This Pilgrim's Progress

The Human Zoo

The London Zoo had a special exhibit called the "The Human Zoo" this past weekend. They had a group of eight 20-something men and women dressed in fig-leaves attached to their swim suits living in one of the exhibits. Sounds like it was a pretty boring exhibit, kind of like watching "Big Brother"!!  I think they might have had more success if their exhibit was developed a little more thoroughly to show the different "subspecies" of modern western-European humans. I'm thinking if they had side by side exhibits showing  "Eco-Leftists", "Neo-Cons", "Computer Geeks", "Chavs", "Gender-Feminists", "Cultural Elites", "Dot.Com Capitalists", "Over-the-Hill Baby Boomers", "British Footie Yobs", etc.  it would have been a lot more interesting and instructive!!  The people in the exhibit were allowed to go home at night which is real bogus!! They should make them stay in the exhibits full-time and engage in the typical natural activities of each sub-species.  The Eco-leftists could be shown tree-sitting or throwing red-paint on any spectators wearing animal products.  Neo-Cons of course would be blogging and ranting on Talk-Radio. The footies would be consuming mass quantities of alcoholic beverages and doing their team chants and songs, while the Geeks would be busy trying to hack into the Dot.Com-Capitalists financial systems. Of course the Cultural Elites would need a one-way viewing glass because they would be posing for tourists photos instead of sipping their cappuccinos and debating the merits of Kaballa vs. Pilates. Yes, I think the London Zoo has a good idea, but they need to take it to the next level.

IT'S HOT!!!!

Temps were in the triple digits this weekend in El Cajon. We spent most of the weekend in the air conditioning!

We took our kids and dog down to the beach Saturday evening. While they surfed we walked Toby along the beach. He loved it!! Toby found a small fish,  grunion maybe?,  and carried it around for awhile until it disintegrated.  He loved being around all the people and got real excited when anyone wanted to pet him. We need to work on training him to not jump up on people...he gets so excited he's like a jumping-jack bouncing up and down!!!

School starts for our kids this week. I still haven't finished putting their history/lit. syllabus's together yet. I made pretty good progress Saturday on Heidi's.  The tough part for me is figuring out what to put in and what to leave out.  Covering the most important parts of history and lit. and ignoring the less important. Requires me to make some judgments about that, and that can be real tough.

I signed up for a small group at church Sunday. I'm looking forward to the fellowship.

The youth ministry I'm involved with,  Cadets, is kind of in the doldrums at our church right now. I was going to take the year off, but I'm afraid the ministry may collapse due to lack of men to lead it. Our session (church board) seems rather non-committal to it even though it has been a great ministry for youngsters  in the primary and middle school ages. I might end up leading a small group of boys just to keep the ministry going. We have a large number of toddler boys in our congregation who will be the right age in a few short years, if we can keep things going we will have quite a large Cadets club in about 3 to 5 years. It has been an important ministry for my son, and I think it has a lot to offer all young boys in the area of faith-mentoring and building bonding experiences and learning some fun skills.  I have to be careful not to take too much on though. In the past that problem (taking on too much) has been a real one for me, causing me one year to come close to a nervous breakdown.  So I have to be careful and prayerful about all this!!!

Neighbors and Dogs

We received a form-letter from the city yesterday that informed us that someone had filed a complaint against us about our dog barking. Of course, we know which neighbor complained, because we had a heated confrontation with them a few years ago with our Springer Spaniel (who's now busy chasing cats in heaven!! Do I believe pets go to heaven...that's a topic for a different post).

Cookie would get separation anxiety and sometimes bark because she thought we were around and ignoring her. The poor thing had become deaf and somewhat very near-sighted in the last half of her life. We finally bought her a no-bark collar which worked well when we remembered to put it on her. The confrontation occurred when I was rebuilding our back fence, and had just a plastic safety net across. So we put her a long yard leash one Saturday while we were at an all-day swim meet with our kids.  When we returned home, the poor dog had wrapped herself up around the picnic table and was sort of pinned to the ground by the leash. Our neighbors came over almost immediately to complain. I explained the circumstances, but they were having none of it.  Obviously this was a sore point with them and no amount of apology or reasonableness was going to placate them.

Well now we have a 6 month old Lab. But, HE DOESN'T BARK, ever!! We do have another Lab on the other side of us, and a Schnauzer across the street,  and a Terrier two houses down that are always barking. But they rarely do it continuously.  So, why the complaint?? Because in their mind they think they are being grievously infringed upon by the occasional noise.  And we happen to be a convenient target because we live next to them.

So what's the Christian response to a neighbor like that?? The scripture says we are to love our neighbors, but does that mean even when there's no way to make amends?? Our neighbor just simply doesn't like dogs, and they resent us for having one. So, how do we soften their hearts an reach out to them?? We could pray for them, and we have in the past. But it's hard to keep that up with no seeming affect. But perhaps that's the discipline that the Lord wants us to learn??

And the neighbors with the small yippy dogs that are causing all the noise?? Well, I don't feel like I want to make it an issue, but maybe we'll mention to them the fact that a complaint has been made against us.  One can't predict their reaction, but maybe they will be more thoughtful if they know that someone in the neighborhood is super-sensitive to dogs barking??

Avian Flu - the next plague??

Hugh Hewitt had a huge segment yesterday on the Avian Flu. He's convinced that it's a real threat. He was bouncing off an article from the Washington Post about Avian Flu. He asked his audience if we were afraid. I thought that was a bit over the top!! There's so much to fear in this life that we don't need to look for new stuff. It sounds like the health community and our government are keeping a close watch on this virus.

Life IS precious and very fragile. That fact should drive every Christian to a renewed reliance on the Lord and trust in his soveriegn grace.

Hugh said he wasn't trying to be an alarmist, but he sure is sounding like one. Remember all the doom and gloom crowd predicting the "end of life as we know it" from the Y2K issue?? I sure do. No don't waste your time on unreasoning fear, spend your energy on prayer, the scriptures, fellowship of the saints, and all the spirtual disciplines we need to help us through life's travails.

Lance Armstrong

Looks like the French are determined to trash Lance Armstrong's reputation. The French newspaper L'Equipe published an investigative article where they claim they have proof that Lance used EPO in 1999.

A lab used some "B" samples from 1999 to test their new lab procedures for detecting EPO. Some of the samples tested positive, but the lab says there is no way to trace the samples to the original athlete. L'Equipe claims they were able to make the connection, but we know how easy it is to falsify that kind of  "evidence".

Of course it's a complete fabrication, the French just hate the idea that the best cycle athlete in the world is an American from Texas!! L'Equipe is owned by the same parent company that runs the Tour de France. You'd think they'd realize that trashing Lance's rep will just succeed in trashing the reputation of the Tour, not to mention the whole sport of cycling.

I'm not a huge fan of Lance as a person, but I respect him and his accomplishments as an athlete. He's done much to generate a lot of interest in this country for the Tour and cycling in general. It's a shame to see French chauvinism at work in trashing this man's hard-earned reputation as a world-class athlete.

Stay tuned for more details.  In the meantime check out Lance's web site: http://www.lancearmstrong.com/

Iron Mountain...Again

Monday evening my daughter and I hiked up Iron Mtn. after work. We didn't get started up the trail until 6:45 p.m.  We got to the top at 8:00 p.m. and then back down to the car by 9:30 p.m.

It was pitch-black on the way back but we had our head-lamps. My daughter didn't turn hers on most of the way. I guess her young eyes can see better than mine in the dark. My night-vision is pretty marginal at best, so I definitely needed the light. The view was quite pretty. The sky had a kind of orange glow to it from the lights bouncing off the marine layer near the coast.

On the way down we passed two women with packs on the way up (actually they were just a few switchbacks from the top). They had a little black and white Shetland sheep dog as their company.

Daughter is definitely in great shape. I had trouble keeping up with her even on the flat parts of the trail!! I finally gave up trying and continued at my own slow pace, with breaks to catch my breath. She got new-replacement boots from REI, so I'm sure she wanted to get them broken in. I think she did wear a blister into her heel. Her old boots were pretty trashed, and now I know why!! Her hiking style is to just blast down the trail with no thought to step-placement, trusting her young muscles to cope with the punishment of the rocky trail.  I tend to pick my steps pretty carefully, so I was amazed that she was able to hike in the dark, but then she didn't really need to see!!!

Speaking of REI, I just ordered one of those conversion-camp-chairs for my Therm-a-rest pad. It works great. It weighs just 14 ounces, so I'm thinking it would be worth the effort to bring on my backpacking trip. Often there's no place to sit that's comfortable, so you end up just plopping your body on the dirt.

I decided to spend most of the week recovering, and I'll hike Friday evening, and then Sat. afternoon. I'll probably carry my pack Saturday and load it up by 10 lbs. to 50 lbs. and see how it goes. Hopefully I'll get into the gym and do some time on the treadmill to keep my legs in train this week.

Iron Mountain

I went up Iron Mountain today with a group of friends.

We all are part of a group of men from our church who will be backpacking in the Sierra's for a week next month. We are going to Humphreys Basin via Piute Pass and camp next to Upper Golden Trout Lake. This was a "training" hike and most of us did it with loaded packs. Mine was about 38 lbs.  I did pretty well, and I felt pretty good. I'm in much better shape than I was a month ago, and my mental/spiritual state was real good too.

Iron Mountain is on the outskirts of Poway, and it was a 3 mile hike to the top with a 1200 foot elevation gain. It was pretty hot and it was a bit muggy too, but we all faired pretty well. We started hiking about 7:30 a.m. and got to the top by 9:30 a.m. There was a hiker's registry on top, and I put in an entry for Heidi to find. I think she would really enjoy this hike. There's a longer loop that's even more challenging, and I'm sure she would love that! We spent about 30 minutes resting and then headed back down. We were back to the cars by 11:30 a.m. It was pretty hot by then, and I managed to down 3 liters of water, which is my normal intake on a hike. If it had been a longer one I would have ran out of water half-way, so I'm glad we didn't try the larger loop today. That would probably be a great hike for the winter season.

I'm writing this 4 hours after the hike and my body feels pretty good. So I think I'm on the right course in my training. I started hiking Cowles Mtn. last week, and managed to do it 3 days in a roll. I think keeping that up will help get me in good shape for the Sierra's.

Daughter is Back!!

Heidi got back Saturday. They spent Friday at Knott's Berry Farm and apparently had a blast.  Sounds like she had a great time backpacking in the Sierra's!!

My wife and I went to a Hawaiian-themed 40th b-day party Saturday. Next time we'll make excuses, we just aren't theme-party people!! Or even party-people!! We're home-bodies and proud of it. The decorations were incredible and even a bit over-the-top. We wondered when the volcano-sacrifice-of-a-virgin was going to happen!! But there was no volcano.

Sunday my son and I went to a movie preview at a local surf-skateboard-snowboard shop. It was a movie about surfing-great Bruce Irons. The movie was pretty good, with just a smattering of bad language, and a lot of great surfing footage. It was shorter than we were expecting, but maybe this was the freebie-preview-version?? They had free food and two bands and it was kind of fun to be at.

We saw the Hilton sisters there, or at least their wannabee-look-a-likes. I didn't know that "look" was in!! Why would anyone want to look like a spoiled-hedonistic-anorexic-slut-celeb-nightclubber?? Oh well.

Heidi had oral surgery today to remove her 4 wisdom teeth. Talk about a bad Monday!! Poor thing. She heals up quickly, but it will be a few days before she's healed up. Then she get's the stitches pulled next week.

Sprinkler-system problems this weekend. Still having problems, so I get to replace a valve tonight after work.  One of the valves is stuck open, so I've got to replace it or keep the whole system off so we don't flood our yard down the street!! The joys of home-ownership!!

Toby The Rat Hunter!!

Toby killed another rat this morning.  He was quite pleased with himself and came running to show my wife his catch!! She was not excited about it, but got quite excited when Toby wanted to bring his trophy into the house. I heard all the commotion and hurried into my bath robe to do my husbandly duty.  I managed to coax Toby into relinquishing his prize in exchange for some yummy Purina chow!! Then I scooped the carcass up and dumped it into our garbage can. This is the second time Toby has managed to catch a rat in the back yard. I think it's kind of cool, it's the first time I've ever owned a dog that hunted anything but a comfortable sofa to sleep on! He's such a puppy still. My wife says she saw him chasing something in the grass in the back yard and then suddenly he pounced on it. She thinks he probably killed or stunned it with his pounce and then the coup-de-grace with a quick bite. 

I've had cats that hunted, but having a dog that hunts is a new experience.  We will need to get him trained so he doesn't mistake some of the smaller dogs around the neighborhood for large rats!!!  Actually he gets along fantastically with all sorts of dogs, both great and tiny. He has learned the proper dog etiquette and he handles it better than we do when a dog runs out of its house and barks at us on our walks. He doesn't seem to mind cats at all.  Our old spaniel considered cats to be her sworn enemy and she liked to chase them, but never caught them. 

I need to get some more pictures of Toby soon before he grows again!!  He won't stay this size long, he'll be 100 lbs. before we know it!!

But Our Dog Still Needs Us!!

Toby, our Lab "puppy", is now over 50 lbs.!! He's a bit of a moose, but he still has the personality and playfulness of a young puppy. He's been a real joy to the whole family, even though it has been a lot of work too.

He starts his next obedience class soon, which will be good. He's big enough that he can be a problem at times, so we hope to learn how to "civilize" him a bit better in the training. He's learned to come sit with us in the living room and watch TV with us for a short time, about 15 or 20 minutes.  A month ago he didn't last 5 minutes without trying to eat the furniture and climb up on the sofa with us!! 

We did get him neutered lately, so hopefully that will help him to calm down too as he grows older. He hasn't had any complications, and with his thick, indestructible hide, we don't think the stitches bother him at all.  Soon as he get's them pulled, I'm going to start taking him up Cowles Mtn. with me. He's strong enough to pull me up if need be. Hmmmm, I wonder if dogs are allowed on the Piute Pass trail??