, too, using some of the paint Anne used to paint the laundry room.

James' hasn't been painted yet; I kind of deferred to my dad on this one, since I don't know much about what kind of paint to use. So they went to the store today and bought some paint and brushes just for the car.

It's interesting; I found the design I drew for the car is very similar to the one my dad designed oh so many years ago. I must admit my father had designed a great looking car – much more rounded and smooth than the other scouts’ offerings. The one I designed for James was based vaguely on the Jaguar XKE of the early 1960s, although when the cutting actually started the front end took on stylings more along the lines of later Aston-Martins. James and I didn't actually make any measurements for the design – it was all done freehand – which could account for its evolution.

Of course, the real winner in the generational battle will be found out at the Pinewood Derby competition, which I believe is January 21. After all, my car might look nice, but I can just imagine it losing a wheel on the way down the track. I guarantee I’ll never hear the end of it from my dad.

Here vs. there

It’s now been three months since I left the warm, Mediterranean climate of Sonoma for the wintry cold of Montana, and it’s time to assess. Did I make the right move?

Absolutely. That’s the short answer, anyway. Just the fact that I’m now an adequate ice climber… Would I be if I stayed in Sonoma? Not bloody likely.

But there are a lot of things that I miss. A steady job with a steady paycheck is one. Although my job at the Sun was really starting to get to be job-like, and that’s part of the reason why I left, right now I’m just scraping things together. I guess it’s sort of a contradiction: right now I miss the security of knowing what’s next, even though that security really got boring for me after a while.

I’m also a bit jealous that the folks at the Sun are now dabbling in video for the website, which sounds exciting. I’d love to be part of something where anyone’s idea is worth trying out, which is what seems to be going on right now. It looks like a really cool scene.

And naturally I miss my friends over there, although I have a lot of friends here. It’s been great being in a house with three housemates, because working in the basement can get kind of lonely. I don’t know what I’d do without them sometimes. I miss the camaraderie of a workplace (although not the politics).

There are some things I don’t miss at all. Hot summers, dreary winters, and just way too many people and cars crammed into a place. Everybody driving everywhere for everything, and always in a rush. And I don’t miss the greed…, which is not to say greed doesn’t exist in Montana, but I got hit with it a few times upon leaving Sonoma.

The first was from Bill Hammett, publisher of the Sun, who refused to give me permission to reprint articles I had written as a Sun employee. Granted, the Sun owns intellectual rights to most of my work, but it’s a commonly accepted practice for publications to grant its writers permission to use their own work once they leave the company, free of charge. Hammett, whose background is not in newspapers and is unfamiliar with this practice, demanded some sort of compensation.

The second was from my former landlady, Debra Ritner of Glen Ellen, shorting me $300.96 on my apartment’s security deposit, despite Deirdre and me cleaning for a solid week prior to moving out.

Here’s the breakdown of what she took out, from the letter she sent me with the remainder of the deposit:

1) 2 plants for front planters and it need more soil.
Plants $11.69
Soil $4.62
(the charge for the plants was anticipated, though not the soil)

2) Living room mini blinds that were broken - size 58x46 from 3 Day blinds
$125.04
(the edges of three blinds were bent, which I don’t think was our doing originally)

3) Broken faucet in kitchen water leaked all over bottom cabinet floor
$39.61
(This one is the most egregious – blatant theft on her behalf. First of all, the faucet wasn’t broken when I moved out. Second of all, she’s the landlady – it’s her job to take of things like broken faucets, not mine. She had called to tell me that the faucet was broken before sending this letter, but she never said she was actually charging me for it.)

4) Re-clean carpet, some stains in bedroom but very large stains in living room, tried to re-clean so we didn’t have to charge you for replacement of L.R. carpet
$88
(Gee, thanks Debra, although the carpet was professionally steam-cleaned, as per the instructions in the lease, and the receipt was put on the counter for you to see. The stains you mention are in your head.)

5) Recleaned outside of refrigerator, kitchen walls had food and grease on it and kit fan recleaned, yard raked leafs, pine needles, trimmed bamboo, pulled weeds
2 hr. @$16/hr. =$32

In the end she writes “Best Wishes on your new home! You were both good tenants and paid us on time.”

Without having taken photographs it’s hard to show just how clean the apartment was, both inside and out, but some of the things on this list are crazy. Some, such as the blinds and the carpet stains, I’m convinced were not our doing, although I don’t have hard evidence. Some things are just natural wear and tear after living in a place for over two years. Suing her would probably end up costing more than I would ever get back.

It just disturbs me that someone would take advantage of me in this way. We gave her almost $24,000 in rent over 25 months ($950/month); we always paid on time, and never had any complaints from the neighbors. Why would she do this?

Sometimes I'm just not in the mood

Yesterday, and even talking to people at the brunch party today, I felt my freelance career was going fairly well - slowly but steadily I've been making progress. But every now and then I'm hit with this sense that I'm not cut out for this business and I'll never make it because it's just too hard. I feel like if I let go of the struggle for one moment the whole thing will fall apart... and sometimes I'm not in the mood to struggle. Sometimes I just want someone to say, "This is your assignment, go do it and we'll pay you."

I think it was the winter issue of Outside Bozeman that set me off. I have an article on Nima Sherpa scheduled for the spring issue, but nothing in this one. I had contacted them about writing something for the winter article a while back, but at the time I really didn't have any ideas of my own, and they had enough queries to not be interested in thinking up something for me, so I ended up with nothing. Now the issue comes out, and its full of writers with good ideas and good articles, as well as interviews with several successful Bozeman-area outdoors writers. And I just felt like all those people are better than me. They're motivated, they work hard, they have good ideas which they pursue.

Of course, I'm like that some of the time. I'm about halfway done with my Everglades article, and I don't even have a place to put it. I kind of think that sometimes we have to come to the breaking point before things start to fall into place. That's how it was for me with the Sonoma Valley Sun, when I first started freelancing for them -- I had been working at Murphy's, just filling in, and there was barely any work at all in the winter. I went to the Sun more or less out of desperation, and that ended up working out so well. I could only wonder why I waited so long.

There is an element of lonliness to this life that's probably the hardest part for anyone... but it may part of why I'm drawn to it. And I don't think I'm that different from other writers in this regard. Human interaction is foreign and exciting and fraught with danger. I'm only comfortable with people I'm most comfortable with -- but even that could be a total stranger. God, it's like I'm from another planet or something. Despite the fear, I crave it. People. I must have met tens of thousands of people, waiting tables in so many restaurants, going up cold to total strangers... And interviewing them's no different. I call them, out of the blue, and go into their homes and ask them questions sometimes their closest friends won't even ask.

And yet, here I am, alone in the basement, convincing myself that it's my calling. Trying to embrace my contradictions, as if within them lies some kind of salvation, or at least a paycheck.

Everglades takes a hit

In April, 2005 I served as Writer-in-Residence in Everglades National Park, living in a National Park Service cottage and trying to learn as much as possible about the park. This past November I revisited the area, primarily to survey the damage done to the park by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in the fall of 2005. Most of the damage occurred in the park's Flamingo area, which is the southernmost tip of the Florida mainland.

Most of the damage was done not by high winds, but by the huge storm surges that came out of Florida Bay, covering the entire area with mud. The Flamingo Lodge and its surrounding cottages have been put out of commission indefinitely. The park just finished a public comment period in which people offered their suggestions of what to do about the area; it appears that people overwhelming want to see some lodging and dining facilities return.

I'm working on an article about what happened and what will happen to the area in the future, although I have yet to find a taker for it. I spent about a month in the area when I was Writer-in-Residence, so it's close to me as a subject. Even if I don't find a taker for the article, I'd like to write it anyway, just as documentation.

Here Comes Santa Claus

Inhabiting the role is key to a first-class Claus

by Ray Sikorski

It was about ten years ago that curly-locked George Carter was first asked to perform as “Santa Paws” for the Humane Society’s annual fundraiser.

“The beard smelled really bad, and the suit didn’t fit very well, and I had a cocker spaniel pee all over me,” Carter says.

Ah, the tinkling of Christmas bells. To add insult to injury, a photo of the rookie Santa and the nervous spaniel was featured prominently in the Bozeman Chronicle.

But somehow Carter was inspired, rather than deterred.

“That summer I had a suit made, and the rest is history.”

Since then Carter’s wooly look has become the stuff of Bozeman Christmas legend. Along with having worked the big chair at the Gallatin Valley Mall for nine years, Carter waves from the sleigh at Christmas Strolls, works private parties and family gatherings, and still offers his lap to the spaniels for Heart of the Valley’s Santa Paws.

“Pets don’t believe or disbelieve,” says Carter, whose alter-ego is the gruff-voiced morning commentator on KMMS-AM. “They just see this weird guy in a red suit. ‘Whoa, he wants me to sit on his lap?’”

Belief is the name of the game for Bozeman’s über-Santas. Like Carter, longtime Gallatin Valley Mall Santa Skip Tinder owns his own red suit, sports a billowing beard, and takes the role to heart.

Tinder, who looks the part right down to the twinkle in his eye and the jellybowl belly, took it as a compliment when friends first asked him to play Santa more than 20 years ago. Now it just comes with the territory.

“Maybe it’s a selfish reason,” he says of his reason for taking on the job year after year. “Maybe it makes me feel good to make the kids feel good – I don’t know.”

Tinder, who will be retiring from jobs with the Montana Highway Department and Kenyon-Noble Ready Mix within the next year, takes a certain amount of joy in the challenges of young believers. Upon being asked his name, a boy with brand-new blue glasses refused to give it to Tinder, on the grounds that Santa already went over that information downtown. Thinking fast, Tinder said he didn’t recognize the boy with his new glasses on. The boy ripped off the frames and declared, “It’s me, Jamie!”

Of course, not all who shop in the mall are young believers. Some are not-so-young wanna-believers, like teenage girls asking for new trucks and boyfriends (“I always ask them if they’ve been good girls, and they giggle”) and the occasional MSU football player. Tinder, who also plays Easter Bunny at the mall, boasts that he hosted two burly linemen at once on his big chair, for a grand total of over 900 pounds between the three of them.

Both Santas spoke of the challenges posed by children who ask for them to cure relatives of cancer, or to bring their divorcing parents back together. “That about does me in,” Tinder says.

But the feeling that Santa can’t bring everyone everything is offset by the simple wide-eyed magic of continued belief. Carter described a little girl who found a rusty bell in a woodpile, convinced that it had fallen from Santa’s sleigh one Christmas.

The girl’s parents secretly explained to Carter that she lost the bell, but they had purchased a shiny new one as a replacement. They gave the bell to Carter to present to the girl.

“I said, ‘I heard you lost my sleigh bell.’ Her eyes just got huge, and she said, ‘Yeah.’”

He pulled out the new bell, which rang just perfectly.

“She was on that age where they’re starting to not believe, but that was probably good for another couple of years. The look in her face was worth everything I ever did.”

Both Santas noted that they could be making big bucks in big city malls, but the idea held little appeal to either of them. Carter donates everything he makes as Santa to the Help Center.

“Santa Claus is a concept, it’s a belief, it’s an ideal. It’s not a sales tool,” he said.

“All it takes to be Santa is a red suit and a beard. What it takes to be a good Santa is making the kids feel like at that time they are the most important thing in the world. You relate to them as complete equals. It’s the way they open up, the way they talk to you. You can see belief in their eyes… which is one of the reasons why I don’t wear an artificial beard.”

And, Carter confesses, that beard gets pulled on quite a bit.

“There’s one spot in particular,” he says, pointing to the left side of his shaggy jawline. “It’s sore by the end of the season.”

All of this begs the question: Do you have to be a little bit crazy to be first-class Claus?

“Oh, yeah,” Carter says. “But it’s the good kind of crazy. It’s like your eccentric uncle.”

Backcountry skiing: The first run of the year

Okay, I know I’m not going to win any photography awards for this one — aside from my inexplicably stunned expression and golden retriever Mona facing the wrong way, Peach (a yellow lab/golden mix) didn’t even care enough to pose. Heck, if either of them had opposable thumbs we might have got a better shot.

The important thing is that it was documented. After all, it was my first ski outing of the year, albeit an inauspicious one. As you can see, there’s not much snow at the old Bear Canyon ski hill. It’s second week of December, and Bridger Bowl’s still not opened.

When I was in Sonoma I bought a pair of really nice Volkl skis from the old Goodwill store for $17, having in mind moving my randonée (also known as alpine touring) bindings on to them. Which I did about a month ago, and I’ve been anxious to try them out ever since. Well, okay, not that anxious – there’s been snow on the hills for a while now, but I’m just getting around to it.

Anyway, I got my climbing skins (for the uninitiated, these are fabric sheaths affixed to the bottom of skis so that you can ski uphill – yes!) sized up with the shorter Volkl shaped skis, and I took them and Mary Anne and Craig’s dogs out to the Bear Canyon/New World Gulch trailhead. Going up wasn’t bad at all, although I was truly out of shape – huffing and puffing all the way up, and I didn’t even go up that far. Strangely, the snow seemed to be getting softer and more scarce the higher up I went, so I called it good about halfway up the hill, then bushwhacked (not easy to do with skis on!) across the hillside till I got to this, the main slope.

This is an old ski hill that isn’t really operational anymore, except for the occasional private chartering. There was only a few inches of soft snow on it, so getting down could hardly even be called skiing. It was ugly – I was paranoid about rocks, so I made big traverses, and then had barely enough speed to make a turn. Extremely inelegant, but somehow I made it down. The dogs had a great time chasing me down.

Hopefully we’ll get some real snow soon so I can do this sport properly!

They shoot turkeys, don't they?

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Wild, wild turkeys
I will ride them
someday

Wild turkeys
Clever, scheming, and perfect for a Thanksgiving feast

(The following was published in the November 2006 issue of Bozeman's Tributary Magazine)

By Ray Sikorski


We all know the story: Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, but the arrogant bald eagle won out.

So the bald eagle flies high and looks tough — big deal! The turkey is humble yet wiley. The turkey is sensitive and alert. And the turkey tastes good.

Which is why we eat ‘em on Thanksgiving. I suppose it wouldn’t really be cool to go the supermarket and pick up a frozen hormone-laden 20 pound bald eagle to roast and eat with giblet gravy; national birds are for looking at and putting on Express Mail packages, not for eating.

Turkeys, on the other hand…

Wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to forsake the insipid store-bought bird and go out and find a real bird — the svelte turkey, who’s out there every day running around, gobbling, struttin’ his stuff? Sure, it may not be as tender and juicy as Butterball’s best, but it would be wild and it would be yours. There, on the dinner table, with the good plates and the fancy silverware. That dead thing in the middle, surrounded by the candied yams — you did that.

Of course, it’s not so simple. Wild turkeys aren’t just standing around, waiting to be shot. Well, sometimes they’re just standing around, but chances are it’s not when you’re toting your shotgun. Turkeys know. They have that sense. Incredible eyesight is part of it; with its side-set eyes, a slight movement of the head is all the turkey needs for 360 degree vision. Some hunters claim wild turkeys can see through rocks, while others sense they merely see around them. The camouflage industry as we know it today exists because of turkey hunters. There’s the patterns — mossy oak, forest floor, hardwoods, pine straw — the camo shotguns, the face paint.

Some wear “more camouflage than a walking tree,” said Greg Byrne of Powderhorn Sporting Goods. Byrne said some hunters go so far as to camouflage their own smell, with oil of pine or something called “Earth Smell.”

But finding the turkey is only part of the game. The rest of it is getting the turkey to come to you. The Powderhorn’s George Dieruf explained that this is what makes turkey hunters some of the most crazed, obsessed hunters out there. It’s not about finding your prey and blowing it to smithereens. It’s about coaxing your prey into coming out of hiding, just for you. Then blowing it to smithereens.

Dieruf said that Montana regulations don’t require hunters of the native Merriam’s turkeys to “call in” their prey, but said the satisfaction gained from seeing a gobbler come towards you over a hill is what died-in-the-wool turkey hunters live for.

Some use decoys to bring in the birds, but no serious turkey hunter goes into the wild without at least a few turkey calls at his or her disposal. The cluck. The putt. The yelp. The cackle. The kee kee. The purr. The entire gamut of the sensitive bird’s emotional states: Content. Excited. Horny as a hound dog. Feeling like sitting on the couch all day and playing sad songs on the stereo. The seasoned turkey hunter knows these moods, and can replicate them using a variety of devices, some of which can be made at home. Turkey wingbones have been used by Native Americans as a “yelper” call for over 4,000 years, and they’re still used today. According to Dieruf, wooden box calls are among the easiest to master. Other calls can be made from turtle shells or pieces of slate; a film canister or prescription pill box with a bit of latex over a hole can make a respectable gobble.

Merriam’s turkeys aren’t found around Bozeman; hunters have to trek as least as far east as Big Timber to find the birds. The good news is that turkey hunting has two seasons, spring and fall, so hunters have something to do when they’re not able to go out after the big game.
Of course, for serious stalkers of the wiley bird, there’s only one prey that matters. Although Dieruf claimed that Montana’s Merriam’s aren’t as skittish as some of its counterparts farther east, some wild turkey hunters are so obsessed that they’ll stalk the same bird — unsuccessfully, apparently — year after year.

This time of year, there’s more at stake than just your pride — there’s Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, the wild bird may be a bit drier than the puffed-up supermarket variety — the wife of one local hunter said she stuffs the birds with fruit to moisten things up — but that’s because it’s busy running around outwitting hunters like you.

And even if you can’t put one on the Thanksgiving table, you’ve got to admit it deserves your respect.

Ice Climbing in Hyalite Canyon

(I'm in yellow helmet, Craig's in white helmet)

While shimmying up a frozen waterfall might not be everyone’s idea of a day well spent, for my housemate Craig and I it’s been a longtime goal. Well, a month-and-a-half long goal, anyway.

Craig and I started immersing ourselves into rock climbing in October, and as winter’s chill descends on Montana, ice climbing is the next logical step. We both see it as step in the larger process of becoming proficient all-around mountaineers, in which we’re able to take on any peak. Craig outlined goals for the next year and a half that include increasingly harder routes in the Tetons, the Gallatins, and the Absarokas.

So we better figure this stuff out! On Sunday we participated in Barrel Mountaineering’s Ice Festival, in which we were given top-quality gear and taught by world-class ice climbers, including Bozeman’s Jack Tackle. It was kind of a trial by fire for us; we had both dabbled in ice climbing a little bit, but really are beginners. The guys set up top-ropes and sent us up some pretty crazy stuff right off the bat, trying to teach us good technique… which was great, but what we really needed were the fundamentals. I mean, we were dangling 50 feet above the ground, with the only things holding us up being the tips of two metal picks and the front-points of our crampons. That takes a little getting used to!

We got better as the day went on, and as the guides tossed the ropes down we knew we wanted more. So Craig and I ventured back out to Hyalite today to get back on the ice. This time we weren’t carrying brand new, state-of-the-art demo gear; just our own boots and our own mountaineering crampons and Craig’s two old-school, straight shaft ice climbing picks, which we agreed to trade off. Plus, we had to figure out how to anchor the top-rope on our own — something we’d been studying in books and magazines, but hadn’t had much hands-on practice with. Plus, Craig had to get back to a music rehearsal at one, so we didn’t have much time.

But, boy, did we make the most of it. We left the house at about 7:15 a.m., and of course there was the obligatory stop at the bagel shop… by the time we got all the way down Hyalite, dropped the gear off at the Greensleeves ice route — next to Genesis I — hiked up to the top to set up the anchor, and rappelled down to the foot of the climb, it was 10:30. Wow! Some folks like sports in which they just have to lace up a pair of shoes and go. Climbing, as a sport, is 80 percent lacing up of shoes and 20 percent actually on the rock.

Once we got going there was no stopping us. Greensleeves is a relatively easy climb, starting off steep and then easing out to a lower angle. Short and sweet, which was perfect for getting our fundamentals down. We were both a little concerned about our equipment, but everything worked great, including my strap-on crampons and Craig’s ice tools. In fact, we seemed to have better luck swinging Craig’s heavy tools than the lighter-weight ones we were lent on Sunday — one nice solid swing was all it took to get good purchase. And I felt more at ease hanging off the tips of my crampons.

We each took three turns on the ice, slightly varying the route each time. The last one took me right over the main stream of the cold, dribbling water; it was warmer today, and the water sprayed over my ski pants as I climbed.

Back when I worked in the Tetons I had done a lot of mountaineering, but I had stopped for a while. A friend had slid on the soft snow of Diappointment Peak’s Spoon Couloir, and all I could do was watch helplessly as she flew past, unable to stop herself. Miraculously, she survived with only scrapes and a concussion, but it made me overly cautious in my outdoor adventures. Now, climbing with Craig, using ropes, being careful about our protection, I feel little I’m getting back into it at last.

Batgirl

Fiction by Ray Sikorski

She’s an evil batgirl genius and I want to have my way with her. I would like any woman who’s any one of the three, evil or batgirl or genius, but to be all three at once, well, that’s something special. Of course all the other guys think the same thing and they all want to have their way with her too, but being an evil batgirl genius she can simply take her pick, and she gleefully picks nobody.

She’s not a skintight leather-clad batgirl like in movies and TV, she’s a feather-weight aerospace skisuit batgirl. Her batsuit is a set of wings of her own design, super-light space-age fabric wings going from her ankles to her wrists, spreading out wide as she raises her arms above her head.

She does this on short skis on windy days, and one day she’ll ski uphill, and one day she’ll fly over the engineering building, over the heads and hearts of me and all the others who have taken a number. We know this will happen soon, and we either want to stop her or join her or sleep with her before she flies over us all and we never see her again. We all know she’s evil, or think we know, and once she flies she’ll patent her batsuit and make millions and never talk to us again. So we all hate her desperately, and long to get in her pants.

I offer to accompany her into the woods, to carry her wings, her notebooks, her pencils, her snowpants. Of course, so do all the others, but perhaps she pities me. “Can you conjure a wind?” she asks when we get there, and I try, I pray, I blow, I hope and I wish, but I don’t think she cares. Does she need a squall, or a hurricane? She just wants me to sweat, I’m sure of it. It’s ugly, the power she has over me, over men. It is a thing of beauty, a mind, and when it is so beautiful as the wings she wears, it is blinding. I pray, I wish, I huff and puff… how does one conjure a wind? Alas, I am no witch.

But her. Once she’s prepped, her skis on, her wings spread, her body perky and cute in her snowsuit, a wink is all it takes, and then there is… a breeze. Certainly not a squall or a hurricane, and certainly it defies reason and gravity and friction, biology and physiology and even the kinds of loaves and fishes miracles you read about in sacred texts, because she’s quite a way uphill before I can make any sense of it, and I’m still not making any sense of it. I’m supposed to be recording my findings in the notebook, but really I think she’s just showing off. This isn’t engineering! It’s magic and it’s pissing me off.

She ends up at the top of the hill. “Are you coming back down?” I shout up at her.

“No,” she shouts back.

“Am I supposed to go up there, too?” I don’t want to climb all the way up there, I want bat wings too, I want to just wink and shoot up there like her and then have my way with her, but of course that’s never going to happen.

“Just stay where you are,” she shouts down. “Make sure the notebook’s ready!”

“Oh, it’s ready.”

“Have you been taking notes?”

“Oh, yes!” I say, and then quickly jot down the time and the date and “Subject defies all laws of physics and gravity and compassion for I am smitten and she doesn’t care.” And before I’m done scribbling she’s skiing down the slope and lifting up her wings and going over a jump and flying… and I know it’s over. It’s over for me and for all the others because she’s flying over my head and circling and spiraling and going up and swooping down, and I know that now we’re all screwed because she’s magic and she’s a genius and she’s evil and she’ll win the Nobel prize for it all, all of it, and we’ll never see her again and she doesn’t care. And I jot that all down in the notebook along with the time and how long she’s been in the air.

If she goes too close to the sun, like Icarus, will she come crashing to the ground? One can hope, one can pray, but she’s no Icarus. She’s much, much better and smarter and cuter. I know it’s over and we’ll lose her and she’ll be famous and we’ll have no one to lust after who’s evil and a genius and a batgirl. I write this in the book as well.

So the next day there are TV cameras and newspaper reporters and the whole enchilada, even more because there are Nobel people from Sweden, and there are people from Ronco who want to sell batsuits on TV. But she just says, “I’m glad I can fly, it was fun. I’ll do a demonstration for the TV cameras because my assistant was nice but not very good at recording.” So everyone, the TV people, the newspaper people, the Swedes, the Ronco people, my fellow engineers, and myself all truck out to the woods for the big demonstration. And this time she doesn’t mess around with the shenanigans, she just gets up there, winks for the breeze, skis around for show, and flies. She flies over our heads, and up and around and down and up again and barrell rolls and nosedives and pulls out and goes very, very high, and… flies away.

Me and the engineers and the TV people and the newspaper people and the Swedes and the Ronco people look and look and look and look, but she’s gone. We titter: “Where did she go?” “Is she still up there?” “Is this a trick?” “Will she surprise us?” The concensus is that she’s pulling some kind of clever stunt, to show how long she can fly for, and at any minute she’ll zip by with with a big smile on and land and have a nice speech and a good laugh and accept her Nobel prize and have Ronco make batwings for everyone in TV land. So we wait.

But she doesn’t come. We wait until we’re hungry and we order pizza and the pizza guy comes and waits too. We have all fallen in love with her, now everyone, not just the engineers, everyone even in TV land knows of this horrible evil-batgirl-genius-unrequited love that I have been tortured with for so long. And because I have acted as her assistant I feel I know better than anyone that she won’t come back.

It gets dark and we finish the pizza and we keep waiting. The TV people play back the batgirl video, over and over, and we watch, we can’t stop watching. She is so beautiful when she flies, she is so evil, such a genius, such a batgirl, that she can’t help but be beautiful, and everyone hates her so much for leaving, for abandoning us, and for being beautiful. We wait some more, even though it’s dark and there’s no more pizza. We wait because we want to have our way with her, even though she has already had her way with us.

Write a novel in a month? No problem!

Damn Good Padding


At last, it's finished. "Tinker Visits the Woods," that is, or," Thoreau, I Like a Girl." All 506 chapters of it, and it only took me 30 days to write.

Yes, it's my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) novel, started on November 2nd (so actually 29 days) after I saw a mention of the competition in the Montana State University Exponent. It's not really a competition, in that there aren't really any prizes... I like to think of it as the equivalent of running a marathon for writers.

Me and 80,000 others from around were involved in this marathon, including about 130 or so from Montana. There was plenty of camaraderie in our little bunch, which included NaDruWriNi and a cut-throat battle for wordcount with Saskatchewan, in which we kicked their Canuck butts.

See, the trick to writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days is to concentrate on quantity, not quality. None of this editing nonsense, just crank out the words. Don't even look back, there'll be plenty of time for that in December. As for me, I didn't even have an outline going into this thing. All I had was the character Tinker, who made his first appearance in a story in my book "Driftwood Dan and Other Adventures." I just wanted to take Tinker and roll with him, and roll we did.

Undertaking the writing of a novel while having no idea of what the plot will be is admittedly a little strange. With Tinker, I handled this issue by making him a writer (which he was in the original story) who's writing a novel and searching for a plot. Clever, huh? That enabled me to essentially free associate the first 10,000 or so words, i.e. "I need a plot, Tinker thought"; "This sucks, not having a plot"; "I wonder how I can find a plot"; "Every other writer must have a plot by now"; etc.

The problem revealed itself when I was eventually forced to find a real plot, which ended up being something in which the character Tinker created became his antagonist, and for some reason Tinker felt compelled to have sex with a bunch of different women, some of whom only existed in his imagination. I should note that on the NaNoWriMo website they included interviews with authors who had successfully written NaNoWriMo novels in the past, who offered helpful advice on padding: when in doubt, bring in a new character, plot twist, sex scene, or have all the characters sit down to a gourmet meal. I repeatedly did all but the last one, and that's only because if I think about food when I'm writing I get hungry and the whole thing goes to hell.

So, basically, I ended up with 47,000 or so words worth of padding. And I think there's something to be said for that. It's damn good padding. Sometimes I thought the whole thing sucked and should be drop-kicked into the landfill, but when I actually got around to re-reading some of it (I separated it into 506 micro-chapters, and since finishing have made plans to name each one -- I'm up to Chapter 94 so far), I sensed that it wasn't that bad. Not good, mind you, but not bad.

I've only shown it to one person so far... but that's mainly because I'm embarrassed by all the raunchy sex scenes that ended up in there. It's amazing the things writer's block will make you do.

Does anybody want to see it? Let me know!

Is it evil?

The other day my housemate Craig was vacuuming up ashes around the wood stove, and apparently some weren't quite out yet. Ross and I saw smoke coming out of the vacuum; the stuff inside the bag had caught on fire. So Craig fumbled comically with that for a while, finally wrestling the smoking bag out of the vacuum and out of the house. Oddly, in a few minutes he came back in the house with the bag and said, "I know what to do with it, I'll burn it in the woodstove!" See, he didn't want to put the smoldering bag in the garbage and catch that on fire, too. (Later I asked why he didn't just throw it in the snow. He didn't have a very good answer to that one.) Anyway, after throwing the bag in the woodstove it became apparent that the bag wasn't just filled with dirt; it was filled with dog hair, which really stank when it burned.

Yep, just another day in the life.

Requiem for a bridge

Fond memories for the sleepy neighborhood that is no more

October 2006

(Note: The following was written for the Sonoma Valley Sun, but was never published. The reason given was that it wasn't pro-automobile enough.)

There it is, all shiny and new, multi-laned, striped and solid. The champagne has popped and fizzed and bubbled over, and the traffic nightmare is gone. The new Ig Vella/Riverside Drive bridge has come to save our motoring souls.

Remember the old bridge? Narrow and curved, it was more fit for Medieval oxcarts than the crush of automobiles that plied it daily. A labyrinthine footpath flanked its southern side, with giant "Walk Your Bike" signs admonishing from either end. When riding from El Verano to Sonoma, I often avoided the path entirely, preferring to squeeze tightly alongside the cars.

And then that old bridge was gone, and the detour signs went up... and a new, even narrower bridge appeared next to where the old one lay. This bridge didn't have a ribbon-cutting to welcome its arrival; it wasn't named in honor of any local luminaries. I suppose it was something of a secret bridge. After all, it wasn't a bridge for cars, so that cut out pretty much everyone traveling around Sonoma. It was a bridge reserved solely for those of us who preferred self-propelled transport: pedestrians and bicyclists.

This was a humble, friendly bridge. Located just south of the construction work, the span provided a viewing platform for both the work and Sonoma Creek below. It was a place to nod hello to fellow conspirators in our little anti-petroleum plot. And it totally transformed the neighborhood.

Sure, right now most El Verano residents are celebrating the end of the half-hour commute to get to a place that's just right over the creek. But it won't be long before some of them miss the peace and quiet.

Ah, the good old days of... when? A week ago? Those were the days, indeed. Riverside Drive and Petaluma Avenue were sleepy little back roads then, where dogs and cats could freely roam the neighborhood — heck, they could have even laid down to rest on the double yellow line. Children could wander along the shoulders, or play on the side streets, free of fear from being mowed over by the constant onslaught of racing vehicles. And bicycling was a joy, not a dangerous chore.

Those days are no more. Riverside Drive and Petaluma Avenue are thoroughfares once again, shortcuts out of town. Sure, it's great to have the construction work done and the traffic snarl over with, and it's wonderful that the new bridge has wide sidewalks and bike lanes on both sides.

But, for a while, El Verano was a peaceful place. The new bridge is nice, but I'll fondly remember the secret one.


Former Sun Features Editor Ray Sikorski returned from Montana to collect the rest of his stuff, and couldn't help himself from writing one more thing.

A Hike in The Narrows

October 2006


For years I've been thinking about The Narrows, the slender cleft of the Virgin River in Utah's Zion National Park. It's supposed to be one of the nicest hikes in America... of course, it's not exactly a hiking on a trail as it is just wading through the waist-deep water of the river, sandstone cliffs towering over you on both sides.

And finally, it was going to happen! Susan and I had a road trip planned to Southern Utah for a friend's wedding, and Zion was only a couple of hours away. Everything was set. Sunday, October 15 would be the day.

Of course, on a trip like this, one should expect the unexpected. But rain in the desert? I mean, I know it rains in the desert from time to time. A little sprinkle here, a little sprinkle there. But in Escalante, where the wedding took place, it rained for three days straight -- hard, pouring rain. Definitely not the kind of conditions you want to be wending through a narrow slot canyon in. Drowning in a flash flood is not my idea of a good time.

The morning of the 15th looked just as dreary as the day before. Dejected, Susan and I took our time over breakfast, realizing we'd just have to do it another year. We decided to take in Bryce Canyon instead. But when we saw that canyon's pink and orange hoodoo towers, we saw something else, too: blue sky peeking through the clouds. We inquired at the visitor's center, and got a phone number for Zion's backcountry office. It wasn't raining at all in Zion! The ranger said the water temperature was 56 degrees and the river was flowing at 98 cubic feet per second. We had no idea what that meant. But other people were going for it, so we decided we'd go for it, too.

Of course, Zion wasn't as close as it looked on the map. Windy roads abounded, plus we decided to stop for lunch at perhaps the slowest restaurant in Southwestern Utah. On top of that, in order to alleviate traffic in Zion Canyon, the park has a mandatory shuttle bus service -- which worked great, but it didn't get us to the Temple of Sinawava trailhead any faster. It was 4 p.m. when we finally got to the river's edge. With the sun setting around 7, we wouldn't have time for much of a hike.

Susan and I hadn't come all this way for nothing. We had come prepared for action: shorts over thermal long johns, telescoping ski poles, and I had gone so far as to glue carpet remnents to our hiking shoes for better traction on the slippery rocks.

What? You've never glued carpet remnents to your hiking shoes? Okay, so it was new to me, too, but a guy in the fishing store in Bozeman said fishermen did it all the time. Well, some fishermen did it some of the time, anyway. It sounded like a cool project to me, so I went to the carpet store, got some nice brownish swatches of low-level wool, cut out the outline of our shoes, and glued them on with Barge cement. Did the people on the shuttle bus eye us strangely? You bet. But hey, I had read that walking in The Narrows was like walking on greased bowling balls. Looking a little dorky on the bus wasn't much of a trade-off if it meant our ankles would be spared.

We planned to do a "bottom-up" hike, wading upstream as far as we could get before turning around and heading back to the beginning (some hikers take a shuttle to Chamberlain's Ranch and do a 16-mile, one-way hike). As soon as we waded across the first stretch of the Virging River our big questions were answered. Is 56 degrees cold? Yes, but it's possible to walk from one little canyon bank to the next where you can warm up before the next plunge. Is 98 cubic feet per second swift? It is at certain river crossing points. After a couple of inelegant crossings we taught ourselves the best way: me taking both ski poles and taking the lead, with Susan holding on to me with both hands from behind.

The result was one of the most unique and exciting hiking experiences I've ever had. Wading up to your waist through a river may sound like hell, but it's a fully-involving event. You're wet. You're cold. The current is trying to push you down. Fun! Plus, the canyon is spectacular. You're hiking in a place only the most courageous dare to tread. Pockets of other stick-wielding, soaking wet hikers waded downstream as we waded up. No one was crying in agony; most of them even had smiles on.

We hiked a little ways past the junction of Orderville Canyon into the Virgin River. Not much of a distance -- we averaged about one mile an hour -- but hey, we're hiking upstream in a river, for crying out loud! We had a bite to eat before turning back. Downstream was noticeably easier traveling, and we had gained valuable greased bowling ball technique in our short experience.

Oh, yes. The shoe carpeting. It worked! Well, it sort of worked. The outer wooly layer of carpeting wore off in the water in the first half mile or so, but the base layer stuck on relatively well. It helped a little bit with traction -- I know, because my base layer eventually wore completely off one shoe but not the other, so I could compare. And, by the end of the hike only the faintest sheen of carpet base remained. A worthwhile experiment, but I can't say I recommend it. I don't know how the rangers would feel about huge clumps of carpet residue floating down the Virgin River. Until they make river shoes with built in carpet bottoms, I'd recommend just going without.

Living On Teton Time

September 2006

I haven’t been gone from Sonoma a week and already I’m in a different world.
I’m working the tail-end of the season at my old job at Grand Teton National Park’s Jackson Lake Lodge, a place where cell phones barely work and few people seem to care. There’s so much to write about — details, like unlocked bicycles and unlocked doors. They’re everywhere.
It snowed the other day — big, puffy flakes, coming down for about an hour. I’m not sure how the hotel guests felt about it, but I know my co-workers were excited. Many are university students from Turkey and Bulgaria, and they snapped photos from the restaurant’s back door. A similar sense of excitement happened later in the evening, when a large bull moose ambled along the patio outside the Mural Room — a flurry of employees descended on the windows, vying for the best viewing alongside the guests. The managers, rather than telling their minions to get back to work, encouraged workers to stop what they were doing and take in the sight.
Heavy and wet that night, the snow was gone from the valley floor the following morning. I had the day off, so I ventured into the mountains, up a lonely trail called Hanging Canyon. The trail is lonely because it doesn’t exist on most maps of the Tetons, but it was made lonelier still because of the lateness in the season and the cloudy, cold weather.
And because of the snow. At the lower elevations there was none, but once I climbed a thousand or so feet above the valley floor, it was everywhere. For the first time in years I was wearing my heavy leather hiking boots, sporting my trekking pole, my instep crampons, my ice axe. The snow was too soft and shallow for the ice axe to be of much use, but I felt proud with it strapped to my pack. Just as some affect a cane or a pipe, I felt my ice axe presented me with an air of importance — or perhaps just silliness, to those who know better. Either way, I liked it.
I had hiked this trail many times. It was never easy to follow, winding over boulders with small rock cairns marking the way, and it was made even harder with six inches of snow obscuring the route. No footprints marked the trail, unless you count those of the elk.
But really, the trail didn’t need much marking — just head straight up, 3000 feet in three miles. The occasional slipping was made worse by the snow-covered gaps between boulders, and the weather was cloudy and damp. I should have dressed warmer. I was still used to Sonoma; I hadn’t anticipated pulling out longjohns this early in the year. I considered turning back, but… no. This was my first hike back in the Tetons. This was my home, or at least one of my homes. I was determined to go on.
After much trudging and slipping, I reached Ramshead Lake. I had hoped to make it to Lake of the Crags, only a hundred or so vertical feet higher, but a large boulder field stood in the way. With the soft snow covering the gaps between the rocks, I knew it was a sprained ankle waiting to happen. And then what? I was alone. Really alone. I realized I hand’t been this alone in years. Alone, in the cold and snow, with darkness approaching… it was exhilirating. There is a certain feeling you get when you realize your life is fragile, but you continue to live: Relief? Emancipation? Accomplishment? Luck?
Something. Perhaps it’s just the feeling of something that cannot be bought from a store with a credit card and plugged in. For me, it’s a sense of returning home.