Advice by Alan

I've decided to add a recurring feature to our blog, Advice by Alan.

Alan is the security guard at my office. He speaks little English but that hasn't kept us from becoming friends. We communicate with a mixture of the English he knows, the little Georgian and Russian that I know, a healthy dose of charades and a bit of Pictionary. Each morning I can count on a walk-in from Alan. He pops into my office, we exchange "Good mornings" and "How are yous" in Georgian (which is closing in on the extent of my knowledge of the language) and he quickly launches into a one sided conversation in a mixture of Russian and Georgian.

During our "conversations" my eyes work harder than my ears. I am constantly watching his facial expression and his hands as he expresses his story. Alan's stories often evolve into advice giving sessions. Alan's advice ranges from cancer prevention to the best accompaniments for vodka. From how to make your plants grow to the uses of the common house cat in curing your bodily aches and pains.  I realized that I have been selfishly keeping his advice to myself, but that stops today.

Advice by Alan #1: Mobile phone antennae cause cancer

Recently Alan came into my office to chat when he noticed my cell phone sitting on my desk. He pointed to the phone and shook his head. "Your phone, wery old," he said. (This would be the phone I bought before we moved to T'bilisi in August 2007) He continued by pointing at the antenna of my phone and then gesturing at the side of his stomach, his hands slowly moving away from his body. I shook my head indicating that I didn't quite follow.

He went on to tell me a story about the time he and a friend were drinking vodka one night. Judging by the way he was moving his hand to his lips and repeatedly tilting his head back I'm going to say they were doing shots of vodka. All of a sudden his friend grabbed his heart in pain and told Alan that his chest hurt. At that moment Alan realized that his friend was carrying his cell phone in the front pocket of his shirt. Alan removed it and the pain subsided. Alan looked down and noticed that his friend's cell phone had an external antenna. Proof positive that "cell phones with external antennas cause cancer."

I asked Alan if it was possible that perhaps the nights of vodka shots played a role in his friends chest pains. He assured me that this was, in fact, ludicrous. So, for all of you out there with old cell phones that have external antenna, take it from Alan, it's time to upgrade. As long as your antenna is internal, your safe!

A Cyclocross Bike is not a Mountain Bike

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Originally uploaded by SethTri

... but it's close. There has been a TDYer here who actually brought a mountain bike with him for the last month or so and I was easily convinced to get out on a ride with him. I managed to put the knobbies on the cyclocross bike that for far too long has sat on the trainer and ride with him 3 times now.
For those who aren't aware: a cyclocross bike is effectively a road frame (toughened up a bit) with wider, but certainly not wide knobby tires. There is no suspension like a mountain bike has, the tires are significantly narrower than mtn bikes, and I don't have mountain bike pedals (yet) on it.


I've been out 3 times now with him and the first 2 times I was doing pretty awesome. Despite the much harder gearing I'm running than the mountain bikers, I've made it up almost all the stuff 2 guys out here could get up. Going down is a little sketchier though -- it's much more of a technique challenge that I can't transfer from road riding, and since I have no suspension, every rock puts me in the air. But I've made it down most of the stuff, though usually significantly slower and conservative than the downhill mountain bikers.


Now for the fun part:


We've been riding the same areas that Meg & I have been running for quite a while. I can see the Embassy from the ridgeline, and I've long thought it might be possible to make the traverse over. (Though it looks like it's at least 5 miles.) So, on Saturday, three of us attempted the ride.


Boys and Girls, learn from my mistakes: A cyclocross bike is NOT a mountain bike.


So we got our normal ride in, and that worked out pretty good. Then we headed up to the saddle that has a road coming off it that leads down into the valley we wanted to go. Ohhh... it seemed like such a good idea at the time, and it looked like I could have used it to commute to work eventually.




Not quite. It starts out a pretty steep downhill, big loose rocks filled in with scree and a big rut that wanders all over this "jeep trail", that even a Jeep would be very challenged to get up. And then it got steeper, and sketchier. I was pretty gripped and eventually kicked out of the pedals and kinda shuffled down. It got rideable again, and we continued down, but then the road disappeared into a washed out thin trail. Well down we go (and out of my road pedals again).


And then the trail ran into a foot deep creek with big rocks on the bottom. This bike would have had a tough time with the creek bed WITHOUT water in it. Ok, so I'm walking it, but now I'm trying to walk across this creek with my road shoes and cleats on. Yeah, that won't work, so off come the socks and shoes as I walk through water that smells a bit like manure. (At least there probably aren't any other chemicals in here.)




But once across the creek, we were on a dirt road (a real dirt road!) and worked our way through dilapidated buildings of the lower-middle class parts of Tbilisi. A few dead ends later we popped out on the streets of diplomatic heights and Meg came by and rescued us from having to return by either the same route or by the very busy roads of downtown Tbilisi.


Alright, so maybe I'll consider getting a suspension on the bike. Maybe. We'll see.

Our Garden (The Mudpit)

Many of you have been hearing us talk about working on our yard and garden. We thought it was time to update you with some photos.

When we first arrived in Tbilisi

in August 2007, the summer season was in full swing, the roses were still blooming (and would continue to do so through Christmas) and the pomegranate tree was just beginning to show fruit. The branches on the fig tree were heavy with fruit and we had a lone apple holding on for life. Seth deduced that the monstrous tree in the corner of the back yard was, in fact, a bay tree and the hazelnuts were almost ready for harvest.

It sounds like a lot doesn't it? But there were still more trees and plants we couldn't identify as their season had already come and gone. We have just experienced our first spring in Tbilisi and it was full of surprises. For weeks we would wake up and look out the window in the kitchen to see something else had opened up over night. We realized that, what was a row of nasty, drooping, green stalks in the backyard during the fall and winter, became yellow irises in the spring. Three cherry trees are now as heavy with fruit as the fig was last fall. We have a bed of tiger lilies and the hyacinths have come and gone.

Our major project, however, is the yard itself. We inherited a yard that had not been cared for in years. In Georgia the belief is that "green is good" meaning, if it's green, they don't touch it. Our "yard" was a blanket of weeds. What makes the situation even more challenging is that the previous owner had laid a network of stone paths without any boundaries. As a result the stones migrated throughout the yard over the years, leaving us with a rocky weedy mess.

Seth has spent hours with a shovel tilling the soil by hand to prepare it for grass seed. At first we would sit in the piles of dirt, picking out rocks and stones (and glass, cigarette butts, chip bags and other oddities) by hand. It took an hour to fill 1 bucket and we were looking at a minimum of 40 buckets worth of debris.

One day I mused that "This would be so much easier if we could get one of those box sieves that gold prospectors used when panning the river." Seth suggested I draw up the schematics and he would see if he could get the carpenters at the embassy to build it. They were able to build it (for 40 Lari/$30) and we have been making quick work of the yard ever since. We are almost ready to put down some grass seed. The added bonus of filling in all the potholes in our alley with the stones from our garden is also nice.

As you can see from the photos, the roses are in full bloom and it's time to weed whack the irises as they have finished their cycle. The containers of cherries came from our own trees, which we take no credit for because they just appear and we eat them. Neither of us has ever had our own yard to care for and develop before and we are having a great time with this!

Our First Visitors

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Originally uploaded by SethTri

A few weeks ago, Jason and Kristin became our first visitors to Tbilisi. Kristin was going to Bucharest for the NATO summit and Jason tagged along to make it into a Black Sea tour. They had a good time in Bucharest, then flew over to Istanbul then Trabzon, Turkey, took a bus over to Tbilisi. They stuck around here for about 5 days then took the bus back to Trabzon and flew back to Istanbul and home.

It was pretty cool showing some folks around and they kicked us in the pants to do somethings that we've been meaning to do, but never managed to take the time.

We checked out the botanical gardens, walked around and found a "businessman's" house that we weren't allowed to approach or take photos of. This house was HUGE! It a helipad, mutliple 20' waterfalls into some huge pools. Let alone the size of this "house". I mean, I've seen 5 star hotels that looked run down and small compared to this.

Given our issue with the security guard, so then we hiked of to Narakeli fortress. On the way to it, we passed by a "dream tree" where people tie scraps of fabric and make a wish. We checked out the fortress and had some time to kill before dinner, so we headed over to the beer wall.

That's right, I said "Beer Wall". Kazbegi has a stand at their brewery where you can walk up with any container you want and fill it up for dirt cheap. We paid 8 Lari (about $5) for something like 6 Liters of beer. I'm pretty sure it would have been cheaper had we brought our own container.

While there, we saw the interesting side of Georgian life. This guy with an accordian came up looking for tips. Also a bunch of random folks came up looking for a cup of beer or two. We even saw a 5 year old kid, and his 22 year old father drinking a beer. (Yes, that's right, his son was drinking too.) It started raining, so we ducked for cover and ran into a bar down the street.

One day, while they were at the local English bookstore waiting for us to get out of work, they met a couple riding their bikes around the world for bike awareness. We went out to dinner with them a few times and talked to them about their project. Their blog is linked over on the right side.

Jason and Kristin got back on their bus ready for a 13 hr ride back to Trabzon and left Tbilisi a few liters of Kazbegi lighter.

Tbilisi Botanical Gardens

The other day I had several hours between lessons and decided to walk to Narikala Fortress in Old Town Tbilisi for some exercise. While I was climbing around on the fortress walls I peered down over the edge to see a network of bridges and manicured flower beds. "What is this?!" I exclaimed to myself.

It turns out I had found the Tbilisi Botanical Gardens. I walked along the walls looking for a way down. I came upon a turnstile but was given the international symbol for "NO! Don't go there!" (which, in case you're curious, looks like 2 forearms crossing in front of your chest) by a man sitting in a little guard house. So I left. Defeated.

The following weekend our friend Brad took us, along with his 2 children, down a bumpy back street to the lower entrance of the gardens. It was worth the wait. Tucked away behind a looming fortress and hidden among a snake-like network of streets is a gem among the crumbling foundations of this city.

A 1 Lari entrance fee ($0.70) gets you access to a beautifully manicured network of paths, flower beds and streams. Gurgling irrigation pools trickle past you along the paths as you climb past collections of trees and flowers (virtually garbage free, except for this one cave which has a pile of trash in it...alas, the rule of 80%)

The kids were told that they could not pick any flowers except dandelions. As a result, we all carried fist fulls of yellow weeds by the end of the hike. We did our part to clean up the landscape.

We even spotted a couple of people practicing Tae Chi among the trees. As we wrapped around the stream to head back toward the cars one of the kids pulled up short and said, "LOOK!" I looked down to see 3 pink sequins on the ground. Leave it to a 4 year old girl to find the smallest, shiniest pink object in this huge garden.

As we neared the parking lot a noise, which I had mistakenly took for some very large and aggressive birds, became louder. We crossed a foot bridge over the stream and came upon a frog pond (ahhh...so NOT huge killer birds then.) These frogs were having a heated debate over who could boast the biggest "lily pad." Can you spot them?

The Botanical Gardens has made our list of "Places to take people who visit us in Tbilisi."

Of course I said yes!

She said yes!
Originally uploaded by SethTri

The much anticipated story of "How Seth Proposed."

I had arrived in Durango, CO the night before. After racing to make all my connections Seth picked me up at the airport and I could not have been happier to see him (actually, I may have been happier to see all my luggage had made it, but I digress.) We went back to our friend's home and met up with some more great friends whom we hadn't seen in a while.

Thursday morning, January 31, we piled in the cars and headed to Purgatory Ski Resort for a day on the mountain. Being the baby skier that I am I headed toward the "all green" lift while everyone else went to go throw themselves down the mountain the most challenging way possible, with the plan to meet up for lunch at the bottom.

After lunch I had a private lesson scheduled for the rest of the day. As I was heading out to meet my instructor Seth said (ever so casually), "Hey Meg, why don't you have your instructor drop you off at the Powderhouse (a restaurant halfway down the mountain) and we can do the last run of the day together."

It sounded like a good plan to me so I headed out to get schooled on some skiing. Around 3:30 my instructor and I realized that we had lost track of time and were running late. We high tailed it to the Powderhouse. I saw Seth standing, very patiently, by the signs directing skiers to various runs waiting for me.

After quick introductions and thanks for a great lesson my instructor took off and Seth and I turned to head for the bottom of the hill. After a few turns, however, he headed over to the side of the slope and called out, "Hey babe, come over here for a second."

I made my way over and side stepped into the powder next to him.

"I love you." he said.
"I love you too,"

BAM! After luring me in with his sweet talk he pushed me down into the powder, tackled me and started a tickle fight right there on the mountain. Tackling and tickle fights are par for the course with us and after we composed ourselves and caught our breath, we sat up again laughing.

Seth looked at me smiling and said, "I want to make you happy."
"You do make me happy."
"I know, but I want to make you happy for the rest of your life." he said, as he reached into his right pocket and pulled out a ring box.

At this point I may have blacked out, but I think I started mumbling something along the lines of "Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God..." When he opened the box I dropped back down into the snow screaming in excitement and flailing my arms around in snow angel fashion. At which point a member of ski patrol happened to be riding up the passing lift and called down, "Are you OK?"

I realized that I had not actually said "Yes!" yet. I sat up quickly, took Seth's face in my hands and said "Yes! Yes! Yes! We are going to be such a great team!"

To which Seth replied, "You're gonna have to take off a glove."

I stripped off the gloves and put his beautiful ring on my finger and we headed back down the mountain to meet all of our friends who were waiting for us at the bottom. Only 2 of Seth's closest friends knew what he was up to on the mountain that afternoon so the crowd was thoroughly shocked when we walked in.

Beers were bought, photos were taken and hugs were shared all around.

This story has been told many times already and each time I am reminded how fortunate I am to have the love of a man who would take such care and make such an effort to create a moment that was so true to our personalities. With a backdrop of the snowcapped Rockies, in a pile of snow, he asked me to marry him and I said yes.

My Wild Ski Trip

Me and Ouray, CO
Originally uploaded by SethTri

First, as many have heard already, during this ski trip I proposed to Meg. Meg's working on putting together a post describing how. I'm usually leaving it to her to do it because she's so excited. Why not me? Well, I kinda saw it coming, so while I'm still thrilled that she said yes, I never had any doubt that she would. My tone is a little less "OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" than hers. So, she's a little more fun to listen to tell the story.

Back to our regularly scheduled blog entry... (not really so regular, sorry about that.)

Meg & I went our separate paths on this trip. I left a day earlier than she did and very different routes. My first endpoint (by plane) was Chicago, where I jumped into a (more expensive than anticipated) cab ride to the train station. After a 3 hr wait due to the train being a little frozen over in spots apparently, we got on the 4 hr ride to Jackson where my ever so patient family were waiting for me. Got to my Aunt's house and passed out.

We spent the entire next day talking and catching up. Had some good food and I told the family the game plan for the trip. Then, after dinner, we all piled back into the car and headed to the train station so I could be back in a hotel in Chicago a little after midnight. Pass out there, back in the airport by 7 for my 9:00 departure to Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah.

Pull into SLC where my friend Stephen is waiting for me. We grab lunch at an Italian Deli, check out the Black Diamond shop and meander our way down to Park City, UT where we found a room in a hostel with 2 beds for relatively cheap.

Why only relatively cheap? 'cause for those of us who don't pay attention to Hollywood much, apparently during the last couple weeks of January, there's this little thing going on in Park City called Sundance. Hotels are packed and expensive, parking is insane, but no one is on the mountain because they're all watching movies.

On Wednesday night we did manage to snag a movie. A kinda funny French flick, but we both were struggling to stay conscious for the last 30 minutes. Thursday we hooked up with a ski patrol buddy of Stephen's who got us discount lift tickets to The Canyons and took us into the backcountry. So glad we got the discount tix, because full price for only 3 rides seems insane. Seth's a pretty cool guy who relocated himself from Maine to do the fun stuff in Utah. In a lot of ways I'm jealous. But his work schedule is pretty insane and I don't have the guts to just drop everything and live the lifestyle. (That and
Meg would probably kill me now.)

Thursday night our buddy Joe showed up. Friday the three of us went to Park City (only 150yds away from the hotel!). We skied pretty hard and threw Stephen down some pretty gnarly stuff. He's a trooper though and managed to get down most of it without serious problems. Joe took a pretty good digger that kind whacked his noggin' a bit while trying to mess with Stephen, but that's about as bad as it got.


Apres ski found us hanging out with 6 - 8 former Tampa Bay Cheerleaders. (Some of them clearly VERY former, if you catch my drfit.) But we all kinda laughed about it and Stephen met a ski instructor for a lesson, so it was good. We had dinner, found Joe's knee had swollen to the size of a grapefruit (but no pain) and passed out.

Saturday, Stephen went to a lesson, while Joe & I warmed up on black diamonds. Joe's knee wasn't bothering him, but was still pretty swollen. My head wasn't in the game (jet lag + a few days of hard skiing taking their toll) and I took a doozy of a tumbler. (2 cartwheels followed by 2 somersaults, and a loss of about 40+ feet of vertical.) That woke me up and we really started hitting it again. Joe's knee made him bail by noon and Stephen and I had a good time reinforcing his lesson while I worked on comfort with speed and being fluid. Another awesome day.



Sunday, we bid farewell to Joe at the airport while Stephen and I headed to Ouray, Colorado with the goal of ice climbing on Monday. A major weather system started to hit us though, and when we woke up on Monday morning, 3 passes were closed between us and our final destination (Durango) with a forecast of a long delayed opening, so rather than climb, we drove. What should have been a 1.5-2 hr drive took us 5-6 hrs and 200 miles to get around the 4 closed mountain passes. But we got to Durango, met up with friends and hot tubbed. It was good.

The weather system continued to pound the region and we went skiing on Tuesday, got a bit of ice climbing in on Wednesday, more skiing on Thursday and Friday. (Engaged on Thursday too on the mountain.) We moved into town on Friday where Durango's snowdown was going on. Snowshoing on Saturday morning, Follies (skits) on Saturday night, followed by Superbowl on Sunday. (Not very often I can watch a Spartan catch the winning touch down in a superbowl!)

Monday most of us were planning on leaving. Some had planned on the 6am flight 'cause they had to work on Tuesday and wanted to get to DC at a reasonable hour. We chose the 1pm 'cause we weren't in a hurry. Unfortunately, it had snowed 18" overnight (making that a total of 65" over the course of a week!), and the 1pm was the first flight that wasn't canceled. We got back to DC where my parents were waiting for us and drove us into Arlington.


Dentist, shopping, hang out with my folks, hang out with some friends that couldn't make it into Durango and the next thing you know we're back on a plane to Tbilisi. We did a lot, skied a lot, talked to a lot of people and had a blast. One thing we didn't do: sleep a lot. Wow, I think we're still trying to catch up on that.

Thanks to all for helping make it as great of a vacation as it was. Craig: sorry you couldn't make it this year. It was epic again. How does next year sound?