Kayaking the Columbia

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Not quite as exciting as the title might make you think, but very pleasant.

I spent a few hours yesterday kayaking in the Columbia River near my home in the Wenatchee area of Washington.

I bought the kayak a few months ago and, in all honesty, have only taken it out a few times. It’s nothing special — a yellow Costco special nicely outfitted for one person on calm water. My first outing was in one of the Quincy lakes with a friend way back in May. Other brief outings followed. But then I got my little jet boat running and started taking that out instead.

A few weeks ago, while out on the jet boat salmon fishing with a friend in the mouth of the Wenatchee River, I noticed a number of people taking kayaks and paddle boards up the Wenatchee River. The spring flow was long over and it hadn’t rained hard enough lately for floodwaters to raise the flow. Indeed, we couldn’t get much farther upstream with the jet boat than the second bridge because of low water. Low water meant slower flowing water. Slow enough for people to take a leisurely paddle upstream.

That’s what gave me the idea to do the same.

Yesterday I headed out with that in mind. I had a five hour window before I had to be back at the helicopter for an afternoon charter flight. Just enough time for a paddle and a shower.

Washing the Kayak
Washing the kayak is as easy as standing it up in the corner and hosing it out.

I started off by washing the kayak. It had been stored under my RV for over a month and I didn’t want to think of the creepy crawlies that might be in there. Better to just hose it out. So I propped it up against a corner of my RV, connected a spray nozzle to the outside shower, and gave it a good rinsing, letting the water drain through a normally plugged hole on one end. I let it dry while I packed a tote bag with a few things.

Mirror View
I can keep an eye on the kayak in my truck’s mirrors.

Loading the kayak into the back of my pickup isn’t difficult. I lift one end into the bed over the closed tailgate and push it as far forward in the truck as I can. Then I angle the body of the kayak diagonally across the bed. I secure it in place with a bungee cord attached to a corner tie-off hoop built into the truck. It doesn’t move more than an inch in either direction during the drive; I can watch it in the truck’s mirrors.

One of the things I absolutely love about this area of Washington is the sheer variety of outdoor activities available. The Columbia River is a source of many of these activities: boating, fishing, swimming. There’s even an 11-mile bike/hike/skate trail that goes down one side of the river, crosses a bridge, comes back along the other side, and crosses a second bridge to return to a starting point. Parking is free in the loop trail parking lots or any of the parks along the river in Wenatchee or East Wenatchee. There are three boat ramps within a 20-minute drive of my home — all free with plenty of trailer parking.

Where I Kayaked
The area where I kayaked on Sunday.

I decided to put in near the swimming beach at Walla Walla Point Park, which is about 15-20 minutes away from my home. The beach is protected from the river’s main flow by a sort of jetty with a path on it. You can see it in the lower-right corner of this satellite image. I chose this area because I could back the truck pretty close to the water and the little lagoon was a good, calm spot to launch.

I dragged the boat across the grass and down the beach to the water. I put Penny’s life jacket on her and stowed my life jacket and tote bag in the boat. Then I put Penny in the boat, pushed off a bit, and climbed in after her. A moment later, we were gliding across the lagoon. It was about 11 AM.

I could feel my arm muscles working hard right from the start — but not nearly as hard as they had to work when I exited the lagoon and got into the Columbia River’s main flow. There was some shallow water then and the river rushed over it. I had to paddle hard to get through it. I started to think that I’d never reach the mouth of the Wenatchee River about a mile or so to the north.

But then I got through it and into calmer water. I still had to paddle hard to stay ahead of the current, but it wasn’t a frantic paddling. I stayed close to shore and the water got calm. I might make it after all.

The satellite image above shows the river with the water at a higher level. Northwest of where I put in is an area that reminds me of the marshes in Newark, NJ. You know — where the NJ Turnpike goes past the Meadowlands? The difference here is that the water isn’t tidal. The little side inlets exist only as long as the river’s water level is deep enough. Although the image shows lots of watery passages between trees, on Sunday there was only one channel that went through to the mouth of the Wenatchee.

I know this because I found it. I didn’t have a map or satellite image. Instead, I just paddled close to shore, saw an opening in the trees, and decided to explore. What I found was a calm water passage surrounded by trees and water weeds and inhabited by ducks and herons. The water was glassy smooth and shallow — in some places barely deep enough to paddle over. There was the tiniest bit of current to convince me to keep moving forward, that water had to be coming in from somewhere.

Penny on the Kayak
Penny rode on the forward deck as I paddled us through glassy smooth water.

It was sort of magical in there. Quiet and private, with the occasional sound of a motorboat out in the main channel of the river to remind you that you weren’t paddling the remote Amazon. Trees hanging over the narrow parts of the waterway gave us cooling shade every now and then. Bubbles and bits of debris on the water surface cast shadows on the sandy bottom, assuring me that the water was indeed moving in the opposite direction I was.

Near the end of the waterway, we met up with a man on an inflatable boat with oars. He was alone but talking to someone. At first, I thought it was me. But then when we got near him he laughed, held up his smartphone, and said that he was sharing a virtual float trip with friends in Georgia.

The world is getting smaller.

Parked on a Log
Parked up against a log, looked down the Wenatchee River and across the Columbia River to the far shore in East Wenatchee.

The waterway dumped us out at the mouth of the Wenatchee River. I turned left and started paddling up that river. There wasn’t much current, but there was more than there had been for the past 30 minutes. I paddled upstream on the south side, pausing when I reached a log jutting out of the water. I pulled in upstream from it and let the current take me downstream until the kayak was lodged against it. I rested there and tweeted a photo (as I so often do) and took in the calmness of the rivers around me.

How can anyone not like this area? It’s got the dry air of the desert but is full of water. It rains, but not too often. It gets hot, but not too hot. It gets cold but not too cold. And all around are beautiful mountains and forests and orchards and farms and rivers and lakes. Boating, fishing, hiking, motorcycling, biking, wine tasting. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets, magnificent thunderstorms, star-filled skies. Quiet, private places to live and work. A major city less than an hour away by air or three hours away by car. And people who are friendly and happy and youthful — even if they’re not exactly young anymore.

How did I live in Arizona for so long when I had this to tempt me for five consecutive summers?

(Well, I know the answer to that question but we won’t go there.)

Finished with my rest, I paddled across the Wenatchee River into one of the water channels on the opposite shore. I paddled around on that side down one channel and up another before finding a third to take me back out to the Wenatchee River again. Along the way we saw Canada geese, seagulls, and killdeer. Penny barked at the geese.

I crossed the Wenatchee River again and headed back into my quiet waterway for the return trip to the park. This time some kids were walking along one of the sandbars, catching fish in a cutoff milk jug while a man paddled a canoe. As I paddled past him, he said, “I see your dog is getting you come exercise.” I laughed and told him she was guiding me.

Back out in the main flow of the Columbia River, I let the current do some of the work for me. I had to paddle hard to get around the tip of the jetty and back into the swimming lagoon. There were lots of people there now, kids swimming in the designated area, dogs fetching balls in the water nearby. I paddled up to shore and we got out. I ran into a friend of mine and chatted for a while before dragging the kayak back to the truck.

By 2 PM, I was back home prepping for that afternoon’s flight. It had been another great day out.

Adventures in Cheese-Making

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There’s a whole world to explore.

I started making homemade cheese in September 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Cheese-Making tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

I love cheese. I mean, who doesn’t?

I love just about any kind of cheese, but I especially love the soft mellow kind like bries. I like cheese that has a secret flavor you can taste only when you let it rise to room temperature before eating and eat it either alone or with a plain cracker. The hint of nuts or earthiness that lingers on your tongue after the cheese has been swallowed.

CheesemongerThere’s an excellent cheese shop not far from where I live: The Cheesemonger in Leavenworth. It — and the smoked meat house called Cured — is the only reason I go to that tourist town. I go early in the day, before the crowds arrive. I prefer taking my motorcycle, since there’s always motorcycle parking right outside Cured. I descend into the basement shop, make my way past the milling tourists nibbling on samples of cheddar and swiss, and find one of the many helpful counter people. Then I place my order, rattling off the names of the cheeses I like best: triple cream brie, morbier, butter cheese, and whatever blue-veined cheese behind the glass catches my eye. I whisper the secret password to get my local discount on checkout, leave a tip, and climb back out into the sunlight while the same milling tourists stand uncertain on how to proceed. In and out in a flash.

If you’re in the area and like cheese — again, who doesn’t? — I highly recommend a visit to this shop.

Anyway, my love of cheese got me interested in making cheese. This interest was fed by my attendance at a cheese-making class I took in early August. Yes, special ingredients and equipment was needed, but it wasn’t difficult to do. And it might be interesting. And heck — the end product was cheese.

It’s not as if this was brand new to me, either. Last autumn, I made yogurt. I’d had a great deal of success with that — so much, in fact, that I made all my own yogurt while I was living in my Arizona house. cheese-making was similar and certainly should be within my capabilities.

Yesterday, I made my first batch of “basic cheese.” Although I won’t be able to taste it for about a month, I also made ricotta cheese from the whey and got to taste that right away.

I realized that my cheese-making adventures were blog-worthy — certainly enough to document for future reference. So if you’re interested at all in making cheese, follow along with me as I take you though my learning process. I’ll write posts in this series as I find time and would certainly love to get comments from other folks exploring home cheese-making.

Bees: More about Mites

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My own observations prove another beekeeper’s theory true.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m concerned about varroa mites in my beehives. Mites can weaken a colony to the point that winter survival is impossible. Since I’d like all my hives to survive the winter, I’m starting a war on mites now, before it’s too late.

My Setup, as it Relates to Mites

There’s a few points I want to make here without spending a lot of time on a long narrative.

  • My three hives come from two sources:
    • My original hive was a nuc I purchased from a beekeeper in Peshastin. That hive grew and thrived very quickly, producing 2-1/2 gallons of honey in about a month. When a hive inspection showed signs of swarm cells, I split it off to form my third hive.
    • My second hive was a swarm capture. The swarm came from a colony living in the wall of a friend’s shop building. These are as close to “wild bees” as you can get.
  • My hives aren’t all set up exactly the same way. As I experiment with different hive components, I use them on different hives. For example, my first and second hives have standard wood bottoms while my third hive has a bottom with a varroa trap screen drawer. When setting up this third hive, I placed a sticky board in the drawer and left it there for about a month (which is really too long.)
  • My first and second hive have drone frames installed. As I discovered earlier this month, the drone frames work — once they’re adopted by the bees — and my first hive was confirmed to have mites.

Mite Count

On Wednesday, after a normal hive inspection, I placed sticky boards (with screens) in my first and second hives. Remember, I’d already learned that my first hive had mites; the idea behind the sticky board was to see how bad the mite problem was in each hive. Because I’d left the sticky board in the third hive so long, I couldn’t really gauge the mite problem. So I got serious for this test and left the boards in for just two days. If I had a third board, I would have tested that third hive again, too.

Mites on a Sticky Board
I’d say this hive has a mite problem, no?

When I pulled them out yesterday morning, I was surprised to find that the sticky board from Hive #1 was full of mites. Here’s a magnified image of just one square inch of the board. The dark ovals are dead mites — you can even see the legs on a few of them. The light ovals are also mites, but I don’t know if they’re some sort of shedded skin or exoskeleton or the actual mite itself after being dead for a day. The other dots on the image are mostly litter from the hive as well as some propolis that the bees laid down between the holes on the screen. Keep in mind that this sticky board has 176 square inches and although not all of them are as full of mites as this one, some are a bit worse.

All this was gathered in less than 48 hours.

But what was even more surprising to me — at first, anyway — was that the sticky board for Hive #2 had very few mites on it. In fact, because I pulled it out first, I thought that I’d pulled it out too soon. It wasn’t until I pulled out the other sticky board that I realized that the boards had done their job; I just had far more mites in one hive than the other.

Why the Difference?

Last night, I was at a BBQ gathering of helicopter pilots and mechanics who are based in the area for fire season. One crew — pilot, mechanic, and fuel truck driver — are based in a really nice house in a farm just down the road from where I’m currently living. They had a fire going in the fire pit and grilled up some steaks and brats and corn. It was a really nice night out.

I got to talking to one of the pilots, a guy who flies the Cessna Skymaster “push-pull” used for observation and direction to fire crews. He lives in the Snohomish area of Washington and keeps bees at home. We got to talking about mites and he asked me where I’d gotten my bees. When I explained their source, he told me that commercial bees always had mites.

I thought about what he said. It completely jived with what I had observed. The hive from the nuc had a bad mite problem. The hive from the swarm had very few mites at all.

He said that because so many hives were moved around for pollination, the mite problem spreads. He keeps mites out of his hives by keeping them away from commercially available bees.

Certainly something to think about.

Three Means of Attacking Mites

Because I’m serious about eliminating — or at least greatly reducing — the mite population in my hives, I’m currently using a two-prong attack:

  • The drone frames, as I discussed in another post, can help concentrate most of the mite reproduction on one frame, where they can be easily removed. Unfortunately, the queen is far less likely to lay drone eggs as the summer season comes to a close. In addition, only one hive (so far) has adopted the use of the drone frame.
  • I’ve purchased a miticide and dosed each of my hives with it. Although it can’t be used when the bees are producing honey for human consumption, using it now, before winter, should help reduce the number of mites and make a stronger hive.

The third method, which I hope to be able to institute soon, is to have sticky boards beneath screens on the bottom board of each of my hives. While it would be great to do this via a varroa trap with drawer for each hive, the $27 price tag makes that a bit more than I want to spend. So I’ll likely cook up my own solution using some “hardware fabric” I already have on hand to make the screen. I’ll talk to a beekeeper friend to see what we can rig up.

In this area, bee colonies have a 50% overwinter survival rate. I have three hives. I want to have all three colonies survive the winter. That’s going to take some work — and I’m willing to do it.

The Sprained Foot

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Here’s how it happened and how it is three weeks later.

I didn’t blog about this when it happened. It may have been embarrassment. Or it may have been because my life got very busy for a while with house guests and day trips and life in general.

It was on Monday, August 5. I’d spent much of the day — the third or fourth day in a row — out at my future homesite in Malaga, clearing out invasive weeds along the driveway and the road in front of my house. It was hot, exhausting work, but I felt good at the end of each day. Like I was working toward a goal. (Am I the only person who feels that way while making progress on a project?)

That particular day, I’d been using a gas-powered hedge trimmer to cut weeds. I’d rented it from Home Depot. The tool did the job, but not as easily as I’d hoped. And it was a bitch to get started. I returned it that afternoon, contemplating the purchase of a chainsaw again.

On the way home — it was probably about 5 PM at the time — I stopped at the supermarket to buy groceries. Because I had so much junk in the truck I did something I very rarely do: I put the 5 or 6 grocery bags in the truck’s bed.

That was my mistake.

When I got home, I discovered that the grocery bags had shifted around in the back of the truck. So I lowered the tailgate and climbed up to gather them together. They were the usual plastic shopping bags and I grasped them by their handles with four in one hand and two in the other. I walked to the back of the truck, stood on the edge of the tailgate and crouched down with my butt about four inches off the tailgate. I put my right hand down on the tailgate and launched my feet off the back of the truck.

Keep in mind that this little jumping maneuver is something I do regularly. The distance to the ground is only about 3 feet. By crouching and launching like that, I minimize the impact of the landing. I do it all the time. I’ve never had a problem.

Except that Monday. As I launched my feet off, one of my feet — maybe my right? — got hung up on the rough surface of the spray-in bed liner. It could have been because I was tired from a full day at work, but it was more likely complacency — not thinking about what I was doing because I had done it so many times before. I didn’t make a clean jump. I realized this as I was falling and tried to recover.

I don’t know exactly how I landed, but I suspect my left foot took most of the impact on an angle. My left knee and the palms of both hands hit the gravel next. The grocery bags crashed all around me.

I immediately thought of the Tito’s vodka and Maker’s Mark bourbon what were in the bags. It would be a real shame to break the bottles of $50 worth of liquor.

But pain interrupted those thoughts. Lots of pain. I was hurting badly. I rolled over on my back and began taking inventory on body parts. One by one they checked in OK. Except my left foot. That was just registering pain.

I sat up and gathered the bags together. Neither bottle had broken. Whew!

I sat for a moment more. My left knee was bleeding but the palms of my hands were fine. That could have been worse, I thought to myself.

It was. When I tried to stand up, I realized I couldn’t put any weight on my left foot.

Oddly enough, I didn’t think much of the problem at first. After all, we’ve all gotten hurt in silly little accidents and after the initial shock wears off, everything works fine. I figured that my foot or ankle — whatever was sending those pain messages to my brain — was just whining a bit longer than usual.

In the meantime, it was hot and I was thirsty. I managed to get to my feet and sort of hop over to my RV. My porch was a bit of a challenge and I honestly don’t remember how I got up the stairs. I put down the bags of groceries and poured myself a glass of lemonade with lots of ice. I drank it all and refilled it.

My ankle was still sending those pain messages. What was up with that?

I sat down on the steps that lead up to my bedroom and pulled off my shoe. My foot seemed to explode into a swollen mass. I couldn’t move my toes.

This was not good. There was a chance, I realized, that I may have actually broken something.

I pulled out my phone and called my friend Kathryn, who lives in the orchard.

“What are you doing?” I asked once the greetings were over.

“Nothing much,” she replied. “Just hanging around, enjoying the weather.”

“Could you do me a favor?” I asked.

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Could you drive me to the hospital? I think I might have broken my ankle.”

The tone of the conversation changed immediately to once of concern and urgency. A few minutes later, Kathryn and her husband Donn were out in front of my trailer with their truck. I used a stepladder as a cane to meet them on the driveway and managed to climb aboard.

They took me to a local clinic, which they thought would be faster than a hospital. Donn fetched a wheelchair and wheeled me in. I did the paperwork at the desk. And then they waited 90 minutes with me. (I have such great friends.) Kathryn came into the examining room with me to keep me company. I was x-rayed, poked, and prodded. It was pretty obvious that the problem was in my foot — not my ankle. The verdict came from the nurse practitioner who’d been assigned to me.

“It’s not broken. It’s a sprain.”

“That’s good,” I said, relieved.

“No, it’s not,” she corrected me. “For people over 40, sprains are usually worse than breaks. They take longer to heal.”

She wrapped me up with an ace bandage, gave me a prescription for pain meds, and told me where to find crutches at 7:30 on a Monday evening. She also gave me a sheet with the standard RICE advice.

My friends took me to Fred Meyer. Kathryn went in and returned with a set of crutches. Then we went to Olive Garden for dinner (their choice). I had a terrible drink and an excellent meal, which I only ate half of. By the time I got home, it was after 9 PM. I was glad I’d remembered to put away the yogurt before leaving.

Sore Foot
The day after my mishap was spent in bed with my foot elevated. But it swelled up anyway.

In the morning, I was amazed by how bad my foot looked. I took a picture and put it on Facebook. I spent much of the day in bed, trying hard to keep my foot elevated above the level of my heart.

Do you know how hard it is for me to sit still when I have things to do? It was a miserable day.

The next day, I had things to do and I wasn’t going to let my swollen foot stop me. So I wrapped it up grabbed the crutches, and got on with my life.

Of course, during this time I was still on contract for cherry drying. I had some concern over whether I’d be physically able to fly. After all, flying a helicopter requires four limbs, preferably healthy ones. But I put those concerns to rest on Wednesday when I fired up my helicopter and flew it down to Wenatchee for some scheduled maintenance. Fortunately, my helicopter doesn’t require much pressure on the pedals.

I admit I didn’t follow the RICE advice to the letter. Although I slept — or tried to sleep — with my foot elevated on two pillows, I didn’t ice it as often as I was supposed to and I certainly didn’t rest it very much. I was on two crutches for just two days and then just one crutch for a week. After the first week or so, I realized that it looked almost normal when I got out of bed but swelled up to epic proportions within a hour of being up and around. The swelling included my foot and ankle — indeed, I had a chankle. I ditched the crutches entirely about 10 days after my mishap. That’s when I flew my helicopter to Seattle to pick up a friend and did the tourist thing around Pike Place Market and the Space Needle. It was pretty swollen that night.

I’ve turned down five invitations from friends to go hiking. You have no idea how frustrating that is.

But I’ve also been out on my boat three times. Not much walking involved there. Once, while fishing, I sat on the swimming platform and dangled my feet into the Wenatchee River. The nice, cool water was soothing.

I’m now starting week 4 of healing. I’ve found a good compromise. When I prepare to go out for the day, I wrap my foot firmly in the ace bandage, put a sock over it, and put on my good walking shoes — ironically, the same ones I was wearing when the mishap occurred. The shoe gives my foot the support it needs; it only hurts when I step on uneven surfaces. Because the flexing motion of walking also causes pain, I have a pronounced limp when I try to walk quickly. But around my home, it’s not that bad. Yesterday, when I unwrapped it, it didn’t even look very swollen.

If I behave myself and stay off the hiking trails, I’m pretty sure I’ll be 100% healed by the end of September. That’s a long time, but I just have to deal with it.

As for jumping off the back of my truck — well, I think this little incident has reminded me that I’m not 22 anymore. We’ll see if I remember this lesson in the months and years to come.

Temporary Power: Cleaning the Box

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Prepping my hand-me-down temporary power box.

As I wrote yesterday, I decided to do the installation of the temporary power at my building site in Malaga. This would not only teach me more about how electrical wiring is done, but it would save me about $300.

The decision was made easy, in part, by a friend’s offer of his old temporary power pole which was about 80% wired for my needs. He’d built a home in Wenatchee Heights and had the permanent power turned on last summer. He didn’t need the box and offered it to me in trade for a few trees he wanted to plant on his property. He also offered to supervise my wiring of the box and took me shopping at Home Depot and an electrical supply store to get the few parts I needed to make it work for my purposes.

Yesterday, I went to examine the pole and electric panel, which he’d dug out and laid on the ground. I tried to move it but couldn’t — the post is an 8-foot long 8×8 piece of lumber further weighted down with the electrical box and some heavy wires and conduit. (I should point out that if I had to move it, I know I could — probably by fastening it to my Jeep’s bumper and dragging it to a new position. And when it comes time to bring it to my future home, I know my friend will help me get it in my truck and wrestle it into place in the 36″ deep hole I dug on Saturday.) But even in its current location, I could open it up and check it out.

Electric Box Before
The electrical box was full of twigs, left behind by an industrious bird.

Sometime during the past few years, a bird had built a nest in the box. The meter side was absolutely full of twigs, feathers, and dirt. It would all need to be cleaned out before I could do any wiring. So I donned a pair of latex gloves and got to work.

While a lot of the twigs were easy to get to and remove, others weren’t. I had to get a tool — a flat-head screwdriver, in this case — to partially disassemble the box where the meter would go so I could reach the twigs. I also used a needle-nose pliers to reach and grab where my fingers wouldn’t.

I got a phone call from a friend while I was working and took a break. While we were chatting — about, among other things, the latest crazy talk from Arizona, if you can believe that — I went into my friend’s house to track down a ShopVac. I have one, but it’s in storage, and I know my little battery-powered DustBuster wouldn’t be able to do the job. I found a big ShopVac with an extension cord and carried down to the back door.

Power Box After
This is as clean as this box is going to be.

When my conversation was over, I plugged the vacuum in and ran the cord out to the backyard where the power pole lay open. Five minutes later the electrical box was as clean as it would get.

I reattached the panel over the area where the meter would go and closed the box back up. Then I returned the ShopVac to its place in the house and put away all my tools.

Taking care of the box must have put me in the mood to clean because I spent the rest of the afternoon clearing out the miscellaneous stuff that had accumulated under the helicopter’s seats, washing the helicopter bubble cover, and cleaning out the RV basement.

(Now if only I could get through this stack of paperwork that never seems to go away.)

My friend returns later today. With luck, we’ll get that electrical box wired this afternoon — and maybe even bring it to my future home and position it in its post hole. There’s a good chance I’ll have electricity there by the end of the week.