Perlieu in June

We went to our beloved spot in Dunn County again last month. It had been over a year since we'd last been there. I'd say that it was one of the most relaxing cabin trips yet. We even had some friends visit us.

Here's a set of pictures from the trip, including digital and film photos.

Post Seattle Trip

I got back from Seattle a while ago. It was a great to see Pat and Angela, and go to a bunch of coffee shops. I was reminded how small the coffee world is and how many connections there are between people I know. I was reminded about the hype and the ego. I was reminded that there are some really good tasting coffees out there, and there are some mediocre coffees with fancy labels.

I love that now when I talk with Pat, I can picture his life and the scenes from one of his average days.

The trip was also about photography. I hadn't intended it to be, but bringing along my favorite Nikon system was bound to do something. Walking into Jim's Cameras to get my FE2 fixed did something too. I was surrounded by old cameras. I wanted to look at so many of them that I think Jim got tired of me. Oh well.

I got home, started developing film again, and bought a Canon CanoScan 8800F scanner. I'm having a lot of fun scanning my hand-processed negatives. It's great because I can use my 35mm cameras for everyday photography and have a way to use the photos digitally, and then hand print the ones I really like.

So, my Seattle & Portland Set on Flickr is now complete with both digital and film pictures taken during the trip. I also have a set just of film scans.

If you run into me on the street or in a coffee shop soon, chances are I'll have an SLR or a rangefinder on my person.

Beginning of Seattle Trip

This is my first morning of my trip to Seattle and Portland. I'm visiting my friend Pat and going on an espresso pilgrimage. You can follow my adventures on twitter, and see photos on flickr. (More will appear daily.) I'll be taking real film photography while I'm out here too, so those shots will take a while to make an appearance. My Nikon FE2 seems to have a possible issue with a light seal, but I've already found a place in Seattle I can have it looked at. I'll let you know how it goes.

Racy D'lene's Coffee Lounge

Last weekend I went on a trip with my best friend Pat who is getting married a week from today. It was a "just the two of us" kind of get away before he becomes one with Angela. On the way back from his cabin we stopped at Racy D'lene's Coffee Lounge in Eau Claire. I've blogged about Racy's previously, but it's worth another mention.

I used to go to Racy's when I was in high school and home from college. This was before I knew much about coffee (which is good, because their coffee wasn't that great back then!) Racy's has been a kind of formative ideal for me of what coffee shop atmosphere can be. It's cozy yet industrial, and a little dark. It has an adequate sound system, which is a detail many other good coffee shops lack.

As I mentioned before, the coffee quality at Racy's has been elevated in the last few years. It might be the only shop with a Synesso in western Wisconsin. We had a good time talking with Kyle, the barista pictured below. Baristas have many common experiences: the gripes and joys of the job. He humored us and poured some latte art.
Thanks Kyle.

Fall Vacation

It was a few weeks ago now (ok, so almost a month) but here's some pictures from our fall vacation to Battle Lake, MN.



(If your flash isn't up to speed, here's a link to the album.)

Zero Driving Days

After Gibbie and I finished fixing the car as shown in the previous post, our family didn't drive again for six days. We biked everywhere. This was extremely gratifying and probably one of the longest stretches of Zero Driving Days we've had.

Since I bike to both of my jobs, weekdays are easy Zero Driving Days. The weekend is the challenge. So far we've successfully biked to church only once. It's uphill most of the way and we need to leave home early enough to give me plenty of time to be early. (I can't be late for church if I'm supposed to play the opening hymn!)

We pull the kids in our Cannondale trailer which Libby has equipped with a milk crate "trunk" for our stuff. We can trade off who pulls the kids for the different legs of our travel in a given day. Unlike driving in the car, we can split off in different directions whenever we want to and both have a vehicle.

I'd say the biggest drawback is how hard it is to hold a conversation while traveling like this. We often read in the car, which is of course completely impossible on bikes. Thus our current book Paradise Lost is not going quite as quickly as others have, but ah well.

All this and I haven't mentioned gas prices... but I guess that's obvious.

First Paddle as a family of four

One of the things I have missed most in the last few years is canoeing. Being out on the waves, pulling ourselves through the waves, with the sun on my face and the water lapping all around. We just haven't gotten much chance since the kids came around.

Well, my uncle Dave recently completed building his own Kevlar canoe. Yeah, you read that right. He made the canoe pictured here by hand. And was gracious enough to let us take it for a paddle around the lake. We were so excited and awed with the privilege, we were holding our breath as we set out from the dock, but oh! it was wonderful.

He designed her very thoughtfully. Note the snappy cord to hold the bowline? He made similar features to secure the paddles while portaging, and the yoke is possibly the most comfortable I have ever used. (The yoke is the piece of wood that sits on one's shoulders to carry a canoe.) Dave said he had the wooden features made out of white cedar by a local craftsmen in his area. I guess the Kevlar is made by building a frame and layering coats of polyurethane over canvas? I'm guessing at remembering what he told me. Also note the ruler on the inside of the gunnel for measuring the catch!
The whole thing weighs remarkably little; I was afraid I would be too out of shape to carry it by myself, but imagine my suprise when I rested that yoke on my shoulders, and found it felt like nothing at all! I think Dave said it was about forty-five pounds. Later I put it together that my two kids together weigh at least fifty pounds and I carry them all the time, so now that makes sense!


Paul obligingly sat in the bow (the front) so I could take stern. He held Ezra, who was overdue for a nap, until he konked out. Then he paddled with me. Gibbie was duffing in the middle. He had a paddle too, but was mostly interested in dipping and splashing his hands in the water and eating the snack we brought for him. Never forget the snacks!We thoroughly enjoyed the view and the quiet time together. At one point, we met a little black, bright-eyed weasel, running along the shoreline, poking his head up to watch us.We saw lots of beautiful old snags, and one amazing, ancient-looking dead tree, weathered bright white by the wind and water. We passed a big roost of blackbirds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands, it sounded like, all calling and starting up from the branches of a young forest, flying in lines and swoops between one tree and another. What is the word for a lot of blackbirds? There is a murder of crows, and where herons roost is a rookery, right. What do blackbirds make? A mass? A swarm? A crowd? A legion?
I like to go right through the reeds sometimes, to let the kids feel and hear them along the side and bottom of the boat.
Thanks, Dave. Nice work.

Our Fall Vacation

Here's a look at our fall vacation. I took last week off from work and we went to the Perlieu cabin, and then Libby's grandparent's place near Battle Lake, MN. We'll write more about the trip itself when we can, but for now just enjoy the photos!


(If the slideshow doesn't work for you, here's a link to the photo album.)

Purlieu Weekend

It's been a busy couple of weeks and we've got a lot of back-blogging to do! Two weeks ago we took a long weekend in Wisconsin. It started around a close family friend's graduation party and turned into a good excuse to spend a couple of days at a cabin in the woods. If I've got the history of the place right, it goes like this: Libby's dad and some friends decided to form a sort of farming co-op back in the '70's and bought some land in Dunn County Wisconsin. The whole farming aspect didn't much take off, but they built a couple of cabins and have had various projects going on the land. We've been spending time there on and off for years and love the rustic (no electricity, pluming, etc.) accommodations. Libby would come here in her childhood and thus learned to love the same landscape that I enjoyed growing up just a few miles south of here.

This was our first time bringing the boys to Purlieu (as it's called). We thought Gibbie would love it, since he so much enjoys the large wooded parks we frequent in St. Paul. Some aspects he took to right away, like the large field with a hill to run or roll down.

There was one unexpected obstacle to his nature enjoyment, however. Bugs. I guess we just have a lot fewer bugs in the city. For the first day Gibbie went around with his hands over his ears trying to block out their buzzing.
Eventually, after talking with him about it for a while, I figured out why he was so scared. He's really good at taking a concept and generalizing it. He knows that bees buzz, therefore he figured that anything that was buzzing around his head must be a bee and could hurt him. No wonder he was freaking out. He didn't completely get over the bug thing until our last day out there.

On Sunday morning we decided not to drive back into town for Church. Instead, we went down the highway just a mile or two to the Hay River Lutheran Church. I had expected this little country church to contain a handful of old people singing feebly and slowly after listening to an old pastor preach feebly and slowly. I was wrong. It was a small church, but it was full, and full of people of every age. The pastor had a wonderful conversational style of delivering a message true to Jesus' character. He also had quite an accent. Someone said he was from Colfax (another small WI town). We later learned that came from Australia before serving in Colfax! When we went downstairs after the service for coffee we met people who lived all around the Purlieu land. They knew about the land, and a little about the people who owned it. They were impressed that we knew the old farming couple who used to live next to Purlieu, in fact one of them was their niece. It was a joy to see some life in that little place, and to meet many of the friendly folks who live around the cabin.

On our way back to St. Paul we stopped for lunch at that very farm once owned by the old people I mentioned. After they moved into town for health reasons one of the Purlieu members bought their land. It's a beautiful little valley with a creek running through it.
Looks idyllic, doesn't it? What you can't see in this picture are the wood ticks. Hundreds of them. All over us. They weren't bad at the cabin, but here there was a steady crawling stream of them. When we sat down for lunch here Libby said, "Oh Paul, you've got a tick on your pants... and one on your shoulder... another on your shirt... here's one on Ezra's head..." and so on. She didn't mind it so much (that's the ex-wilderness guide in her.) It really bugged me, though, and I was already in a bad mood because the Mercedes was running funny and I was worried about making it back home. So Libby pulled out one of her tricks from camp counseling: the Tick Stick.
See that brown mass on the diaper pin? That's a stack of impaled wood ticks. They still wiggle a little like that. It's great for grossing out Junior High campers.

We did make it home in the Mercedes. It was a good trip, but I think the next one will be even better because the boys will have already gotten used to the accommodations. I forgot to mention how much Gibbie liked the "potty house"!
This last picture has no significance except that I think it's a good photo. (Check the texture on the wood and old chair.) Gibbie is being a bird in his nest on the porch of the cabin.

Over the River, Through the Woods

This weekend we went to visit my family in Menomonie, WI. Here you can see Ezra held by his Great Grandmother Veronica. It's kind of funny that in order to get to where my mom and dad live, you do have to drive over the St. Croix river and through the woods of western Wisconsin.

The visit started out with an adventure of our car getting thoroughly stuck halfway down my mother's long snow-packed gravel driveway. It took at least an hour of work and the skillful help of my mom's Gary to get us out. We just walked up the drive from that point on! Libby and I got to go out without the kids that evening, and then came back to celebrate my mother's birthday a day early.

Since neither of my parents have a place for us to stay at their respective houses, and because my mother is generous, we stayed the night in a hotel. Gibbie was excited, though somewhat disappointed that there was no one for him to watch in the pool.

In the morning, since it was a Monday and my parents were working, we decided to go to Eau Claire. It's about a half hour drive and always has greener grass than Menomonie, if you know what I mean.

I was also curious to go back to Racy's. I mentioned it in my last post about latte art. I guess it was one of my early coffee house influences and is still somewhere I think of as an example of my favorite kind of coffee shop atmosphere.



Hey all you coffee geeks: do you recognize what kind of espresso machine is in this picture? (You know, you can click on it go get a better look.)

Yes, the drinks were excellent. We also ended up eating a delicious, reasonably priced lunch there. Still, in some ways it seemed a little soul-less compared to the Racy's of old (which had worse coffee, more weird furniture, more dirt, and a constant cloud of cigarette smoke). Why do great coffee and great atmosphere rarely mix?

While we were at Racy's, there was a young mom with her 16 month old daughter as well as what seemed to be her whole extended family. What stuck out more than the mom's tattoos or the dad's punk hoodie was the utter delight she had in her child. Why do I mention this? Simply because it was beautiful to see in another parent, and hopefully somewhat reflective of our family experience this weekend.