Scott Trauner

Freelance writer and founding editor of The Connecticut Outdoor News (www.connecticutoutdoornews.com) "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." -Benjamin Franklin

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Location: Connecticut, United States

Saturday, September 23, 2006

My Other Bike is a Fifty-Dollar Schwinn

There’s something deeply satisfying about reaching a distant place on nothing but your own power. I’ve felt a bit of that sensation before on long runs and section hikes, but my experiences are dimmed next to those of one Canadian adventurer who recently became the first person to travel around the world without the aid of gas, steam or even wind.
But then again, while thirty four year-old Colin Angus hiked, rowed, pedaled and paddled for the two years it took to close his giant circle in Vancouver last May, most of us were busy working.
I recently took the jealousy you probably detect here, however, combined it with the very work schedule around which so many of us have to plan our adventures, and devised my own personal odyssey.
Three weeks ago, I began commuting by bicycle to my full-time job as a high school English teacher. The fifteen-mile round trip is not difficult in itself, but the daily routine tests my long term endurance- my day-to-day loyalty to both myself and my personal goal. That goal, however, has been swelling to more ambitious proportions everyday since teachers reported back to school the week before Labor Day.
At first, I planned on riding in a few days a week. Then it became eighty percent of the first marking period. Then everyday until Halloween. Then Thanksgiving. Then I began playing with the idea of going the entire one hundred eighty-plus days of the school year. In other words, I’ve become addicted, not just looking forward to the peace and quiet of the morning commute but actually relying on the afternoon commute to blow off steam. As I write this, I have ridden into work sixteen out of sixteen days. The goal is still being devised, but what I do know for sure is that I wish had I started this routine years ago.
I’ve tried to make this as much of an experiment in economics as it is a test of my own commitment. I commute on a Cannondale road bike that was manufactured sometime while I was still in high school, probably an entire decade before I even started teaching high school eight years ago. I bought it used for a hundred dollars last month. I could have ridden it just as I bought it, but I decided to splurge on new handlebar tape and a cheap pair of clipless pedals and shoes. On rainy days, I ride the Schwinn hybrid I bought last year at a flea market for fifty bucks, and when the mornings got chilly last week, I bought a ten-dollar pair of mechanic’s gloves at Wal-Mart and began wearing my racquetball glasses to block the wind- I never said I looked good doing this!
I used to work in a bike shop, so I’ve been able to keep these old horses galloping all by myself. In addition, according to my own estimates, I’ve been able to save five gallons of gas a week by keeping my Dodge pickup in the driveway. And while I’m certainly not ready to give up my truck, the City of Seattle- an increasingly green community that strongly encourages bicycle commuting- estimates the savings of eliminating one car from a family at $340 each month.
Speaking of being green, it is certainly another factor behind my new routine. I saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth shortly before we went back to school, and while my plans to commute by bike were already in place, the cautionary tale about global warming surely cemented my plan.
For example, the film’s web site, http://www.climatecrisis.net/, lists a number of striking statistics about the role bike commuting can have in saving our atmosphere. Climate Crisis claims that every gallon of gasoline not used is another twenty pounds of carbon dioxide that is not reaching the sky. An average American is responsible for releasing about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with much of that coming from personal transportation. Climate Crisis also says that by avoiding driving just ten miles a week, you can reduce this amount by 500 pounds a year. Reading this felt good, knowing that my daily commute alone shatters this number.
Nevertheless, the site’s "Personal Impact" calculator labels me as a "larger than average" contributor of carbon dioxide.
I wonder what "average" means, though. The United States is way behind the rest of the world in using bicycles as an alternative mode of transportation. According to the Washington State Energy Office Extension Services, China leads the world with 77% of its commuters using bicycles. The Netherlands also has a good showing at 50%. Just 1.6% of American commuters, however, ride bicycles to work.
If the earth’s health isn’t motivating Americans to ride to work, you might expect our own health problems to get more of us on bikes. I’ve written here before about my own struggles with weight. Having once weighed 245 pounds, I know how hard it is to get fit. But by adopting a much healthier lifestyle, I reached my current weight of 188 pounds. My weapon against obesity was running road races and hiking, but riding a bike to work can be just as effective. According to Bicycling Magazine, bicycle commuting by itself can help a newcomer lose approximately thirteen pounds in the first year.
Then there’s riding a bike for the sake of riding a bike. My good friend who is a teacher in another town also started riding into work recently. The stories we share are quite similar. We’ve both felt the gradual change of the seasons. Witnessed beautifully pink sunrises and the way dew settles lightly on cobwebbed lawns. Big, full moons that linger in the still-dark sky. And the great satisfaction of getting someplace all on our own.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Post Labor Day Adventures












While everyone else slept late in our tents, I wandered from one empty campsite to the next, collecting from their dusty fire rings the charred remains of the previous weekend. I dropped the armful of half-burned logs next to our own pit, raked the morning coals back into a glowing hub and soon a new fire crackled, warming my shins on this cool September morning.
With Labor Day over, I was able to rummage through at least a dozen vacant sites last weekend at Burlingame, the popular coastline campground in Charlestown, Rhode Island. It certainly wasn't empty, but we still knew that the "first-come-first-serve" policy wouldn't make finding a site all that difficult, despite our arriving at dinnertime on a Friday night.
School may be back in session, but it's still hard to understand why these places are deserted for the last weekends of summer. The full-mooned nights are crisp and bugless. The days are breezy and bright. Beach parking is free while the surf retains all the heat that beamed down throughout July and August. And, of course, the entire coast is bubbling with fish.
The name "Miscuamicut" has a Native American meaning of "Red Salmon at this Place," a translation that only backed up my friend Shane Calamo’s prediction that we'd regret not having our rods on this trip. Just a couple of weeks earlier, the tuna Shane caught off Montauk was on our dinner table. There are still several more meals from that catch in my freezer. If anyone could pull off a big catch here, it would be Shane.
But we came to Westerly to kayak. We launched behind Weekapaug Bait and Tackle, where a quiet water laps the sand. It was two hours past high tide, which left a large, dead striper behind, picked to the bones by birds and crabs. We glided over the calm water of the inlet, under a small bridge and into the churning breachway, just yards from the rocks where my wife caught her first flounder a few summers back. There was a smell of rotting fish here, too, and through the green blur of water we saw the white flesh of another striper laying on the floor of the breachway.
We turned left and paddled inland. The receding tide forced a strong current through the channel, which was constructed over fifty years ago to connect Winnapaug Pond to the open ocean. We paddled hard to fight the water; any halt in our propulsion and we lost ground immediately.
Where the breachway meets Winnapaug, we noticed a flyfisherman casting from a kayak, steadied in the calm water of a cut in the bank. The current didn’t subside for several hundred more yards, and when it did, the wind took its place as it raced over the open surface of the pond.
Winnipaug Pond, like neighboring Quonochontaug Pond, is a large, shallow pool of salt water held by the reefs on its shores. With 2,738 acres of clean, green water- sometimes clear to the bottom- Winnapaug attracts paddlers and anglers alike.
As shallow as Winnapaug gets (my paddle never reached deeper than halfway), it is still full of life. At the center of the pond, stacked aquaculture trays for harvesting clams and oysters reached high above the water’s surface.
Aside from fish, we watched a variety of birds, getting within just a few boat lengths of nearly a hundred double-crested cormorants. Dozens of great egrets dotted the shore, while at the grassy edge of the pond, I paddled within a few feet of a lesser yellowlegs poking around in the brush.
In January 2005, Winnipaug Pond was an exciting destination for local naturalists, who were amazed to see an American white pelican, which normally winter in tropical regions. The bird, which can have a wingspan of up to nine feet, was soon joined by a seal, another rare sighting for Winnapaug Pond.
With the wind now at our backs, we cruised into the breachway. Instead of the current, we now battled the wakes of fishing boats returning from the ocean. I noticed something on shore and got Shane’s attention. I pointed to a kid standing alongside the channel. A good sized striper was wagging in his hand. I wondered what the day would have brought had we packed our rods. Either way, the lap around Winnapaug was rewarding in itself.
Afterwards, we met up with the rest of our group at the beach, where I pulled off my shirt and walked out into the warm surf. I knew it would be my last ocean swim of the year, but wondered if it really had to be.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Premiere Climbing Guide Visits Connecticut

The image projected behind Peter Whittaker must have made the lifelong Washington state native feel right at home in Old Saybrook Middle School’s auditorium.
"It’s literally my backyard," said Whittaker to the dozens of adventure enthusiasts looking up at the giant profile of the 14,410-foot Mt. Rainier last Wednesday night.
Whittaker’s presentation, "Climbing Mt. Rainier: A Family Tradition," discussed a legacy of climbing and guiding on one of the lower 48's most challenging peaks.
He began his talk by asking the audience how many had been above 14,000 feet before. A good amount of hands went up. 15,000: a few went down. 16,000: more went down. This continued until Whittaker reached 22,000 feet and only one hand remained- a man in the front row who had climbed Aconcagua, the 22,832-foot peak in Argentina up which Whittaker guided seventeen breast cancer survivors in 1995, raising 2.3 million dollars in the process.
Whittaker co-owns Rainier Mountaineering Incorporated (www.rmiguides.com), one of the oldest and most respected mountain guide services in the nation. Started by his father Lou in 1969, RMI has guided thousands of people up Mt. Rainier. Peter, however, has since extended the services to include big mountains all over the globe, such as Denali, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro and the volcanoes of Mexico and Peru. Next March, RMI will even offer an expedition up the North Side of Mount Everest.
Whittaker, 47, has been guiding climbs up Rainier since he was sixteen years-old and recently summited that peak for the 219th time. He admits, though, that his first ascent of Rainier at the age of twelve isn’t the best of his climbing memories. Whittaker recalled- amid the crowd’s laughter- that he cried his way up the mountain.
"Skiing was my passion,"said Whittaker, who has been hitting the slopes since he was two years-old, but felt at a young age that mountaineering in particular was not for him.
That aversion, however, was destined to change.
"I was born with mountaineering in my blood," said Whittaker, whose uncle, Jim Whittaker, was the first American to summit Mt. Everest in 1963, followed by his identical twin, Lou.
Jim and Lou began mountaineering as Boy Scouts after their doctor suggested that the clean air of the higher altitudes might relieve their asthma. And so the legacy began.
Packed with exciting mountain photography, Whittaker’s presentation showed just how strong his family’s passion is for the mountains. From his father jumping over a deep crevasse just for the fun of it, to his own acrobatic maneuvers on skis, it is easy to see that mountaineering certainly is in their blood.
But Whittaker sees his role in the mountains a little differently than those photos might suggest.
"I’m more of a guide than I am an extreme [athlete]," said Whittaker. During a question and answer segment, he fielded questions ranging from global warming to the responsibilities that come with being a guide. Whittaker stressed that people skills are among the most important while leading a group to a summit.
The discussion veered to the philosophical, hitting such poignant topics as the 1996 Everest disaster, which was recounted in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Whittaker knew several of the mountain’s victims that year, including Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, climbers Whittaker had met on other mountains throughout the world.
This year’s season on Everest was nearly as deadly, and Whittaker addressed the issue of rescuing climbers on the world’s highest peak, something that has been brought into the spotlight since a recent Matt Lauer interview with Lincoln Hall.
"It’s like being underwater," said Whittaker, referring to the limited amount of oxygen that is carried there and the difficulties that rationing presents for a possible rescue on Everest.
Whittaker is a trained EMT and has been involved in numerous rescues on Rainier. After twenty five years of guiding, and an entire lifetime in the culture of climbing, Whittaker has accumulated knowledge that only time on the mountain can teach you, certainly a good trait to find in your guide.
Aside from bringing that experience on his expeditions, Whittaker works with companies like Jansport to develop more efficient packs, as well as Buck Knives to create a carabiner/knife. The presentation itself was sponsored by North Cove Outfitters in Old Saybrook and Mountain Hard Wear, an outdoor gear company with whom Whittaker also works closely.
But as much as equipment improves, Whittaker says that climbing may get more comfortable, but it will never get easier.
"It’s still basically you and the mountain," he said.
From objective dangers to personal obstacles, mountains will always be challenging, which is why we will always dream about mountains. Guys like Peter Whittaker, though, help make those mountains reality.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Road Races Benefit All

There’s an old Seinfeld episode where George and Jerry are at a party during the New York Marathon. A woman at the window shouts down to the runners: "You’re all winners!" Of course, the pessimistic duo find the woman to be a complete fool, but, even though I wouldn’t have expressed it as fanatically as she does, I do have to agree with her.
It will be two years ago tomorrow that I ran my first road race. Throughout the summer of 2004, the New Haven Road Race had been in my sights and served as the motivation to actually accomplish what I had struggled to do for the entire previous decade: get in shape.
As a lineman in high school, I used to cherish any extra pounds I could pack, but I was now approaching the catalytic age of thirty, and the grunts of opposing noseguards and linebackers had been replaced with the snorts of a family history of diabetes and heart disease. I weighed 245 pounds and I’m only five foot ten.
Some of the friends I played football with are now high school coaches themselves and run a summer fitness camp for teenagers. They knew I was attempting to shed the weight I had gained throughout my twenties, so they invited me to participate with the campers.
"Who’s the old fat guy?" I imagined the high school athletes saying, not able to grasp that I once resembled them.
I committed to the camp anyway.
By six o’clock every morning, I was warming up with kids half my age, needing twice as much time as they did to get ready for the day’s activities. For nearly two months, I stumbled through agilities, jumped rope, lifted weights, tossed medicine balls, tumbled on mats, sprinted the length of the football field, worked on core strength and then at the end of each session, I stretched my ragged muscles.
Then, when I got home, I’d go for a run.
My favorite part of that summer, though, was when I got up and weighed myself. The damage I had done during my twenties was melting away and I increasingly found myself hanging in there with the kids at camp. This was the same summer that I hiked to the highest point of each New England state, another goal I had put off for years.
By Labor Day, I was down to 190 pounds and was ready to run the 5k race. I had lost so much weight, in fact, that I couldn’t even register as a Clydesdale, the 200+ pound category I at one point considered competing in. Instead, I lined up on Elm Street, lean and bouncy, thinking about all I had done to get there. I still have a framed photo my wife took of me in the final block of the race. I remember exactly what I was thinking at the time: I did it.
I remember what else I was thinking. That the camaraderie of the runners was something I had never experienced before in my life. The competitiveness I had in high school football was just as strong, but I was now butting heads with myself. All the runners were fighting only themselves. It blew my mind that when I passed someone, he would only encourage me to keep it up. I returned the favor when someone dusted me, too.
I was hooked. I ran my next road race five days later. Since Labor Day 2004, I’ve run in approximately twenty races, including a 20k and a half marathon, and while most are not as big as tomorrow’s race, they all have something in common: lots of people doing good things for themselves and each other.
A road race is the perfect outlet for someone wanting to help a cause that’s important to them. It’s a physical challenge that allows you to dig deep and get some aggression out while you know your money will be spent well. A month after my first race, for example, I raised $1,000 for children grieving the loss of a loved one. My own mother died in a car accident when I was twelve, so I wrote her initials on my shoes and dedicated the race to her.
That doesn’t make me unique. In fact, I came up with the idea only after watching Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France that summer. His "Live Strong" campaign to cure cancer made me ask myself, "What’s important to me? Who can I help?"
Last year’s New Haven Road Race distributed over $100,000 to eighteen charity organizations in the area, from the American Red Cross to the Ronald MacDonald House. Now in its twenty ninth year, over 5,000 runners will participate in the New Haven Road Race, a number that will help benefit even more good causes.
I’ll be one of those 5,000 runners tomorrow. I’ll admit, I’ve fallen in and out of running shape several times in the past two years, but I still haven’t seen two hundred pounds on the scale again. And I have promised myself that I’ll never be so out of shape that I can’t run the New Haven Road Race, because even if I’m slow, I know I’ll be a winner!