The Pioneer Woman

The Pioneer Woman is a blog run by a woman named Ree Drummond. It's delightful. Not only is the food to die for (and probably will kill you if you don't exercise some of the calories away), she has a very for real and funny way of writing. Oh, and step-by-step pictures that keep you salivating.

Her blog has become so popular that she did a cookbook. She's doing a book signing tour and was in Salt Lake today. Misti knows everything going one with her and her family. Big fan. I'm not quite so up to speed with the Drummond family, but still like her. We figured we'd just show up, buy the books and get them signed. Maybe 2 hours.

We showed up 30 minutes early. Right at that moment a woman announced all the tickets for the signing had been given away. Its November, not too cold, but not warm. We figure we'll take off for a bit and come back later and see if the line dies down and we can get in anyhow. We go for cheesecake.

We get back to the King's English Bookstore (lovely place, I'd like to go back and peruse) a little after 8. It's still packed. Let me illustrate a bit. Almost the entire block is full of people. The entire front lawn of the store, local businesses, and even some people loitering in the street. Pretty cool that she's this popular. Who knew?

Mom & Misti know we're not going to get in any time soon if at all, so they take off. I stick around and make friendly with all the groupies for another 3 hours. I found a little group of runners and we all swap stories about different races we've done. We even inspired one lady to start running. Hurrah.

Rumor is Ree will stay and sign everyone's books even if they don't have a ticket. I figure I have nothing to lose. It's not like I have to get up in the morning for anything. Around 10, someone who decided they'd just take off gave me their ticket, so now I know I'm definitely in.

One of the highlights of the evening was when her mother-in-law came out to chit chat with people outside. She was pretty cool. She told us how she's trying to help the kids learn to swim. Apparently all of them are having a hard time with it. They can't even float after multiple lessons. Anyhow, it was really funny when she told it. A couple of the recipes in the book are hers.

So after 3 hours of hanging around I finally made it to the top of the line. I said some dumb things about some of the recipes I liked and giggled nervously. She was super sweet. Oh, and she's gorgeous. You wouldn't know she eats as much butter as goes into her cooking by looking at her.

I've never gone to a book signing before, but it was fun. I met a lot of nice people. Got to talk about running and food all evening. Good times.

Happy Birthday!

I've been having a great birthday. There were many years as a teen on through most of my twenties that I didn't even care about celebrating my birthday. I wasn't anti birthday, I just didn't make anything of it. I've loosened up more the last few years and now I milk the birthday good times for as long as I can. Presents are not a necessity, but I'm always very touched when I get them anyhow. I consider quality time/talking time with the people a good birthday treat. If there's something I really want, I'll ask for it or get it as my birthday present to me. :)

We have 5 birthdays in the family within a week. Jason & Vee are Oct 27th. Kiana and I are today. Lizzie is tomorrow. That's a lot of birthdays to celebrate all at once. Usually we get a cake the kids will like (Shrek was 2 years ago), or a cake with sections. This year, mom went above and beyond and made us all our own smaller cakes.

Another trick is making sure everyone gets what they want for dinner. We usually do Chinese or pizza. This year we had both. It's not conventional, but everyone got what they wanted. We had pepperoni & Hawaiian pizza, a gong bao chicken pizza (hybrid, it's pretty tasty), sweet and sour chicken, rice, and fruit salad. Everyone was happy.

All I wanted for my birthday this year was hugs and kisses. I also wanted people to do nice things for other people. It's not too late. I accept belated birthday gifts all year round. :) What better feeling can there be than knowing you had an impact for the better in the world. I'm a woman of simple wants.

I asked Livi if she thought I was going to get any hugs or kisses today and she said "no." She's such a teaser. Spencer came over and gave me a great big giant hug and a nice wet kiss. He's the sweetest. Later Livi did give me a big hug. Seriously, such a little teaser. I got good hugs from Vee's kids too. It was a good day.

It really has been a good birthday. I got to be with my family who I really like. I've talked to a lot of friends that I love that are not nearby and miss like crazy. I've been taken out and have more dining plans through next week. Overall, I've had a great birthday. I'm happy. I'm glad to be around another year. I'm lucky to know all the great people I know.

I did get some great presents too. Misti took Liv & Spency with her to help pick out my presents. It's like our minds are all one. They got me exactly what I wanted. The board game Candyland and the Curious George Christmas DVD. That's soooo me. Then they helped me open my presents. They are such helpful children.

I've decided to try and dedicate my next year to doing more kind acts to others. More adventure. More real living. And more sharing the joy.

Provo Halloween 1/2 Marathon

This was a fantastic race. I have a few complaints but overall good times.

Even though the 8:00 start time is later than most races, I was still whining and grumpy about getting up so early (5:30). We got to the shuttle rendezvous spot and it was freezing. In August this seemed like such a good idea. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I knew it would be colder than most races I do, but it was still shocking to be in it. They didn't have very many buses going, so we waited in line for almost 30 mins. We complained about the cold the whole time. :)

Fortunately they were able to get the dining hall at Sundance for us to wait in before the race. It ended up starting a little over 30 mins late cause they didn't get all the runners up on time. That gave me plenty of time to check out the costumes of the other runners and chat with people. I actually ran into an old acquaintance from when I taught in China, Shannon. So fun.

The course was fantastic. The sun had come out by start time. We were in the shade for most of the canyon still, but the lighting was great. Wish I could have taken lots of pictures. It was like being in a Bob Ross painting only even better. Magical. Rocky out crops, snow cap peaks, happy little trees. There were low clouds too hanging in the pines that made it very mysterious.

The first 5 miles of the course are the steepest. I tried to hold back and just take it easy. I have a tendency to push too much at the start of a 1/2 M. We came out of the canyon to Sundance at that point, then crossed the road. It meets up with the river trail at Victoria park about a half mile from there. I took that rest stop to stretch my quads and calves a bit. I took my first energy packet here. I went with a Cliff Mocha gel. One of my new favorite flavors. It's everything chocolate was meant to be in a gel. I also started pushing a little harder at that point.

I took my second gel at about mile 8.5. It was a Powerbar Tangerine. I like the texture of the Powerbar gels the best cause they go down pretty easy. I decided to only take 2 gels this time. I ran the Provo River 1/2 M and took three. I got some sever intestinal discomfort after the third one on that race. Maybe it was the raman noodles for dinner the night before. All I know is I was surprised at the finish line that I hadn't left a trail of energy gel behind me. Anyhow.....

I gave another push at mile 9ish. I'm not sure what mile it was exactly, but there's a spot in the Provo River 1/2 that you make a u-turn and go back uphill a little over a mile. When I passed that spot I gave a little woo-woo out. I can't tell you how happy it made me to not go up there. I think the total elevation gain for this course was 39 feet. So nice.

The last aid station I passed they said it was only 2 miles left. My first thought was these guys have no idea what they are talking about. My garmin had me at 1:31:something. That put me on pace for around a 1:50:00 finish time. I thought "no way" cause that was 10 mins under my previous PR (Personal Record) (Ogden 1/2 this year, 2:01:30). I knew this would be a fast course, but Ogden is mostly downhill too.

The last 1/2 mile was where you turn into the Riverwood area. And there ahead of me I see a red shiny cape. D & I both went as Wonder Woman (I had several girls tell me they liked my costume and one guy thanked me), but she had a cape. That totally got my adrenaline up, so I pushed as hard as I could to catch her. I cut the distance in 1/2 but didn't completely catch her. I think she had me by about 20 seconds. Oh, and she was pregnant. I did my best ever and still got beat by a woman 13 weeks pregnant. She's kind of a really good runner though, so I was actually happy about that.

So my chip time was 1:52:18. That's about 9 mins off my previous PR. Some of that was due to being so much downhill and part was having lost 10 pounds since my last 1/2 M. But some of it was definitely due to training hard and pushing myself. I have to say I'm really happy with my performance today. I've been dreaming of breaking the 2 hour time all year. So much for just running for fun. :)

Stats
Chip time: 1:52:18
Overall place 227 out of 727
Gender/age category 28 out of 113
Overall women 112 out of 499

I was 41 mins slower than the 1st place runner. That's just crazy to me. I'm super happy with my results though. I'm a little sad though cause I just can't imagine doing better than this ever.

Happy Halloween!

Not about my trip, about a duck

I am taking way too long to recount my trip since it's a month past. Other things are happening.

Today I saw a duck slaying. That's right, I witnessed a murder. I was at the Fairmont Park in Sugarhouse, just walking around. All of a sudden I saw like 50 ducks and geese all running for the pond. The ducklings where so cute. Then I saw they were running cause there was a dog at the edge of the pond.

Sadly, I realized he had a duck shaking in his mouth. His owner pulled him off and left the park. I headed over to see if it was ok. I was determined to nurse it back to health if I could. I decided to call him Ned. I used to bring injured birds home when I was a kid. I have some weird impulse to save animals. When I got to Ned, he had already expired.

I didn't cry or anything, but I felt so sad. I was really sad about it. Normally I'm not the biggest defender of birds, but I kid you not, maybe 10 minutes had passed since I was thinking how grateful I was God created ducks, cause they were making me so happy to watch them. Mostly the wee little ones.

Drawing in honor of Ned

I went into the pool and talked to the desk attendant. I didn't know if there was someone who should be notified that there was a dead duck out there or whatever. The desk guy said that it's actually illegal to let your dogs run off leash and it should be reported if they attack other animals. Seriously, who lets a rottweiler run around a park on it's own?

He gave me the number for animal control and I called them. I felt kind of like a busy body reporting it. Maybe it's just easier to do nothing. Plus I really like dogs, but I didn't feel like I was doing the dog or the thing/person the dog bites a favor. What's it going go for next? Puppies? Babies? Me? Won't anyone think of the children!!! (Simpson's quote, if you didn't catch the humor there.)

I really feel like pet owners need to be responsible for their pets. Animals are going to do what animals do. Pet owners need to guard their pets from their own nature sometimes. I think the owner was homeless though. He was pretty dirty and had a big backpack on. Not that that's an excuse.

I'm now best friends with the animal control lady. Not really, but we chatted for awhile. She went and picked up Ned while we were talking, and disposed of him properly anyhow. Gah. I'm alone most of the day not working and all, and if someone wants to chat, I am so there. I feel like I'll explode some days if I don't talk to someone. The blogging seems to take some pressure off me too. I digress.

A moment of silence for Ned the duck. Was he a good duck? A good father? What did he want in life? Now we'll never know. Fair thee well, Ned.

Leshan

I took a 45 min bus to Leshan at 10:00 AM. I had a nice chat with some college boys who were going to Leshan to pick up a computer. They helped me find the bus that went straight to the Dafu (world's largest Buddha).

On the way there I saw a man laying on the side of the road with some people standing around him. Everyone on the bus stood up and stared out the window say "he's dead!". (In Chinese of course.) I don't know if he was, but he looked pretty dead. Weird.

Going to tourist spots earlier is better. Even at 11:00, it was pretty packed. It took almost 30 mins to walk down the stairs on the side of the cliff to get to the bottom of the Dafu. It is wicked tall. It was pretty impressive.

I wandered around the park for a couple of hours. It's a nice park. There's a pagoda, nice landscaping, and some ponds.

I ran into a group of college kids. They were really fun and nice. We wandered around the park some more together. They showed me the way to go to the temple on the park grounds. I never would have found it myself. There's a bridge you cross that was one of my favorite architectural objects I saw the whole trip. I took one picture of it. Gah!

We went to dinner together. They ordered two huge baskets of these steamed dumplings. They looked almost like flowers. Delicious. I had to catch the last bus back to town so I didn't get a chance to take a tour of their university.

Good day.

Emei Shan

Definitely one of the highlights of my trip was hiking Emei Shan (Mount Emei). It's one of the four Buddhist holy mountains.

Part of Emei, most of it is in the clouds, much taller than it looks

There are buses that leave hourly (as I recall) from Chengdu to Emei. There were two French guys on my bus. When we got to Emei I was a little concerned about how I was going to find my hostel, the Teddy Bear Hostel. It was dark and I had no idea where I was going. As soon as the three of us foreigners got off the bus, a bunch of taxi drivers all said, "Teddy Bear?!". We split the taxi. It was only a 5 min drive.

My hostel room had two Swedish girls, a girl from Nanjing, and a girl from Columbia. I like hostels cause you meet interesting people there.

I was originally planning on hiking the mountain for 3 days. I was going to go most of the way up in one day, summit and start down the 2nd, and finish the 3rd. It turned out I made it most of the way up the 1st day, summited the 2nd, came part way back down, and took a bus the rest of the way.

Emei Day 1

I might have been the first one up and out that morning. I left the hostel around 7:30 AM. I'm really not a morning person, but when I have something I'm excited to do, it can be a motivating factor to get me going. I stopped and got an egg and some baozi from a street vendor on my way to the start of the hike.

Near Loufeng Nunnery

I actually got really confused and turned around. At first I couldn't figure out where the trail was at all. I did a loop of the bottom area twice. Then I ended up hiking to a side nunnery that isn't on the trail to the summit. It took about 1 1/2 before I was on the right trail. At that point the information center was open, but it didn't have any useful information to be honest. The lady there spoke English but she didn't seem to be interested in helping. Haha.

Bagou Temple, first temple you come to on the pilgrimage

It was a nice day on the lower section. It was quite sunny and the temperature was very nice for hiking. When I say hiking, I mean climbing stairs. The whole trail is stairs. There were a few flat spots, but for 90% of the time you are either going up or down stairs.

I usually stopped on flat spots for pics, seriously it was mostly stairs

There are temples, monasteries, nunneries, and little restaurants/homes along the trail. I had a few Cliff bars, but I was able to get most of my food from vendors along the trail. It's recommended cause there are a lot of wild monkeys on the mountain that will go after food. The Colombian girl had a monkey jump on her and her backpack. She threw the bag and the monkey unzipped it, rummaged for food, didn't find any, and wandered off. She was not very happy with the experience, but it was a cool story.

A couple hours into my trek, I ended up walking with a little Chinese man. He was probably in his 60's. I tried speaking Chinese with him, but I couldn't pick up his accent and he wasn't understanding me much either. I caught on something about monkeys. I think he wanted to walk together cause monkey's don't usually go for groups more for solo travelers. We ended up walking together for 8 hours that day. We didn't talk a lot, mostly grunts or groans when we'd see a long steep set of stairs together, then we'd both laugh. I'll always have fond memories of him just because of all we went through together. Stairs, and lots of them.

One of my strongest recollections is the sound of both our feet on the steps and the tap of my bamboo walking step. It became rhythmic the further and tired we seemed to get. I was tired, but step, step, stick, step, step, stick. It was hypnotic. We didn't see any monkeys that day. That was my only real concern. We stopped at some of the temples along the way and he would pray and we'd move on.

We made it to the Elephant Bathing Pool area around 6:00 PM. We'd collected 4 Chinese women shortly before this. I was beat at this point. About 10 hours of trekking stairs and my legs were exhausted. I ran into the two Swedes outside a restaurant. I had gotten behind the group, so I wasn't able to tell them I was done for the day. I know my pilgrim friend was going to the top that day.

I knew I wasn't going to make it. My legs almost buckled under me. Once I stopped moving I got very cold, very fast. At this elevation, it was much colder and very misty. The cold went straight to your bones.

Temple I stayed

I ended up eating with the Swedes and stayed at the temple/monastery there at the Elephant Bathing Pool. It was amazing. There's the smell of incense, monks chanting, gongs of a bell, and the buildings enshrouded in mist. Unreal cool.

The rooms were alright, but the best part was the electric heating mattress. Yes, please. I crawled into bed and didn't come out again.

Emei Day 2

I planned to summit with the Swedes. We were going to get up at 4:30-5:00 AM and hope to get up in time to see the sunrise. Ha! We really got up around 6ish. Still too early. It was raining up until shortly before we left anyhow.

Snow near the summit

It still took us four hours to get to the summit. It was so misty, we wouldn't have seen the sun so it was just as well we didn't leave any earlier. It was pretty cold, but once you started hiking those stairs, your body temperature went up again. I was wearing all my clothes I had brought, but ended up taking the top layer off after an hour.

Golden Summit

On the way back down we saw a lot more people headed up. Most of them take a bus to near the top. From the buses, it's about a 2 hour hike, or a 20 min cable car ride. This is the only part I saw monkeys. The tourists were throwing food at them. Apparently the monkeys sleep in until the crowds come. Smart monkeys.



The Swedes decided to take the bus back to town. I decided to go with them. If they had hiked down, I probably would have followed too. I feel good about having hiked all the way to the top, but I have no shame in not hiking all the way back down. I still hiked 6 hours that day. I decided to be kind to my knees and spend my third day going to Leshan instead. I had heard good things about it from some other travelers at the hostel.

Chengdu

I arrived in Chengdu around 11:30 at night. It was past midnight when I got into the city from the airport (by bus). Fortunately I had a brochure to the hostel that was recommended and it had instructions how to get there in Chinese. I grabbed a taxi and made it with no problems. After I checked in I spread all my clothes out because everything was slightly damp. That's the problem with humid areas, nothing ever completely dries.

I give the Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel two thumbs up. It was comfortable, cozy, and there were gardens. It really was a lovely little hostel. It's run by a guy from Singapore, Sim, and his wife who is Japanese. Sim is very friendly and full of good advice. Also, the hostel is pretty conveniently located. After I checked out the next morning I walked over to the Wenshu temple.

The Wenshu temple is located inside a folk street district. Great spot if you're looking for old world Chinese character. Most of the buildings are tea houses, restaurants, or souvenir shops of course.

The Wenshu temple was actually one of my favorite Buddhist temple's I've been too. The grounds are really pretty and the food at the restaurant in the complex was fantastic. I thought it was funny that it was a vegetarian restaurant, but there were a lot of meat dishes listed on the menu. Go figure. I had stir fried bamboo shoots and spicy eggplant. Mmmmmmmm. I didn't take pictures of the temple grounds because I wasn't sure if that was disrespectful or not.

After that I took a bus to the main square in the center of the city. There's a big status of Mao there. They're working on a subway system in Chengdu right now, and it looks like the major hub will be under the square.

I walked over to the Renmin Park and enjoyed the scenery a bit. One of the most interesting things at this park was the dancing/singing area. There were 5 or 6 different groups of mostly senior ladies (some guys) dancing or singing. It was very loud. Very, very loud. It was a cacophony of sound and movement. I mean each group was right next to each other and it was like they were competing for loudness. I found it a bit nerve-wracking, but I guess when you live in densely populated areas where it's never really quiet, the noise doesn't bother you so much. I've lived in and been to some big cities here in the US. They are quiet and calm compared to the big cities in China. Even parts of LA are peaceful comparatively.

That's all I really saw in Chengdu. It seems like a cool city, so maybe I'll get back there some day. I read about this game club. It's a nightclub that has all these old school board games. Also, I really like the Sichuanese food, so I'd love to get back somewhere in the Province and get a cooking class or two.

I took a bus to Emeishan in the afternoon and that was that for Chengdu.