Chicken Show!

This one's for you Stegal...

Apparently now one of my aliases is "chicken man". Here's a small entry I typed up but never posted a few weeks back showing my excitement over my first chicken show....

The week of Aug 29th, Abby and I made the trek out to Loudon county to the 4H chick chain sale. I didn’t know much before marrying Abby about 4H, but it seems like it’s a great program something akin to Boy Scouts which are some of my fondest childhood memories. The program that night was essentially a "chicken show" of sorts. I’ve never been to a chicken show up till now, but I have to say it was quite a fun experience.

There are apparently many characteristics on which to judge a chicken. Judges looked at beak structure, comb structure and color, feathers, legs, overall size, and even measured pubic bones to ascertain if a chicken was laying or not. The chickens were lined up in pens in groups of 3 and based on these characteristics. The judges were looking at consistency between the three birds in the pen that were judged. Breeds were divided up into their own respective classes and then there was a best in show judging. Abby and I were hesitant as we heard they had been going for a lot in other shows in other counties (upwards of 30 dollars a bird), so to be safe before the auction began we bought one chicken for sale off the side. A silver laced wine dot. After the judging was complete a bid list with the winners and bid order was handed out. The “Grand champion” chickens went for 32 bucks a chicken! Yes that’s 32x3= 96 for the pen. We thought at this point we were going home with one chicken, but to our pleasant surprise we were able to win the reserve grand champion (2nd place)! We won 3 addition Barred Rocks so now our chicken total on the home front is a baker’s dozen. The new arrivals have yet to start laying but they are close judging by their comb color and body size. Here's some photos from the trip out to the county, where we were the city slickers.

The Spread of birds.

Rhode Island Red class

Barred Rocks were the most popular bird at the show.

These are called leghorns and were the only ones at the show.


These are "black stars". As you can see they don't call them bird brained for nothing.


The new ladies are still getting used to being able to free range a bit.



Our New Silver Laced Wine dot.

Sunny No Chance of showers...for 8 days.

Last week was very busy and we had our hands full on the home front. Our one and only shower, which was very cheap plastic had leaked for the final time into the wall. After 2 months of fighting every caulk brand we could find, caulk tape, and everything but silly putty we decided that we needed to change out the corner options. The plastic we glued to the wall was thin enough that temperature changes would cause the liner to swell and the plastic would buckle opening fissures which would allow water to flow freely under the tub basin and into the wall. We got Abby’s brother to pick up some tile for us the weekend of the Black Bear race from an outlet, which saved us loads of money over local tile stores and borrow his tile cutter. One thing we negated to realize till we started laying the tile was that “green board” is not appropriate for backing on tile, so we had to also rip out the entire wall behind the shower and put into concrete board. After considerably more site prep and demo the project finally got off.

We're always so thankful we can keep Abby's retired parents from getting too bored.

Demo was fun for about the first 10 minutes. I really wish I had a fubar for this.

Now that's a mess.

Finishing touches on the concrete backer board.

We got all the tile laid in Sunday night, but our neighbors probably hate us now as we were up till midnight cutting for the damn thing. After tiling we let them set for two days and then grouted. Following that you wipe with cheesecloth and then apply several coats of sealant to the tile and grout.

Grooves help the adhesive work in and allow for drying.

Accent band of tile and progress here is faster with someone simultaneously making cuts outside. Spacing on the tiles is kept in place with little spacer kits that have "plus" looking shapes to them.

A little polish goes a long way.


Reposition fixtures and seal accordingly.

The hardest part was actually putting the old shower stall back in. If you’ve ever have tried to drill through ceramic with a masonry bit that’s supposed to work well you know what I mean. It took 1.5 damn hours to drill 6 holes for the shower stall. We finally got everything set in and caulked around where things needed to be sealed and then we headed up to home this past weekend for the MSG series to let everything have ample time to dry. In all we had no shower from Friday night 10-3-08 till Sunday evening 10-12-08. Which made for slight stinkiness and awkward showers in the front yard at night under a hose with flashlight. I’m pretty sure I flashed a few people driving up and down our road and they probably just thought, “Well it’s just the Chandlers”. Chilly night temperatures actually made the hose only a little cold, as the water seemed to be warmer than the air. All in all it was a painfully slow project for the regularity of use we get out of it and sometime in future homes I think we will try to make sure there at least two bathrooms so that you are able to work on one majorly once in a while.Tile is glued on with this special cement.

And DONE! No more stinky Chandlers. (Boogy included)

Black Bear Rampage 2008

Daddy Trent Flexing for the ladies

Dave Flexing for the ladies

Dirt Tans...the only safe tan.

Some of the only dirt on my bike was from the morning fog making the dust stick.

The probably boring account for you of my day at the races...

This year’s edition of the rampage was the diametrical opposite of 2007. It was hard, scary fast, and dry…too dry. I really haven’t been training much however I think I had a pretty decent base from commuting to work. I definitely could tell when there were periods of intensity that my leisure rides to work at 12 mph were not adequate.
The race started perfectly on time this year and went off without a hitch logistically. My only complaint would be the lack of water at the start/ parking area where the only source of refreshment was monster energy drink. Subsequently kids were bouncing around everywhere and just looking at the hundreds of gallons of monster made my heart palpitate and stomach say hell no.
The Expert men wave took off a full 30 seconds after the pro-semipro men. A group of 6 of us myself and “The Great Caleeeeb” included moved to the front and started doing some serious work that I was to ready for this early in the race. Within about 300 yards of asphalt road I was getting maxed out. Fortunately there were some guys feeling the same way in front the pace settled and then persisted. Gary Fisher started with the pro men and was quickly shed from their ranks but as our pursuit group passed the man himself, I flashed my bling and said hop on the pain train. Gary: “Alright man sweeeet”. So He held on almost to the top of the climb at our now blistering pace again…quite impressive for a Geezer who helped start this whole mtn biking thing.
As we crested the weed out hill section on the road we caught on to the semipro/pro group and the pace settled once again. A slight mist morphed itself to a thick fog shortly after that fogged glasses and made visibility drop to about 15 feet. The pace of the group slowed even more and at this point myself and 3 other dude went to the front. It’s pretty intimidating having the entire pro field behind you. A few seconds later a blur of colorful jerseys combined with the sound of squeaking brakes let us know (about 20 people) we had missed the turn for the start of the race….another great start. A group that had been behind the original lead group ducked into the woods in front of us and a herd of cussing pro’s fought their way back to the front.
Brush creek was some of the fastest scariest riding I have done in a long time. The Dust was terrible and this combined with the speed made any small mistake a big problem. I saw several people careen off the trail hell-bent on making the trip down the valley to the Ocoee river. One Pro who will remain name less informed me I was holding him up at the top of the overlook trail (I hadn’t even sent the guy till then and he acted like he had been waiting forever huffing and puffing). Shortly after he passed on a technical downhill I saw him off the left nursing a tacoed wheel and madder than a bucket of snakes. I could only help not laughing inside.
At this point in the race I figured I was somewhere in the top 10 as most of the people in front of me were pros and semi pros. I was informed to my pleasant surprise at aid station 1 I was in 2nd and I really couldn’t believe it. Settle down I told myself, still a long waaay to go. I passed several semi pro men and then about Thunder Rock Express I realized to my dismay I was going to have to stop and pee. It seems drinking 2 L of water before a race is a bad idea. My whiz was the never-ending whiz, you would have thought I downed an entire keg before the race. I imagined all the poor kayakers on the Ocoee that would be swept away in my river of over hydration. It seemed to take hours and about 10 people passed me, which motivated me further to ride with reckless abandon. After the express descent I started picking people off on the climb, which was a treat for me, as my climbing skill set has diminished significantly from the days of my previous racing. By the time I made it to the top of the Quartz loop I felt an unfamiliar tingle in my legs…bonking. The next few miles including the descent I spent trying to get some food and water in me, which given the pace up to this point had evaded my grasp.
As I began the climb back up to brush creek I knew I was in trouble, I felt weak and for the first time ever in a Cross Country race…I felt a cramp trying to come on in my leg. (great all that drinking earlier in the day had cleaned my electrolyte supply out I thought). Jeremy Hargroves caught me at the top of the overlook and never looked back, his endurance racer legs seemed to be trucking along just fine. I got passed by several other people at this point all who were semi pro/pros and the speed with which they dropped me became ever more depressing. I caught onto a friend of mine Matt who was having a “bad day” in the semi pro category and he definitely helped me keep up a better pace thought he last of brush creek. As we neared what was to the be the finish there was a left turn going up the road. I saw two men riding closely together so Matt and I turned and headed up after them. We caught them at the level of the road and found out they were in fact just rec riders, so we quickly doubled back down to the main trail which shot us out onto the old asphalt road there. Thank god the race ended now, I was about as toasted as I had ever been. When I saw the results I was pleasantly surprised to find I finished 4th in Expert, much higher than my top 10 aspirations. It seems the Knoxville crew had a good day with respectable finishes by all. Dave got another 2nd to add to his belt of podiums and Andy, Caleeb, Derek, Mark,Vick, the SMAPS, and Randy all had excellent races that I knew of. This year’s edition was definitely harder with the dry trails wielding an unyielding “dirt roadie” course. I’ll be happy to race some more technical and slower terrain in the near future. And of course CX in one week.

Cliff notes for the excessively long blog entry:
Class: Expert
Place: 4th in class / 8th out of 234 overall
Time: 3:05:20
Fun: Yes
Fast: Yes
Tired: Yes

Residential Evil

So we have a pretty nice flower garden out front that is slowly beginning to see some age. This past weekend I noticed our "bee" population was experiencing what seemed to be a late season boom. Boogy was trying to catch some but ended up getting stung twice. I also noticed that his activities seemed to attract more...something suspicious was going on with these bees. Upon closer observation and after being attacked at the breakfast table I realized that the offending bees were in fact Yellow jackets. Yellow jackets I usually don't have too much of a problem with, but these guys were being down right pushy and really disrupting the peace and karma in the yard around the house. The chickens did a great job of making short work of the ones in the back but there were just too many. I guess it's just swarm season or something, but when I got stung taking a load of compost across the street to our pile..it was on. I gradually determined the location of the nest (easiest during the day) and commenced with operation "Shock and Flame". This operation involved a night ops component and night stalk commando tactics to defeat the enemy. I found the entrance which to my surprise was about the size of a fist. Now the fun part... Steps to vanquish yellow jackets:

1. Apply Gasoline- with a low vapor pressure and lightweight liquid form it does a pretty good job penetrating soil. (2 Cups)

2. Let stand 3-5 minutes- This is the hardest step because it involves waiting with fire in your hand to apply to the gas, but it is necessary. The gas slowly soaks into the hive and the vapors at the entrance begin to overcome the enemy.

3. Apply fire- This is the tricky step. By now there are most certainly some pissed off soldiers in the air. If you turn on your light too long they will seek you out and sting you at night. So you very quickly light a paper towel on a shovel and slide it to the entrance and run like hell. Soldiers in the air are vaporized as well as ground troops trying to escape the vapor of the nest. The most satisfying part about all this is if you've done it correctly every jacket in the next will be dead or severely incapacitated for the final counter attack to come. The burning gas burns the bastards outside the nest and the burning gas in the outer tunnels of the nest effectively pull all the oxygen from it suffocating all the workers inside. Turning over the surface soil for about 5-10 minutes will ensure a good enough burn to dispatch the nest, in most cases.

4. Kill ALL survivors- Dig the nest up slowly making sure you got the oxygen out of every compartment. The air exchange can be a big issue for hives, so odds are everyone is crawling for oxygen on the verge or gone. In any case they will be lethargic and once you see the hive it's time to do a secondary burn to make sure there are no survivors. Dig up the rest of the nest and spread the contents out around on the ground. The birds will take care of the rest at first light the following day. Check over the next few days to see that there wasn't a sub nest or another portion to the original one. Visual of the queen usually gives me good affirmation that the job is done. She'll be in the middle of the hive well protected, but she's noticeably larger than the dudes that serve her.

Yellow jackets love to build subterranean nests around old stumps and particularly underground rocks which ad a bit of security to their nests. This nest was bigger than I had anticipated (About the size of a regulation NFL ball) and they had quite the assemblage of soldiers on the inside.

The initial dig is where the likelihood of night time stinging is greatest.

The Hive

More Hive and Grubs.

An extinguished worker chamber.

How to cook a wallet...

So it’s been busy over the past few weekends and with teaching and school I’ve been swamped. With those excuses I’ll get back to it. Re-cap from the past 2 weeks. Went and volunteered as the wheel truck for a road race in Oak Ridge the weekend of the 6th with Derek.

This Be How I role...

Our View for the next 2 hours of racing...

It was neat watching the races fold from behind and gave me a new perspective on how they work. My volunteer efforts would not go unrewarded however...

Abby and I had planed our anniversary dinner for this night since we were visiting family on the 1st. As it turns out I was supposed to be home around 4 and ended up getting there about 7:15. Needless to say tensions were already high at the Chandler residence. Tycho Derek’s Dog is a tricky little Russian and managed to get into the chicken pen and mutilate but not kill one of the barred rocks.

The Damage

Well this combined with my extremely late arrival in the evening made for a tense period between me getting ready for dinner and getting out the door. As I hopped into the car I asked if the keys were there and was met with a blank yet annoyed stare. I ran back to the house, unlocked it and ran inside to get the keys. Somehow when I was in the kitchen I had to frame of mind to remember we have had several robberies in the past few weeks in the neighborhood. This is where the trouble started I decided I had to get the wallet out of sight from the window, so I threw it in the oven. Now I know what you’re thinking, but it was a dark out of sight place and I thought for sure a burglar would not look there. I mean common how many times does a guy break into a house and say man let’s check the oven for the mother load stash? Anyways so dinner ad the rest of the evening went off without a hitch and everything was fine and dandy.

The next morning I got up fully intending to bake Abby breakfast in bed. I went to the kitchen and turned the oven to preheat at 400 deg. As I walked to the bathroom to take a leak I felt something warm at my feet (and in between my toes). To my horror Boogy had had the worst case of diarrhea I have ever seen mixed with some paste like stool. Retracing the night’s events I seemed to remember hearing some scratching and little bit of whining but I thought surely Boogy just wanted to go outside and look for a cat that had crossed out yard. Not the case. And even though it was an absolute mess I couldn’t help but laugh at the presence of a single paw and poo streak that was left on the back door. It was as if his last act of desperation were in vain. At least he has the decency to go in bathroom where it was easy to clean.

As I was down on my knees doing the Cinderella an unfamiliar odor began to fill my nostrils. That’s when I knew what it was. I ran for the oven opened it and found a cloud of smoke, which quickly enveloped the kitchen and promptly activated the smoke alarm. Thinking only of what was to come I reached for the smoking hot wallet and threw it across the kitchen towards the sink. Of course I missed and the contents went sailing everywhere leaving tracer smokes trails as they evenly coated a kitchen already engulfed in haze. A further check of the area revealed no fire but a burning sensation in my hand let me know that the zipper on her wallet was in fact metal and had been heated to approximately 400 degrees. It toasted my thumb and index finger on my right hand and I knew that our planned ride for later in the day was going to hurt as I shifted.

Serve with white wine and many apologies.

All the commotion between Boogy and the oven awoke Abby who came down and promptly began to laugh at the situation. Me distraught with poop and burns on me must have made for a good wake up call. Anyways I was informed the wallet was old and it was ok since it was a good marshal’s purchase. I was informed if it had been Abby’s Italian leather purse her host mom over there had given her in high school, we would be on much rockier ground now. Thank god for that. The rest of the weekend went off without a hitch and I was glad for that.

The following weekend got a lot of yard work and house work done, mixed in with some school and riding. I was able to finally get my screech owl box up and I’m looking forward to having some tenants in the near future, as Concord has a good population of its own.

The Concord Penthouse complete with backyard flight path and view.

We had screech owls at home when I was in high school and they're super neat. They're vocal and aren't as weary as some other species of humans so sometimes you can throw (scraps) out in the yard and feed them. So hopefully they will like my new placing and move in.

Also been finding some neat end of season spider of unusual size in the garden.

Rewind...Day 4 Honeymoon

Headed to Tower campground, one of my favorites in Yellowstone. Nestled alongside a mountain stream in a high valley and subject to cool breezes, it was absolutely perfect.

Home sweet home complete with man made door mat.

We hard boiled some eggs for breakfast.

This is where you see a lot of buffalo in the park.

Werd up Buff Da Billz.

We got our first dose of many thermal features of the park on the way at Mud Geyser basin.

Mud Geyser

Sulfur smells dominated the air here. (Who farted?)

Dragon's Tongue Spring

A Small mud pot with microbes all around the rim.

This sign constantly reminded us what happened to poor little Timmy, and that being scalded to death like a few people are every year hurts.

Lots of pigments in the guys growing around the springs area.

The walks in Yellowstone are constantly being destroyed by thermal movements, but at least lumber isn't in short supply here.

We set up got ice and supplies for the day and then headed off for our next round of adventure. We decided to hike Mt Washburn from Dunraven Pass. We decided on this route because it seemed that the switchback offered would afford a good view as the climbing was steep and the land would drop below us. Also our original intention to get a little extra mileage out of this out and back, and at 3.1 miles would be our first good test of hiking at altitude. The trail from Dunraven pass was actually an old road grade that in places had progressed to more of a single track hike.

Right from the paring lot this hike reminds you that the grade will be constantly going up.

Up a small valley and Washburn is on the upper right.

Looking back down on where we hiked from steeper terrain.

The final 1/2 mile of trail traverses a very cool spine, somehow like 50 years ago they were able to pave sections of this road. Landslides forced them to make another road up the back of the mtn with a much friendlier grade, so this road is progressively falling off the mountainside.

The horse flies were absolutely awful until about 9500 ft where I was hoping they all asphyxiated and dropped dead. They were slow though so the competition between Abby and I to rack up the insect body count raged on till we were clear of the pesky little buggers.

As we hiked up through the high alpine meadows there were huge beautiful fields of flowers that seemed to stretch endlessly through the valley.

Lots of these yellow guys.

Some blue guys.

Lichens, symbiotic associations of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont), grow everywhere even at the top of the mtn these guys were doing just fine.

More flower power.

As we got higher, the occasional rock escarpments gave us breath taking views of the land below to our south, and leftover snow pack was fun to play around in. At the top we toured one of the only actively manned fire towers still in Yellowstone, noting several formation on maps there on our horizon and the big forest fire itself.

These two are for you Dave.

Yes we did take one without sunglasses (for the grandmothers) but we thought this one was cooler.

The southeast edge of the fire.

We learned the ranger lived up there none stop for 3.5 months of the year in between snows and was restocked every two weeks. His abode on top of the tower was packed with many comforts of home to keep him from getting lonely and the daily visitors I think helped cure that as well. Being the geek I was I asked him about some of the equipment he ran and got some good explanations about some of the things’ functions that remained mysterious to me. After a little convincing, which I don’t know how I did it, I was able to get Abby to concede to hike off the backside of the mtn to the road on the other side, with the prospect of hitch hiking back up to Dunraven Pass.

Last year was a record snow year so there was still a lot of snow. Notice the red color in this snow.

The color is caused by a red pigmented cyanobacteria that lives on receding Alpine snows and glaciers. Sometimes refered to as "watermelon snow"

The barron back slope.

Looking back up the ridge you can see the tower and a snow field.

If the forest is going to ever grow back here, it's taking its sweet merry time. There were no young saplings to be seen anywhere.

It was a little shorter to the parking area on this side of the mtn but the terrain was much different. Where there was high alpine forest on the other side this side had only high altitude meadows that stretched quite some distance. Some small groves of trees burnt out as a testament to the fires that swept through here some time ago. Here were pummeled by the sun’s full force in the open as well as winds whipping across the open ridgeline. We arrived at the parking area to find that we had another good mile to go before we hit the main road. This is where the fun began. Hitch hiking is hard, and we tried in vain for 45 min to get a ride as we walked down the improved gravel road. After the first few min I looked back to find Abby just stopping and smiling at cars as they went by and I had to explain the whole thumb thing to her. We tried hiking with her in front of me and back but it seemed people would have none of the two sketchy figures on the side of the road. After making it back to the road I prepared myself for what I thought would be the inevitable 6 mile hike by me to Dunraven Pass to get the Van. We found a pullout for a scenic overlook about ½ mile up the road and made on last ditch effort to get a ride. Finally! College girls and ecology grad students doing research at that, stopped to give us a ride and we couldn’t have been more thankful, as our dogs were barking by now. We had a brief "nature geek out session" in the 15 min drive back to the pass. Abby learned that her shoes did not fit well and that when you feel a hot spot you need to stop. Her reward for trudging through the heat and pain on her foot was a nice fat blister I feared would derail our plans for more day hikes and possibly the summit attempt on Grand Teton the following week. After we found our way to the car we drove to "THE GRAND CANYON" (of Yellowstone) to check out Yellowstone falls via the Uncle Tom Trail, with lots of steps and people freaking out about the heights everywhere.

An awkward pose on a busy platform.

Yellowstone Falls

And again from Artist Point. (we never seemed to hit any light right for the fals we hiked to)

70 down 500 to go.

Abby and I were tired but it was nice to see people that had gotten off a tour bus suffering for a change instead of us with close to 10 miles of hiking for the day. (which we found to be a lot if you hike this amount in sucession several days in a row) At Artist Point we got another good view of the falls and ran into our first tour bus crowd so this visit was brief and we were missing the slopes of a much less populated Mt.Washburn. We stopped at Upper falls picnic ground at the end of the day as the Sun was starting to go down to find it completely deserted…perfect. We took our solar shower and behind the latrine was a tree perfectly suited for a solar shower rinse. After our showers we decided we would treat ourselves so we went back to the canyon village and ordered some huge American Burgers with fries and indulged our appetites. Abby also got a 5 dollar shake much like the one from Pulp Fiction but I only got one sip of that thing before it was destroyed so all I can say is it was pretty good. We met a couple from western Mass at the bar and talked a bit. I did not envy their crowed hotel where they were staying all week and having to drive vast distances. We ended up missing the wolf ranger program at Tower that evening but the burgers were worth it and we own "In the Valley of the wolves" we purchased from PBS last year.