The Great De-Pinkification, continues…
we actually have a pretty good system worked out that saves my back from too much abuse. kris cuts in the trim on the floor, i cut in the ceiling and high parts she can’t reach, odin rolls in the bottom half and i do the top.
now that we all have our specialized “finisher” roles – maybe we should start a painting company, “three snowdeals and a ladder”.
just kidding. sort of.
no, really, odin is enthusiastically helping us with The Great De-Pinkification.
almost done priming!
it is nearly impossible to escape the harry potter juggernaut and all the moreso when the second of two movies based on the 8th and final installment of the series is now playing in theaters. odin has definitely heard of harry potter and even seen bits and pieces of the earlier movies when we’ve been on vacation and it has happened to be on the television and cousins wanted to watch it. but the movies have always been a bit much for him to take in and i doubt he’s gleaned much beyond the names of the characters and very basic plot elements.
since he just turned seven we thought we’d try and read the first book, “harry potter and the philosopher’s stone”, with odin and see what he thought. i don’t know what the conventional wisdom is on the age-appropriateness of the books, but our understanding is that the first few books are the tamest of the series and we thought, really, how much worse can it be than “grimm’s fairy tales which he enjoys.
turns out, for the most part, he loved it! and asked us to read it during the day for long stretches and we really got the sense that it was his first experience with a “page turner”. he even told me one morning, “poppi. i have something to tell you. i woke up and turned on my flashlight and grabbed the book and just flipped through the pages. i hope i didn’t wake you up.” i told him i might have done the same thing with my favorite books when i was his age 🙂
for days he recounted stories of the characters struggles and quidditch and muggles and hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. the ending, though, ended up being a little intense for him and in the final analysis he said simply, “it was a good book, but i had mama read some of the scary parts in her head and i think i might like to read the next book in two years when i’m a little older.”
a fair enough review for sure, but i can’t help but wonder if we’ll be starting “harry potter and the chamber of secrets sooner rather than later.
odin demonstrates his latest Tree Swing Acrobatique freestyle moves on The Most Super Awesomest Tree Swing.
i really can’t figure out how he’s able to pretzel in and out of the move – over and over again without getting himself tangled in a knot.
also, i don’t believe i’ve ever had the upper body strength required to do it once, little less over and over again.
if it’s not obvious from the somewhat blurry photos, the tree swing is carving out a 30+ foot while he’s doing this.
for father’s day, possibly to balance out the ice cream maker i got for my birthday, kris and odin gave me a nice little saris bike carrier which means we can now go on fantastic Bicycling Adventures outside of the five or ten mile radius bike routes we traverse in town.
this is A Big Deal. we’ve wanted one Forever since we haven’t really had an easy way to transport multiple bikes in the jetta.
so, today, odin and i decided to hit the elroy-sparta state trail which is about 35 miles from homebase. i intented to go on a leisurely 5 or 10 mile ride.
odin hatched A Different Plan when the nice woman who sold us a trail ticket mentioned there was a fantastic tunnel 9 miles down the trail. 9 miles! that’d be at least 18 miles total. muuuuuuuuch longer than our previous record bike ride of 8 miles. but odin said he was up for it.
so off we rode.
after nine miles, up a 3% grade for much of the route, we finally reached The Tunnel Entrance. it was pretty neat because you could feel the cold air coming from the 3/4 mile long tunnel well before you see the entrance.
i probably shouldn’t have been surprised that odin rode the 9 miles like it was a trip around the block. i, however, was huffing a bit 🙂
note, you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
and, if you can stand shakey-cam, you can watch us walk the entirety of the 3,810 foot tunnel. i was warned that it would be dark and thought the little light on the front of my bike would adequately illuminate our way. it provided just barely enough light which made for quite a interesting walk considering there was far more water dripping from the ceiling than i anticipated.
for some reason the video camera got stuck in “macro mode” ( maybe because of the water droplets on the lens? ) so it’s a little blurry, though i think it adds the right artisitic flair 🙂
at the other end of the tunnel we found a sign which told the story of the making of the tunnel. apparently, workers struck an overhead spring which explains why there was so much water dripping from ceiling.
coming back through the other side of the tunnel we were surprised to run into a guy who climbed to the top of the tunnel entrance.
the video camera didn’t adjust to show his face which is probably good because i think he was smoking something that’s not legal in most states unless you have a health condition 🙂
while we were biking i told odin how awesome it would be if we ran across a little shop that sold ice cream sandwiches and lamented the fact that there was probably no chance my dream would come true.
lo and behold, we did run across a little stand that a nice old man set up in his backyard.
i think he thought it was pretty neat that we were out for a father and son ride and offered to take our picture just as we prepared to dig into the very muchly appreciated cold and creamy gift.
we’ll ignore that look on my face.
at one point on the trail there’s a cool standstone formation ( or at least i think it’s sandstone ) that appeared to be frequented by local teen-agers ( lots of names scrawled in the sand, remains of a bonfire and some empty adult beverage cans ). it’s at about miles 15 on the return route and when odin said he wanted to stop and rest and climb to the top i was only too happy to oblige.
( i couldn’t resist taking one more of odin sitting on top of the sandstone and it didn’t have anything to do with me wanting to “milk” every minute out of the rest stop. honest. no, really. )
aaaaaaand, we. finally. finished. all. twenty. miles.
we talked a lot during the ride about judging how much energy you had left and told him many, many time we didn’t have to bike the whole route all at once. but maybe that was all about me and not him.
he finished with a smile and said he could have probably rode 40 miles. or maybe 50.
and, as his style, he said he said he couldn’t possibly thank me enough for taking him on The Best Bike Ride Ever.
epilogue: sparta, wisconsin is the self-described “Bicycling Capital of America” because the traile we rode was the first rail bed in wisconsin to be converted to bike trails. i’m not sure that warrants the title ( why not the “Bicycling Capital of Wisconsin”? ) but it’s a fun little bit of appropriate trivia.
and so, looking for an adventure ( and needing to do some shopping in A Big City ), we trekked to madison. we thought it would be fun to have lunch somewhere that served cuisine a bit more exotic than the typical fare to be round in rural southwest wisconsin and not knowing the madison restaurant scene nearly as well as i should, i put out a call on the social intertubes for a thai food recommendation.
bahn thai received the most number of votes so we decided to give it a try and were pleasantly surprised to see that it was next door to westfield comics which gave us the perfect opportunity to introduce odin to the wonders of a Comic Book Store. not having been in a comics shop in A Very Long Time, i was quickly reminded that the age appropriate pickings for an almost seven year old are slim ( thankfully odin didn’t stumble upon the new issue of heavy metal ), but we had a great time sitting on the floor and flipping through what selection they did have.
odin eventually settled on a copy of a batman comic which made for a great way to pass the time while we waited for our food after we meandered over to the restaurant ( as an aside, i think odin could develop a great love of comics and we’re looking for recommendations – some folks have already recommended the muppet show comic book and the secret science alliance ).
the food arrived quickly and bahn thai served good, but not great fare. the pork pad thai was a little sweet for my taste, but the fried rice and chicken satay were excellent. definitely worth more trips to explore the menu.
sa-bai got the second most number of votes on email, fb and twitter. vietenne palace and one for sala thai both got votes and look interesting from the yelp reviews. so we have plenty of thai options the next time we visit madison!
we’re certainly looking forward to hitting “madtown” more often. i can’t believe we’ve only visited a few times over the past few years.
he’s rapidly approaching his seventh birthday?! and odin appears to be Thinking Big Thoughts. the other day he cornered me with a question about the smallest number ( which prompted much discussion in various places in The Real and Virtual Worlds regarding The Correct Answer, including consultation with a university of chicago physicist ).
today, he approached me and said simply, “poppi, you should go upstairs and look. i just drew The Universe on my chalkboard.” as it happens Odin’s Universe is a beautifully chalk-rendered earth with oceans shrouded in clouds and a bit of green land ( that doesn’t come through on the photograph ) and surrounded by stars. it instantly reminded me of carl sagan’s “pale blue dot”. if you haven’t listened to him read from the book, you should go do it now. i’ll wait 🙂
of course, we adults “know” The Universe is bigger than the earth, but he’s off to pretty good start at attempting to conceptualize The Bigness and Beyondness of it which is pretty fascinating when you consider that his schooling has consisted not of memorization and recitation but of playing in trees and singing songs and that he has almost no contact with Media. and that the books we read were mostly written over a century ago ( e.g. “wind in the willows”, “adventures of huck finn etc ).
i truly have no idea where he picks up concepts of negative infinity and space and cloud shrouded earth ( in fact, when i asked him if he’d ever seen a picture of earth from space he said, “no.” ). is he secretly handing out with carl’s ghost?
regardless, i’ll blow him mind some day when we watch the “powers of ten” video.