Hiking Out

The Coati Ploy

Biking near Lake Arenal, just my daughter and I, we encountered numerous gently rolling hills. On the uphill my daughter would easily pass me as she maintained a steady pace while even in a low gear I worked to maintain forward momentum. However, on the downhill my weight gave me a clear advantage, so I could easily overtake her light frame. Consequently, we serenely leapfrogged one another as we pedaled past jungle and lake vistas.

Along one relatively flat stretch we were nearly side by side when my daughter spotted a lone coati standing demurely by the side of the road.

“Mom, can we stop to take a photo?”

“Of course!”

So we dismounted off of our bikes, immediately forgetting the important safety tip when encountering wild animals (or even dogs for that matter)—always keep the bike between you and the animal. After all it looked so furry and cute and placid, what trouble could it cause? Boy did it have us pegged! No sooner had we set our bikes down than a dozen more of its family, neighbors and friends melted out of the dense undergrowth. They flowed toward us like an avalanche in the Rocky Mountains as we back pedaled on foot. I attempted to right my bike while urging my daughter to back up behind me. The coatis continued advancing en masse, my bike impeded my get-away and so I quickly discarded it in the favor of a faster retreat. Of course the coatis could run forward much more quickly than we could fumble our way backwards over the uneven ground.

Two events converged at this point—the coatis surrounded us just as a van approached from behind. Whether the driver pulled over to allow his tourists a view of the “cute” animals or to be entertained by the near hysteria of the surrounded mother (human not coati), I don’t know; but in any case he took pity upon our apparently misplaced frenzy and pulled over. When he got out of his van he told us in English there was nothing to worry about, “they’re just like raccoons.” Well I don’t know about raccoons in your neighborhood, but personally I don’t want to be swarmed by a pack of raccoons either. My daughter, on the other hand, maintained her calm and started taking photos.

The driver quickly picked up a seed pod and easily coaxed the coati away from us as they only were looking for food. Apparently these coati were quite familiar with the bait (cute coati) and switch (swarm of coatis) routine to encourage humans to feed them.

While the driver calmly held the coati at bay with his passengers laughing at my alarm, my daughter and I collected our bikes, stowed our cameras and thankfully pedaled on.
I am certain that the coati “plant” their smallest and cutest member by the roadside as a lure to tempt gullible tourists to stop. Needless to say we passed up a stop the next time a coati stood cutely by the roadside.

Monkeying Around on a Canopy Tour

Strapped into a harness, I soared 200 feet above the jungle treetops from one precarious platform to another. My feet had but a moment to pause on the 4 x 4 foot platform before I was clipped onto the 2nd cable and sent whizzing along an even longer ride.

Canopy zip line adventures are a well known tourist attraction to all who have visited Costa Rica. There seem to be two extreme reactions: terror and exhilaration. Signing the release form requesting blood type definitely could have ignited feelings of terror. One fellow traveler made it past that hurdle, but after climbing to the top of the first ladder and glimpsing the first platform without any railings, safety nets or steel reinforcements in sight, she had her fill of terror for her for one day and climbed back down.

However, if you get past those two small obstacles, you are likely to experience a wonderful sense of exhilaration. Much of this is not only due to soaring over the green expanse of jungle below, but also, I believe, a direct result of having few, if any, redundant systems in place. The adventure brought to mind the metal jungle gyms and wooden seesaws built on hard top of my childhood. As children we would play king of the jungle gym, daring one another to stand on top of the jungle gym. Common sense then, as now on the canopy zip line, was paramount. We felt powerful as kids. Even if we didn’t formally calculate the risk of slipping on the metal bars and cracking our skulls, we had an innate understanding that our actions were directly determining whether we crossed the line from play to the emergency room. I feel exhilarated in a new environment, knowing I am responsible for keeping myself safe by using my common sense—no leaning over the edge of the platform, no unhooking from the safety rope, no monkeying around.

And speaking of monkeying around… as 10 or so of us patiently waited on one platform for the guides to get in place, we noticed 4 monkeys in a tree next to us pause as they swung through the trees and give us a most curious glance. I can just imagine what they were thinking as they saw humans like fish out of water huddled on a tiny platform at their eye level. I am certain we provided them with good stories to share over dinner.

Biking in Costa Rica

Our first day biking in Costa Rica made several characteristics immediately apparent regarding Tico drivers: they drive fast, they hug the (non-existent) shoulder regardless of what or who

may be occupying the (non-existent) shoulder and they are friendly. At least I think they are friendly. A quick "beep, beep" accompanied every passing car, on-coming and headed our way, that I took to mean hola.

Thankfully the friendliness was enough to diminish the fear that came over us the first few times a heavily loaded sugar cane truck roared past us without the slightest movement across the mid-line of the road. Instinctively I would ride behind my youngest daughter and keep a foot or two outside of her rear tire in the hopes of providing her with a buffer against any passing traffic.

Fortunately the roads we traveled were not heavily trafficked, unfortunately, my parenting skills couldn’t process this information and so I continued to suggest/request/admonish my daughter to ride further to the right of the road. The friction between our tires and the road had nothing on the friction between my younger daughter and I biking together.

“Please ride closer to the grass sweetie, I don’t want you to get hit by a car.”

“I am, stop yelling at me.”
“You’re drifting to the left again”
“You’re further out than I am!”
“That’s because I want to protect you from any cars sweetheart. If a car comes from behind and doesn’t move out it would hit me and not you.”
“Well if you got hit by a car, I’d ride in front of one and get hit too.”
“What a nice sentiment,” I mused, “you’d want to be with me in the afterlife.”
“No, I wouldn’t want you to get your dying wish,” she responded.

Well, there’s a touching mother-daughter exchange to bring tears of joy to your eyes, or maybe not. We made an unspoken decision that I would ride with my older daughter and let my husband bike along with my youngest.

Backside Exposure

I realize that there isn’t a need for moms to keep up with the fashion trends of the day, but I’d seen my children roll their eyes a few too many times when I wore my Levis that fit quite comfortably around my waist.

“Mom, your pants are so high, that’s embarrassing!”

And I had thought low-rise pants were the fashion mainstay only of plumbers.

So I decided it was about time I tried a pant that hit closer to my hips. My first pair worked fine. Okay, I felt a little exposed at first, but I soon learned that keeping up with another trend—wearing my shirt untucked—had the pleasant side effect of covering my exposure.

Boldly, I order a second pair from a catalogue; I was on a roll. The day they arrived I tried them on. They were certainly a bit lower than the first—the ‘waist’ hit three full fingers below my belly button. I suppose it’s no longer called a waistband at that point. However, with the right length top to cover, they actually looked good. Of course, seeing as I was now wearing all of my shirts over my waistband I couldn’t see how my children knew where my pants hit—belly button, hips, wherever, but they seemed less embarrassed, at least by how I wore my pants.

Well, looks isn’t everything, because while they looked good, they felt… insufficient. Or I should say, I felt insufficiently covered. I tried washing them and drying them, working to shrink the waist enough to have it take hold a bit higher on my waist. No such luck. Today as I walked through the grocery, I found myself hitching up my pants. Perhaps one needs to start this fashion at a younger age so one acclimates to the pants-on-hips feel before stretch marks need concealing.

When I got home I tried taking the waist in with a binder clip, so they wouldn’t slip down quite so low. That worked pretty well for awhile, but in time the clip started to poke into me— especially when I sat down. Somehow having a sharp implement in my hip bone didn’t seem a good trade off to cover my exposure.

Now I’m trying one of the most versatile of products—duct tape. I’ve cinched in the waist and taped it with duct tape so the pants fall only 2 fingers below my belly button, a definite improvement and actually not uncomfortable.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson; I shouldn’t buy pants that hit more than 2 fingers below my belly button. Oh right, and I shouldn’t succumb to my children’s pressure to wear fashion that just wasn’t meant for post-pregnancy bellies. Time to pull my Levis back on.

P is for Patience

Patience doesn’t come naturally to many people. Certainly I know some people who seem to be able to wait calmly as if in an ethereal trance. They can watch as their spouses drive into the longest lane at the toll booth and not even notice that every other lane is going faster, let alone mention this fact to the driver. These serene individuals would never consider rudely making a strategic dash for the far lane which appears to be moving along quite nicely. I’m not in that category. But parenting requires patience. A conundrum? Not quite— I mimic patience.

Time builds patience. Adding 15 minutes to the start of any outing is one very good way to make it appear as if you are patient simply because you aren’t rushed.

Preparation builds patience. This one I dusted off from my Girl Scouting experience. Pack the snack, sign the notes, locate the homework the night before and maybe you won’t find yourself yelling up the stairs, “The last place I saw your orchestra folder was under the chair!"

Hunger erodes patience. Your or theirs. Nothing wrong with munching on some baby carrots or cheese cubes while you drag out…, I mean inspire your daughter to write that opening sentence for her essay due tomorrow.

Now if I can just find similar precepts to mimic patience on the computer so I don’t continually open new windows to start new tasks as I am unable to wait patiently for the results of a search!

Small Boots, Medium Boots

“Mom, let’s say you have a person who needs a small pair of boots and a person who needs a medium pair of boots and you have a medium pair of boots and a large pair of boots, what would you do?”

My initial reaction, “well it depends on who the people are”, was quickly countered by the more expansive response from my husband, “You have just hit open one of the fundamental dilemmas of social policy. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether to do some good for the most people, or if it’s better to completely solve some people’s problems and leave others with in inadequate solution.” And yet still it depends on whose feet are without boots.

The public education system in Massachusetts can be compared in many ways to the pair of people needing boots. Whether you consider the two bootless people to represent the financially poorer school systems and the richer school systems or the students receiving standardized instruction and the children needing Individualized Educational Programs (IEP) or the children needing honors class and those working at an average ability level, the metaphor can be played out.

Let’s consider that the students needing IEPs require medium boots and the students who receive standardized instruction require small boots. From a Massachusetts outlook, which in the public school system requires the maximum possible development of students with disability, the disabled students don’t have any footwear at all, while the other students all have at least one pair of shoes. Consequently, the education system in the state is crafted to meet the individual needs of the disabled students while leaving the remaining students to manage with a one size fits all approach—trying to put a large boot on a small foot, or worse, fitting a large foot into a small boot. In the case of disabled students and non-disabled students the cost of making the boots is not commiserate. So far more properly sized boots can be made for non-disabled students than can be made for disabled students for the same cost.

Hypothetical musings of a child are quick to capture fissures in social policy. I hope that as parents we nurture this thinking so that in time, she can be the one to find a plan to repair the cracks as well, where we have a system where everyone can get a pair of boots sized to fit.

All Wrinkled

I don’t iron. My mother will zealously verify this fact. Not infrequently, when she is a guest for Thanksgiving, I will find her meticulously ironing my cloth napkins shortly after she has walked in the front door. Honestly, how smooth do they need to be to catch crumbs of stuffing or blot up errant cranberry relish?

I have a vivid memory of our ‘ironing lady’ as a child. I would often drive with my mom to drop off or pick up our ironing. The slender elderly woman would hold the screen open for us as we carried out oodles of hangers holding crisp shirts and pants. Generally the ironing primarily included my father’s freshly laundered shirts, but on occasion I could slip in a shirt or a pair of pants. I must admit, there was something appealing about pulling a wrinkle-free shirt out of the closet and having the front lay flat when I buttoned it up.

Now I know that my mom could herself iron; she weaves textiles and frequently could be found, an iron in hand, pressing edges of a recently completed throw. However, somehow I never picked up that homemaking skill. Even my Jr. High Home Economics class neglected to include a unit on ironing. So when I got to college and thought it’d be nice to be able to pull on a crisply ironed shirt, I borrowed a dorm-mate’s iron and set up an ironing board in our common room. I held up my shirt in dismay—the wrinkles made the solid blue shirt appear batik. Where to start? An upperclassman noticed my confusion and quickly offered her efficient and effective advice, showing me where to start (top of the back by the collar) and ending with the front button holes. Yet, despite the fact that I can distinctly remember her instructions and even picture the late day sun streaming through the dust as we ironed, I neglected to keep up the skill and now find myself more often than not pulling on wrinkled clothing. Or equally absurdly, banishing a favorite wrinkle-prone cocktail dress to the dark recesses of my closet.

Rather than converting entirely to wrinkle-free synthetics, I have stumbled upon an alternative, efficient solution to prohibiting, or at least limiting, the wrinkles in my closet. I have found the wind. Or more precisely, the wind has found me. I hang my clothes out to dry whenever possible, primarily because they seem fresher when I take them off of the line. So what a delight when I hung my clothes out to dry with a stiff breeze blowing directly at the shirts and pants and towels clipped firmly to the line. Caught in the wind, the laundry blew nearly horizontal to the ground, the wind flattening the material like it was paid per vanquished wrinkle. I wonder how effective wind could be on that cocktail dress?

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