Sharry Miller

Snow bike...fun?

In retrospect, it was fun, and that is decidedly the definition of Type 2 fun. Are you familiar with the three types of fun? I'm not sure who came up with these designations, but someone determined that: Type 1 activities are fun while you're doing them. Think riding go-cart riding, skating across a smooth lake - all those things that make you say, "Whee!" Type 2 activities maybe aren't so much fun while you're doing... Read more →

Robe Lake Attempt

One of these days I'll learn that if I say, "It'll be fun to try to get to...", it really means that I'll be dead tired after a failed attempt to get wherever it was. Today was one of those days. After a failed attempt at a winter hike up Hogsback a couple of weeks ago (I needed to go a few miles farther and about 2000 feet higher than I did), I decided it... Read more →

Ice Tunnel Adventure

"Yeah...when's the last time you did anything outside of your comfort zone?" I had to actively keep my mouth from falling open when I heard my daughter's sarcastic voice say this to me. Me. Have I failed to live my philosophy of "if it makes me nervous I should probably do it"? I don't think so, but perhaps. Of course, she could just have been a teenager trying to show off in front of her... Read more →

Ice Skating Robe Lake

After two years of prevaricating and just a week of post-ordering waiting, the Isvidda ice skates I ordered for each of us finally came in yesterday. This afternoon, finally done with my work, I asked Thane if he wanted to go for a walk. He suggested that we go skating instead. I knew I married him for his brains! (sometimes) The skates are simply blades with bindings into which ski boots clip. This system means... Read more →

10,000 Parts

My phone only seems to take blurry pictures anymore. There's a saying I like: a helicopter is just 10,000 parts flying in loose formation. That's how I feel when I skate ski. Thane and I went skiing on the trail behind our house. The trail had been groomed a day or so previously, but a couple of snowmobiles had been on it in the meantime, and it had rained hard and refrozen. Short sections of... Read more →

Snowshoeing Bad Ass

Scout and I took our first winter snowshoe up to the Solomon Gulch reservoir. It never fails to amaze me that you only gain about 600 feet on that hike - so much of it seems straight up! I think I've only been up there once before in the winter, and that time the trail had been packed by snowmobiles. Today I got to break trail through about 8 inches of wet snow. Not bad,... Read more →

New Job and Holiday Staycation

On November 2 I started a new job at Prince William Sound College, a little bitty community college here in Valdez. My official (and truly awful) job title is Instructor and Administrator of Industrial Technology. Right now, my primary purpose is to refine our current industrial technology programs (safety and millwright) and help the college develop new ones. I'm spending a lot of time talking with people from Alaska's different industries to find out what... Read more →

Chasing Winter

This weekend officially ushered in Spring, and with temperatures in the 40s and low 50s, Valdez was primed to play along. What did the Miller family do? Headed north. After two days of finally getting to ride my bicycle, I kept saying, “It’s just wrong to leave this fabulous weather and go chasing winter.” Thane and his snowmobiling buddies had no sympathy for me. They were set on heading to Summit (the one on the... Read more →

Improved Vision

Thane found a link on BBC this morning to an article about myopia, nearsightedness. It's been traditionally thought that myopia is inherited as well as exacerbated by excessive reading or other close work - a description that certainly seemed to explain my extreme nearsightedness as a child. This article focused (ha, ha) on another theory: myopia may be impacted by genetics and habits, but the primary cause seems to be too much time spent indoors.... Read more →

-65

In the spirit of living in the present (and giving into the inevitable), I did my best to embrace being back home from Maui today, even if I was suffering from a 65 degree drop in temperature. It was 17 F and the sun hadn't quite made it over the mountains when I forced myself out of the hot tub and left the house just before noon this morning to go snowshoeing. It really was... Read more →