SUUSI Day 4
Jul. 26th, 2007 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI got up very early Wednesday morning and managed to slip out for breakfast before Alex woke up, armed with my hiking gear. My father and I had registered for a hike up Sinking Creek Mountain, which turns out to be on part of the Appalachian Trail. So after breakfast we assembled at the Nature tent with about a dozen other hikers. Our guide, a compact, grey-haired woman who exuded sensibleness, inspected our boots, gave us a brief safety lecture, and packed us off for a half-hour van ride to the trailhead.
The trail meandered through a bit of scrubby woods and then into some open fields edged with barbed wire and dotted with blackberry bushes. At one point we had to climb over a six-foot stile, which gave me some anxiety at the top - I signed up for a hiking trip, not a climbing trip, and I've always had a pretty major fear of falling. Then it was steadily, steadily uphill for a couple of miles, in a climb which left me gasping for breath and feeling the lactic acid burn in my legs. It was as tough a hike as I've ever done. Even my father came up to me at one point and acknowledged that he agreed with SUUSI that it was "strenuous." We stopped briefly at times to grab a drink of water or catch our breath, but mostly it was a steady climb to the summit. Then we hiked along the ridgeline for a half-mile or so and came out into a clearing which had been cut for a power line, resulting in a beautiful view of the valley below. We sat around and talked and swapped personal varieties of trail mix for a nice long while (the best came from the previous day's Theme Talk minister, who had broad tastes in dried fruit).
I felt absolutely exhiliarated to have made it to the top, and to have kept up with the group without needing special accomodation. I also basked in my father's obvious pride. I mean, ten or twelve years ago, we thought I might never be able to stop using crutches. And here I was, completing a strenuous climb and keeping to the pace of a group of fit, healthy adults with plenty of hiking experience. It's hard to even describe how goood that felt... and on top of the physical endorphin rush, too.
The descent was easy, with much more opportunity for conversation. We came back, showered very very carefully (there was quite a bit of poison ivy along the edges of the trail), and hit the dining hall for an absolutely enormous lunch. Then it was time for the very first class to make it onto my SUUSI schedule, and the one I'd been looking forward to since the catalog came out: Chocolate Making 101.
Everything looked great when I came into the classroom, which was a dorm kitchen: paper-covered tables arrayed with all kinds of supplies, from decoratively colored white chocolate melted in a multi-chambered electric bain-marie, with paintbrushes for application, to plates of toasted coconut. Someone was stirring chocolate in a double boiler on the stove. Each of us was given a large gift bag full of supplies: a 4x6 photo album filled with recipes, an offset spatula, molds for simple bonbons and cordial cups, and a fold-out chocolate box we were to fill with our products.
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bosssio and I were practically jumping up and down in expectation. But our teacher looked very nervous, and soon we found out why: the outdoor humidity, combined with the additional humidity from the vented dryers in the laundry room next door, had done terrible things to the chocolate, and it would. Not. Set.
So we wound up hearing a lot about how one makes chocolates, and learning about techniques, and eating a lot of sludgy chocolate that wouldn't firm up properly, and - at the very end - managing to get some of the white chocolate to form up in a simple mold. But we didn't manage to get any filled candies made. She sent us each home with some additional plastic molds from her collection and some of the colored white chocolate coins, andbosssio and I agreed to get together and make chocolates once the weather cools and dries. It was terribly disappointing, and only the fact that our teacher obviously felt worse than we did, and bent over backwards to try to salvage the class for us, kept me from feeling completely let down.
We picked up the kids and let them play outside for a while outside the youth program dorm, and then went over to the SUUSI quad for Community Time. They'd set up a whole Harry Potter section, where you could get a temporary tattoo in the shape of a lightning bolt and a pair of big plastic black-rimmed glasses. Alex spent a great deal of time in "Potions Class" - a couple of water tables outfitted with pipettes, graduated cylinders, and screw-top test tubes, with food coloring and cornstarch to add when your potion was ready. They also had a table with quillmaking supplies (essentially it was pencil decoration) and a wandmaking table.
"It's been a while since she's gone to the potty," I mentioned to Michael as we moved from the Harry Potter section to the sand volleyball court. We agreed that we needed to be alert for that. Perhaps ten minutes later, she wet her pants - totally our fault. At least it was outside, this time.
We got her cleaned up, and then all went to dinner. Afterwards, we came back to the suite and my Dad did some singing with the kids. Alex was especially thrilled to discover that he knew some of her favorite songs, like "Zip-a-Dee Doo Dah" and "The Mermaid Song." (It must have been quite a sight, the three of us walking back from the cafeteria singing at the top of our lungs: While we poor sailors go skipping to the top, and the landlubbers lie down below, below, below...") Then Alex andbosssio's son Liam went off for a prolonged period of tearing up and down the halls: first marching with jingle bells, then pretending to be monsters, and then abandoning all refinement and just chasing each other at top speed.
Afterward, we brought Alex into the bedroom for a cooling-down period with stories. I started combing out her snarled hair, but it was in an awful state - she's got a terrible fear of showers, which meant that her hair hadn't been washed since Saturday. So I got the brilliant idea of dipping her brush into a sippy cup of water and smoothing the tangles out that way. I gently brushed water into her hair for a good ten minutes while Michael read her stories, and then put the sippy cup on the desk. Where it suddenly looked... kind of cloudy. I dipped a finger in and tasted it... apple juice. Apple juice. I had been carefully, gently, and lovingly brushing diluted apple juice into the hair of my hairwashing-averse child. (In my defense: it was probably 80% water, and so it didn't look like apple juice, or smell like it.) Michael went and got some clean water, and I started the whole process over again. I dipped all of her back hair straight into the cup, and then combed out the rest... what a disaster.
It was 80s night in the over-21 dance club, and so I sort of thought I should go dancing. But my muscles were reminding me that I'd spent the morning on a strenuous hike, pushing them to their utmost. So instead, whenbosssio went out to do her childcare co-op shift, Michael and I just followed her into the hall, where we spent a few hours in fast-flowing conversation with whoever else was too lazy to actually go out - in particular, a woman named Lorah who I'd had a long conversation with last year as well. It turns out that she's homeschooling her kids, and she had interesting things to say about the connection between homeschooling and the UU Principles. All of us were swapping SUUSI stories and church stories and parenthood stories, and before I knew it, it was 1am and time to stagger to bed.
The trail meandered through a bit of scrubby woods and then into some open fields edged with barbed wire and dotted with blackberry bushes. At one point we had to climb over a six-foot stile, which gave me some anxiety at the top - I signed up for a hiking trip, not a climbing trip, and I've always had a pretty major fear of falling. Then it was steadily, steadily uphill for a couple of miles, in a climb which left me gasping for breath and feeling the lactic acid burn in my legs. It was as tough a hike as I've ever done. Even my father came up to me at one point and acknowledged that he agreed with SUUSI that it was "strenuous." We stopped briefly at times to grab a drink of water or catch our breath, but mostly it was a steady climb to the summit. Then we hiked along the ridgeline for a half-mile or so and came out into a clearing which had been cut for a power line, resulting in a beautiful view of the valley below. We sat around and talked and swapped personal varieties of trail mix for a nice long while (the best came from the previous day's Theme Talk minister, who had broad tastes in dried fruit).
I felt absolutely exhiliarated to have made it to the top, and to have kept up with the group without needing special accomodation. I also basked in my father's obvious pride. I mean, ten or twelve years ago, we thought I might never be able to stop using crutches. And here I was, completing a strenuous climb and keeping to the pace of a group of fit, healthy adults with plenty of hiking experience. It's hard to even describe how goood that felt... and on top of the physical endorphin rush, too.
The descent was easy, with much more opportunity for conversation. We came back, showered very very carefully (there was quite a bit of poison ivy along the edges of the trail), and hit the dining hall for an absolutely enormous lunch. Then it was time for the very first class to make it onto my SUUSI schedule, and the one I'd been looking forward to since the catalog came out: Chocolate Making 101.
Everything looked great when I came into the classroom, which was a dorm kitchen: paper-covered tables arrayed with all kinds of supplies, from decoratively colored white chocolate melted in a multi-chambered electric bain-marie, with paintbrushes for application, to plates of toasted coconut. Someone was stirring chocolate in a double boiler on the stove. Each of us was given a large gift bag full of supplies: a 4x6 photo album filled with recipes, an offset spatula, molds for simple bonbons and cordial cups, and a fold-out chocolate box we were to fill with our products.
bosssio and I were practically jumping up and down in expectation. But our teacher looked very nervous, and soon we found out why: the outdoor humidity, combined with the additional humidity from the vented dryers in the laundry room next door, had done terrible things to the chocolate, and it would. Not. Set.So we wound up hearing a lot about how one makes chocolates, and learning about techniques, and eating a lot of sludgy chocolate that wouldn't firm up properly, and - at the very end - managing to get some of the white chocolate to form up in a simple mold. But we didn't manage to get any filled candies made. She sent us each home with some additional plastic molds from her collection and some of the colored white chocolate coins, and
bosssio and I agreed to get together and make chocolates once the weather cools and dries. It was terribly disappointing, and only the fact that our teacher obviously felt worse than we did, and bent over backwards to try to salvage the class for us, kept me from feeling completely let down.We picked up the kids and let them play outside for a while outside the youth program dorm, and then went over to the SUUSI quad for Community Time. They'd set up a whole Harry Potter section, where you could get a temporary tattoo in the shape of a lightning bolt and a pair of big plastic black-rimmed glasses. Alex spent a great deal of time in "Potions Class" - a couple of water tables outfitted with pipettes, graduated cylinders, and screw-top test tubes, with food coloring and cornstarch to add when your potion was ready. They also had a table with quillmaking supplies (essentially it was pencil decoration) and a wandmaking table.
"It's been a while since she's gone to the potty," I mentioned to Michael as we moved from the Harry Potter section to the sand volleyball court. We agreed that we needed to be alert for that. Perhaps ten minutes later, she wet her pants - totally our fault. At least it was outside, this time.
We got her cleaned up, and then all went to dinner. Afterwards, we came back to the suite and my Dad did some singing with the kids. Alex was especially thrilled to discover that he knew some of her favorite songs, like "Zip-a-Dee Doo Dah" and "The Mermaid Song." (It must have been quite a sight, the three of us walking back from the cafeteria singing at the top of our lungs: While we poor sailors go skipping to the top, and the landlubbers lie down below, below, below...") Then Alex and
bosssio's son Liam went off for a prolonged period of tearing up and down the halls: first marching with jingle bells, then pretending to be monsters, and then abandoning all refinement and just chasing each other at top speed.Afterward, we brought Alex into the bedroom for a cooling-down period with stories. I started combing out her snarled hair, but it was in an awful state - she's got a terrible fear of showers, which meant that her hair hadn't been washed since Saturday. So I got the brilliant idea of dipping her brush into a sippy cup of water and smoothing the tangles out that way. I gently brushed water into her hair for a good ten minutes while Michael read her stories, and then put the sippy cup on the desk. Where it suddenly looked... kind of cloudy. I dipped a finger in and tasted it... apple juice. Apple juice. I had been carefully, gently, and lovingly brushing diluted apple juice into the hair of my hairwashing-averse child. (In my defense: it was probably 80% water, and so it didn't look like apple juice, or smell like it.) Michael went and got some clean water, and I started the whole process over again. I dipped all of her back hair straight into the cup, and then combed out the rest... what a disaster.
It was 80s night in the over-21 dance club, and so I sort of thought I should go dancing. But my muscles were reminding me that I'd spent the morning on a strenuous hike, pushing them to their utmost. So instead, when
bosssio went out to do her childcare co-op shift, Michael and I just followed her into the hall, where we spent a few hours in fast-flowing conversation with whoever else was too lazy to actually go out - in particular, a woman named Lorah who I'd had a long conversation with last year as well. It turns out that she's homeschooling her kids, and she had interesting things to say about the connection between homeschooling and the UU Principles. All of us were swapping SUUSI stories and church stories and parenthood stories, and before I knew it, it was 1am and time to stagger to bed.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 08:26 pm (UTC)b) i am not at all snickering about the apple juice. not me. not a bit. (sometime in the future after i am emkidded, i will call you and say "remember how i laughed at the apple juice thing?" and then tell you something awful i've just done. i promise.)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 08:51 pm (UTC)Oh, no!
OK, yes, I'm laughing, I admit it. If it's any comfort, it's the rueful chuckle of "I could so see myself doing that." Argh!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 12:04 am (UTC)Sounds like you had a great hike! It's wonderful that you could see the valley from the ridge. On Skyline Drive, there's usually too much pollution these days.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 12:44 am (UTC)It was heavily overcast when we set out, and I was afraid we'd reach the summit and see nothing but a blanket of fog. But instead, we saw this:
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 03:10 am (UTC)(sorry, channeling Liam just now).
Must do chocolate. as soon as the temperature drops a bit.
Oh, I need to schedule my visit to Balmer - I'll shoot off the email tonight - it will be the second week in August.