Random: Galaxy Trucker

We are a board game family. The more complicated and long a game is, the happier it makes the older boy. I don’t mind a super complicated game sometimes but I find I don’t have the mental space needed to stay chipper during an extra long game all that often during the summer. So this summer I instituted a new family tradition of playing a 3-player Galaxy Trucker on Friday afternoons! I figured that way we could play a long, involved game to make the older boy happy at least once a week and I wouldn’t have to learn all new complicated rules each time we sat down to play a game. Plus I’ve yet to win at Galaxy Trucker so I hoped that playing it repeatedly would eventually help me get better at it.

It sounds simple. You build a ship by grabbing components and properly placing them next to other components on an empty ship board. That isn’t hard, right? Except you need to grab the components before the other players do, you need to finish your ship before the timer runs out and you need to be certain that all the bits go together properly or you might loose half (or more) of your ship during the spot check before you even launch into space.

This is one of my best ships. You want guns. You want people. And you want engines. Other things are good too. But really if you have those three things and can keep them, you’re doing all right. It isn’t perfect and it definitely isn’t the prettiest ship. But evidently my standards are low for intergalactic travel.

The game says “The game ends after Round 3, once all the rewards have been collected and all the penalties paid. Add up all your cosmic credits. If that number is 1 or more, you win!” It took longer than I would like to admit (a surprising number of bad things can happen to your ship during the three rounds through space – meteoric swarms, smugglers, pirates, slavers and so on…..even simple, friendly open space can be the end of your ship if you somehow lost all your engines before the empty space), but I had actually ended the game with more than 1 credit before this summer.

This is one of my ships after many of those bad things happened one game. I’m not going to lie – this can be pretty demoralizing. Especially if the other ships breeze past all of the bad things due to a combination of better design, planning ahead and luck.

The rules go on to say “Of course, the player who has the most credits is a bit more of a winner than everyone else.” I am never the person to end with “a bit more of the credits”.

This is the most credits I’ve ever ended a game with. 60 credits!!! I was very proud. I still didn’t win that game. Maybe someday….

But I did get to spend hours and hours with my teen and tween this summer hanging out together. So I’m going to count that as a different kind of win.

 

 

Random: Teenage Driver

It turns out I cannot knit in the car when I’m a passenger with a teenage driver. I know this because we now have a teenage driver in the house. He’s completed Driver’s Education (and let me just say here that whatever the Driver’s Ed instructors are paid, it is nowhere near enough) for those 6 hours of practice driving and logged about another 10 hours driving mostly with his dad.

He mostly does fine. He pays attention and knows the rules of the road. He thinks ahead and makes every effort to be careful. Despite all that it is somehow much more apparent when he is driving that we are barreling down the road in a large metal box at speeds high enough to cause certain damage if we somehow manage to leave the road.

Last night I realized my blood pressure was through the roof the entire time of our 9 minute drive to an evening meeting. At one point I tried to grab the 12-year-old’s hand to grip in the backseat (he was not interested) and the rest of the time I held on to various bits of the car. As his mother, I just can’t quite forget all the times this same person got distracted and physically ran (or walked) into a wall when he was a toddler and small boy. Hard enough to bounce off.

I think perhaps it is better for everyone if I am not a regular passenger of his until he’s logged more practice driving hours. Because my randomly moaning about near-misses in the backseat is probably distracting. And no one needs him to be distracted at this point.

In the meantime, I went looking and found I can purchase these magnetic signs pictured above to slap on our car when he is behind the wheel.

 

Hiking: Now what?

Now that we’ve finished out Grand Canyon hike and the bitter cold of winter has set in I miss all those hours I spent on the trail last year. We haven’t been on a family hike since we climbed out of the Grand Canyon in late November. We need new trails to train for and new trips to plan.

All those family hikes were great for our training. But they were also hours and hours we spent together as a family. We actually talked because you can’t stare at your phone easily when you need to watch the trail. We shared stories and snacks. We enjoyed being outside and away from distractions. You really can’t beat that kind of family time with a teenager and a tween. And we got in pretty good shape while we did it.

I’ve been doing a little looking and haven’t quite decided where we should hike next. After all the traveling we did in 2017, I wonder if we should keep closer to home in 2018. Maybe we could do some of the Colorado Trail that runs north and south through Colorado. Or portions of the Ozark Trail in Missouri. Or the Ouachita trail through the Ouachita mountains in Arkansas and Oklahoma (I didn’t actually know there were mountains there). Or we could head back to the Arizona since there are still tons of trails out there that I would love to share with my boys.

Suggestions?

 

Hiking: The Grand Canyon Hike

We did it! We hiked down on Bright Angel Trail from the South Rim to Phantom Ranch. Spent the night. And then hiked back out all day from Phantom Ranch to the South Rim. We covered about 23 miles, about 4500 feet down in elevation and then back up those same 4500 feet. It was beautiful and awesome and hard and amazing!!!

Leaving from the South Rim

At the top on the way down.

Still going down.

We trained with family hikes for a good part of the year before to prepare. But I was talking to another hiker in the women’s dorm at Phantom Ranch and she said she’d done it every year for the last 15 years and she didn’t think anything could truly prepare you for hiking the Grand Canyon since it is simply in a category all to itself. The training we did was enough for the husband and older boy to do it more easily. But the younger boy and I needed more endurance. All the hill training did mean that the climbing wasn’t a strain for my lungs and breathing which was especially awesome since I have asthma!!! The older boy and husband are already talking about a Rim to Rim hike next time. I’m thinking once was enough for me. The younger boy hasn’t decided yet.

See that trail that stretches off into the distance? That’s a little less than halfway to the river.

This is part of the next half down.

At the river that helped form the canyon!

We hiked down for 7 hours leaving at 8:00 am from the Bright Angel trail-head and arriving at Phantom Ranch about 3:00 pm. We stayed about 15 hours at Phantom Ranch at the bottom. Then started our hike back up at 7:30 am the next morning and hiked out for 8.5 hours, arriving at the top about 4:00 pm.

One of several water crossings.

On the way back up.

And up.

And up.

It am so grateful that we hiked it as a family and made those memories. Our boys are 14 and 12 years old and they did amazing! What better proof do they need that they can accomplish just about anything they set their minds to and work towards? They’ve just done the almost impossible and that makes them mighty. Somewhere near 600,000 people visit the Grand Canyon each year and only about 1% of them make the trek to the river at the bottom. Fewer still do it on the power of their own feet. What an amazing life lesson to learn!!! I’m super proud we made it to the top (me especially since the last 3ish miles up were basically pure will power for me).

Almost all the way back up!

We made sure we had lots of food and water and ibuprofen for the hike out. We also lightened our loads at Phantom Ranch by filling one Mule Duffel between us. We thought we had lightened our loads of everything we didn’t need before hiking down in. But once we reach the bottom and knew how very far we needed to climb back out, we each found more weight we could lose from our packs. We only put 16 pounds of the allowed 30 in our Mule Duffel since we were already traveling light. But it was definitely worth the $74.83 not to carry it out ourselves. Experience hikers carry almost nothing back up with them but we weren’t sure what we might need since this was our first hike out and kept a good chunk of our gear.

Mule Duffels full of hiker’s stuff on the way back up to the Rim. Our stuff is in one them.

It was beautiful and awesome and hard and amazing. I’m glad we went and did it. And now I’m also glad to be done!!

If we were to do it again, I think camping and stopping at a more leisurely pace would be very enjoyable.  My ideal itinerary would look something like: Day 1 hike down to Indian Gardens (4.7 miles down from the South Rim) and camp. Day 2 hike down to Phantom Ranch (4.6 to the end of the trail and then another 2ish miles along and across the Colorado River to Phantom Ranch). The meals at Phantom Ranch were wonderful and served family style with the other hikers and campers so I would be sure to reserve at least one dinner and breakfast.  Day 3 stay at Phantom Ranch and explore the area. Day 4 hike back up to Indian Garden and camp. Day 5 hike back out the last 4.7 miles and 3500 vertical feet. I think the added weight of camping equipment would be worth it to have more time to explore and rest between hikes. We would train more too.

Hiking: Packing for the trail.

Our Grand Canyon is coming up in just over two weeks. We’ve finished most of our hill training and long distance hikes and now we are packing for the trail.

We have reservations to stay in the dorms at Phantom Ranch on the canyon bottom. That means we don’t need to worry about hauling tents or sleeping bags. We also don’t need to pack food or supplies for meals. We opted instead to pay the high prices for prepared supper and breakfast in the canyon plus a sack lunch to eat on our hike back up out of the canyon. The ease of having someone else haul and prepare our food for us seems more than worth the cost.

We’ll be back country hiking for several hours each day, so we’ve researched cold weather and long distance hiking quite a bit. Since it will be winter at the top of the canyon and warmer on the canyon floor, we’ve paid extra attention to layering so we can adapt quickly and easily to changing weather. We decided on a base layer (polyester tops and bottoms to wick away moisture and add a little warmth), a mid layer (fleece on top and hiking/wind pants on bottom) and outer layer (good cold weather jackets) for each of us. Plus we’ll each carry a rain poncho and pants in case of inclement weather.

So really we only need to pack basic supplies like extra base layer clothes, toiletries, camera, snack foods, first aid kits, sunscreen, trekking poles and emergency Mylar thermal blankets.

Plus water. We definitely do not want to run out of water so we might end up carrying more than we’ll need. At this point we think we’ll each be carrying the equivalent of three or possibly four 32 oz bottles. Water adds quite a bit of weight to our packs with each filled 32 oz bottle weighing just under 3 pounds. That means we are trying to balance between the extra weight of the water and the fear of running out.

Because the older boy takes being prepared seriously he is also bringing all of this too…..unless one of us can talk him out of it. The pile adds about 2 pounds to his pack and includes two first aid kits, extra aspirin, pocket knife, compass, mesh bag, flashlight, poncho, extra poncho, survival bracelet, coins, some rocks and other random bits.