This morning, for the first time in over two years(!) I made it out trail running. I’ve been trying to build my fitness back up after a couple of years of, well, distractions. Or laziness. Call it what you will. I’ve been busy.

I figured I had about six miles in me. So far this year that is about my longest run. Looking through my Forest Park map pack, Loop Number 6 is around six miles long. Perfect. I pulled on my Vibrams, grabbed a bottle of water and my camera, and headed out the door.

It was a perfect morning for a run – blue skies, and not too chilly. And I loved every minutes of it. At times like these I have to ask myself, why don’t I do this more often? I regret doing so little running through the fall and winter. I wish I was in better shape now so I could run further and longer. Hopefully this year I can focus a bit more on running and training and general. I still really want to try an ultra.

Scott got on TripCheck to see what was going on, and learned that the freeway was closed at 12:30 (about 40 minutes before we got stuck) due to a vehicle fire. He also talked with a few truckers and learned that the vehicle that was on fire was a hay truck, and the backup was about 2 miles long at that point. We got out, took some pictures, and just waited for things to move again.

Close to an hour later things finally did start moving again. The next two miles were slow since the freeway was still down to one lane while they continued to clean up. The truck that caught fire was completely charred. And the area around the fire smelled really bad too!

Other than this slight delay the trip was uneventful. We pulled into Baker City about 4:30 and got to work pulling all the race gear out of storage at the High School. After that is was dinner at Paizano’s, and then to the Always Welcome Inn for the last good night of sleep for the weekend!

The crust before baking:

Th crust after baking:

The meatza ready for eating. My side free of tomato sauce and cheese. It was pretty good! I will definitely do this again.

Helvatia Half by tonymccray at Garmin Connect – Details.

A few days after another fruitless search, a call came in early morning on Wednesday. I remember hearing his cellphone went off in our bedroom. After I dozed off for I don’t know how long, he returned to the room and said he had to leave for the search. This time was 2 hikers missing in the Gorge. I was really busy at work all day. I didn’t have time to find out what’s going on until I picked up his text messages after work. One message said he got interviewed again. At least it was a good outcome. The hikers were found. Let’s keep the hopes up for the same outcome for Kyron.

Then, I read about the Fiskars Momentum Reel Mower in a magazine. It is promoted to be “30% Easier to Push”. I read the reviews from actual use posted on Lowes website and they were mostly good. Lowes is selling it for $199.00, probably similar to what we paid for the Scotts. I thought we should give a go. I first went to Lowes by myself to get it. The mowers were stocked on a shelf above the floor level. I pushed one box a little bit and it barely moved. I figured it’s too heavy for me so I waited until Tony was home in another weekend to buy it.

We assembled and adjusted the blades one evening. Everything seemed to be okay at that point. It was getting too dark to mow the lawn so we put it away for the night. A few days later, I was walking home from the bus stop after work and saw Tony adjusting the mower in the driveway. He finished mowing the back yard at that point. He said he pushed the mower across the lawn over to the concrete driveway and he heard a loud bang. When he checked the mower, he found a straight dent on one of the cutting reel blades. It looked like the stationery blade on the mower housing bumped into the reel blade.

The owner’s manual said repair any dings as quickly as possible with a file. Tony did that but the big problem was that the positions of the stationary and the reel blades got out of whack. He followed the instructions to adjust things. This mower is designed to have those blades to be slightly apart from each other. They are not supposed to touch. When they are adjusted close enough, the mower would cut perfectly. Our mower can no longer get to that perfect position. Tony tried to bring the blades close together. They came into contact in the middle area and they were too far apart for cutting at one end. The other end remains to cut fine. He adjusted the blades so no parts of them touched and finished the front yard as is.

Straight dent in the middle of the reel blade

Tony called the Fiskars help line and they told him to send in a photo through their warranty request page. He submitted the request online late May and we heard nothing since. He also called and left a message in late June. Still nothing. He just tried replying to the warranty request received email last night. I doubt we will hear anything. This is such a bummer. I used it twice since then. It is definitely easier to push (but it is still a work out).

The Scotts is like a fixed gear bike. You have to keep pushing to move the blades. The Fiskars is a single speed. When I push it real fast and then stop, the cutting reel spins for a while. I think that’s pretty cool. It’s a great idea to add a chain to the reel mower. The next step is adding some suspension to the front wheels. The little plastic front wheels on the Fiskars can’t handle any bumps. I pretty much lifted up the front wheels when I was about to reach the concrete edge of the lawn (and we have quite a bit of those edges). Aside from that, only 2/3 of the 18″ blades cut the grass. The Scotts is a 20″. The Fiskars is smaller as it is so the partial cutting forces us to do more passes to mow the whole lawn.

All in all, if your lawn is surrounded by hard scape like concrete, this is NOT the mower for you. I really want to avoid going with gas or electric. But do we have a choice?

The Saturday call out was to meet at 6:30am at the Sheriff’s office. I woke up around 6am and Tony had already finished eating breakfast, almost ready to go. It’s going to be a nice day, sunny and high around the low 80′s. He has only one pair of pants suitable for the whole weekend. We need to get him more. His text message after 4pm was that the team was getting ready for a second mission. He got home after 10pm. He was again congested but not sneezing as much as he used to. The allergy medicine helps but it is not enough for how much stuff he was walking through. He told me a few times before, “Search and Rescue doesn’t walk around stuff, they walk through stuff.”

The food that was served to the searchers had improved a lot. During the first week before the statewide call to SAR, Tony had cold pizza and cookies one night. They were lucky last weekend when one of the Multnomah County SAR volunteer cooks showed up with a BBQ and made hamburgers and sausages. Yesterday, he had cold fried chicken for lunch (a late one since the second mission didn’t start until after 4pm) and steak and baked potato for dinner. A butcher shop in Gresham donated the steak. That’s really cool. Tony’s diet in the past year has been meat, fish, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, eggs, bacon, and a variety of fat. He is allergic to most vegetables, fruit, nuts and wheat. By avoiding these foods and dairy, his seasonal allergy had become almost non-existent until he went on this massive search. It’s important that he could eat about the same kind of foods during the search but it would be almost impossible. An enthusiastic volunteer handed him a baked potato last night and he couldn’t refuse. Luckily, they were serving it with bacon and butter and he loaded that potato right up.

Sunday call out is once again a meet up at 6:30am. I was so tired from my cousin’s graduation party the night before (I was playing ping pong and pool) that I was sound asleep until he came into the bedroom to say goodbye. He assured me he took allergy medicine and had put on sunscreen. He will use the eye drop a little later. When I got out of bed to see him off, I saw that his small pack was out of his big backpack and attached to a helmet. His team was allowed to carry the small pack yesterday and he hopes they will do the same again today. That would be nice because his big backpack has enough gears to stay the night out in the woods. They were carrying the big packs as shown in the Oregonian photos last weekend. It doesn’t make sense to keep doing the same as they get to go home every night. The big packs are still taken to base just in case. Well, let’s keep good thoughts on all the SAR folks.

Update (6/15/2010): Sunday was another long day even though the Sheriff’s Office called off the massive search at noon and Tony’s team was back at base finishing lunch around 3pm. The entire command center needed to be packed up so it’s again up to the SAR volunteers to do the work. A bright side was that the huge amount of donated food and water was distributed among all the SAR’s that came here from all over Oregon. When the SAR goes out on a search, they have to bring all of their own supplies including food and water. Tony said his SAR got all of the water supply replenished from the donation. That’s a really good thing because it’s not yet summer and plenty more people will go missing in the warmer months. Several hours after packing up and figuring out who should transport what back to the Sheriff’s Office, a new search came in just when the Multnomah County SAR was about to leave the Skyline area. A child went missing on Larch Mountain. One of the SAR leaders started pointing at Tony and a few other volunteers and directing them to leave for the new search. Tony was exhausted at that point but luckily, minutes after the call came in, the missing child was found. “Save by the bell!” for sure. He got home around 9:30pm.

Earlier that evening, I dragged my sore self out to buy a gift card for his cousin, a little cup of chocolate peanut butter ice cream (for him), and pizza (dinner for me) after working a long day in the yard. Tony almost stopped by the store on the way home to buy beer and ice cream but decided against it because it was too late to drink a beer. So, I totally read his mind except for the beer. Besides, he didn’t eat dinner after the late lunch of hot dogs and fruit because there were a lot of snacks laying around and it didn’t make sense to cook a full meal again after the search was called off. Tony was congested all weekend and also on Monday morning. He was finally able to breathe again by late Monday afternoon. There is still a scratch on his arm from the blackberry bushes and the itching is slowly going away.

Reposting from Education Northwest intranet, originally published on June 8, 2010

My husband Tony joined the Multnomah County Search and Rescue (SAR) last fall. He came up with the idea when he decided to do something similar to me volunteering for Amnesty International USA (I’ve been an active member since 1999) – a cause I am deeply passionate about.

The Multnomah County SAR trainings are held from mid-September to early June every year. There is an indoor classroom training every Wednesday 7-9pm and an overnight weekend outing once a month. When he began the training last fall, we were two months into our kitchen remodel. The remodel was a total gut job. We demoed all the way to the studs and sub-floor. And we are still working on it at the moment. The SAR trainings had probably caused a good amount of delays but I didn’t mind it at all. (Big thanks to Nancy Henry for loaning us her hot plate. We are still using it everyday!!!)

Last Wednesday was graduation day. I got to go to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office to attend the ceremony. The newly elected Sheriff was there and he gave a good speech. Good man, I think. Less than a week after Tony was officially certified for SAR, he got called out on a search. This is the big one – the student that went missing at Skyline Elementary School.

The first call came in last Friday. He couldn’t go at that time. He checked back with his team Saturday night after finding out the news online. Another call went out to all volunteers to gather at the Sheriff’s Office on Sunday at 7am.

He woke up early last Sunday to eat a big breakfast. I couldn’t get back to sleep after he got out of bed. I got up, watched him get dressed and off the way he went with his huge backpack and another duffel bag of stuff in case he had to stay overnight. I called his friend later that morning to let him know we wouldn’t be able to make it to his place for the barbecue he was hosting that evening. I also talked to my brother-in-law by phone to make sure his mom know Tony went on the search (his mom requires him to call her every time he goes on a search). Then, my duty was done for the day. I wasn’t in the mood for the kitchen remodel so I did chores around the house instead (neglecting two bathrooms during a remodel is not a good idea).

Sometime after 5:30pm, he called to let me know his team was back to base (the “command center” of the search) and he was waiting for further instructions. An hour later, he sent me a text that said he was going out again with his team and he would be coming home later in the evening. Sometime after 9pm, he got home. I don’t worry about him but the not-knowing what he is doing out there is kind of bugging me. The news reports weren’t super helpful. But at least the Oregonian snapped a good photo of him.

Last night, we were out having dinner in the Pearl District. His cellphone was buzzing the entire time. There was another call for the search. He had a major report due later this week so he took all of his gear to work this morning. A moment ago, I got a text from him. He is going out to the search again. I hope he won’t stay overnight. A few of his teammates were sleeping in the school gym over the weekend. With school back in session, I don’t know where the volunteers would sleep if they stay there. It could be the A-frame made of tree branches and a tarp as he had been trained to do all along.

Update (6/9/2010): Tony called me shortly after 9:30pm last night to let me know his team was back at base. They had to debrief before they could go home for the night. He got home around 11pm with all signs of allergies. His arms got red marks and his eyes and nose were watery. Lots of sneezing and itchy eyes, too. A teammate told him to pour rubbing alcohol over his arms and it took the itchiness away. He took an allergy pill before heading to bed. We looked everywhere for the special eye drop prescribed by his doctor but it’s nowhere to be found (nothing is easy to locate during a remodel). I asked him if he should stay out for a day and he said he might just take his gear to work with him. Do I need to wave the “Listen to your wife, please” card? Well, he is still quite congested this morning and agrees that he won’t go out on the search today (he had already gotten calls from several people last night for today’s search). 200+ hours of training are no match to the thick vegetation (as tall as him I heard) that kicks off his allergies.

Update (6/10/2010): There was a call out to Multnomah County SAR to meet at the Sheriff’s Office at 4pm yesterday. Tony didn’t bring his gear to work and he wouldn’t be able to arrive on time anyway. He offered to drive the shuttle and that was his job for the night. He transported search teams between their assigned areas and base. He also added up volunteer hours at the command center. Even for such simple tasks, he was there past 9pm and got home after 10:30pm. As for me, I went to the store to get him allergy medicine (and a chocolate bar for me). In terms of tonight, he plans to go straight home after work to clean up his gear to get ready for the weekend. But what about all the festivities (2 graduation parties and a baby shower) we got invited to this weekend? “We will see,” he said. What did I let him get into? A new obsession?!

“Stay tuned for the continuing coverage …”

Since I can hardly take the time to write a blog post, my wife has asked to be a contributor on my blog. So of course, since I am a good husband and always listen to my wife I did just that. So, hopefully something interesting will start popping up here from time to time. Like her experiences with me being out on searches, such as the one going on now for Kyron Horman.