Hester's Winter Coat

Hester is a lovely shade of midnight blue, but these days you wouldn't know it.

Ed's car is a bit more comfortable and better able to handle really rough road conditions, but since the roads weren't too bad last week we took her skiing and she hasn't recovered. The weather here has been pretty snowy, and that means wet, mucky roads. Poor Hester has been bombarded with grime each time I take her out, and so there seems to be little point in washing her. 

As something of a neat freak this is causing me no small amount of anxiety. Still, keeping her clean in winter would be a Sisyphean task. At least she won't rust, since the environmentalists in Boulder eschew road salt.

New Job, Sort Of

In the interest of keeping at least some of my savings in my savings account while I look for permanent work in Boulder, I've started a part-time job. It's not the most thrilling work I've ever done, nor does it pay particularly well, but I like the people a lot and it will do for now.

The offer came to me in a roundabout way. I was searching for volunteer opportunities and saw that an organization that provides resources for providers of scholarships was looking for someone to spend a few hours a week helping with administrative work. I liked the idea of working in a downtown office where I'd have the opportunity to meet some people, so I replied to the posting and they agreed to take me on. After my second day of volunteer work, they extended an offer to work for them part-time and I accepted.

I'm spending 20 hours a week here, and so far the job has, just like any other, it's pluses and minuses. On the positive side, I really like the people I work with and my boss allows me a great deal of flexibility in terms of working whenever I want to get in enough hours each week. It's hard to feel passionate about the work, however, which consists so far of compiling and combining spreadsheets and scouring the Internet for the email addresses of financial aid directors.

While this is hardly a dream job, it's proving to be a nice way to make a few dollars while I look for something a little more in line with my experience and training. And I'm looking forward to my first paycheck! 

Baking in Boulder - Orange Nut Bread

For my next trick, I decided to try a recipe of Mark Bittman's to use up some of the oranges I had lying around. After talking to two friends extensively about baking at altitude, I came to the conclusion that making too many changes right off the bat wasn't wise; as in any experiment, one needs a control. Accordingly, the only change I made to the original recipe was to add an extra egg. I did this for two reasons: 1) to add extra moisture, as things tend to dry out in the mountains, and 2) because eggs act as a natural leavening agent. 

I had to bake the loaf for three more minutes longer than the maximum recommended by Bittman until the toothpick came out clean, but it seemed to rise nicely.

Because I made the loaf right before going out of town for the weekend, I threw it into the freezer before tasting it, hoping to keep it fresh for when both Ed and I got back on Sunday. I let it defrost overnight and sliced into it the next morning.

Ed and I agreed that the flavor was excellent. It was a little on the dense side, however, and Ed felt (though I'm not sure I agree) that it needed either more butter or more oil. 

Now I'm left with a conundrum: how to make it airier? Virginia, who faces a larger challenge than I do since her home in Bogotá is about 3,000 feet higher than mine, told me that she had to reduce the baking soda in her banana bread recipe from 2 teaspoons to just 1/4 teaspoon to get it right. Counterintuitively, the loaves she baked with more leavening in them turned out to be more dense. The reason is that the batter rose so fast that it collapsed, resulting in dense, inedible bread. Less leavening led to lighter bread. My bread, however, doesn't seem to have collapsed, so I'm not sure what to try next. I may split the recipe in half and add different amounts of leavening to each half, then bake both versions side by side to compare the results.

Even if I don't master it, however, I'm heartened that my result is, if not excellent, certainly very good. Baking in Boulder may not be as hopeless as I feared.

Old Friends, New Exploits

My friend Virginia is a remarkable person, so when I heard that a piece of her writing had been published in an anthology alongside pieces by the likes of Dave Eggers, Ann Pachett, and Jane Smiley, I wasn't surprised. Never mind that Virginia hasn't been published before. This is just the kind of thing one gets used to hearing when one knows Virginia. The anthology, titled An Innocent Abroad, is a Lonely Planet publication edited by a man named Don George with whom Virginia took a travel writing class. He liked her piece so much he proposed that it be included in his book.

Virginia, a lawyer, moved recently to Colombia with her Bogotá-born husband Jorge. I heard details about the publication from our mutual friend Cathy. The three of us met in high school and I feel lucky to still count them among my friends; they're some of the most interesting, insightful women I know. Cathy, whose Taiwanese parents raised her on an Aramco compound in Saudi Arabia, has worked in various countries including Haiti. She now calls Santa Cruz home, and when she mentioned that she was planning to go watch Virginia read a section of her essay at a Bay Area bookstore, I decided I had to join them.

I flew out to meet Cathy on Friday night. We went to one of the most authentic ramen places I've encountered in this country, then retired to the eclectic house she shares with an aging sculptor and several other roommates. The place is full of Susan's sculptures celebrating femininity and statues of Buddha. We spent the next morning walking for miles along Santa Cruz's breath-taking coastline, then picked up Virginia in San Francisco to drive her to the bookstore, Book Passages, in Marin County.

 Neither Cathy nor Virginia had been to a book reading before, and I hadn't attended one for months. Five other authors, none of them famous outside very small travel-writing or Bay Area authors' circles, were there to read from their pieces, too. Virginia was very nervous. She said she kept telling herself that this wasn't court and that a person's future did not hang in the balance of her ability to know the answers to difficult questions. At least eighty people arrived, including a large fan section composed of Virginia's friends.

Don George, a balding man with twinkling eyes, introduced each author warmly and pronounced each piece a "beautiful story" at its conclusion. Virginia was fourth of the six and her introduction, though warm and enthusiastic, lacked the accolades George piled on the other authors since she'd never been published before. Nevertheless, she held her own among the other accomplished authors and was so serene that one would never have guessed she'd spent weeks fretting about this day.  Her story is an intense one about a harrowing three days in the Puna, a vast desert region in Argentina so dry it is often compared to Mars. I thought one of the other stories I heard was only OK but Cathy and I both agreed that another was very good and the remaining pieces were excellent.

I was sorry to say goodbye to Virginia, who I wouldn't see again before she headed back to Colombia. Cathy and I had a pleasant dinner in Sausalito, then drove back to Santa Cruz. We had time for a quick breakfast the next morning before it was time to head to the airport.

It was a wonderful trip, but too short, and though I enjoyed the time I spent with a few friends I was sorry my time in the enchanting Bay Area couldn't include visits to the many other friends and family members who live there. However, I was encouraged that the flight there was easy enough that nothing should discourage me from making frequent trips to a place I love to see people I love in the future.

First Race: Fa-La-La 10K

Getting motivated to run in Boulder is not tough. There are lots of lovely places to go, and the weather has been really gorgeous lately. But just in case I found myself dragging, last month I signed up for a 10K in December and a half-marathon in January so I'd have another reason to lace up my shoes. My Meetup friend Lindsay picked me up on Saturday morning and I was feeling a bit nervous as we drove to nearby Westminster. I worried that I hadn't put in much training lately. And athletes in this part of the country tend to be very good--pros live here because training at altitude helps them so much, and the overall culture is a very active one--and I wondered how I'd stack up against the competition. I'd built up a thick skin, though. After racing in New York, I was used to less-than-impressive division results simply because there are so many people in each race. Here, as in New York, I figured I'd stay just above the halfway point in the pack, not because there are huge numbers of people but because the small number have huge talent. It wasn't new, but the prospect of continuous mediocrity is not a pleasant one.

It was chillier than predicted and so Lindsay and another Meetup girl I'd met that morning hung out in Lindsay's car with the heat on until just about the last minute. Then we found spots in the back of the corral just as the race began. The course wound around a large park in Westminster that is probably quite pretty when it's green. I ran with the other girls for a few moments, then, feeling good, I decided to pick up the pace a little. 

What followed was one of the more fun 10K races I've done. The Thursday before I'd done a pretty long run and I'd followed it with a pretty fast run on Friday, so I expected my legs to be toast for the race. I felt wonderful, however, and passed people consistently, a pattern I'd maintain until I crossed the finish line. I'd been indifferent about my overall result initially, but because the course consisted of two out-and-backs, I realized pretty early on that I'd worked my way closer to the front of the pack than I'd expected. I wasn't sure how old the women in front of me were (nor even how the age groups were divided), but I decided about halfway through the race that I was going to try to beat as many of them as I could to see how I fared in my division (whatever that was). 

I was tired when I crossed the finish line (and a bit sore the next day), but generally I felt pretty good, not at all as though I'd exerted a massive effort. So I was astonished to learn the following:

1. On this hilly course at an altitude of over a mile up, I'd run a faster 10K than any I ran in New York by about a minute.

2. I'd taken 7th place overall (among the female competitors, of course).

3. I'd placed 4th in my division.

The winning women's time was nine minutes faster than mine, and the third-place finisher in my division came in three-and-a-half minutes before I did, so I don't have to torture myself thinking that if I'd just gone a little faster I'd have earned whatever the third place prize was; no way I was going to catch her.

The girls and I, along with another friend who'd run the 5K, celebrated our achievements with brunch afterward and had a lot of fun. I can't wait now for the half-marathon. I don't have enough time to really put in the kind of training that will give me much more of an edge for this one, but it's fun to know that I'm a bit of a competitor in my new environment!

Avalanches and K2 at Neptune

Neptune Mountaineering, THE store in Colorado to pick up gear for just about any mountain-related adventure one can imagine, plays host to an interesting series of events that I have been enjoying very much of late. The store, which is worth a visit even if one isn't planning to buy anything, has devoted about a quarter of its space to what is referred to as "the museum." On display there are all manner of old pictures and pieces of historic mountaineering equipment like ice axes, crampons, and wooden skis. Rather charmingly, all the labels and explanations have clearly been typed on a home computer, cut out, and affixed to the wall. On certain evenings, shelving is pushed aside to make room for chairs, and a screen comes down from the ceiling if the speaker has need of it. All the events are free.

The first event I attended was a talk about the human factor in avalanches. Markus Beck, head guide at Alpine World Ascents, spoke to a group of around fifty people about why perfectly intelligent, sometimes very well-trained skiers, climbers, and snowmobilers put themselves in the path of avalanches and get into trouble. I didn't know much about avalanches, and so a lot of the first part of the talk, which breezed over the conditions that can cause them, was news to me and went a bit more quickly than I'd have liked. But I followed more easily when Markus got into the psychology that leads people to ignore risks. His talk was accompanied by a slideshow that included some pretty incredible video clips. I took several pages of notes and have decided I'd better learn more about avalanches. Luckily, a talk about avalanches and beacon use is scheduled for next week.

I enjoyed the avalanche talk, but the second event, which took place the following evening, was truly remarkable. Alan Arnette, the oldest man to have summited the formidable K2, spoke for 90 minutes about his experiences and had every person in the room (well over 100, I'm certain) spellbound. Alan climbs mountains to raise money for Alzheimer's research in honor of his mother. He summited K2 this summer on his 58th birthday and nearly didn't make it down to tell the tale, having developed a severe case of HAPE (high-altitude pulmonary edema) that filled his lungs with fluid and made it nearly impossible to breathe.

K2 is the second-highest mountain in the world, and although Everest is higher and therefore gets more press, K2 is a much more difficult adversary. Nearly 25% of climbers die attempting to conquer it compared to only 4% on Everest. This is due mostly to K2's structure; Everest is steep in places but tapers off occasionally, while K2 maintains a steady 30-45-degree angle slope from bottom to top. Having attended Markus's talk the night before I saw Alan, I knew that this is the range in which avalanches are most likely to happen, and sure enough, sliding snow is what kills most of K2's victims. Only a fraction of the number of people who have climbed Everest have tried to take on K2, and even fewer of those have made it to the top.

A photo of K2 and Broad Peak (to the left) from Alan's website that I hope he does not mind my using here to promote his career. There are lots more stunning images on his site.

Alan's slideshow was phenomenal, and as much as I enjoyed listening to him explain each image in person, I half wish it had been a documentary simply because I wish everyone I know could see what I saw . (Many of these images, and lots of other information about Alan's career and mission, is available on his fascinating website where one could easily wander for hours. And if Alzheimer's research is a cause you'd like to support, please consider doing so through Alan.) He took spectacular photos of his adventures and shot short videos during the arduous trip to base camp, during his (very short) acclimatization phase, and all the way up and then down the mountain. Watching these clips in which he reflects on his experiences while K2 looms behind him was pretty incredible. Alan is a very good speaker, and his talk was sometimes funny and always polished and fascinating. Because his experience was so harrowing, I was astonished to learn at the end that his goal is to climb all of the 8,000-meter peaks in the world within the next five years to continue raising money for research. There are 14 mountains on the list, and he's conquered three so far. Annapurna, the only mountain with a more deadly reputation than K2, is scheduled for spring of 2016. See his complete plan here. I sure hope he's careful.

By the way, those who are interested in learning more about K2 would likely enjoy The Summit, an excellent documentary about one particularly storied attempt to climb the mountain that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It is gripping, harrowing, and fascinating.

I've got a few more events at Neptune on my agenda in the coming weeks, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the mountains that surround me in my new home. But I think I'll keep my distance from K2.

Baking in Boulder - Cornbread and Banana Bread

Boulder is just over a mile high. The altitude affects the way you breathe when your heart rate accelerates, though this improves with time. The altitude also affects the way foods and liquids behave when you cook them, but this does not improve with time.

Basic cooking doesn't change much. Water takes longer to boil and boils at a lower temperature because...science. Your stir fry or steamed broccoli is going to take a tad longer but will generally come out in Boulder the same way it would at sea level.

Baking is a different ball game.

The quality of the air affects baking in up here: its drier and its thinner. The dryness is easy to wrap your head around; extra liquid--just a bit--is needed and that's all there is to it. The thinner air, however, affects the way doughs and batters rise, and this is where things get interesting. For one thing, you have to adjust the amount of leavening (baking powder/soda or yeast), though there's no formula for the precise amount to omit. Other factors come into play in unexpected ways, too; for example, if you over-beat your eggs before adding them to your batter, the excess air will cause problems. Too much leavening or too much air in your eggs means that your baking will rise so fast that it will collapse, yielding decidedly unattractive, and probably less tasty, results. One more thing to keep in mind is that because water takes longer to heat up, you have to increase oven temperatures.

Most cookbooks are written for sea level cooks, and recipes I've baked for years with great results now need tweaking. But no set of exact steps exists, so I'm launching into experimentation, making notes all along. My system, so far, is to jot down the changes I make and the outcome on a sticky note, which I attach to the recipe.

My first venture was Mark Bittman's cornbread recipe. First, I set the oven to 400 degrees instead of the recommended 375; he suggests adding 25 degrees to baking temperatures above 3,000 feet. I reduced the baking powder from 1 1/2 teaspoons to 1 and used 1 1/3 cups of buttermilk instead of 1 1/4. I'd read that covering things while they baked could prevent them from drying out, so after 15 of the 30 minutes it was supposed to bake, I tented the pan with foil. The sides looked done, or even perhaps a bit overdone, at 30 minutes and the toothpick came out clean, but the top was a bit pale.

The color, I figured, was the fault of the tent, so I fired up the broiler to give it a little color. I then violated one of my most sacred kitchen rules and started doing something else while the bread was under the broiler instead of watching it closely. Oops. I pulled a somewhat splotchy loaf of cornbread out probably 90 seconds after what would have been ideal and frantically tossed the pan into a snowbank for a few minutes to stop the baking process.

I was nervous to taste it, but the result was a pleasant surprise. The bread was moist and the texture was perfect. Next time, I'm going to try tenting for the first 15 minutes, then removing the foil to let the top bake for the next 15. As far as the ingredients, I don't think I'll change a thing.

My next venture was banana bread (or, rather, banana bread muffins since I was making only a half batch and don't have a loaf pan small enough). Again, I started with an oven 25 degrees hotter than recommended. The halved recipe calls for 1/2 tsp baking soda, but I used only 1/4 plus a tiny pinch more, and instead of 3 1/2 TB sour milk I used 4. I didn't tent the muffins at all after the fiasco with the cornbread. This, I think, was a mistake. The muffins were done in 36 minutes. (A full-sized loaf, according to the recipe, takes an hour. Not sure about sea-level muffins.) Interestingly, they were paler inside than usual and yielded fewer crumbs. Ed deemed them delicious, and while I agree that they're pretty good I think I still have some work to do. The texture inside is good, but they have a crispy crust all around the outside that they never had before. Could this be the fault of the higher temperature? Should I have covered them for at least part of the baking time to counteract the dry air?

I think I will try foil next time and then, if that doesn't work, lower the temperature.

Baking up here is certainly an adventure, and while I am sort of enjoying the discovery process, it will be a long time before I attempt a soufflé.