Blooming

This is my front yard here in Oregon. Quite a difference from the beige landscape in Dhahran.




Everyone tells me that the weather of the past two weeks is completely anomalous: dry and sunny, dare I say even hot--almost 90 F on several days. I had to get a couple of box fans to put in the windows to cool the house down. I can't be too disappointed because I know it will start raining eventually.

The dogs are in for a surprise though. They soak up the sun every chance they get. I suspect it isn't quite hot enough for them!

Frankenbike

Since I couldn't pack Erika the Step/Pilates Nazi in my air freight box or one of my suitcases, I've been casting about for some additional exercise options. I already walk the dogs an hour a day along a rather hilly route but that's not enough. I have my OSU student ID card now but I can't use the campus gym facilities until the summer session starts in June.

Taking up bike riding seemed a reasonable option.

There are bike paths all over the place and they are well connected so you can travel for quite a distance without having to go on regular streets. There is in fact the start of a major multi-use path just across the street from my house. By following this path, with a few jigs and jogs, I can actually ride a bike to campus.

But first I had to get a bike.

I started by visiting some of the bike shops in Corvallis. I tested out a new bike as well as a used one, both costing in the neighborhood of USD 500. That seemed like a lot so I decided to think about it some more.

My friend Anne offered to loan me her bike, which she's kept in a clean, dry garage for some years. But it would have required quite a bit of work (labor fees at a local shop) plus some new parts to get it back in working condition. And it still didn't quite fit me. I have very long legs but a relatively short torso so most women's bikes are too short and most men's bikes are too long from seat to handlebars.

I found a used bike on craigslist that fits me pretty well. It is a crap "walmart" type bike, no-name brand, only 16 gears, but someone had done some upgrades to it. It had decent shifters and an extended stem that lifted the handlebars way up. I still had to buy a helmet, fenders (which I installed, having to resort to zip ties in the end because the Frankenbike doesn't have threaded holes with standard diameters), and a cable lock. But for around USD 180 and a bit of work, I now have a working bike. It's quite a mongrel, dings here and there, parts that don't match in style or vintage, the flywheel a bit sticky. But it works.

According to what I've been told, bike theft or bike part theft is a booming industry on campus. So I certainly didn't want to begin this experiment with some high-end affair that would get stolen. The Frankenbike won't turn any heads, that's for sure. I mean, really, zip ties.

I rode to campus today. I had a false start two days ago and had to come back to study the bike path maps a little more carefully. Today, I went loaded for bear: backpack, iPad, printed maps, water bottle. I made it to campus in almost exactly 30 minutes of not terribly horrendous pedaling. No, to be correct, in 30 minutes, I made it across campus to the auditorium where I am to spend June and July listening to organic chemistry lectures. I treated myself to lunch (only the second time I've eaten out since I arrived here) then pedaled back. That was much, much harder. My legs weren't at all ready for what amounted to an hour of bike riding.

I calculated that it's probably been 13 years or so since I last sat my fat butt on a bicycle seat so I guess that I'm doing okay since I made it back in good time and without too much trauma. (I'd forgotten how fun it is to ride a bike despite initially being a bit wobbly.)

I may be delusional but I am wondering if I can save the summer parking sticker fees and bike to campus instead. That's a lot of pedaling but no doubt it will be good for me. It certainly meets the "need more exercise" criterion. I am not delusional enough to think I would continue this during the winter. But it's summer now. The weather is decent at the moment.

There is a second option. There is a "park and bike" lot about 15 minutes' drive from my house that meets up with a different bike path that heads straight into campus and that would cut the total bike trip by as much as two-thirds. I will probably give that a try next week to see how much trouble it is to load and unload the bike into the back of the car (it will fit, the question is a matter of the trouble required) and how long this alternative takes.

And if this summer experiment goes well, I can sell my Frankenbike (which now has fenders and will probably get a new chain before too long) and upgrade to something a bit nicer.

Oh Dear

Tonight was the first meeting of Azza's obedience class. We had to show up without the dogs. I can certainly understand the value of the instructor giving the group some basic instructions without the distraction of the dogs, but almost two and a half hours of it? She nattered on about the most irrelevant and annoying nonsense and only got to the real meat of the entire affair AFTER we were supposed to have already finished (specifically, what we were supposed to prepare at home for next week's class).

Having taught such classes to dog owners who lack the faintest clue about dog training, I can tell you that rushing through the instructions for how to train the name game, collar touch game, and a sit-stand-down combo is a waste of everybody's time as she'll just have to repeat it all next week.

On top of that, not one of those green handlers got an opportunity to practice any of these new activities under a guiding eye. They didn't get to practice the timing of their marker word, they didn't get to practice the placement of the treat for luring a sit or get any advice on how to get their dog to sit by their side (many untrained dogs have problems with this since they are used to facing their owners for their treats).

The instructor showed no understanding of or respect for different learning modes (how people learn), spoke disparagingly of vets, and spoke continuously with hardly a pause for breath. For two and a half hours. The environment was not one that encouraged inquiry or exploration.

To add insult to injury, the instructor had two of her own dogs and the assistant instructor had one of her dogs running around unleashed. It seems that the assistant's dog is there "to be trained." They used these dogs to model the homework behaviors for a total of about two minutes (they didn't even offer to let one of the participants give it a try with the dogs). The rest of the time there was a lot of pointless showing off, solipsistic rambling, and a couple of times even some factually wrong statements.

When I was teaching the obedience classes in Dhahran, I fretted a bit about taking Mimi to class (I think I even wrote a blog post about this). I was worried that it seemed self serving. But I never used her to demonstrate a skill when I could use a class dog instead. I never taught her new behaviors during class. I never let her off lead.

I am not paying these clowns to train their own fucking dogs. I am not paying them to talk over questions from the handlers. I am not paying them to operate doggy day care during an obedience class.

I am not sure that I will return next week. I need to think how or even if I can make this a positive experience for Azza. It won't be a positive one for me.

It's Rhubarb Season!

I ran into my landlady in the Safeway this afternoon (I know that sounds weird but I live in a very small town outside of Corvallis, which isn't all that terribly large itself). We had a nice chat about the weather and the rental house. She and previous tenants have planted lots of beautiful trees, shrubs, herbs, and plants and I have really been enjoying discovering them as they come into bloom. The tulips and cherry trees are finished but the irises and a small dogwood are now taking over. There are three large rhododendrons in the front yard blooming in glorious varieties of pink.

She told me, the rhubarb is ready for harvesting. The rhubarb? Oh, that looming plant with the enormous dark green leaves. I had in fact weeded out that side bed just the other day and discovered the rhubarb as well as a bed of onions planted by the previous tenants. I didn't recognize the rhubarb but figured it was too large and permanent looking so I weeded around it.

I've never touched rhubarb before but I'm game. My first stop for some ideas was the BBC Food web site. If I had my Joy of Cooking, I probably would have also looked there, but it's on a slow boat from KSA. Of course the BBC comes through. I chose this recipe for rhubarb chutney. It suggests serving the chutney with gammon, a form of smoked pork, and I happen to have some boneless pork steaklets. But the recipe attracted me because I like making chutneys and compotes. They are so easy!




Here's a picture of the rhubarb cooking in the brown sugar with the rest of the ingredients ready to go in.

It took quite a while to cook the chutney down and the pork was still frozen so I'll defer the rhubarb feast until tomorrow. The flavors will be that much better!

Get That Rat!

Mimi and I had quite an adventure yesterday--her first experience with earthdog. For those of you who lack terriers, earthdog is a competitive, titling sport for the small and medium sized terriers. The dogs have to find (at the advanced levels) and enter a 9x9 inch tunnel (wood roof and sides, dirt floor) then navigate its length until they arrive at the end where they find the rat. Yes, a real, live rat. The dogs aren't supposed to run overground to the rat, they have to go through the tunnel. The rat is in a metal cage that is behind heavy wooden dowels. The dogs aren't supposed to make contact with the rat but they are supposed to "work" it for a specified period of time. Sitting and staring doesn't count. The dogs must do something like bite the dowels or dig, and it is good but not required that they vocalize. The judge sits at the rat end and has separate access to the dog and the rat as needed.

My friend Anne asked if I'd like to help the club dig and lay out the tunnels for their trial next weekend. She dangled good bait: members who helped could practice on the tunnels afterwards. She said, yes, you're not a member but I'm the VP, and I can probably arrange something if it's a problem.

It was a long, hot, dry, dusty, windy morning but many hands make short work of such tasks. In less than three hours, we had the Introduction to Quarry, a 10-foot tunnel with one 90 degree turn, and the Junior tunnels dug (with the help of a backhoe, amazing invention), laid out, leveled, and buried. Another team took care of the Senior tunnel which was quite a distance away in a brushy, wooded part of the farm.

After lunch and the club meeting, one of the club members who is a judge headed out to the Intro tunnel with a rat and her dog. Anne and I hotfooted it out there after her with Anne's JRT bitch Skeeter and Mimi.

It took some convincing but at last Mimi went into the tunnel. The judge was holding the door open at the end so there was plenty of light--at only 10 feet, Mimi could certainly see the exit once she got into the mouth of the tunnel even with the 90 degree turn.

We spent quite a bit of time encouraging Mimi to be a very good terrier: biting, whining, barking, digging, and otherwise pitching a fit to get to the rat.

Sigh. Another photo of my butt. But this is a nice one of Mimi's butt! Mimi is going into the Junior tunnel. There is a right turn, then a left, then another right, before she gets to the rat. The tunnel is around 20 feet long! Mimi stands almost 16 inches at the shoulder so she has to really crouch down to get into then move along in the 9x9 inch tunnel.

The Junior tunnel proved to be more of a challenge. It was almost 20 feet long with three 90 degree turns. Mimi was pretty disconcerted by the length of the thing and gave up twice, backing out the way she came. It took quite a bit of encouragement to get her to go in there and keep going. But she did it! Twice! And worked the rat for well over a minute each time.

You'll notice in the video that I am stroking her while she is working the rat. That is to ensure that she doesn't back up out of reach when the door is opened up--because unfortunately that usually signals that the handler is going to pull the dog out and the fun is going to end! When I did reach in to get her after her second Junior run, she dropped even lower to the ground to keep me from getting my fingers around her and kept working the rat! She did not want me to pull her out of the tunnel. Very amusing.

Even though the activity is somewhat artificial, going after vermin is what the smaller terriers were bred to do. The idea is that they are displaying behaviors that were selected for and encouraged. It was really fun to see Mimi's enthusiasm for it.

The trial is next weekend. Anne has her PRT Forrest entered in the Senior class on Sunday. I found out today from my friend DSL, who did earthdog for several years with her SFT Meggie, that I could enter Introduction to Quarry and Junior classes on the same day. I will probably take Mimi up there on Sunday (to keep within my general competition rules). Once classes start I may not have the luxury of time for these sorts of activities so I figure that I might as well enjoy them while I can.

PB

At the fun match last Sunday, one of the women told me that she filled one of those squishy, refillable tubes that you can get in camping stores with peanut butter and let her reactive dog suck on it like a baby bottle to get him through stressful situations. She recommended I try it.

I duly purchased a couple of the tubes the other day. My attempt to get peanut butter into one of them became rather tortuous and involved as I tried to use a spoon, knife, fork, and microwave to get it into the tube. I ended up with too much in there and had to squeeze about 1/4 cup into the other tube before I could get the first one closed. I was already having second thoughts about this experiment. However, I wiped the tube clean and set it aside for our walk this morning.

So remind me why I would expect something like this to work for Azza?

Mimi thought this was a fantastic idea and would happily nurse off the end of the PB tube at the sight of another dog. Azza simply panicked as usual.

She wanted nothing to do with this thing being shoved in her face. The only way to get PB into her mouth was to grab her collar, immobilize her head, and shove the end of the tube in there and give it a squeeze. Except that she kept her teeth clenched shut so that the PB would just smoosh out onto her teeth and lips.

There was peanut butter on her whiskers, her chin, the top of her head, the teeth of the zipper on my hoodie, my pants, my shirt, Mimi, the leashes, my shoes (from drool), the gear shift in my car...everywhere except inside Azza's mouth.

When we got back to the trail head, I chucked the damned tube in the trash can.

Shrouds

Warning: rant ahead. Children under 12 and those with sensitive eyes should probably just go to the next post. Go on ahead. It's a funny one. This one is not funny.

I've been meaning to write about this topic for some time. I couldn't do it while I was actually in KSA because doing so might have put me in jeopardy of being fired or even expelled from the country, and I've been diverted by other topics from some time.

But this article from the Guardian and its accompanying comments has prompted me to tap out a few thoughts.

I'd have to agree with the overall sentiment of the Guardian article, and many of the commenters, that the domestic abuse ad pictured in the article is hardly going to make a difference in Saudi Arabia. The abuse itself is widely sanctioned by the same religion giving men all the power. Please, readers, give me an example from history when those in power gave it up, in all or part, to make things more equal for their people.

When I first arrived in KSA, I was pretty appalled at the abayas and niqabs and heavy gloves and socks. They are explicitly designed to negate the reality of women as humans. The sight of those black-shrouded ghosts made me really angry. I'd want to say to them, sister, it doesn't have to be this way. You need to fight!

But time passed. I spent more time in the company of Saudis. I spent more time listening and watching. Instead of anger, I felt sad at the extent of the brainwashing and indoctrination. I felt sorry for those zeroed out women. I'd want to say, look what he has done to you, sister.

Eventually, I spent enough time listening and watching, and talking to overtly westernized Saudis, who turned out to be quite the opposite, but their westernized veneer allowed them to talk to infidels relatively easily, and I came to the conclusion that those women are architects of their own misery. Sure, the horrible, barely Bronze-age tenets at the base of Islam (and Christianity and Judaism, when you come down to it), derived from crazed desert nomadic tribes' heat-shimmering visions, that spend a lot of energy proscribing what one can or cannot eat, wear, say, do, fuck, kill, and to whom, in the end, the tenets themselves are not much more than historical curiosities unless one is willing to buy into the craziness. Then things get kind of serious.

And no, sorry, you can't cherry-pick your way out of this. You can't say, well this verse of the qu'ran or the bible says this happy, love-your-neighbor sort of thing, and isn't that nice? No. Because too much of that stuff is garbled, violent nonsense.

Sorry, back to the main point. That's where I completely lost any sympathy or empathy for fully veiled women. Some few, some very few, might be forced into it. Most are not. They like it that way, just like they don't want to drive (despite the uncomfortable yet apparently too easily dismissed theological situations that having an unrelated male driver puts them into). You will hear many fully veiled women say they find it "protecting" or "respectful" to wear the niqab yet they will in the same breath rail at the feral youth roaming streets and shops and malls harassing women. Who raised those young men? Who allows, even condones, this behavior of men?

Their mothers, their sisters, their grannies, their aunts, their neighbors. All of those women have abdicated responsibility for assuming any role as full and complete humans. Why should their sons and brothers and fathers act any differently when the women themselves fail to step up and say, hey, I am a human being. I deserve to be treated like a human being.

In my opinion, this abdication means they can't whine about the consequences. What's a black eye or a bruised wrist when you can walk around "protected"?