Junior Eco-terrorist

Today, while at the Oregon zoo, we visited the polar bear exhibit. In addition to a few polar bears, the exhibit displayed some information about how dramatically the ice cap has shrunk over the last 20 years and the problems this is causing for the polar bears.

Shortly after leaving the exhibit we went to lunch at the cafe, and while waiting for our lunch to be prepared Travis asked why the ice was melting. We explained the whole "burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide which causes the atmosphere to trap more heat" problem, and the different kinds of fossil fuels we use and why. April also explained the different ways electricity is generated and the fact that burning coal is the most popular way in the U.S., and reminded him of all the coal trains we saw when riding on the train to San Francisco.

After a few moments Travis stated "I know how to keep people from getting their electricity from coal, tear up all the tracks the coal trains run on!"

Good thing he's too small to use a crowbar.

Biking Pics

As requested, here's some pictures of the kids (and April) triking and biking. Hailey's getting better each time she rides.

School starts, Blake leaves :-(

Shortly after arriving in Oregon, Travis made friends with Blake, a kid who spent the weekdays at his grandma's house across the street. They played together all the time; riding bikes, playing with Legos, playing Stratego, Wii, and numerous other games. And they played together very well; he was probably Travis's best friend to date.

Unfortunately, Oregon City schools start on Monday so Blake, who's going into third grade*, won't be around next week. Kindergarteners don't start until Friday, and Travis will only be in daycare Tuesday and Thursday, so on Monday and Wednesday I think he's going to be pretty sad. Hopefully, we'll be able to find fun things to do. Like go to Burgerville for lunch.

* Note - just because Blake is two years older then Travis didn't keep Travis from beating him at Chess the one time they played and consistently at Stratego as well.

There's nice, and there's too nice.

Oregonians are sometimes irritatingly nice.

Typically, when we're approaching a 4 way stop on the bike/tag-a-long/trailer combination at the same time as another car, we'll slow down so the car gets there first, stops, and goes through the intersection before we get to the stop sign. This eliminates the need for me to take a foot (or two) out of the two clips (to hold us up while stopped) and then getting it back in the toe-clips after we're underway again. Basically, stopping is much less convenient then simply slowing down and speeding back up.

However, here in Oregon City that doesn't seem to work as well as it should. Typically, we'll slow down, and the car will too. And the car will then come to a complete stop, forcing us to do the same. After we come to a complete stop, the driver of the car will then wave us through ahead of him or her, even though he was clearly there first. The driver is apparently trying to be nice, but in reality it would be better if he just did what he's supposed to do.

And yesterday when taking the kids to and from school this was taken to an extreme. In two cases, I approached an intersection where I had a stop sign and the cross-traffic did NOT have a stop sign, and cars coming down the road stopped anyway (!) to allow me to proceed, even though I was already stopped and waiting for them to pass.

We think it's the presence of the kid trailer (as we haven't seen any other bike trailers in Oregon City), although for all I know Travis is back there waving his arms around like a crazy lunatic. Either way, it's nice that they're nice, but it'd be nicer if they just followed the rules of the road.

Oregon City Topology

Oregon City is not flat.

The oldest part of town was built along the southern bank of the Willamette River, which is where the Oregon Trail came to an end. Just several 100 feet from the bank of the river is a cliff that rises 100 feet or so, and from there ground continues uphill for another mile or so, to a relatively flat area known as "the hilltop".

As the town grew, it headed South, up the cliff and then up the hill, so in general the further south you go the newer the buildings are. There are some roads that go up along the edge of the cliff, but for pedestrian traffic the city built a municipal elevator to connect the upper and lower business areas. It's a standard sized elevator but has an operator to push the buttons for you, although since there's only two we think her primary job is to deter vandals. Bikes are allowed in the elevator, but it's not big enough for the tandem.

We live on the hilltop and most of the stuff we need day to day is there as well, so we don't typically need to go down the hill. There are, however, a few exceptions, most notably the pool, which is about 2/3rds of the way down. Also, April's school is down the hill, around the cliff, across the river, and about another mile (only about 5 miles total), but it's unlikely she'll be biking there.

The hill's steep, but only about 3/4 mile long. When going down on the tandem/tag-a-long/trailer combination our challenge is to control the speed without using the brakes too much. We're a combined weight of over 400lbs, it's a steep grade, and the tandem has just two normal bicycle brakes, which if used too much can heat up the rim to the point where the tubes can pop. Our technique is for April to lean one way while I lean the other, thereby maximizing our drag, and then using the brakes intermittently. This allows us to keep the speed down around 30 (the speed limit is 25) while keeping the rim temperature down to where you can still touch it. On the way up we put it in the lowest gear we have, pedal the best we can, and stop and rest about half way up.

Daycare and school

We have Travis enrolled in kindergarten and both kids enrolled in daycare (kindergarten is only a half-day so Travis will spend the afternoons in daycare). The daycare is close to the College (three miles from our house), but the school where Travis will attend Kindergarten is about 4 miles further away (down the hill and across the river). There are certainly closer schools, but this is the closet bilingual school, and since Travis already knows everything Kindergarten's learn, we figured this will give him the opportunity to lean something new - Spanish. It's also fairly close to Mom's school.

The kids will attend daycare a few days this week and next, and then start full time after that.

Oaks Amusement Park

This morning we all went to the Oaks Amusement Park for a "Chippers Rides Morning" for preschoolers. It was 2 hours of rides, rides, rides, followed by story time and milk and cookies.

We started out with the Lewis and Clark adventure ride, which from an adult's point of view was completely lame, but the kids seemed to like it. After that low-key start we moved to the frog-hopper, which was a hit with everyone. From there we simply went to whichever ride was closest, and by the end of the morning we'd rode almost everything multiple times.

The roller coaster was Travis's favorite, but Hailey did not like it at all, probably because it went pretty fast, and was a little jerky. She did, however, really enjoy the big pink slide (as did Travis).

The park was just a short drive away (about 12 miles away near downtown Portland), the weather was nice, and the lines were incredibly short (no waiting for anything except the Big Pink Slide). Everyone had a great time. And on the way home we stopped at BurgerVille for lunch.

Travis and the token system

Earlier this summer, Travis was becoming rather "back-talky" and argumentative with us at times. In order to curtail this behavior (and limit his Wii time), we instituted the "token system": every day Travis would receive 10 tokens (they hung on the wall on a cool wooden holder Rich whipped out from some scrap wood) which represented 5 minutes of Wii time. As he played, he had to keep track of his time and remove tokens (he's really good at counting by 5s now!). But he could also lose tokens for arguing with us or generally having a bad attitude. As Natasha could attest, it was a pretty effective system.

With the move, we'd stopped using the tokens as effectively as before. And for awhile, there wasn't much unpacked to entertain him, so we were kinda loose with the time limits. But in the last week or so, the horrid behavior has really come back with a vengeance, particularly at bedtime. Basically, saying "it's time to get ready for bed" was resulting in a 5 year old throwing a fit on the floor. SO...

Last night we tweaked the plan, and now he has to EARN his 10 tokens. He earns 5 for jobs to do getting ready for bed, and 5 for morning routine jobs (we're preparing to get him out the door for kindergarten on time!). We explained what he had to do, set the timer for 15 minutes, and whatever he had completed when the timer went off, he would earn that many tokens. With 7 minutes to spare he was ready for bed and all tucked in, no fits, whining or complaints! Success!

This morning he was up and at them, super cooperative and ready to go with no problems. He was so proud of himself! He was happy that no one was nagging him, and we were happy to not deal with his obnoxious behavior. The real test will come tomorrow morning when they go to daycare for the first time, but hopefully it will be an effective plan.

As an aside, we know that this obnoxious behavior is part of him getting ready to go to kindergarten, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier to live with. He's getting pretty excited about kindergarten, however. Last week we went and bought his school supplies, and one day when we swung by his school (at Travis' request) his teacher's car was in the lot and she let us inside the kindergarten area, so he got to see the playground, the room, and most importantly, the bathroom! (It's not magic!) He was feeling pretty good about that. Last night we bought some "school clothes" and today he helped me plan some lunch menus to take to school (he was SUPER excited about that!) so I think we are doing a good job of easing into this transition. The kids are going to go to their daycare for two days this week and next, so they will both be able to settle in and make a few friends before they start their full-time schedule.

Sorry, no pics tonight, but hopefully later this week....we have a final "family summer adventure" planned.

Oregon City Swimming Pool

It's been unusually hot here lately (today was our third day over 100, VERY atypical for Oregon City) so today we decided to check out the city swimming pool. It's only about 2 miles away so we loaded up the bike and headed to the pool.

They have an indoor pool which ranges from 3' to 12', with a slide and diving board on the deep end, and and outdoor kiddie pool, which is about a foot deep. We opted to swim indoors, as it was much cooler; so for an hour or two the kids swam around using the provided noodles and floating pads. By the time we got out Travis was pretty comfortable putting his face in the water, and could do a credible back float, things I believe he learned last year at swimming lessons. But we never ventured down the water slide; looks like that will wait for another day.

At 2:00 they closed the indoor pool for lessons so then we headed to the outdoor pool for about 30 more minutes. There were lots of kids there and several of them had various floats that they graciously let both Hailey and Travis use. After 30 more minutes we dried off, changed into our bike cloths, and rode home.

Everyone had a great time, and I'm sure we'll be revisiting the pool in the near future.

Silver Falls State Park

Today we went for a short hike at Silver Falls State Park, which is about a 50 minute drive south of Oregon City. We choose a short 2.5 mile hike as we figured that was sufficient distance for Travis. The highlights of the hike were two waterfalls that the trail actually went behind.

Hailey hiked about the first 3/4 of a mile by herself and mom carried her most of the rest of the way. Travis, however, hiked the entire distance by himself. We brought along some snacks, stopped twice along the way to eat them, and had lunch at a rustic cafe located at the trailhead when we finished. The kids slept in the car on the way home.

Sport Utility Bike in action

This afternoon had another great opportunity to try out April's new sport utility bike (the Ute). We needed some misc things for the house so we headed to Fred Meyers. Fred Meyers is sort of like a Super Wal-mart, in that they have a little bit of everything, and it's only about 2 miles or so from our house.

In addition to groceries, a few small plumbing items, and misc household items, we bought a bicycle seat for use on the Ute so Hailey can ride on it. We looked at various small chairs and other items we thought we might be able to use, but decided the bike seat was probably the best option, even though we only need the seat part and even that will need some modifications. The seat came in a big box, so we were about to put the Ute to the test.

Upon arrival at the store we had dropped the kids off at the in-store playland. They have an employee there that watches kids from ages 2-5 for up to one hour, and they have a pretty intricate identification system. When we were done the lady wouldn't let me pick them up, even though she recognized me and the kids were talking to me, because I wasn't wearing the special paper identification bracelet that she'd given the kids and April. We'd taken about 59 minutes, and the lady commented that Travis was pretty funny; she said he stated "I don't know what's taking them so long, we're on bikes so they can't be buying that much stuff". Travis obviously doesn't understand the carrying capacity of the Ute.

We were running a little later then expected so we loaded up the bags, strapped the box to the rack, and then went across the street to Burgerville for dinner. Burgerville's like Mcdonalds except they try to use local stuff and be environmentally friendly. Their motto is "fresh, local, sustainable". The kids and dad really like Burgerville.

And to make the trip home a little more challenging, April bought a Blackberry Smoothie to drink on the way home. Fortunately she was up to the challenge because we made it home without difficulty.

Hailey rides her trike

In the past, Hailey's tried riding her trike but wasn't very successful. She could sort of go back and forth, but she really couldn't pedal any distance, or steer for that matter. But today, that all changed.

We've got a good sized concrete patio behind the house that Hailey put to good use today riding her trike all around. She probably spent an hour out there, and got so good that this evening we went for a ride around the block. She made it quite a ways, needing only occasional help getting up slight inclines. She'll soon be a triking expert.

New Bike

As everyone whose family has ever had a bike-to-people ratio greater than 2-to-1 knows, the perfect number of bikes a family should own is N+1, where N is the number of bikes you currently own. With that in mind, April bought a new bike.

You might think that's crazy, but in reality we've been suffering a serious bike deficit lately. We've fallen well below the 2-1 ratio. Right before moving we sold our recumbent trikes because we'd decided that Oregon City wasn't that suited for trikes; it's hillier than Loveland, and there aren't as many super-wide bike lanes. And April sold her upright bike as well. It was over 10 years old, and she'd put well over 1000 miles on it, so she was due for a new one. Her needs had changed, she wanted a lighter, easier to pedal, bike.

So, yesterday we went bike shopping. And ended up getting a Kona Ute. It's a longbike; a somewhat obscure type of bike that's designed for carrying lots of stuff. After getting it home we headed to the store for a test ride. April on the longbike and Rich on his not-so-long (i.e. normal, plain, not-so-cool) bike pulling the kids in the tag-a-long and trailer. She bought $60 worth of groceries, which fit into two of the store's reusable bags, and then found the stores bags fit perfectly into her bike's saddle bags. So she simply dropped the bags in and we headed back home.

We were most pleased, and are now searching for additional saddlebags. The bike comes with two, but will hold four, so we're hoping to obtain two more. And in the meantime, we thought "hmmm.... what else could this bike carry?..." the obvious answer: People!

So today, Travis hopped on the back for a quick test ride. And, as you can see from the pictures below he thought it was great! Unfortunately (as you can also see from the pictures) seeing Travis and Mom biking away without her made Hailey very sad. Very very sad. We didn't think she'd be able to hang on, so we weren't going to give her a ride, but we did put her on the bike in an attempt to make her happy. And while this did make her somewhat less sad, since they weren't moving she never quite got into the happy zone.

So then it was dad's turn. He got a little ways into the happy zone, and would have gotten further if April hadn't been complaining about how hard it was to pedal with all the weight on board.

In the end, fun was had by all. Except maybe Hailey...





P.S. That Borg-implant-like thing sticking out of April's head is a mirror. The Portland bike shop biker-dude said it was the best "regardless of the dork factor". Only the best for us!

Biking Portland's bridges

This morning we, along with around 17,000 other Portland area bicyclists, participated in Portland's "Providence Bridge Pedal 2008" event. Many of the downtown roads were closed to cars and several courses were set up to allow bicyclists to cross numerous downtown bridges. We did the "6 bridge family ride" which had us go on a 14 mile ride around downtown Portland and cross 6 of the dozen or so downtown bridges.

At times the road was jam-packed with so many bicyclists that we had to come to a complete stop, but usually we could move along with relative ease. Travis always wanted to go faster, but doing so was usually not possible given the number of bikes. There were a lot of trailers being pulled on the family ride, but we only saw one other tandem\tag-a-long\trailer combination.

The weather was pretty good. It was overcast when we started (9:30) and partly cloudy when we finished (around 11:30). The kids had a pretty good time, and took pretty long naps this afternoon to recover. Pics are below.

Only a husband...

... would write an entire post, all about technical difficulties, and not mention anything about the kids, the new house, Oregon, or anything else interesting!

After returning from CA, we are slowly settling in. The house is in that obnoxious "mostly unpacked but nothing is put away" state. But we have enough stuff out to function, and we're enjoying the opportunity to go at a slightly slower pace than when we left CO. :) The house is a small two bedroom with a living room and office. The laundry room has great storage space, and we have a two car garage, so this will be fine for the school year until we are ready to buy our own place. Travis has made a friend with the kid across the street, who is visiting his grandma for awhile. I think the other kid is REALLY bored, so both boys are enjoying playing together.

Everyday we have done one job (open bank accounts, etc) and also gone for one bike ride (sometimes we did both at the same time!). Today we rode over to the farmer's market and I loaded up the basket that I bought in CA with corn, berries, lemon cucumbers, broccoli, and fresh eggs. At that point the basket was full, so we headed home on the bike. Hailey was EXTREMELY disappointed not to find artichokes (her new favorite after last weekend in CA) so we will have to bike over to the grocery store later to get a few.


I will try to post pictures from last weekend later...the camera battery died on Sunday, and I haven't been able to find the charger, so I don't have any pics more recent than that!

Last Days in Colorado

The weekend we packed the truck, Jack and Virginia graciously offered to take the kids to Karate and then to their house overnight so we'd have an easier time getting stuff done. And we wisely accepted the offer. :-)

As usual, the kids had a great time. They went to Dave and Busters in the evening and the next day went bowling. Travis didn't do as well in real bowling as he does in Wii bowling, but he enjoyed the experience nonetheless.

And the next day, when they returned, the truck was mostly packed and ready to go. It worked out great for all involved.

Pictures are below. Formatting is less then ideal, as blogger,com seems setup mostly for text, not pictures. I probably should be using flickr...

What happened to the www.albersfamily.org website?

The www.albersfamily.org website was hosted on a computer located in our house, and while we still have that computer (and the website), it's no longer easy to direct your requests to that computer.

In Colorado, our internet service provider (ISP) gave us an IP address that never changed, so your web requests could easily be redirected to our house, but here in Oregon that is not the case. Our IP address here changes so we can't as easily send your web requests here. And even if we could get the requests sent to our house, our new ActionTec DSL modem (which qwest, our ISP, says we have to use) seems to be a POS, as it doesn't forward requests sent to it to the proper computer.

We'll likely figure out a solution to these problems in the next month or so, but in the meantime we're going to use this site at blogger.com to share family updates. Who knows, maybe it'll work better then the old site? Time will tell.