Home again home again, Jiggity Jig.

Londontown

the boy in london....looking 15 instead of 5.

 We liked the hidden animals in the main hall.

The best stop in the Natural History Museum...the BASEMENT!  Skip the animatron dinosaurs (altho it is really cool), check out the blue whale and friends in the mammals section and then leave plenty of time to head downstairs and play.....

Back up top, we headed to Kenningston Gardens/Hyde Park to the Princess Di Memorial Playground.  With the crowds and the heat the kids downed a bottle of water each, a handful of gummy worms and didn't make it past the first play structure -- a washed up pirate ship. O is up in the crows nest here....

strolling....

 The London Eye from the Westminster Bridge.

and...for Al the family eagle scout, a quick visit to Robert Baden Powell, the father of scouting.

We did a mad dash thru the Tate Modern -- FPFJ was appropriately awed at seeing Matisse's Snail in person, and O was impressed at the Picasso room and the scale of Ai Weiwei's sunflower seeds installation, even tho we only saw the post-exhibit piece -- just a fraction of the size of the main hall exhibit and a hands-off exhibit (the main exhibit full immersion....walk on the ceramic seeds, hold them, roll around and take a nap on them if you like....sorry to have missed that.

overheard

"I think we need to figure a way to earn a bit more money....."

we missed an opportunity to talk to Jack White a few days ago.  am kicking ourselves. we are torturing the family by downloading every single White Stripes youtube we can find.  kicking ourselves. but what would we have said?

Care to join us for a Dad's Day pint....of wasps?

Care for a second round?

These suckers have been creeping us out.  We have a knotty (naughty?) pine ceiling in our sitting room.  On day we noticed a cluster of these nasty wasps congregating on one of the knots.  They weren't moving so we kind of ignored them.  For weeks.

I also had a party this week and at one point I made a comment about them....everyone was a bit horrified to suddenly know they were sharing their happy party space with a cluster of giant wasps (right over the buffet table, in fact.  Today, Mr. 13Socks decided he was done staring at them and leapt into action.

Happy Father's Day Mr 13Socks!  THANKS for all your crepe-makin, ethiopian-food-bringin, goodnight-kissing, soccer-playin, wasp-trappin, awesome daddy self.  You ARE the best.

Story Problem

A 11.77m x 5.32m pool loses 10 cm of water in 36 hours.  How much water leaked out?

A staggering 626 liters!  Sorry to go metric on you but I can't imagine doing this 'story problem' with feet/inches/cubic yards/gallons.

By some miracle we were able to fix the problem with some careful research, some helpful children and a $10 packet of epoxy putty.

We had kind of assumed we had a leak but it was getting increasingly worse and increasingly expensive. Our fear was that it was in the water/pump/filter system.  Rather than call our house maintenance team (who have yet to return to fix the gaping hole in our roof from the bee-hive removal project), we took a week and did some research online, a few experiments in the pool.

The funniest thing was reading an online forum about pool maintenance (yes, I did that).  One guy was worried about losing 1cm in a week from his outdoor pool in the summertime.  Uh, Hello? but this was when I confirmed that losing 10 cm in 36 hours was more certainly abnormal, especially considering that it's winter.  I also knew something was seriously wrong b/c I had just added an entire bottle of dry acid in 36 h to balance the pH where the directions recommend adding a capful a week at the most -- and only if you need it.  I am not going to even try to calculate the $ lost to this leak in pool chemicals.  Instead I'll focus on the money we will save by fixing it.

The research.
We turned off the pump and started 'the bucket test' to see about cracks in the pool itself.  Over the 36 h the pool lost water but the bucket did not.  This meant that water loss was not due to evaporation (duh, but good to have confirmation). We dropped in some food coloring around the edges and did a visual inspection. This was the art experiment part of the project!  FPFJ did some performance art.....finger in the dye and then...absent mindedly....finger in the nose.....

The noticeable cracks in the concrete did nothing to attract the dye so we assumed they were superficial; the cracks in the plaster between the pool and the pool intake/filter were not.  After the 626 liters of water leaked out, we left the pool for another 36 hours and saw that there was no more water loss. This was a good sign - we could at least isolate the problem - the union between the concrete pool and the plastic water filter intake.

Despite a shopping trip that yielded only 2 of 9 things on our shopping list, we found epoxy putty that seemed (from the pictures, the instructions were in Afrikaans) to be the answer to the leaky pool.  FPFJ and I hung over the edge of the pool and poked our heads in the weir for an hour, squeezed the epoxy into the cracks and smoothed it out.

The epoxy putty cures underwater so we optimistically added 626 liters back in (it took a day and a half).  nearly a week later the pool is sparkling and the chemistry back in balance.  The best part is that we have not added a single drop of water.

This meant....an icy swim today and the opportunity to put in our air mattresses....so we can figure out where to patch THEM up!

Yes, this is really what it's like to live in "africa."  We have it rough....trying to patch our swimming pools and get through the Nutella shortage.  (this is going surprisingly OK - I even stopped looking for it). Everything about our life here is ridiculous lately.  from the hole in the roof to the hole in the pool.

Home leave soon...but soon enough? Can't wait for automatic dishwashers and central heating.

POOL UPDATE Jan 2012:  am realizing now how much money we lost just by trying to maintain proper pool chemistry with the constant water loss.  we noticed it right away but assumed it was b/c it was cold weather....but we got through the hot season and now even mid-rainy season all is well with very little input. we were regularly having algae outbreaks, mold problems, frogs (uh, we still have frogs), and annoying things like bright green and cloudy water.  but really, aside from the normal cleaning and monthly testing and adjusting the pool has been practically maintenance free.  too bad we didn't look into this 3 years ago!

Livingstone....revisited

The family headed down to Livingstone over the long weekend for our annual chilly winter camping trip.  Usually we go to Kafue National Park and camp at a lodge that has $260/per person/per night chalets and $14 campsites but opted for the tourist mecca (Victoria Falls/Livingstone) down south instead so we could try a few new things with our friends who are moving away.  We also gave up out usual fancy room with air con, cable, breakfast buffet and a giant bathtub in favor of camping at a backpacker lodge at the edge of town.
The completion of the Zimba Road has made the trek to Livingstone a viable long-weekend option.  It took them 3 years to do it but isn't a thing of beauty?

 Below, the bypass/detour Zimba Road....This dirt trail was in far better condition than the actual road but it was still not cutting it as a replacement for a proper tarred road.  For two years this was the road for getting that last 60km to Livingstone.

 Ahhhhhhhhh.  The Chinese did a most excellent job with the new road.

There was a big group also staying at the lodge from Gonzaga....on a 5 week psychology class doing research at a chimpanzee reserve in the NW province (what a way to get your biology credits! three weeks at the reserve and two weeks of travel and tourism. -- they popped over to Botswana to go to Chobe along with some travel within Zambia).   

Above, The Overland Vehicles that took around the Gonzaga group.  These monstors are based in Zambia but can travel to Botswana (where they transport folks to Chobe national park but also where they fuel up at $600 a pop, much cheaper than if they fueled up in Zambia), and Zimbabwe (were their business operations are based)

The place was recently refurbished and was quite OK, the staff was super helpful and nice.  Even the food was good.  BUT the establishments surrounding their compound were noisy as all get-out.  Three bars/parties with loud music until 3am and then the roosters starting in at about 3:20.  And can I just say that a mummy sleeping bag is perfectly suitable for one of me but quite uncomfortable with one of me and one 5 year old.  He's small but he's not THAT small.

Going with another family meant that we could divide and conquer.  O joined them for an elephant safari while FPFJ stayed behind and hung out with the cheetahs, white lions and caracal.  Only the lions, which were 4 months old, did not think that my little guy looked like a delicious snack.  There was a group of 3 others there with us doing the full-on 'ENCOUNTER' and the animals were out to be pet and played with.

Another party doing their "cheetah encounter"  they had the cats on leashes when they were out of the enclosures but they paying customers also got to hang out with the cheetahs INSIDE the enclosures.  Yikes.  We were doing the free, 'voyeur encounter' and had fun just watching the spectacle as well as enjoying the big cats up close with a wire fence between us.  Even a little bit of fencing is nice when you are traveling with a tasty snack (aka  Finn).


It was nice to do something new and I was surprised at the level of professionalism and the ethics of the operation.  I'll be honest to say I'm quite afraid of elephants and the idea of sending O into the bush with two little girls and another mom wasn't high on my list.  That said, it ended up being quite alright, and totally awesome. And, like I said already, I was totally impressed with the whole operation.



The elephants are free to roam the grounds but are called into service when it's time for an elephant safari.  The animals are all orphans from Zimbabwe or are otherwise 'rescues.'  The big momma ele is about 50 years old and the smallest one, Mouse, is 11 years old.  They have 7 elephants, all of whom came to Zambia on foot from Zimbabwe over the Victoria Falls Bridge in 2009.

In every photo I took you can tell exactly where my delicious little 5 year old is....just follow the stare of the predator and you can see where he is too!  It's a bit unnerving.  The staff were great and made sure they knew where he was and asked that we carry him if the animals were getting ideas (which they did). Creepy.  

No trip to Livingstone is complete without a visit to Victoria Falls.  So, visit we did.  We all hiked down to the Boiling Pot (a gorge at the base of the falls), hiked around by the knife point bridge and at the top of the falls.  Everyone got thoroughly soaked.

Double Rainbow?  (search for the youtube double rainbow clip if you are ever bored)

This is from a dry-season trip to Livingstone -- when the water is raging (below), rafting operations come to a grinding halt.  Livingstone is the adrenaline junkie's paradise.

 O, doing his part to hold up the Victoria Falls Bridge.  From the Boiling Pot you get a good view of the bridge...and the bungee jumpers who take the leap mid-span.  TJ enjoyed his views overhead with Pilot Pascale.  Check them out! (the 'cloud' is the mist rising from Mosi-y-tunya, the smoke that thunders.  Does it ever!)

Thanks, Gesuales for a wonderful weekend!

Say "CHEESE!!!"

Sunset on the Zambezi

simple bear necessities

The primary school had their annual drama production this past week -- a DISNEY DAZZLE spectacular. It was pretty darn cute.  The play was narrated first by Mickey and Minnie and were joined by Uncle Remus (Song of the South), Shere Kahn (the tiger from The Jungle Book), Snow White, Princess and a few more.  (I'm really not up on my Disney characters, especially the newer ones, thank goodness.)  The growing crowd of narrators filled us in about the history of Disney, the success of the films and all the major milestones of animation interspersed with each of the primary classes performances of signature Disney songs.  It was really well done, everyone participated and .... wow were they excited!

Year 4 did "Simple Bear Necessities."  Yours truly volunteered to help with the costumes -- I stepped up when they thought there would be 6 bears.  Fast forward to me with my eyes as big as saucers when I find out that the plan changed and bit and not there were 25 bears!  We scratched our original plan and headed to the Foam Shop in Kamwala and bought three giant sheets of white foam.  FPFJ and I traced and cut out 25 of these (Plus a giant kitty head for good measure along with a few foam swords and surfboards).  Seeing that the bears were not Polar Bears, out came the paints. What a mess.



The night of the play there was an army of face-painters and I think each and every child in the primary school got painted: dwarves, flamingos, dogs, princesses, sprites, tigers, lions and bears....OH MY!

And if you are so sorry you missed the show....not to worry, we have a DVD and I pretty sure if you see us this summer, you will be asked to sit and view.

Finn already has his lines memorized for his 'graduation' play in June, along with everyone else's parts!  They are performing "Wackadoo Zoo."  Now to figure out a "Professor" costume for the little guy....we're fresh out of tweed jackets.  Do professors even wear tweed anymore?

How Sporting

The little kidlets are become quite the athletes.  There seems to be no end to their interest or enthusiasm.

Some snaps of them in action.  The little guy, who is somehow STILL a head shorter than 90% of his classmates, participated in Saturday Soccer and played for 'Team Airtel.'  While the team's win/loss record wasn't so good, the kids (and I dare say, the parents) had a fun season and reached some of their team goals.  The highlight of the season was the invitation to play on the 8-10 year old team for a game.  (The teams are very loosely set up....players swap shirts to fill the lineup and as long as the kids are the age or under they are welcome on the pitch.)  A lot of the fun of playing when you are 5 is the playing that goes on off the pitch.  He hit it off right away with a few of the other kids (lots of different schools participate although it's at the American School and so is mostly kids from AIS) and those clowns spent many hours finding many ways to make it down 'the big hill' by the soccer fields.

O opted to keep up with his Capoiera practice which has a weekend session so he couldn't do soccer, which made for some complicated logistics but meant FPFJ didn't have to push his way onto center stage.  Big brother has a tendency to hog the limelight, just b/c he's so awesome, not b/c he's a big meanie.  The group that practices capoiera on the weekend is all adults and that has been really fun to watch. There is talk of starting a kids' group.  The boys will both squeeze in some work at a Capoiera center in Sea-Town this summer -- we found a studio in SODO that has drop-in classes for kids.  Fun.

O has been doing field hockey at school and really enjoys it.  He's doing "Athletics" as an afterschool activity along with the PE athletics.  As far as I have been able to sort out, it's track-and-field-ish with some funny stuff thrown in.  The local school hold meets.  Our school does miserably at these meets but the kids do their best and of course, have fun doing it.  O has learned a lot about non-sporting topics from his bus trips with the secondary students (YIKES!) and has made some more good friends that maybe he wouldn't normally have hung out with at school. Now mom has to decide about team swimming for next year.  He's been invited to swim but quite honestly....the schedule means a lot of running around for yours truly and would mean little brother would be dragged around Zambia to watch swim galas.  I did swim team as a kid and (yes, mom) really enjoyed it -- so maybe it is my payback time.  I'm remembering all the running around my mom did in Minnesota -- and the big speeding ticket to make it to the Cornelius Classic in time for my race....

O running a 50m sprint at the "Ten Step" meet at the Italian School.  The kids did 10 different athletics/sporting races, including the high jump, long jump, beanbag races, and a 50 m jump-rope race!

Four Seasons

Lusaka is not unlike many cities we know and love.  We have four seasons here, even if they are a bit different than you’d usually consider:

• the cold season (6 weeks around july and august) The cold season in Lusaka is kind of like "summer" in Seattle.  But in Seattle you have things like fleece, down, and wool....carpeting, insulated wood floors, doors and windows that actually CLOSE, central heat, etc.  In Lusaka when the temperature drops to 40F at night, it means that despite the warmish daytime temperatures your house will maybe warm up to 50.  Your stone floors and stone walls will make your house feel like you live in the crisper drawer in the bottom of the fridge. You can't keep a breeze from blowing through and you certainly can't actually ever 'heat' a room. Being inside means being constantly cold. You can be certain to find me bundled up most nights in my famous orange 'puffy coat' and wrapped in my down blanket, wool socks on and a hat if I can find one that survived storage without getting too musty/moldy.  The cold season is dry and windy.  The air quality (very low in Lusaka to begin with), is horrible between the pollution, the fires and the dust. 
• the hot season ( 6 weeks some time between september and November)  It's mind-bogglingly hot and humid.  In Lusaka it's not unbearable but out side of Lusaka temps regularly exceed 100F.  Where we are there are a few truly miserable days but then comes......
• the rainy season (6 weeks between December and January)  Seattle and Lusaka actually 'match up' pretty well for annual rainfall.  The difference is that  Seattlites experience this precipitation as a constant drizzle.  In Lusaka it comes down in violent bursts -- the 'season' lasts about 6 weeks but there are probably only about a dozen days of rain in that time period -- and it's coming down in solid sheets accompanied by spectacular thunder and lightning storms.  Rainy season here is Mother Nature at HIGH INTENSITY.  The rains bring some relief to the heat and when they first arrive everyone welcome this change.  But then your roof springs a leak, your car stalls out in a flooded road, any excursion out of town is put off
•  all remaining months are strangely seasonless and perfect:  sunny and 70 degrees F.  

For the most part, the weather is amazing, Zambia's strongest selling point, to be honest. Right when you get completely fed up with the heat, the cold, the rain...it changes.  The change of seasons is never gradual.  One day it's the hot season and the next you are full-on into the raining season.  And when the rainy season stops....there is not a drop of the wet stuff from the sky until the next year (imagine...not a drop of rain from March to November -- it's surreal).

But that's only three 'seasons.'

The fourth season? It's a doozy.

It's... the LEAVING SEASON. 

The leaving season is the worst.  The weather is starting to get cold, everyone is starting to get cranky about “things” in Zambia, most expat families are fleeing to the northern hemisphere for warm sunny, home leave, the school term is incredibly busy and compressed (term 1 is 15 weeks, term 2 is 12 weeks but term 3 is 7 weeks of pure insanity) and there's never enough time to squeeze everything in.  


On top of the rush of the last school term, this time of year is when families, friends wrap up their 2-3 year postings and head onto the next stop in their life.  It's quite exciting but of course sad to see friends leave.  One family we knew briefly came to Zambia from Cambodia, stayed here for their 3 year post and were headed to Croatia.  Can you even imagine?  That is how it goes when you work for the US State Department overseas. 


The Leaving Season is filled with endless goodbyes, parties, packouts, boot sales and travel planning.   (those passports and visas, curiously,  tend to expire from time to time, creating more than a few dramatic departure stories and many many headaches.) There is such an exodus of families going on 'home leave' this time of year that any chance of getting actual work done is abandoned.

Well, this year is a rough one.  Not only b/c we are not leaving* but b/c our good friends ARE.  After 5 years in Zambia (and many more years on the continent) the Gesuales are through with attending leaving parties and hosting home-away-from-home holidays; they are fed up with having the responibility of bringing a wee bit of sanity into all our lives.....this time they are the ones leaving.  It's breaking our hearts.

See -- look, there one goes now, sneaking off on her elephant!

Lusaka has never met the likes of Steve, Melinda, Scout and Matea, who are all in their own ways special, kind, and generous -- beyond imagination.  They will be missed by many families.  We will be making every excuse to catch up with them where ever they happen to land.  (Yellowstone!?)  


Best go, we've got some packing of our own to do...

*no need to remind us that we thought we'd be away from Rat City for "2-3 years." In our defense, did anyone truly expect the economy would take such a spectacular nose-dive? That the housing market would take such a hit?  that there would not be a job to come home to?  Not us. Apologies to all....but this gives you some time to save your pennies and book those tickets.  There is a sale on South African Airlines right now if you book your trip before the 21st!  

Honey, honey?

Mr 13Socks recently sent around a little quiz (which he called a "weekly quiz" but which was not weekly in any way, shape, or form).  In case you missed it:

This time it’s multiple choice since last week’s entries were so lame.

The scene: shirtless brothers on top of our two+ story house last night, setting fire to old mountain bike tires and ripping off asbestos roofing panels with a borrowed claw hammer.

The appropriate response:

(a)    call the police

(b)   call the fire dept (I think Lusaka (population over 2 million) has one working fire engine)

(c)    turn up the volume on the Argentian soap opera to drown out the thudding footsteps on the roof; only then it will be clear that Soledad should NOT get engaged to Carlos the attorney who is defending her sister for murder; she’s obviously preggers from Alejandro, her true love, and needs to get over the inconvenient fact that his father killed her father. 

(d)   wait for a gooey clump of honeycomb, a divine product of the bee clearing operation

The answer? 

We have two very active hives....one up under the soffits 30 feet up and another double-colony in our ceiling board in the pantry off our kitchen (below).  The ceiling is sagging in several spots as the size of the hives and the weight of the honey has grown over the years.  Seeing as how our housekeeper has a fatal bee allergy (we had some excitement last year when she was stung and 15 minutes later I was rushing her to the "best" private clinic in town.  more on this after the bee story!)

In the night-time photo up top I must point out the one piece of equipment the 'bee brothers' brought -- a ladder.  You might notice it's a bit short.  At one point TJ says to me "Hey...You should go check out the operation outside...." and I went out to see how Plan A:  approach the hive from below, was progressing.  They were 'testing' the ladder....on top of which they had positioned a handmade wooden ladder (half rotten and very weak)--- on the top rung of the aluminum ladder.  it didn't reach up quite high enough.  thank goodness.  They went with "Plan B"  (get it?  Plan BEE?) which was to climb up on the roof from the balcony and rip off the asbestos roof panels, smoke them out and pull the hive out by hand.   TJ's question about this plan:  "This sounds a bit....Dangerous."  The response?  "YES!  You can DIE doing this job!"  Lots of laughing and up they went.

"our" bees like to hang out in the fountain grass by the door (below).  there are thousands of them.  Removing the hives did not remove the bees and since our neighbors cut down a tree that had a huge hive in it as well, we also have their bees.  Our very sweet but very strange, crazy dog (who we believe thinks he is invisible) has been known to skip his dog-food and meat breakfast preferring instead to eat....guava, ferns, avocados and....bees.   He once vomited up a stomach-ful of....bees.  The bees are looking for a new home and we have had a few 'lockdown' days where every door and window is shut and no one is allowed out.

Back to the bee allergy.  It was a really scary day and very lucky.  Our housekeeper, Obrin, is in her mid-20s and has somehow never been stung by a bee.  I was headed to school one day and she was stung on the face right when I was leaving.  we live 8 minutes from school.....I went there and back and by the time I returned, I could hardly even recognize her....she was swollen all over, breaking out in hives, having trouble breathing....all the classic symptoms of a severe allergic reaction.  

Lots of things fell into place for this to have a happy ending.  We had someone call ahead at the private clinic -- one of three private clinics in town that can take emergencies and deal with them.  How well they deal with emergencies can be debated all day but overall I am TOTALLY UNIMPRESSED.  First off, you have to go upstairs and wait in a queue and return with a receipt of payment before you can be treated and then you wait indefinitely.  (If you are to be admitted to the 'hospital' part of the clinic I think it's 5 million, cash, up front -- even if you show up at midnight with a seizing 4 year old which someone discovered one night a few years back)  

At any rate, she saw a Zambian doctor (which is important b/c her English is very limited) and had 2 Zambian nurses on duty.  They gave her a massive number of injections and observed her for an hour.  After an hour, they sent her home.  They gave her a weeks worth of allergy pills.  And that was it.  

I followed up with a few of our friends who are doctors (I like to keep a few in my pocket at all times!) and learned that without a bulletproof plan for 'next time' the outcome was not going to be good, especially given the severity of this reaction.  After many conversations, much research, we finally settled on a 'plan.'  Having an epi-pen on had turned out not to be practical -- they cost $800, last a year and there was a 3 week wait to get one.  As her employer I was happy to go this route but just having a pen isn't enough.  You have to use it properly, have it on you at all times, and replace it annually.  The pharmacist and I agreed that this would work but it wasn't sustainable.  They came up with a better solution; we put together an emergency kit (with hi-dose allergy drugs, written instructions and three ampules of adrenaline/epinephrine, the active ingredient in an epi-pen.  We live close to a clinic and hospital and they can administer the drug -- and know of her condition as long as she notifies the staff from time to time (when she takes the girls in for checkups/vaccines, etc.).  And while an epi-pen is a great solution (which still requires a clinic visit and emergency car) in a perfect world, there is no way she could afford an $800 pen. She CAN afford an ampule of adrenaline which contains 3 doses and which can be had with no wait from the chemist for $1. YES, $1.  Not only does this take the burden off of us (and any future employer), it puts her in charge of her health which is a good thing.  

The bees remain a problem....and more than a month later we still have a hole in our roof.  The pantry got a full makeover but....the bees returned to this same spot and also have a new hive at another spot on the roof.

The Buzz: Honey in Zambia. 

Zambia has fabulous honey and there is a small export business of honey/bee products from the miombo woodlands in the NW Province. Zambia honey even makes its way onto The Body Shop retail shelves! A group from Gonzaga University has an ongoing project which sprung up a few years back.  It's actually kind of funny the way it's marketed -- certified organic, blah de blah.  The reality is that the honey is harvested by a village cooperative which consists of guys climbing up trees in the woods.  

We have honey taste-tests and agree that 'house-honey' ranks high against the commercial product.  But if you want "Zambia Gold" you may be able to find it on the store shelves to do your own taste test.  

We TRIed!

Owen gets ready for his 200m swim

For the past 10 years (?) the American International School in Lusaka has held a community triathlon every April.  There are four 'levels' of competition: Sprint, Intermediate, Fun and Junior.  Racers compete for prizes and for our local teams it's a great opportunity to get some records under their belts and some race experience.  For the rest of us, it's a good challenge and heaps of fun.  The race had over 300 participants age 4 to 56, every-one finished (and a few had to scramble to fix flats and change tires and recruit swimmers (and borrow swim suits!) right before the race.  A majority (if not all?) of the “Overall Winners” for the 11U and 15U were girls/young women.  There two bike crashes at the bike finish lines (both grown ups) and zero medic response required for anyone -- not even skinned knees! 

SuperBoy was the family triathlete this weekend;  he was the youngest competitor in the American School's Community Intermediate Triathlon event.  He competed against a handful of kids in the 15&Under category and 30 adults 30-48 y.o.  The race consisted of 200m swim (in a 25m pool), a 6km bike ride on a seriously intense mountain bike trail, and a 2km run with a spectacular sprint to the finish. 

SuperBoy, aka #C240, started the swimming at Batch 22 in the center lane with 4 other racers (age 39-48). By race day he had acquired a huge fan club amongst the race organizers and all our friends from all of Lusaka’s schools, so he was off to a good start just by signing up!   

Some backstory......We had gone through the race course a few weeks before...he raced with Dad’s team and they went on a wild goose chase trying to find the route.  Later, he raced with Mom’s team on yet another (wrong) route.  Finally, after trying to drive the route in a 4WD three times, we finally decided we found the actual course route and #C240 biked the full course as a training session -- or at least what we hoped it was the course -- with a good friend and excellent athlete from the secondary school (his best bud’s big brother!).  The kids in fact fared much better than the truck for the training run, but a LandCruiser is never happier than when it gets a good workout, right?  It turns out it’s quite a handy thing to have a bumper (ahem, and someone to replace it and wash the car before Mr13socks got home from work.)

On race day Owen had a great swim - he swam breast stroke very beautifully.  

The transition from swimming to biking was assisted by dad and a handful of helpers, was photographed by mom and cheered on by brother.  Transitions are tricky -- have you ever tried to put on shoes and socks in a hurry when you are dripping wet?  

Owen reports that he took the bike route pretty easy and the fact that we had an overcast morning REALLY helped b/c it was high noon by the time he finished biking.  On the last 50m of the bike race he had a run-in with a giagantic flying beettle thing but otherwise the biking went well - the course wasn't crowded and he neither passed or got passed by any bikers which he was very proud of.

After a sip of juice and a few sour gummy bears, he took off his helmet and TOOK OFF for the run!  Everyone watching thought he twisted his ankle after about 50m or was tripped up by something but in fact, it was the SAME beetle from the biking that going after him and he had to do a quick evasive maneuver. He reported the run wasn't too tough and Owen finished strong, barely sweating in 43:18.  

High Fives at the finish line

WOW!  Today he's asking for one of us to go on a 6K run with him. Uh......sure.

Myself and Mr. ThirteenSocks were swimmers on two different Sprint Relay Teams:  Team Vector (Malaria Control Team) and the Greater Puget Sounders (Seattle-Lacy-Bothell/Anne-Beth-Terri).  We did not get to compete against eachother on race day (except for our times of course) but had a great time training with everyone at our school pool and the American School pool where many 50M all-out sprint races were won and lost with no awards or trophies, or tears.  Little13Socks did not sign up but only b/c he decided too late to register. He trained with us and not only mastered his age group’s 25 meter swim but also learned, through a beautiful thing we like to call YouTube how to swim BUTTERFLY.  Yes, he is 5 and wears size 2T swim trunks but he . can . swim . butterfly.  It’s more like fluttery-by but it’s still darn impressive.  

The Greater Puget Sounders (above) were exceedingly happy with our time (1:07) and proud that we did it and finished strong.....good thing b/c when Beth finished up her run, she grabbed a cold water and ran straight to her car with her family cheerleader to meet the rest of her gang to leave town for a weekend camping trip!  We didn't win any big trophies or set any records but we decided that the race was truly the icing on the cake and all the training was our real reward.  (The excellent time does earn us some bragging rights, doesn't it?)  Next year if we keep our same team together we will be in the 40-49 category instead of 16-39! This could be a good thing.  There's got to be some benefit to turning 40. (Age 16 to 39?? Who are they kidding, right?)  

Terri just moved back to Zambia 3 weeks ago and she had to jump right into training on a borrowed bike.  She was amazing!  And cute!  notice the pink nail polish to match her top?

The happiest runner in the world, Beth, had to figure out how to ONLY run 4k.  10k more her distance.

and me....race ready?

PATH's Team Vector (Todd, John and Msinide) made excellent time (1:00.44) and won first place for the Corporate Team Award which is a speed -per-kilometer race between the all the Sprint and Intermediate teams.  Most years an Intermediate team wins so it’s a real accomplishment that they won in this category racing the sprint distance.  WAY TO GO TEAM VECTOR!  They get to have their names engraved on a special plaque and they can post the plaque in their office until next year.   Awwwwww.  Next year I promise to make them Team Vector Shirts.

Overall, a great day!  We’re all ready to start training for next year!

Some more Race Day pictures:

 

Friendly? Fun? Non-Competitive? Yes, until you are the middle-aged pot-bellied guy and a 12 year old secondary school cross-country record-holder is trying to pass you in the last 200m.  The big guy won but I think it's gonna take him about 3 weeks to recover.  CE on the other hand was still pretty fresh (but frustrated at being elbowed out at the finish line?)

Below, Todd's race had an interesting start, the swimmers matched up well, but after 100M things fell apart for everyone else but TJ hung on and easily crushed his heat. Even better, he beat his best swim time by 30 seconds and did flip turns at every turn.  Nice.

Above, the gang, post race. They are already thinking about their soccer game tomorrow.

 Below, Team Sandbloom. This family is going to need a trophy room for all the prizes won and records broken. All three kids competed in multiple races; Dad's team set a new record which should stand a LONG time Incredible!