Vehement Solutions for Trivial Problems: September 2019

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Ragnar Trail Wisconsin

During our Great River Ragnar road race last year, we talked about trying a Ragnar trail race. Early this year I registered for the nearest one, the Wisconsin Trail race at Nine Mile Forest just outside Wausau, and started recruiting the needed team of eight runners. Two team members from last year joined (Jen and Ryan), plus my daughter Maggie and her boyfriend Ben (Jen's son), Jen's friend Mike, a coworker of mine, Katie, and a friend from church, Chad.

Jen and Mike were able to pick up Ben and Maggie in Madison, and they got there a little before the four of us carpooling from the Twin Cities, so Ben and Maggie scouted a campsite- they picked a secluded spot far from others, which was relatively quiet, although it did mean we had to walk further back and forth from the village and race relay transition area. Between us, we brought three tents and a canopy, as well as some camp chairs. Some teams really went all out with their set up, so it was interesting to see some of the other sites. Ragnar offers some "glampsites" as well, for $1,480 per team, but that would have more than doubled our per-team member expense, so it was great to bring our own tents.

Practicing with the Tent in the Basement

One of the camp site main drags

Our camp site at the end

Based on the number of teams there were close to 3,000 people there, and it took time to get checked in and situated. We had to scramble to watch the required safety video and get our race bib in time for our first runner to start at 12:30 PM.

Team name is in honor of the 16 year old mini van that got half of us there

Each runner runs all three legs over the course or the race, Green (3 miles), Yellow (4.6 miles) and Red (7.6 miles). The trails are very narrow, with many rocks and exposed tree roots and about 900 feet of elevation gain/loss for the three routes.

The loops

One of the challenges (especially when your campsite is a long way away) is trying to estimate when the runner ahead of you will be finishing and you need to head to the transition area. We learned very quickly that trail running like this entails a much different pace than your typical road running pace. For example, for my Red leg, my finish time (1 hour 47 min) was about 30% longer than I would have calculated based on my road pace. After our team had completed each loop a couple of times, Ben did a "back of the envelope" estimate to advise wake-up alarm times for naps. His estimates were pretty close (our times lengthened near the end as everyone was getting worn out), but we still had to get to the transition area early and wait around until our team name popped up, indicating our runner is 1/4 mile out. We agreed Ragnar could share this information better if they had a real-time app, but it wouldn't have helped us much as only about half of us had a cell signal at all, and unreliable ones at that.

Team race time estimates to plan your nap

Ready for our next loops

A pasta dinner on Friday was included, and there was a bonfire with s'mores and a couple of outdoor movies in the village. There was a tent with Ragnar swag, so of course I had to buy Maggie a jacket like the one I'd bought a year earlier.

Jen bought one for Ben, too.

Ragnar jackets

I tried to take an evening nap, but I couldn't fall asleep. I ran the Yellow loop at about 1:30 AM, then did the team's required 3 hour volunteer shift from 4:30-7:30 AM directing runners at a trail split, so I didn't sleep during the event.

I'm coming in hot from my first loop, Red

For what little time we did have at the campsite, it was fun. Next time we'd bring a frisbee.

Hanging out at camp

Our early runners were able to head out before the last finished, so the only time to get a photo of the eight of us was right before I ran my last loop.

A great team!

Our team wrapped up at about 2:30 PM on Saturday. It took us a while to pack up and get our stuff back to the gear drop area, and I had to wait in a long line to get the shuttle to the parking lot 4 miles away. Mike was smarter- he'd brought a bike and was able to get to their car quickly. Then a three-hour drive home, and a hot shower.

We all agreed this was a really fun event that we might enjoy doing again sometime. The trail runs were challenging, but beautiful, and it was nice not to have to be cooped up in a van for a weekend. It was easier to plan for, as well.

My favorite team names we saw:

Quest for the Holy Trail

Porta Hotties

9-1-RUN

Gettin' Joggy Wit It

Chafed and Confused

Sky's Out Thighs Out

Bend the Knee

Hold My Beer

Game of Groans

Worst Timber Date Ever!

Shake Your Trail Feathers

Are We Still Trailing?

Come Trail Away

WTF- Where's the Finish?

Great Faces, Great Paces

Ignorance is Bliss-ters

Ragnar P.I.

One Night in Ragnar and the Tough Girls Tumble

Wait...This is a Running Thing?

Buttsweat and Tears

Quadzillas

Trail Run DMC

Snails on Trails

Runs of V-tach

Better at Running up a Tab

Fool me Twice: Shame on Me

The Moist Fun We've Ever Had

Run S'more Miles

Ace of Pace

Trailer Rash

Trail and Error

Holy Fit! Not Again

Shufflepuff

Laps in Judgement

Chafing the Moon

Climb and Punishment

Run Like the Winded

Done and Done'r

For posterity, the team's results:

Runner order:

Mike

Jen

Maggie

Ben

Ryan

Sunny

Katie

Chad

DIY Sidewalk Leveling

We had a 3-foot by 4-foot section of walkway to our house gradually pushed up by tree root growth, to the point where one side was about 2 1/2" elevated, a safety and snow blowing hazard. I searched long and hard for help, asking about 10 different cement, landscaping and other vendors for quotes to repair it. Most said they don't do that kind of work, and a few responded that the only approach they would take was to replace that square of walkway for us with new cement, the best quote being $1800 for that approach.

Unlevel walkway

We didn't really want to spend $1800 on one sidewalk square, and we didn't like the idea that the square would then be a different color, so we started to look for instructions on how to try to level it ourselves. There wasn't a lot of information that I could find on the internet, but I did find one suggestion about using a jack to lift up on edge and work underneath it. So, I bought a $33 bottle jack and a $20 hatchet, as well as two large cement blocks to hold up the lifted segment, and one Saturday we got to work.

We dug out one edge of the square, piling up the dirt on a tarp. We had to clear quite a bit of dirt before we were able to place the jack under the edge of the square. The jack only lifts about 8", so we began a slow process of jacking up what is probably a 600 lb section of walkway, wedging various configurations of bricks in the gap, until it was raised enough to prop on the big cement blocks and start attacking the tree root underneath.

For some reason, I thought the tree root would be some 6-8" diameter thing we would hatchet a bit and call it a day. In fact, it was at least 20" in diameter. Our stupid hatchet couldn't do a thing but chip out tiny little sections of no help. We drilled it, we used a hammer and chisel, and other completely ineffective approaches we had with our limited set of tools, then finally had to lower down the sidewalk square in multiple releases of several inches and brick reconfiguring for a fruitless 4 or so hours of frustration.

Using the jack to lift the square

Now what? We knew our options were to double-down and buy the right tools for the job, or pony up the cash for someone else to fix it. We decided to double-down. I spent about an hour researching electric chainsaws, and bought one for $108.

It was tough to get under the square with the chainsaw, but done slowly and carefully, it worked

The next weekend, we again did the gradual dance of jacking up the square in multiple rounds, then plugged in the chainsaw and started going after the root in earnest. The saw made clearing the top section of the root much easier, even if it was a bit tough to navigate in the tight space of the propped sidewalk square. When we were confident we'd shave enough root, we started to lower the square, and it would not settle- it was getting caught up. Sigh. We jacked it back up, and dug out more dirt, then hammered away at a chunk of cement sticking off the side and getting caught on the neighboring square. We lowered it down, and it was still not settling. Not only that, but the opposite corner of the square was now badly sunk into the ground.

We couldn't stomach the thought of trying to move a ton of river rock and digging out the other side of the square, so in desperation I dug a small hole and we stuck a long landscaping timber in it, leveraging it over two bricks. We lifted and lifted, Andy lifted while I jumped on the elevated corner, and all of a sudden with a loud sound of scraping concrete, it settled into place. Perfectly into place. We poured some small scale river pebbles into both holes, then filled in with dirt.

So, we were able to level the sidewalk for $153 in tools and supplies and a total of about 7 hours of work.

Level walkway!

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Italy and Switzerland- Planning a Trip with a Detailed Itinerary

For our summer family vacation, we gave our son the same offer we gave his older sister- in celebration of his high school graduation, he could pick the destination. He loves mountains, and he told us whenever he saw a beautiful mountain photograph come up on his Microsoft Screen Saver, 90% of the time it was Switzerland so he wanted to go there. He had also taken Latin in high school, and frequently talked about his interest in Roman history, so we easily talked him into a combination with Italy, as well.

This year it was really hard to find two weeks in the summer when our schedules could all align, but we finally identified 2 weeks in August that would work. While this isn't an ideal time to visit Europe, as it is THE peak travel and vacation month, it was the only timing that would work for us and Andy got started planning.

The first step was finalizing the high-level route and areas we would visit. Andy and I have been to parts of Italy and Switzerland two times before, so we had an idea of things we really wanted the kids to see (or not). Venice was a must, as was Florence and Lucerne. I wanted to go to Milan, and Andy wanted to see Lake Como, so gradually a route emerged- we could fly into Rome, travel north through Florence, Venice, Milan, Como, Lucerne, and fly out of Zurich (avoiding backtracking by flying in and out of different locations).

With a route planned, and at about six months prior to the trip, Andy's next step was to figure out the number of days to allocate to each location, what to prioritize doing in those days, and finding any cool stops along the way when traveling from one place to the next. There are a ton of travel books, websites, etc., Andy always loves the Frommer's travel guides, as they have a good rating system of what to see, so I picked up copies of their Italy and Switzerland books. Rick Steves has good advice on the best things to see, as well.

Since August is such a peak travel time, we learned there are long queues to get to see many of the best sites and museums, or you might not even be able to see them at all if you don't book tickets in advance, so for this trip more than any other, we planned and pre-booked a daily itinerary with a great level of detail. This turned out to be challenging and time consuming for several main reasons:

Many of the advanced tickets were sold on basic websites that didn't have great functionality. The websites were in Italian only, and while we could use Chrome to translate the page, we learned for some sites you could only see and push the purchasing buttons in Explorer. So we had to use two laptops side by side, or try to hold our phone up to the screen with Google Translate to get the job done
For some tickets, there was no note on when tickets in our date-range would be released, and the release pattern we observed didn't fit much of a predictable pattern. For a few of the tickets, Andy had to check the sites regularly for several months before he could buy ones for our date
da Vinci's Last Supper in Milan were the toughest tickets to get. We had heard from several sources that the tickets can sell out the same day they're released, so we set our alarm for 2 AM on the date they were to be released (given the time zone difference) and had a bit of a frantic time using two computers figuring out how to get it to work under time pressure. It took about 45 minutes. But we got them!
One of the BEST pre-booked tickets turned out to be breakfast at the Vatican. We got in the door a full hour before general admission, and were able to spend about 45 minutes in an uncrowded Sistine Chapel

With the ticket-booking effort well underway, Andy started to plan how we would get from place to place. We love taking trains, but the train costs for 4 people were a lot higher than the cost of renting a car, so we went with the car, knowing it would be a pain and extra expense to park in some locations. Andy learned that the cost of taking an Italian rental car into Switzerland to leave it there was very high (about $800), so we opted to rent two different cars- one in Italy that we picked up in Rome (on our way out of Rome, not for use while we were there) and dropped off in Milan, then taking the train into Lugano Switzerland, where we picked up a different car that we dropped at the airport at Zurich. Most credit cards don't offer their usual rental car insurance in Italy (one of the few exception countries), so you'll want to look into coverage options separately.

Finally, Andy figured out the lodging. Hotels in Europe are generally sized for 2 occupants in a room, so Airbnb turned out to be not only a better deal for 4 of us in most locations, but gave us the added advantage of being able to cook our own breakfast, and in several of them, do a couple of loads of laundry. Andy found some wonderful places to stay, including an apartment in Rome overlooking the Vatican from its balcony, a charming B&B in the old pedestrian-only section of Como, and an actual farmhouse in Lucerne, with a herd of dairy cows right outside the door. I will say that Airbnb can be great, but we had a terrible episode trying to connect for two hours to do a key handoff in Milan when our phone carrier wasn't working and we couldn't find any wifi at all, so there are some downsides. This was also the place an apartment that was newly remodeled, but none of the three installed air conditioners would work, so we had some very hot nights.

For this trip, we emphasized seeing as many things as possible, and we kept a busy pace. This type of travel isn't for everyone, but we like to pack in experiences, and everyone did great- the frequent Italian espressos helped, too! As the trip was winding down, we all agreed that this was our best family vacation yet, and it was a testament to the tremendous amount of planning (probably at least 40-50 hours) that went into it. It's also likely to be one of the last vacations with the four of us, as the kids get ready to start careers of their own, etc., so it was really great to have this experience together.

Here is Andy's itinerary. (T)= ticket is already booked.