Remember when

Remember when we used to ride through the woods, the sun finding its way through the kaleidescope colors of leaves above our heads. The dark earth beneath our wheels, soft and forgiving as we wound our way along the trails and along our lives. The air, the earth, the trees, the sky, the crunch of dry leaves that we picked off one by one, insistent that we not leave this place until we touched each one, reinforcing our presence to no one in particular, just the trees who weren't looking anyway. It was a game that left us out late with the stars and our breath, our noses dripping with glee, our cheeks red from the hour.

Close your eyes and remember. And go back. Back to that time of goodness and freedom, youthful and limitless, boundless until dawn. The woods weren't about hiding and neither was the night. It was about being found inside and out. You brought me there. You were my vessel, my chariot to this world. And now I have you back to relive this passage again. It's all timing, they say. It's all a full circle. This circle may arc into another path, but we'll stay on it together hand in hand.

Quiz Time

You finished your first cyclocross race 12 hours ago. Do you feel:

1. Splended. In fact I've never felt better. I think I'll take my dog Binky out for a stroll in the night air.
2. I'd answer but the morphine drip prevents me from writing coherently.
3. Like my legs have been through a meat grinder.
4. I am SO STOKED for this season I'm going to do laps running up stairs with my bike first thing in the morning, and then I'll go around Discovery Park practicing hurdles, and then go do some more steps, and then some more hurdles, and then go to the gym and lift weights. And then I'll do some more. All before 7 a.m.
5. My boyfriend said I looked so hot in my jersey it totally made me, like, forget where I was. I swear I could have pulled him into the woods, and, you know. Oh, and sorry I got in your way when I walked down that steep section of singletrack. It made me so, like, totally nervous. I just can't, like, concentrate on what I'm doing when I think of my boyfriend. Ya know?
6. They expect us to do this in the RAIN?!?!?!
7. I never knew how consistently recognizable a Balance Bar could look when yacked over a period of 35 minutes.
8. There is a masseuse out there who could retire early with the money they'd make off me right now.
9. Ya know, I, like, feel really totally awesome! I can't wait until next week! It's gonna be, like, so much FUN!!! It was like, so beautiful and sunny today, it just really made me love being outside and feeling good about myself. It was like one of those "Life is Good" t-shirts. In fact I think I'll go to REI and buy another one with a big smiley face on it.
10. There is a reason they invented autumn. It's a time to harvest God's bounty: mass quantities of Oktoberfest microbrews and brautwurst with mustard. Fuck this exertion shit. Bring on the beer and weiners.

Blingy Blingier Blingiest

Having the best dad/ebay shopper in the world gets the new track frame new toys (at half the price).

Blingy Bling Bling

All work and no play gets Rosemary new toys.

Baton Rouge Velodrome

From my Bell 212 helo overflight. Sweet-talking the pilots has its advantages.

Quote of the Week

"God must really hate red states."

Out of the frying pan

Into the glamorous life of the largest environmental disaster (formerly called Louisiana)that the states have ever seen. Welcome to the world's newest and largest Superfund site. I'm at the Baton Rouge command post at a refinery facility, which happens to be a smaller Superfund site, holed up with I don't know how many hundreds of more Coasties in a dozen double and triple wide trailers. The field outside has about 50 RVs where people have taken residence. Like a college tailgating party without all the revelry or sleep. I landed a plush hotel room with one of my idols, one of the most talented and famous women scientists in the world. If I had known 5 years ago that I'd be rooming with her I'd have choked. Turns out she likes a glass of white wine before bed, uses a rose scented lotion, and can get ready to leave in under 5 minutes.

We're here to do the real field work of the Katrina response. This is where we're mapping the +30 oil spills, the boats that are smashed or underwater, and tracking the oceanic convergent zones that are sweeping bloated human bodies towards Florida. Three of us are stuffed in a room about 8'x8', with 4 laptops, 3 printers, and assorted office supplies to keep it cozy. The wireless connection sucks. Email goes in and out all day. The room is like a meat locker in the morning but by noon it's easily 85F baking in the Louisiana sun. The people are just as hard core as the conditions. Dedicated, brutal, truthful. I've never met such a group of responders or scientists who act like such cowboys with 10 gallons of guts and brilliance under their hat. Just the renegade posse needed to herd the hellacious riprap left behind Katrina.

I'm printing out yet more maps for yet more Admirals. Their eyes will sweep across the pretty picture as the commanders brief them on the response status in about 8 hours. My show and tell contribution to feeding the beasts. I did some maps the other day for Bush. That Bush. Stayed up until 2 a.m. He wouldn't look at them. Just pretty colors. My Pet Goat on a map.

I miss....

- Home.
- My new home away from home full of bike parts and bike language and grease and dreams and good people. My fairy god-father. I called him the other day and it was good to hear his voice.
- Rosemary
- My singlespeed Fat Chance
- My friends. All my friends. The laughter. The smiles. The bonds. The hugs.
- Dark beer. I will drink a porter and drink it slowly and savor every sweet sip of flavor over my tongue.
- My morning ride to work and the sights and sounds of a city freshly cleaned by the dawn.
- The Ballard Bridge. The mass of aged concrete and rebar and its colorful murals.
- Coffee shops. As ubiquitous as they are, it's good to know they're around.
- The Arboretum. To get away from it all.
- KEXP.
- The grungy, crunchy, liberal, whiney people of Seattle.
- Grungy, crunchy, liberal, whiney people's newspapers.
- Organic food.
- Reading a book.
- My wool hats. I knew I should have brought one.
- My sweet wool bike jerseys! Arrggggg I knew I should have brought one of those too.
- Rainier and the other mountains.
- The trees. Oh how I miss the big evergreen trees.
- And the water. The smell of salt water and being so close to the deep, cold ocean.

Quote of the week

From my very facetious co-worker as someone plays U2 really loud on their laptop tongight:

So is Bono going to ask all the Third World countries if we can have our money back?

Who really saved the day

This article from the Washington Post sums it up. While the rest of the fed gov't fucked up the Katrina response, the Coast Guard was there in the trenches initiating response and helping people. I've seen nothing but Coasties giving 110% while their own homes lay in ruins and they have nothing but the blue Coastie uniform on their back. In the article they interview Lt. Cmdr. Jim Elliott whom I was fortunate to work with at the Athos spill in December '04. I remember him as the essense of leadership, a man with a soft spoken voice and piercing steel blue eyes, a leader who sees the strengths of everyone under his command and speaks to each of them with intelligence and respect. Keep up the good work, Jim, we're all proud of you and your charge.

Coast Guard's Response to Katrina a Silver Lining in the Storm

By Stephen Barr

Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page B02

Let's have a round of cheers for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out Coast Guard stations in Gulfport and Pascagoula, Miss., and looters wrecked part of its New Orleans base. But that did not stop the Coast Guard from sending out rescue helicopters and cutters on dangerous and exhausting missions to save lives and clear waterways after the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

"We started the night that the storm hit," Jason Shepard , a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, said yesterday in an interview from Mobile, Ala., one of the agency's staging bases for Katrina.

Shepard, who carries the formal title of aviation survival technician first class and has served in the Coast Guard for 18 years, called the Katrina rescue effort "probably the biggest thing that has happened in our careers."

Coast Guard crews have rescued 22,000 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Petty Officer Andrew Kendrick , a Coast Guard spokesman in St. Louis, estimated yesterday.

The Coast Guard, in many ways, is a model agency. It is relatively small -- with about 45,000 uniformed and civilian employees -- and believes in "cross-training" so that each employee can perform more than one job.

It also is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard's response to Katrina in recent days has again illuminated the importance of capable leadership and a clear chain of command in agencies during a crisis. Hopefully, as Congress moves to probe how the government handled the Katrina crisis, the Coast Guard can serve as a model for fixing what's wrong elsewhere in Homeland Security, including what many perceive as poor leadership at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jim Elliott , who is helping oversee rescues from Mobile, said the agency set up a unified command with states and local industries before the hurricane roared ashore.

"We know how to join with other organizations to get the job done," he said. "We were out the door as soon as the winds died down."

Elliott has been getting by on three to four hours of sleep each day for the past week. Shepard said rescue operations are running round-the-clock, with crews working "anywhere from six- to 18-hour missions, depending on what was going on."

The work is demanding. Rescue crews that normally would be asked to pluck about 20 people from danger on a tough day have been "doing 100 to 120 hoists" in adverse conditions that include heat and humidity and exposure to contaminated water kicked up by chopper rotors, Shepard said.

The work is hazardous. Pilots have had to hover between electrical and phone wires and drop cables from heights of 10 to 180 feet, Shepard said.

The Coast Guard trains personnel to rescue people from buildings, trees, mountain cliffs and sinking ships. While the employees often specialize in certain types of operations, they all train to a standard so that they can form up as teams in emergencies, with each person knowing what each job entails and how it fits into overall operations.

As Katrina approached, the Coast Guard pulled its regional command out of New Orleans and relocated to St. Louis. Aircraft and cutters were dispersed out of the storm's path.

The Coast Guard has put about 100 chopper crews, typically made up of four people, in the air each day for the past week and has flown more than 900 sorties, Kendrick said.

Shepard and Elliott said their great satisfaction has come in helping pull families and children to safety. "It is amazing the lives that we have saved," Elliott said. "It is a great feeling to be a part of this operation."

Coastie rescuing an innocent victim from the Superdome

Lost little girl

Coast Guard helo survey

Coastie rescue barge

The little piston that could

I was up until 4 a.m. last night making maps with the night crew. You’d think it’d be a nice quiet shift, but they need to have products prepared for first light, which means I get busy. They served us chicken fried steak at the 1 a.m. chow. I think I'm still recovering from that one. My diet has taken a nose dive into grad school-style comfort food crossed with southern hospitality. Huddling in front of a laptop with people looking over you shoulder for 18 hrs will do that. Red vines, chocolate, pb&j sammiches, oranges, bananas, coffee, more coffee, doritos, chips, diet coke. Rosemary and the track look so far, far away right now. The summer tan that I earned under so many hours in the sun is beginning to peal.

Today was full on. I need it NOW. Is it ready YET? I have a mtg in 10 min. Email it to these Army captains. We're giving these maps to the pilots so they can do aerial surveys of the neighborhoods. If you see bars or stars yes it is a priority. We need this by 1700 for a heads mtg to decide the hazmat priorities. We're giving these maps to the boat teams so they can navigate up the streets now waterways to do house-to-house searches. What is the lat/long of this street address, they say there are people who need rescued there. What is the lat/long of this address, there is a house full of nuns who refuse to leave and want to die under god's will. They sent out swat teams to take out snipers who are on the roofs shooting at the response personnel. There is bunker fuel sliding through the neighborhood. The shit is on fire. A gaping hole will open up and swallow the remains of the city. No body sees that as such a bad thing. It's all good. The Coasties get what they need. They go do the dirty work. I just sit here and eat red vines.

There is a woman pilot my age who wears her olive green pilot suit and black combat boots around the command post. She speaks with authority and control, but in a soft, tender voice that makes you wonder if that same voice barks back to her while she's in the pilot's seat scorching through the airspace. She has blonde hair pulled back and in other attire could be that California girl from a Beach Boys song. I admire her. I sometimes wish I had taken a different track.

It really is a positive atmosphere here. They try to keep morale high. Someone has passed around Beanie Babies to the tables. Somehow I got two. A brown and tan puppy diving into the red vines and a bright green bear dressed as a clown sitting on a printer. Everyone is friendly and says hello. It's not like the streets you live on where you don't even lift up your head to greet a neighbor you've lived next to for 5 years. Everyone introduces themselves. Everyone smiles and asks how you are, even if you've never met. You're here for a common cause. You're here to help each other succeed. There is no need for masks or self absorption. Leave that at the door. In fact, leave that in the putrid flooded streets of New Orleans. Get over yourself. We're here as humanity and will die together in humanity. There is no need to trump anyone else today when you will trip and fall all your ass in front of everyone tomorrow. I love coming to these events because it is a microcosm for how things should be. Team work, communication, success, altruism, equality. I try to take it back with me when I go home, but it tends to get crushed by those who have never had the pleasure. That could be my contribution, to not let it get crushed any more. Fuck you all and your holier selves, I will take back. You won't crush this again.

Keep 'em happy

Firefighter wives volunteer to raise money

A sigh in the world

The Ops Section Chief, a CG commander, that I helped last night was professional enough to give me feedback on a particularly important map that I made for him last night. It was supposed to help him and the Navy pinpoint where they could go into the neighborhoods to rescue people who were left waiting for rescue in or on top of their houses. They took the map on a helo overflight, but when they surveyed the neighborhood from 1,000 ft above there were no signs of life, only small segments of rooftops poking through the fetid water, which meant there was over 18 ft of water in the streets once the water subsided. There were cars overturned and wracked up along buildings, which also told him that these people never left their houses. He was rather somber when telling me that this neighborhood with thousands and thousands of houses, where they hoped they could have saved so many people, may not have had many survivors. He hoped that those people were able to get to higher ground and be ferried somewhere else. They will send boats out tomorrow to check on the houses and pound on the roofs to listen for survivors. If there are no knocks answered they will move on to the next house. Everyone has been talking about how in New Orleans they tell you to have some sort of saw or machinery in your attic to break through your roof as part of your hurricane emergency kit. I really hope that the people in that neighborhood got to higher ground before the waters swallowed up their lives.

There are a few hundred people in the command post here. Most are from USCG Sector New Orleans and have lost their home. Each person has their own story. Some scour the aerials on the internet looking for their homes or where they left their cars. They all laugh at the absurdity of it. I think they're well enough to know that they can rebuild and all will work out in time. One man told me of how he could clearly see on an overflight three debris paths that led across the state. He's never seen such a wide swath of destruction and he's lived through all the major hurricanes of the south. He was dumbfounded about how such a storm surge could have risen, he estimates over 30 ft, to uproot trees and decimate buildings. This event will be fodder for numerous studies on environmental toxicology and cleanup, how the Gulf shoreline has been changed, and how western infrastructure will have to be reconstructed after total annihilation.

Count your blessings everyone and spread some kindness into the world. There is a big hole to be filled.

For the love of coffee

48 hours ago I finished my last track race of the season. Right now I sit at a table in the Alexandria, Louisiana, convention center that is home to the Coast Guard Region 8 command post. The Hurricane Katrina response here is going rather well, given all that is going on at ground zero in New Orleans. The CG has rescued nearly 10,000 people by the end of today. The maps I produced early this morning showed them where they could navigate their skiffs in the flooded areas to ferry people to bigger boats and to safety. We've produced maps of aerial photography that show the flooded areas, hospitals that still have patients and need evacuated, nearly 200 oil spill and other contaminant incidents, off shore oil rigs that are damaged, and SAR operation bases. When I woke up from my cat nap at the hotel this afternoon and turned on CNN, they were talking about the CG rescuing people by boat, and for a moment I had some pleasant satisfaction that I was doing some good here. I'm not looking to stand out, I'm looking to work as a piston in the machine that is chugging along to aid these poor people.

Have we had our frustrations? Hell yeah. CNN had our aerial photography before we did. And we still don't have it all!!! What the hell does that tell you when the entertainment industry (yes I said that, they aren't really news any more now are they) can get gov't photography before their own feds can??? Freakin Google Maps has more current aerial photos than we do. There are goons living in their parents' basement with better information than I have right now. Oh, and now it's the holiday weekend so you can kiss any support from the home office goodbye. Yeah the people here are utterly frustrated with the decisions (or lack thereof) that hinder the response, but that's where problem solving comes into play. Make things work anyway. Push through. Don't cave. Ever. The people literally living in shit can't afford to have you cave.

But I can't complain. Everyone here is wonderful and we're living large everything considered. I eventually got my own hotel room. I pulled the night shift after walking off the plane and the hotel unknowingly gave my room to someone else when I didn't check in at midnight, so I slept for an hour in the lobby this morning waiting for them to clean my room. Then I got a few hrs sleep before coming in again. Local people brought brownies, someone even delivered a dozen pizzas, and kids made a bunch of cards for the Coasties. There is good work going on. It's just not all noted on the vaccuum of television.

Coasties Rule

Responding to Katrina

I'm leaving in a few mintues for the airport, heading to the command post in Alexandria, Louisiana, to work on the Hurricane Katrina response. One of my many hats involves mapping in emergency response situations. I've been on 2 real oil spill responses and numerous drills. It's an opportunity of sheer adrenaline and knowing that everything you do is necessary and valuable. The spill in Philadelphia last winter was the largest in human resouces since Valdez in 1989, mostly because of the stretches of river effected and the nuclear power plant being shut down for fear of oil leaching into their valves. We worked 18-20 hour days without getting out of our chairs, often not leaving the hotel/command post for days, going without eating, sucking as much caloric value as possible out of coffee, cream and sugar. This response will be beyond compare. I'm excited to be part of the human machine that is being put in place. Working with a few hundred, or thousand, people in the command post, everyone gunning at their positions, working together to make the machine's pistons move effectively. The command post is the only time I've seen the phrase "team work" actually work. Unlike the typical mundane tasks at work, in a command post, every task is vital.

I'm packed and even threw in extra food from my camping provisions: peanut butter, dried bananas, chocolate chips, energy bars, crackers, and more chocolate. I'm not expecting to ask for anything when so many people have nothing. I hope my little contribution will help this response in some way. When we work together as a machine for humanity, it usually does.

Track Posse - Jane, Molly, Me

Track Posse 2 - Jane, John, Molly, Me