Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • Spring Bounty (gratitude #26)

    Today was a banner day. My sister and I stopped at a local farmstand for eggs, rhubarb, and asparagus. Tonight, we harvested wild leeks, though we were kind of wary since the leeks were in the spot folks have been sighting a juvenile black bear.

    Dave and Nathan enjoyed a day fishing and catching (instead of just the former) and got these two lovely fish – a rainbow trout and a coho salmon. On the way up this time, we picked up a smoker, and have been enjoying smoked foods – tonight we had smoked trout, grilled trout, grilled asparagus, and new potatoes pan fried with wild leeks.

    Oh yeah, and the neighbor brought over a huge cardboard box (5′ x 3′ x 2′ or so) and the kids drew all over it, cut a door in it, hung a flag on it, and played played played.

  • Comedy of errors on the ground and boy are we lucky (gratitude #25)

    So, Dave and I took the Cessna-182 from UM Flyers to Tobermory for Memorial Day weekend. Due to the weather, we might have a short long weekend, we might have to come back on Sunday instead of Monday, but I was excited to fly instead of drive. Holiday weekends involve long, long, long waits at the Blue Water Bridge border crossing. And flying takes 1/3 of the time as driving. And the views are spectacular, absolutely spectacular. We flew from Ann Arbor, crossing into Canada at Port Huron/Sarnia. It’s always choppy until we cross the border: somewhat nausea-inducing. Dave thinks maybe it’s all the parking lots and building roofs, absorbing and releasing heat, causing thermals.

    back-up-the-bruce

    Then, when we crossed the border into Canada and the skies opened up, and Lake Huron was calm and beautiful, and the turbulence ended. Sigh lovely.

    I was feeling like a queen, having left work a bit early to get on a plane to go to my favorite place in the world.

    Then, we arrived in Tobermory. The local mechanic had fixed the car (alternator froze, taking the serpentine belt with it), and left it at the airport for us. Dave drove it onto the pavement where we parked the plane, and when I walked around the Jeep, I saw the back passenger-side tire was completely flat. Hmmmmmm. Weird. Well, we had a spare. I worked on getting the old tire off while Dave unpacked and tied down the plane. I got exactly one lug nut to move. Fail.

    Dave’s greater confidence in kicking the tire iron got the others off, we got the spare on, and then drove off. I admired the head of the screw that had pierced the old tire, and I had an urge to pull it out, but didn’t have any tool that would do it, so I just tossed it into the back. The spare was looking a little less than full, so we pulled into the first (only) gas station and tried to fill it. No dice, they had some kind of air compressor thing, but it didn’t seem to work.

    We got almost to the cabin (we were in the Meadow) and Dave pulled over. Our spare tire was by now completely flat and we were riding on the rim. The tire was pulling itself off the rim. Ummmm. What do to? We had no additional spares. There are no local auto parts stores, CAA is at least an hour away, and we were blocking the (little traveled) road.

    We remembered my aunt and uncle’s minivan has an air compressor in the back. If they were already at the cabin, maybe I could walk there and drive it back. I started walking, while Dave took the second flat tire off the car. As I walked down the road, I got nervous thinking of Dave under the car, lying in the one-lane road. So, I circled back to see if there was some kind of warning I could put in the road ahead of the immobile Jeep so that he wouldn’t get crushed by an oncoming car.

    When I got near, I asked “so, are you OK if someone comes?” and he said “someone is coming”. And then my aunt and uncle, with the air compressor, pulled up.

    Rescue!

    Our dead spareThey were able to get the tire with the screw in it up to pressure, so we switched it back onto the Jeep. We drove it to the cabin and the tire still is full enough a day later. We still have 2 tires that are busticated, one moreso than the other. Oddly enough, the one with the screw in it appears better than the spare.

    So, we made it to the cabin, we have access to another car, and we sure are feeling lucky. I have no idea what we would have done if Pat and Bob hadn’t showed up right at the right moment. Happy coincidence!

    My next step will be to research air compressors that might run off of the car battery/cigarette lighter.

  • The value of libraries and bookstores (gratitude #24)

    So, there’s this blog I read, and the author has a book with a really compelling title. I’ve enjoyed his blog posts on the topic, and I had put his book on my Amazon wish list.

    In support of my intention to acquire, maintain, and store less stuff, I moved most of my Amazon wish list to a wish list (personal card catalog) at the Ann Arbor District Library. They don’t have every book I’ve ever wanted, but they have an awful lot of them. Amazing. I suppose I’m not as unique as I thought ;). I’m also storing some of the list on my anobii.com bookshelf’s wish list (edited to remove the link since I now use Goodreads).

    Anyway, this blogger’s interesting sounding book with the compelling title was available from the library. I put it on hold, received the notification email, visited the library, checked it out, and then returned it the same day. Funny, flipping through the book, it seemed so tangential to my current interests and so, yes, I’ll say it, thin with huge spaces between lines, not many words on the page, not many pages. After touching the book, I no longer had any interest in its contents. Funny. Glad I didn’t buy it or get someone else to buy it for me.

    Note to self – always touch books I’m going to buy or ask to be purchased for me. Online descriptions just don’t compare.

  • A decade in my meditation community (gratitude #23)

    I just realized that this is my 10th year in the local Siddha Yoga Meditation community. At the time I first went, it was about a block and half from my apartment, but it took me several months to get there. I don’t know the date of my first visit, though it would have been around this time in 1998. That was a hard year for me: my father died at the end of April that year, and I was also pushing myself to finish a dissertation in biology but my passion for academics was depleted.

    I came with the hard questions in mind: how to be at peace with my father’s life and death (lived on his own terms, not in agreement with mine), how to be still, how to be present, how to let go of my expectations and be open to life as it really is.

    I had an intuition that meditation would help. But sitting in meditation was excruciating. Moments passed like hours, my body ached and my mind worried and fretted. I came to the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center of Ann Arbor at the invitation of a friend, after a frustrating meditation class elsewhere. I came with the intention of learning to meditate, but my heart got caught up in chanting. Good thing, too, because it took me several years of chanting to be able to sit well for meditation. I suppose I had to clear my system, or else get comfortable, or maybe just grow into it. Hard to say. But now, after 10 years, I can see all that I have received from Siddha Yoga.

    What a blessing the center, the community, the teachings, shared chanting, shared meditation, the friendships, and the grace of the guru have been for me.

    Over the last 10 years, I have become:

    • more gentle with myself,
    • more thoughtful and grateful,
    • more able to receive,
    • more connected to others and more open to connection,
    • more content.

    Some of this is, perhaps, the wisdom acquired through an additional decade of living, but much of it was gained through the inspiration and teachings of the Siddha Yoga tradition and through applying the practices of chanting, meditation, and self-inquiry modeled at the center.

    The Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor is at 3017 Miller Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103. It’s just west of Ann Arbor, on the NW side of M-14. We have public programs Thursday evenings 7-8:30PM and Sunday mornings 9-10:30AM (often followed by breakfast/brunch). (edited to reflect new location in 2012).

  • My blogs about work and walking elsewhere

    Now and then I post on Pure Visibility’s internet marketing blog – typically posts about our culture, our process, our clients, and events. Recently, the GetDowntown blog featured profiles of folks who, like me, love walking to work. I’m included in the group. But I’m particularly proud of my “Curb Your Car Month Citizen Blog” I curbed my elevator car in May.

  • Rope Yoga at Vie in Ann Arbor

    Rope yoga, or Russa yog, started here in Ann Arbor. I have seen the studio on S. State Street (between Washington and Liberty) and the Ann Arbor Observer recently profiled the studio/founders. For some reason I never made it to the State Street studio, it’s one of many Ann Arbor yoga studios I have on my list but never seem to visit. This week, Vie fitness studio on S. Ashley is starting to offer classes, and I went to a free class on Tuesday night.

    Now, when I was a kid, and we had the “climb the rope” activity in gym, I was always one of the earthbound kids, watching with a mixture of awe and jealousy as some tiny, wiry kid got to the ceiling and back on the rope. Maybe it is because I’m tall (and therefore heavy), maybe it is just because I’m weak, but pull-ups, chin-ups, and any kind of rope climbing have always been something to shun for fear of embarrassment or worse.

    Still, my yoga classes at the Ann Arbor YMCA often featured “rope work”. The old Y had all sorts of pegs in the wall, and we’d essentially tie ourselves to the pegs to get different stretches than normal. For instance, downward dog when the wall (or a partner) is pulling back on my hips is an altogether different stretch. I get a little less hamstrung and a little more stretch elsewhere. So, I knew ropes + yoga = good.

    I overcame my fear and signed up for a free course. All I had to lose was a little dignity and an hour of my evening. The yoga class got me into Vie’s upstairs studio (previously I’d been in the downstairs spinning studio). They have weights and other fitness equipment upstairs, and a glassed studio with about 8 ropes hanging from anchors below the ceiling.

    Fear snuck back in as I approached the rope. It was kind of rough, and I wished I’d brought my cycling gloves. But, I started the class by hanging from the rope and stretching my side closest to it in a gentle C-shape, nice. There were some moments where I struggled to pull myself up (or push myself up), but doing Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III) using the ropes was lovely. I got the same feeling of flight that I have achieved for a moment here and there in previous attempts, but the ropes stabilized it and let me absorb it. Power! Joy! Balance! Yoga!

    So, I think I still will try to make a class at the “mother” studio on State Street, but I’m happy I tried Rope Yoga at Vie and will probably try again, I have to keep working on my core and my upper body strength, after all.