Sequoia: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The lovely Carol worked at Sequoia National Park long before I met her, and we visited the park together for the 8th (or so) time this past week -- on this occasion, with Yunita and her friend Daniel. We camped Sunday and Monday nights at Lodgepole (you can see a map on this page, which also has an alphabetical list of campgrounds), where the sign at the gate proclaimed "Full" in spite of many empty sites (a lot of no-shows, we guessed). You can walk from your campsite to the "village" (which has showers, store, pizza, ice cream -- and the visitor center) -- I figure about a ½-mile.

You can also walk to Tokopah Falls, 1.7 miles from the trailhead (which is in the campground). We did this on Monday morning. There are gorgeous views along the trail, which is not very difficult. Starting elevation was about 6700', which made this a great way to get acclimated to the altitude. Dinner on Sunday was homemade chili (which I prepared Saturday afternoon), cole slaw (which the lovely Carol mostly prepared on-site), rice (provided by Yunita and Daniel). For breakfast we had cold cereal and hot drinks. Monday night's dinner was provided by Yunita and Daniel; they even brought the charcoal! It was delicious, too.

Tuesday morning we headed up the Lakes Trail -- our destination: Emerald Lake, via the Watchtower. If you've never seen the Watchtower, I gotta tell you it's worth the hike, especially if you're just hauling a day pack, rather than 40 pounds of gear. Start at the Wolverton trailhead (it's a cross-country ski area in winter) and follow the signs toward Pear Lake (1st junction) and the watchtower (2nd junction). The trailhead is apparently at 7250' and you gain over 1000' getting to the Watchtower. This is one of the spots on the map where a bunch of contour lines squish together -- I mean there is a steep dropoff. We saw Tokopah Falls, and the trail of Monday's hike, basically from above. I always snap a few pictures at the Watchtower, but they can't do it justice -- not that my photo of Emerald Lake does it justice (yes, those white patches are snow).

The Bad

As we approached the lakes from the Watchtower, the mosquitoes got worse. At Emerald Lake, they were really thick and hungry. I mean, the "Off!™" 7% DEET spray distracted them for less than a minute before they started biting again. It was truly horrible. Come to think of it, there were quite a few on Monday's hike, too (Daniel got a whole mess o' welts from mosquito bites) -- but the insect repellant worked on them. We went into our tent and zipped the door closed after a while. The good news, though, was that the 25% DEET stuff does work on these things -- at least it did at 6:30 the next morning.

Some folks in a nearby campsite begged some repellant off us. Actually they donated a can of beer in exchange for a few sprays. I warned 'em it didn't really work, but they gave us the beer anyway. "Our strategy is to kill them all," one of the guys said.

"Good luck on that one," I told him. Actually you could just clap your hands and kill one or two -- they were that thick. But of course there are thousands more where those came from.

A ranger came by while we were hiding in our tent. She looked at our wilderness permit; we talked with her through the screen "door." Even as we chatted, I saw several mosquitoes land on her and take a bite. Apparently these bugs bite all day long.

The Fire

The fire, which we contained and extinguished, was started by a Svea gasoline-fired backpacking stove. These things work by pressurizing the fuel with heat; that is, you heat the tank and fuel expands/pressurizes. The resulting pressure forces liquid fuel through a small neck, vaporizing it for combustion under your saucepan.

There is a problem, though, if you don't fully tighten the filler cap. When you ignite the fuel in the little well atop the stove, the resulting heat may force gasoline vapor out the cap, turning the stove into a sort of blowtorch. When this happened to us, I was loath to pour water on the fire (I was visualizing oil fires, and creating a river of flame) but eventually decided to sprinkle water -- which lowered the flames; we flooded it and that extinguished the fire.

Unfortunately, when the stove became a blowtorch, the whole thing was in flames, including the (soldered?) seams at its bottom. So another attempt to light the stove (with the filler cap definitely closed) resulted in another mess of flames, caused by gasoline seeping out the bottom of our now-ruined stove. Dinner was cold soup, crackers, salmon and salami slices. And beer.

Our previous backpacking trip was about 23 years ago; between the mosquitoes and the fire, I'm not sure when I'll be ready for the next one.

The Return

I was quite excited to get out of there. I was awake by 6AM, and the mosquitoes were already out in force, just as the ranger had warned us. We had cold cereal -- no stove, so no coffee. It was about an hour from the campsite to Heather Lake. We descended via The Hump rather than the Watchtower, taking about 90 minutes to return to the lower junction, and not quite 90 minutes to the trailhead. 5.2 miles in a shade under 4 hours -- not very impressive. On the other hand, we stopped to talk with folks a few times along the way.

We drove over to the Lodgepole visitor center to return the bear-barrel (which we didn't need at all, really; there are bear boxes at Emerald Lake). We then headed down the hill into Three Rivers, which the car thermometer advised us was some 104°F. That night was spent in the Sierra Lodge, which has a pool (yay!) and interior designs from the '50s or so. Dinner was at the River View (on recommendation of the hotel staff), a funky place with great food.

Cardiologist? An open letter to a young friend

Dude,

I heard you're headed for the cardiologist. Your mom sounds kinda excited about all that, but I wanted to tell you about some cardiac tests I've experienced. First is the basic EKG or electro-cardiogram. Why EKG? I dunno. 'cause of Greek (καρδια?) or German maybe? Anyway you lie on a table and they connect a bunch of suction cups to your body -- the wikipedia link above has a picture showing approximate locations. Wires go from those electrodes to an electronic instrument. They might wipe your skin where they stick those on, to make sure the suction cups will stay there.

Then they'll want you to lie still and think peaceful thoughts, while they chart the electrical impulses that activate your heart muscles. It is quite a complicated problem to estimate what's going on electrically in your heart muscles, when all you have to go on is what you can read from electrical impulses at the surface of your skin. But for the patient it's a simple test; you just lie there while they attach electrodes, and think peaceful thoughts.

Anyway, the EKG is not invasive; nothing goes below your skin. They thought my heart was strange electrically after my EKG, so they had me do a stress EKG, or what I call the treadmill test, which also is not invasive. The setup with the electrodes is the same, but they have you run on a treadmill. At first the treadmill is easy -- like walking. But then they increase the tilt and the speed. The whole time you're walking, jogging, running on the treadmill they're monitoring your heart. When you're just about pooped you signal them and they slow the machine down gradually (so you don't run off it).

I took the treadmill test, and they studied that and said my heart was funny-looking electrically. They wanted me to do a stress echo test. That's like the treadmill test, but just at the point where I wanted to quit running, they put one of these ultrasound gadgets on my chest and took movies of it. There was this cold gel on the end of the instrument, an ultrasonic transducer actually. They studied that and decided my heart was funny-looking.

Bottom line, I do not have a cardiac problem. But my heart is funny-looking both electrically and in ultrasound.

rice balls!

Yesterday was "Pool Day" at our friends' home, a big pot-luck with swimming, cards, and of course food. Our contributions to the buffet table were a succotash, prepared by the lovely Carol, and rice-balls, which were a joint effort.

Shelly asked about the rice balls; here's the story. First is the rice. You want something medium- or short-grain. We get ours at costco in 50-pound bags. Don't use "Minute Rice®" or "Uncle Ben's®" or basmati rice or the usual "long grain" rice popular on supermarket shelves -- the kind of rice you typically get at Chinese restaurants in other words. What you need here is the kind of stuff you typically get at Japanese restaurants; it's fairly sticky. Don't buy something labeled "glutinous rice", though; that's too much of a good thing. I grew up on Hinode brand "Calrose" rice; I think if you get rice with a Japanese brand name like Shirakiku or Kohoku you'll be OK.

These particular rice-balls were made by forming "shiso gohan" (しそごはん). What you do is cook the rice as usual. About 15 minutes after the rice-cooker pops, stir it around with a rice-paddle and let it sit a while longer (covered). Then you take some of this "yukari" stuff (from the envelope you see at left). Here's the interpretation. At the top, the small black letters on a gold background, it says "三島の" (Mishima's -- a brand name) -- oh, helpfully it says "mishima" at the bottom. Next, the big white letters on purple, "ゆかり" ("yukari", sounds like "you-kah-ree") is the name of the product. I guess. I don't know how to say it in English, but my lovely Carol said it's "purple basil." The smaller white letters on green, in the middle, are "しそごはん用" which being interpreted says, "for use (in making) 'shiso gohan'" where "shiso" is that "purple basil" stuff and "gohan" is "cooked rice" (as distinct from "o-kome", rice before it's cooked). OK, so you take your cooked rice that's sat for a while, say 15-60 minutes after you stirred it up with the rice-paddle, and mix in this "yukari" stuff. For three US measuring cups of rice, use four Tbsp of the "yukari" and stir it in well. That's the minimum. Give it a little taste test; you might want a little more.

Now for the fun part. With clean hands (a pure heart is optional but highly recommended -- see Psalm 24) -- oh, I mean clean wet hands -- form some rice into a ball. How much is some? Ah, maybe a scant ½ cup. Use your rice-paddle to put some rice into one cupped wet hand. Then, using both hands, to make a triangular prism, about 3cm tall, with triangles being 6-8cm on the side. We're about to go camping so I'm not going to make the volume calculation to verify that ½-cup is correct. Maybe it's more or less, but that's what you're aiming at.

If you have some "nori" (dried seaweed) around, you can wrap the rice-balls in it, but not everybody likes the seaweed. It's hard to imagine, I know, but it's true. If you're going to a Japanese store anyway, ask the proprietor for "aji-tsuke nori" -- it's prepared with "mirin" (sweet Japanese rice wine) and some other stuff, probably MSG, which really adds to the taste. If you suffer from "Chinese restaurant syndrome" you might want to go easy on this stuff.

But the rice balls were a success at pool day.

For those of you with an inner dietitian (or inner dietician -- /usr/share/dict/words has this but the spell-checker hates it), I have no idea whether this works with brown rice.

For those who love those extremely salty Japanese picked plums (probably no overlap with the inner-dietitian set), feel free to tuck one (or part of one) in the center of the rice-balls. Hey, it's a free country!

Bon appetit!

nfsserver, autofs, etc., all working now: opensuse 10.2

the luddite finally has the computer up. 1280x1024 intel graphics, 24-bit color (yay), and it doesn't crash. The way nfsserver and autofs work on opensuse10.2 differs from the 9.3 setup, which caused a pile of annoyance. Bottom line, this sort of thing used to work:

collin@p3:~> cat /etc/auto.master
/home2         /etc/auto.home         udp,--timeout 60
 etc...
collin@p3:~> cat /etc/auto.home
collin  -rw,hard,intr,rsize=4096,wsize=4096,udp     p4:/home/collin
 etc... 

but it doesn't now :( Instead I ended up doing this in /etc/auto.master:

/mnt/home      /etc/auto.mnt-home     udp,--timeout 60
collin@p3:~> cat /etc/auto.mnt-home
collin  -rw,hard,intr,rsize=4096,wsize=4096,udp     p4:/home/collin
 etc... 

The directory /mnt must exist before starting autofs, but /mnt/home need not exist (must not exist?? I'm not sure but am not inclined to experiment now that it all finally works). I seem to remember from a Long Time Ago that it was considered bad medicine to NFS-mount toplevel directories (e.g., /data1) -- better to symlink /data1 to /mnt/data1 and NFS-mount the latter. So I've just made up a new superstition, let autofs create directories at least one level down. Thus, I have a pre-existing directory /mnt and I tell autofs to create /mnt/home, /mnt/data, and so on.

So if you're getting unexplained 521s when trying to mount stuff with autofs, this might have something to do with it.

What's left?

Printing and sound, in that order. Well, printing *might* work -- I just haven't tried it. Sound definitely doesn't. I have hope, though, because sound works on the box at my office under this very same distro. More later.

Christian kids and college: notes from a parents’ seminar

A few weeks ago, our church had a seminar for parents and high school seniors. They started it off with a panel, and then Kara Powell, from the Fuller Youth Institute, spoke to us for a while. There was a Q&A session (kids in one room, parents in another). Following are some notes -- none from the Q&A though.

What did your parents do that helped you feel supported when you were in college? A panel of college students replied:

• Being available on my schedule, i.e., being flexible
• Telling me "I'm praying for you"
• Taking me to Costco!
• Coming to see my athletic events (using up their vacation time like that)
• Care packages.
• Asking every few weeks, "How can I pray for you?"
• Sending cards and packages. And newsy e-mails.
• Supporting me in my decisions even if they don't fully agree.

What annoyed you?

• Once when I was home on vacation, my dad told me, "Go to bed." ???
• Telling me to do my homework at a certain time.
• E-mailing my academic advisor
  (about what, I don't remember --collin)

What about getting connected with a faith community?

• I didn't know anyone other than my (athletic) teammates and ignored faith for a while. Eventually another kid found me and told me about a good church in the area; we went together.
• got connected through an FCA-like group (FCA = fellowship of christian athletes)
• Don't just commit to the first church you see.

Kara Powell

Confession: "I can go a long time" (minutes, sometimes hours even) "without thinking about God." Life is full for Kara now, research and teaching and raising kids etc., and it gets full very quickly for students entering college.

According to research of T. Clydesdale(?), Christian kids sometimes put their faith into a "lockbox"; it's invisible from the outside. In some cases they drift away from their faith entirely.

One case: a leader in high school (worship leader? Bible study leader?) went to college and gave up on all that. He smokes pot with his buddies who are, he says, "far more supportive than" anyone at church was to him. (Is that reality, or was he only justifying himself? Did his youth group leader just use him, or did he really care about his relationship with Christ?)

They showed a 5-minute section of a longer (20-minute) video. I think you can see the clip at http://liveabove.com -- summary of the video: Christian kids go to college, some of them discard their faith (at least for a time) and get into alcohol and (other) drugs. Some get drunk every weekend; one girl was sexually assaulted while too drunk to resist. etc.

This video was shown at an InterVarsity meeting (this is a Christian group!) and some of the kids couldn't speak because they were so upset. The point: this sort of experience is far more common, even among Christian kids, than we would like to think.

Later, a mother asked if it's different at a Christian school vs others. They didn't answer the question, but I have my own sources :). Regarding alcohol and the party scene, I have a young friend at Vanguard University of Southern California, and she affirms that it's definitely easier to avoid it on a Christian campus than a "secular" one. But if you're determined to get drunk, you can still do it. My friend visited Cal Lutheran with her son, and alcohol is definitely available there. (She was not favorably impressed.)

Regarding sexual behavior, according to an article in Christianity Today (and a book by a Catholic college professor), there is a dichotomy between conservative/Evangelical colleges and others (including Catholic schools). At the Evangelical schools, abstinence and restraint are affirmed/celebrated, and at the others, promiscuity is the norm. So our kids probably would have a different experience going to Whitworth, Vanguard, Calvin or Hope than they would at Cal Lutheran, Holy Cross, Stanford or UC.

Kara next went into three factors for keeping faith in the college years:

Having a firm grip on the gospel

What is the good news, really? They observed (Fuller Youth Institute research) that youth group graduates who are teetotalers completely switch gears when they get to college and drink a lot. From this observation they think the kids don't really understand the good news. (How did they come to this conclusion? I didn't catch that.)

Summary of the gospel in four points:

1. God made us GOOD; but
2. we sinned, which led to GUILT.
3. God responded by forgiving us through his GRACE, and
4. we respond with GRATITUDE. It's not about "sin management."

How do we deal with doubts?

Questions inevitably come to the Christian student when s/he enters college. Why do you go to church? Why does God let nice people go to hell? (Imagine a Bible Belt kid going to Stanford or Harvard and meeting a lot of nice kids who are not Christians. They're nice; will they go to heaven? Why not?)

Four principal ways of dealing with doubt:

1. diffused. student becomes a chameleon, simply adapting to whatever's around them.
2. closed; they don't want to think about it.
3. moratorium; they don't want to jump to any conclusions, so they try to hold all possibilities in their heads at once
4. achieved identity; having considered all possibilities, aware that nothing in this life is 100% certain, yet deciding that following Jesus makes the most sense.

We all hope our kids come to #4 but that's not realistic for a new college student. Probably #3, a willingness to really examine conflicting claims to truth, is the healthiest for a college student. Some of us remain in #3 forever. Personally, I go between #4 and #3.

Preparation

The suggestion was that we work on preparing our kids for what's coming. Part of this is being aware of the top 3 difficulties for Christian kids:

1. Finding friends;
2. Aloneness;
3. Finding a church community.

So a poll of high school seniors showed 15% believe their youth group prepared them well for the transition to college. (In other words, 85% didn't think so.) The action plan then would be to think and talk about these things ahead of time:

• where/how to find friends;
• recovery: how will (my parents? myself?) respond when I goof up?
• finding a church or an on-campus Christian group;
• time and money;
• the first two weeks.

Kids were asked why they go to youth group. #1 is they love their youth group leader. Seeing their friends was #6!

Most important factors on kids' faith:

1. Relationship with their parents (and their parents' own faith);
2. Non-parent adults;
3. Peer relationships.

This isn't very precise. Was this positive influence, negative influence, or both? How was this measured? Was this kids who were still holding onto their faith after college? Those who had drifted away? When was the survey taken? etc.

That said, parents and non-parent adults apparently have a huge impact on kids' faith.

---

So: Do your kids have adults in their lives other than you? Are there any kids in your life other than your own?

A happy fathers day

I had a great day today. I was given the gift of time -- I was permitted to bang my head against a brick wall while trying to fix my computer (as shown here and here).

The teen-ager gave me a calendar, the days of each month, with a fatherly photo above the month. the photos were lovingly retouched with oil pastels, very special. The ex-teen provided a bright orange T-shirt, V-neck. For cycling! The lovely Carol gave me a gift card for Kepler's.

And a lovely meal! Grilled tuna and vegetables, prepared on the patio. Steamed rice (of course). And for dessert, a fruit cobbler. All delicious.

We also had terrific weather. I washed the "whites" last night and hung them out this morning. They were dry (even the socks) before suppertime.

I think I am one of the luckiest fathers alive today.

Two questions for husbands

A brilliant piece of writing from Love & Stosny's how to improve your marriage without talking about it:

Remember the famous Far Side cartoon of the man talking at length to his dog, Ginger? One bubble had what the man said and the other had what Ginger heard. The man said a lot, but this is what Ginger heard:

"Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah ..."

Unless a woman is emotionally connected to her partner, this is what he will hear when she talks to him:

"Blah, blah, blah, failure. Blah, blah, blah, not good enough. Blah, blah, blah, can't meet my needs. Blah, blah, blah, bad boy."

p. 26

They don't mean that Ginger is as smart as the average husband, because they have a similar passage for what a woman hears when her husband talks. The difference is that "failure" (etc) is replaced by "I don't love you," "I won't be there for you," etc.

Can't we stop hurting each other? We probably can't stop altogether, but we probably can hope for better days. Of course I have a plan; it'll probably improve things over a 20-30 year period. It has two parts, wherein a husband must cement his answers to two important questions:

The first question: Whose am I?

... that is, "To whom do I belong?" E. Stanley Jones said that this question, rather than the one below, is the most important question in any person's life.

The answer? If you belong to The Master, Jesus, I recommend that you reach out to him in prayer daily, maybe something like this:

Lord Jesus, you are full of grace and truth, but I am weak and easily distracted. Help me give myself for my wife as you gave yourself for the church. Give me power to understand and to know your astonishing love. What words do you want to say to my wife today through me?

And if she has some discouraging words for me, help me to know what's truly about me, vs what's about her. Help me to remember that you define me; she doesn't. You are my light and my salvation--who shall I fear? You are the stronghold of my life.

When I remember that I belong to Jesus, I'm a better husband, a better employee, a better neighbor. And now for ...

The other question: Who am I?

If I don't know who I am, I'll just bounce around, foolish, disobedient, led astray, a slave to various passions and pleasures, filling my days with malice and envy, hated by men and hating them in return (Titus 3:3), and so on. If we want to be men rather than beasts, there are a few other things we can and should do:

• Relax. Get enough sleep. We'll have a hard time remembering whose or who we are when we're stressed out.
• Say "No" more often. The Master did that a lot; he never let anyone else set his agenda.
• Take time to be alone, or whatever you need to do, to take care of yourself.
• Give thanks daily.
• As Buechner wrote in Secrets in the Dark, there are times when it is quiet and you don't really have to do anything, when
  

  [t]he time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming.
  

  p. 59

  Often we escape: in chores or other busy-ness, media (printed or electronic), etc. But sometimes we need to take time to do what the time is ripe for. Not to escape, but to look back, think about where we've come from, where we're headed, and so on.

The point of all these is to remain centered, to remember who we are.

And part of who you are is husband. You represent Christ to your wife, as I do to the lovely Carol. Let's ask God to help us remember that we belong to him, and to remember what we are about. Because it's really impossible to do well without his help.

Addendum: a point from the Japanese

When we were in Japan, I learned two words translated "help" in English. One is transliterated "tasukeru" and the other is "sukuu". The first is used when you're, say, trying to carry a heavy load and you'd like a hand. The second is when you're drowning and you need someone to throw you a rope.

When I talk about help from God so I can remember whose and who I am, it's this last I'm talking about.