Training complete! Results are in the mail...

Yesterday Grant and I finished our wilderness first aid training. At the end of the day we did a couple scenarios where the patients had make-up on to make the trauma and drama more real. I volunteered to be one of the 5 patients for the very last scenario, wondering if I would be able to keep in my role. So, imagine that you and 4 friends are on a climbing trip. You’re hiking down a trail and you’re looking for a good place to stop for lunch. Your leader says, “hey, look up there, I bet there’s a good view!” and so the group starts to climb up a steep hill to the view when all of a sudden you lose your grip, you’re falling in a rock slide, maybe 20 feet down. So there were 5 of us who got hurt. I had life threatening bleeding and a broken left arm plus a bump on my head. Another person had life threatening bleeding on his shoulder. The third person was unconscious with blood dripping out his ears. The fourth person had minor cuts but was freaking out and tried to get all the rescuers’ attention on her. The fifth person, the leader, was refusing treatment because he was feeling guilty about what happened to his friends. There were about 15 rescuers practicing on the 5 different people. I was found on my side, blood going down my shirt into the grass. My rescuers, noticing that I had bleeding, gently rolled me to my back so they could inspect it. Once they got to skin, they saw the red tape and knew it was life threatening bleeding. Elevation and compression followed. In real life I was laying under a road/bridge/overpass that was leading up to the golden gate bridge. It was about 4:30pm and the ground was damp. In real life I was getting cold and starting to shiver. This was beautiful because for the scenario, they thought I was going into shock. In real life, I always have problems with my hands getting too cold, turning white, getting tingly, then numb. We think I have Raynaud’s Syndrom. This worked well for the scenario again, because my hands were actually losing color, so they thought I was having a circulatory problem. Then when my fingers actually went numb (on both sides, not just the broken arm side), they thought I had a spinal injury. I really had my rescuers working on me! Add in some tears because it was easy to cry with so many emotions in the area anyways, and we had a pretty intense scenario. The training was a lot of fun. There was so much information thrown at us that I know I won’t remember everything, but with my patient assessment check-off list and my little blue book of wilderness first aid, I feel much more confident taking teens out into the woods who have never been. Not that I ever want to use any of my training on them! Now I have to wait for my test results to know if I'm actually certified for wilderness first aid. The test had some tricks to it.

Hello, my name is Robin. I’ve been through 8 hours of wilderness first aid training.

It looks like you may be injured, would you like me to help you? And then it goes into the ABCDE’s, the vital signs, the SAMPLE questions, and so on… Tomorrow we attend the next 8 hours of this course and then I will be Wilderness First Aid certified for the next 3 years. Hopefully I’ll remember all of this stuff when I need it! My hope is to be comfortable taking my high school students on camping and backpacking trips in the future. Like probably this spring after the rain is done. Today was a long day with much information thrown at us. Tomorrow when I take the written test, we’ll see how much of it stuck to me. There were many times that we got to pretend and practice on other people in the class. That was a lot of fun and definitely helped with the learning. All of the talk about injuries was going good until the instructor pulled out the pictures of an angulated fracture of a forearm. Then she had this prop where a blue glove was taped to a duck tape coil about 20” long in such a way that she could bend it and talk about how you would bend it back into place to splint it and evacuate the patient. All of this was after we talked about the damage a broken femur can do to your leg and how to traction it. So my calm went away and that acute stress reaction kicked in, which for me in nausea and the beginnings of a faint. Luckily we were going into a scenario, so when the instructor said, “the patient needs to lie on their side,” I was more than happy to. In other news… CAC sold almost 200 candygrams this past week with a profit of about $160. We deliver the candygrams on Monday at the end of the day. We stayed at school pretty late on Friday to put them all together and organize them by teacher. We’ll probably do another fundraiser at Christmas, Valentine’s Day and then before either Prom or Graduation. Grant is under the weather. I hope he feels better soon!

Getting a Good Deal

Contract Issues The teachers in Oakland have been without a contract for more than the time I’ve been teaching here (so more than 14 months). It has to do with the school district being bankrupt and taken over by a state administrator and the tension that that has caused everyone. Today, is good Berkeley/SF/Oakland style, there was a protest after school during the time that staff usually have meetings. I actually first heard about the protest from a woman at my church wanting everyone to go to the rally and sign a paper in support of the teachers. (I love my progressive politically active church!) Keep in mind that our district is HUGE with like 6 high school campuses, each with 1500+ students. It is easy to feel a big disconnect between the district administration and your own school site. So when OEA (union) notes come along, I usually don’t pay too much attention, I just try to focus on my students in the here and now. Alright, so here is how it affected me today… I’m part of a 5 member advisory committee that creates the lesson plans for the school’s advisory class. Today was to be our presentation of the lessons for the next 8 weeks. We had our presentation broken up among the committee members. Then the announcement of the protest came. Then the announcement that 2 of our members would be going along with ¾ of the teaching staff. I didn’t go because I was working in my room with my girls and the candygrams for CAC. The principal walks by to go to the meeting, “it’s time for the meeting Ms. Kinney.” I walk in and it turns out that we’re going to present anyways, even with the members and the staff missing. I’m unprepared to do the parts that are not mine. Just about all of the questions get focused on me because I talked more than my other committee partner. I’m on the hot seat. I’m embarrassed by our poor performance and a little ticked that the committee members bailed on me. Grrr. The worst part is the fact that we’ll have to do the presentation again because the entire staff needs to see it so they can actually do it in their advisory class next week!! Highlights **The CAC candygrams has surpassed the $100 gross mark… about $70 net, so far. Two days left to sell these things! **Today we experienced weather!! Our first day of RAIN!! Thank you God! Not as many kids skipped school today as I thought would. **Homecoming on Friday—should be fun if there is no rain (or not too heavy). **Wilderness First Aid Class this weekend, then I can officially go backpacking with the BAWT gear.

New Blog

Hey all, I just started a blog on Xanga. I like it because of the subscription thing that lets you "subscribe" to others' blogs and get email updates. I also like that you can read friends of friends blogs instead of randomly getting a blog or relying on people to put links on their page. So, here it is if you want to check it out... www.xanga.com/rkinney

Updates

End of Weekend Anxiety It's that time of the weekend again, sitting on Sunday night in front of my computer, gradebook is updated, lesson plans are almost done, and I have not gotten nearly as much done for this week as I wanted to. And I am worried about it. This happens every week. Do I have enough to make it through Monday? Pretty sure. Tuesday? Yes for Algebra 1 only. The other two, Intermediate Algebra and Geometry, will have to wait until my prep period tomorrow and Monday night after Wesely. On a more positive note, the weekend was a good one. Here's the run down... Friday: "Date Night" Not really. We didn't do anything that special. We went out to this hole in the wall turned jewel of a restuarant that specializes in vegetarian and seafood chinese food. Yummy. We got the "dinner for 2" and had a ton of food to take home. Afterwards we walked to a coffee shop that I drive by everyday on the way home from school to check it out. I had fun finding the hidden plugs in the plants and hanging down the walls. We were the only table that forgot to bring a laptop with them for the free wi-fi. Saturday We parted ways for a few hours. Grant joined the Cal Sailing Club and had his first lesson. I went to church to sing. The choir directors are really music professionals with lots of cool connections and they put together a music workshop day. The morning was spent singing together and the afternoon had workshops on circle singing, African dancing, percussion, voice technique, and music theory. I only stayed until lunch and then I met up with Grant at a park near the Berkeley Marina to help clean BAWT gear. (BAWT = Bay Area Wilderness Training- an organization that trains adults to take kids on backpacking trips and then allows them to rent the gear for free). We saw two people from our WLT trip in June. It was fun to be outside putting up tents, looking for damage, making sure everything was numbered then take them down. Later, was a movie. Yeah for Elephant Pharmacy $1 DVD rentals. Sunday Jenn and Craig take II Friends of ours at church got married in CT in August (that’s where they are from) but today they reaffirmed their vows during the worship service and had a special lunch party afterwards. It was great. They both wore their wedding outfits and we had a bunch of visitors to service. Afterwards Grant and I took a short drive to part of Oakland we’d never been to before to see if we would like to move there. PSR housing is really not up to code. And if there were ever an earthquake strong enough, this building would fall off its foundation. More about that another time. That brings us to Sunday Lesson Planning... yuck.

Updates

Fine Line Today a student's parents sent a cousin (adult) to check up on the student's report card with the teachers. I tired to be as accurate as possible with what was going on with that student in my classroom. But no matter what I said, the cousin seemed to twist it and blow it way out of proportion, making the student sound horrible, when really this student is among my brightest and favorites. After the mini-conference, the student was obviously very upset and so was I at the response of the cousin. I was worried about what the cousin would say to the parents and the effect that would have on the student so I told the student that I would call home after school to talk directly to the parents to try to clear things up. I started the conversation with "I talked to the cousin and I think she got the wrong impression, she seemed to blow things way out of proportion" but no luck. All I got in return is some, "I don't know what you do but you teachers should..." crap. The mom was just about the same as the cousin. Hard tones. Almost shouting at me that I should have called earlier if there were any problems. But I did call! She says, "You didn't talk to no one in this house about [student]!" Oh, I keep records! And I could hear in the background the dad sheepishly said, "I did talk to her." I get so frustrated with parents. There is just no telling what they will do or how they will react. There are some parents that you have to complain and complain for them to even lift a brow towards the child and their behavior and then there are parents like today who will make their children suffer. I guess this is why I have great thoughts of calling parents during the school day but when I get home to actually call, I sit around doing other things, not wanting to ruin my mood with parents' issues. Other School News I found out at the staff meeting today that I am not going to teach tomorrow. I'm glad someone told me the news! I'm going to spend the day with 3 other staff members planing the advisory curriculum for the next several months. It is a mixed blessing. On one hand, a neighbor teacher said I should take a sick day since I've been feeling tired and run down lately (not entirely caused by school). On the other hand, 4 of my classes were supposed to have a test on Friday, 2 of the classes still will, the other 2 (the geo's) will be postponed. Old Testament Grant's bible class is having a huge history test tomorrow so he is busy with our neighbor, Judith, studying away. It is rare that I see him study so much at night. If fact it is often very hard for me to see the work that he does. This makes both of us frustrated. To the Alma Alumni You would all be so proud of me. Just last week a fellow teacher and I started the Castle Adventure Club. (castle is for castlemont, the high school I work at). Our first project is a fundraiser: Halloween CandyGrams. I'm not sure what the first trip will be. A walk in the park? Indoor climbing? Golden Gate Bridge? Mt. Tam? We'll see.

Biking (Mountain definition)

The word "mountain" has turned more into a regional homograph as we have learned more about living in Berkeley and so close to the Berkeley Hills and Marin County. (Homograph= two words with the same spelling but different meanings). We thought... Marin County- the home of mountain biking- it'll be great! (For those of you new to SF geography, Marin County is part of the "North Bay" region. It is the county north of the Golden Gate Bridge and across the bay from Berkeley/Richmond/Oakland/East Bay areas. I suppose in the baby days of mountain biking, the art of throwing yourself down a hill, on a bike, as if trying out for a "yahoo" drink commercial was created. Thus there has been this fear built up in loud mouth day hikers (who seek political action) of getting run down by an out of control mountain biker who neglected to call out prior to passing. And that brings us to the depressing state of our regional parks where all of the boring "road" looking trails are open to all and the more interesting single track trails are just for hiking and horses.

Now, when one enters the real mountains of our area, those of the Sierra Nevadas, a new perspective of mountain biking is formed... well at least on the Nevada side of the Tahoe Rim Trail. There mountain bikers and backpackers can co-exist. The trails are interesting and moderately challenging for a bike and you really are on a mountain! Thank goodness for Tahoe and the Sierra Nevadas. If we were stuck in CA without Lake Tahoe to go hiking around, mountains to go skiing among and the possibility of doing real mountain biking, we'd just about go crazy.

TRT Much needed rest day

It was hard to go to sleep last night because my legs were uncomfortable. But tiredness took over and I slept solid until 7am. We arose, continued our laundry and went down to the main building to officially check-in and pick up our resupply box which had the pancake mix in it.

So, The Echo Lakes Chalet is a green building that provides many services. They have a postoffice and small grocery store with great ice cream. They have boats, canoes, and kayaks for day rentals and they offer water taxi rides across the lake. Many hikers enjoy the water taxi because it saves you about 2-3 miles of walking along the lake, especially for day hikers that want to get to Desolation Wilderness quickly. It also services many of the cottages around the lake which do not have any road access. The chalet also has 8 chaletlees which are small cabins that each have their own kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom and a huge walk around porch to sit in the sun on. We got good at sitting that day. We planned for lunch to be deli sandwiches from the store, followed by ice cream. We sat and watched the fisherpeople.

Inside our cabin, we put two bar stools in the kitchen so we could sit as we made dinner and continued the laundry. Dinner was fabulous. A box of cheap red wine accompanied our veggie chili with pan fried corn bread (no oven) and fritos. We sat outside to eat and enjoyed the lake. We talked about coming back with Jen and Craig, two friend from church and PSR, or other friends from far away that might come visit us some day.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, 48 miles to the car. 4 days to go. We haven't been able to get an updated report about the snow. We don't know if it is safe to go across Dick's Pass yet. If not, I hope that we are smart enough to turn around and come back. The climb will be steep, 1000 ft in 1 mile. Right now my body feels pretty good, the feet only hurt when I put on the shoes. I will have to tape up my blisters before will leave tomorrow.

The only bad thing so far about rest and resupply is that the pack gets heavier with the new food. We tried to pare down the extra food and mail it home. One more night in a bed and then it is back out into the wilderness.

TRT Day 5 Hell Day

We woke up at 6am and left our campsite by 7am. It really doesn't take an hour to pack but we lay in bed too long thinking about getting up before actually doing it. This was our earliest morning yet. We knew we had a really bug day and a great reward ahead of us. Thankfully, we had actually camped farther down the trail then we had thought, only 2 miles from the Big Meadows trailhead. We crossed Hwy 89 and continued for another mile or so for BF.

My spirits were way down after BF. I had a bad cliff bar (cookies and cream) and then my stomach just could not handle the oatmeal. My knees had been giving me trouble, even with the help of the hiking poles. The terrain was flat for once, but I just could not get going fast. Grant was somewhat annoyed with me. Frustration, pain, lack of energy caused me to through down my bag, take off my shoes, eat GORP, and start crying. (it is amazing, all these emotions and basically, I was just hungry). It is in these moments that Grant shows how amazing his love is. So patient and giving. He carried my backpack on his front for the next 30 mins on a very flat section of the Pacific Crest Trail (the TRT piggy-backs on the PCT for the west side of the lake)

We crossed many streams/headwaters of the Truckee River. There was no more taking off the shoes for the crossings, there were just so many of them that I just told myself that I was going to get wet and dirty... I would have a shower that night.

We ate lunch at Showers Lake, which really did sound like a shower because of the wind and the snow melt trickling down the rock walls which made a C shape around one side of the lake. This is where the trail started to get tricky...

Snow patches became more frequent. At times, the snow was so thick that we lost the trail. This is when your other senses come into play. Did you notice that there were signs on the trees? Did you notice that there seems to be rectangles carved out of the trees every now and then? Oh look, there, where the log has been cut. Look I see footprints. Plus we had the map and compass. We had steep downhills by a waterfall, a very serious steep snow crossing that ended with a "I just need to hold you, I am so glad that we didn't fall to our death" embrace. Bursts of energy came out of no where that kept us bookin' as fast as we could. We got real good at boot skiing.

As we got closer to the next trailhead, there were several trail crossings and signs that rallied us on. We came up on Echo Summit Trailhead to find a search and rescue squad in full force. They were organizing the troops of volunteers looking for a older mountain biker with some mental problems who had disappeared the previous day or so. We didn't ask anyone anything. We just used the outhouse, sat down on a rock, ate a snack and watched for a few moments. Only 1.5 miles to the Chalet. Can I say it again? Only 1.5 miles to a building where I can sleep in a bed, clean up, and rest for the next 24 hours.

At 8:15pm (after 13 hours on the trail) we landed at Echo Chalet. Showers, Dinner (the best quesadillas ever!), Washing ALL of our clothes, (which meant sleeping naked), Body Massages (and other activities) to Celebrate our HARDEST day on the trail.

TRT Day 4 Lakes and Meadows of Flowers

We got up and out by 8am, climbed up to monument pass and had BF at 9:15. I hate multi-grain mix. It is supposed to be full of great protein. I cannot eat it. It choke down a few bites. I ask Grant to please not make as much. I hate the stuff. We eat it every other day. The other days we eat old fashioned oatmeal. Just as disgusting and intolerable for me. Next trip I will be very clear about bringing my own instant oatmeal!

We arrived at Star Lake at 12:05, right on schedule for a lunch by a lake. Whenever we can pair water filtering with a meal, we gain a little time. The lake was beautiful with Job's Sister in the background.

After lunch we walked to Armstrong Pass, about 5 miles, where Grant tells me that his hope is that we make another 10 miles before bed. It is already 4:30 pm. (quick calculation- we'd been going about 2 miles per hour, so 5 more miles of hiking? We obviously didn't make it)

Today we reached the highest point on the trail, about 10000 feet at Freel Peak. We also walked through some of the prettiest meadows and wildflowers.

I'm tired of being dirty. It has been 5 days since the last shower and real bathroom. I'm tired of my legs and feet hurting. I needed better shoes before the trip. Time ran out for shopping and I thought these would do. I now have a twin blister in the inside of my other heal.

Tomorrow we really have to push it, because tomorrow night we sleep in a bed!