The Grateful Brain (thank you Kickstarter surge!)

Just thanks.

I woke up this morning, after sleeping less than 5 hours, wanting to write you again.
Paddling as fast as I can, 18 to 20 hours a day, I am still not quite keeping up with all the timely suggestions, offers of help, and messages of support.  While I've been told to expect the Kickstarter momentum to drop off after the first 3 days, it seems to be still going.  Yes, please, more!

Thank you all for the tremendous outpouring of support for our new book.

I've received some of the nicest compliments on Facebook, email, and all the websites from old friends, new friends, and perfect strangers.  The folks who bookmarked our Kickstarter profile a year or more ago have been scooping up the early bird rewards faster than I can get the announcements out to the rest of our audience.   We're starting to get visitors from the "popular" and "trending" listings on Kickstarter.

As each step gets done, and the project begins to move forward on its own, I felt a sense of release. The "weight being lifted" metaphor is trite and true.  It's like pushing your arms against the sides of a doorway for a long time, then stepping forward and trying to relax.  (Try it!)  It's like a glowing retinal after-image of self-imposed anxiety, where there is this momentary, fading awareness, along with the opening look new things as it fades.

Since the launch, it's gone from a floating open feeling, to a profound sense of support.
You have my back.  You care.
Thank you.
I'm deeply grateful, and it's highly motivating.

This is a wonderful feeling, and pure self-interest has me wondering what else I can do to keep it coming. 

This is probably the single most valuable thing I can offer, more so than any physical help or technical information.

If you want to know more about the power of gratitude, read this article: The Grateful Brain.  It offers scientific evidence that gratitude is not just an altruistic or pleasant feeling; it is a functional anti-depressant, and a literally and physically empowering state of mind.  Science once again 'discovers' and proves out what traditional wisdom has been saying for millenia.



It's like human nature is wired so that when we help each other, giving and reciprocating favors, making gratuitous acts of kindness and decency, we become more powerful and determined in our own work.  Fear and anger make us weak, while feeling grateful and supported literally makes us strong.  I learned this from a behavioral psychologist and Marine veteran at the Center for the Intrepid; if you dismiss this as woo-woo, you are missing the boat.
Seeing our book take off is a little like seeing Ernie walk again without crutches after 8 years. 

So I want to share with you the most valuable lessons I took from watching the IDEO program, and Ernie's cohort of courageous survivors pushing through setbacks to rebuild their lives and physical grace:
Gratitude.  Vitamin D.  Give back. And never give up.

Ernie escaping into the wild

(See previous posts about the IDEO program)

Your tremendous support doesn't mean we are going to just coast from here.
On the contrary, our gratitude is going to intrinsically push us to do more and better things.  Can't help it.  It's our biological nature. ;-)

Your support doesn't mean that we are going to coast from here.

We have a commitment from a world-class publisher for the overseas English version of the book - which means we'll be able to offer better shipping rates or even a whole different package for our international supporters.  And we'll be scrambling to make sure the data is correct and relevant for those regions.  If you're in the EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, or outside North America, let us know if you have any last-minute questions or input for that edition.  International supporters might want stick with the digital Kickstarter rewards for now, and keep your eyes peeled for announcements.

Many, many possibilities are unfolding. We're more than halfway to our minimum goal, and I am preparing to post the first stretch goal.

Chime in on what you'd like to see! This grateful feeling has me itching to give back in more ways.

I know many of you share our commitment to building stronger, more resilient communities; empowering people to get their hands dirty and build skills and problem-solving competency; and taking one bite at a time out of the "elephant" of global problems.  (Thanks for that metaphor, Deston!).

Aligning our individual projects and efforts makes a bigger contribution to solving global problems.  Your wishes are very good indicators of how we can give better service, and make a difference.

So please keep the comments coming.  What is one more thing I might be able to offer you - or your friends and family, or your community?



Thanks again for reading these updates.

May your dreams prosper as you share them with others, and may your earnest service bring unlooked-for blessings.

Yours,

Erica W


If you haven't yet found the Kickstarter to place your pre-order, click on this link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rmhbuildersguide/the-rocket-mass-heater-builders-guide

If you're not getting our newsletter, email me.  questions@ernieanderica.com

I have one list for general interest (like this blog), and one that's specifically for dedicated rocket mass heater and wood/fire/masonry enthusiasts.  I sometimes put out special offers there, like in-kind collaborations, beta-testing, or draft resources for review, that I don't release to the general public.


For those outside the USA, please read the FAQ for alternatives to costly international shipping.  This thorough book is, understandably, somewhat heavy (it's 296+ pages, including the appendices and index).


Or you could sign up as a booster, like many of the rocket-stove regional leaders are doing.  Uncle Mud is currently "winning" at booster referrals (go Chris!).  International customers may be able to pay back your physical book/shipping by encouraging your friends and neighbors to chip in at some of the digital rewards levels.  (Kind of a pyramid scheme, I guess - but we only have four weeks left, it's not like we can reach every person in the world without your help.)

Thanks, Teresa, for the word for "Natural alignment" marketing.  The idea is that if we can count on our readers who naturally care about us and our work, to share this info thoughtfully with others who will naturally appreciate it, then everybody has fun.  It's a lot less annoying (and more effective) than bulk marketing. 

I have been getting cold-calls, emails, and Kickstarter messages offering to Tweet my stuff to Over a Million Subscribers for only $14.95! But if I don't have any relationship with those people or know what they like, what good would that do our reputation?  And how many of them would really like or support our work, compared to the ones that have a negative reaction to us as are another annoying ad?  I assume that our actual friends who actually use Twitter are actually re-tweeting (I have to go do a Tweet myself, haven't touched my account in way too long).  And I'd rather rest on natural appeal than scuzzy marketing.

I would love your comments about clever twists on our natural appeal.  Anyone who has visited us or our clients, and melted into a rocket sofa, knows why this is cool.  But according to xkcd, there are something like 10,000 new Americans every day who are learning something for the first time that "everybody knows."


I'd love your ideas for how to present our work in ways that appeal to those thousands of people, for whom this is a brand-new discovery.

It would be really crappy statistics to extrapolate that we should reach over a quarter-million people in the next 28 days, but heck, let's go for it!

Let us know if you have ideas for more digital rewards that would be especially useful - for international work, for friends, would you like a special home-schooling package? 

You know our work is much broader (and stranger) than this book alone.  and our digital rewards can reflect that.

It's an honor and a pleasure to work with my wonderful clients and supporters.

You rock.

Equinox: Sun and Cellulitis

Equinox is here, and things hang in the balance.
This week is a great time to re-orient yourself to the cardinal directions and priorities.

Amazing print done with a pinhole camera in Tijeras,
showing sun angles from summer solstice (high arc)
to winter solstice (bottom arc). From NOAA, 3/22/2015:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/abq/?n=clifeatures_summersolstice

For us, most projects are on hold due to Ernie being laid up with a cellulitis infection in his bum leg. Instead of chopping firewood, he gets twice-daily IV antibiotics. We hope for improvement in the next few days, but nothing's certain.

This sort of setback always makes me reflective. Am I staying tuned to what's important, or just reacting to what feels most urgent? (More on that below).

I wanted to put out this update today, somewhat urgently, because I think passive solar is very cool, and it's important, and it's easy to neglect planning for it until it's too late.  This (the week of spring equinox) is is a good week to take some relevant observations.

You can do a lot of fancy math to figure out the optimal sun angles and thermal mass to match your heat loads.  This site has a pretty great library of resources: http://www.builditsolar.com.

However, nothing beats direct observation, and now is one of the key times to observe.

A solid equinox sun-path, and a second one (sun and moon) from close to the solstice, can let you skip a lot of the maths and work directly from your site data.

 You don't want to stare at the sun directly, but watch how the shadows or sunny patch moves along the ground and floor and other objects.  A vertical stick, or an angle wedge like the dial on a sundial, will make a shadow you can trace.  If you already have a building, just watch the sunny patch from a window as it moves across the walls and floor.

I made this papercut to watch its shadow trace the sun's path.

If you are modifying a building, adding a sunroom or whatever, you might rough in a frame and hang up some cardboard to represent the future walls and roof, so you can trace the patch from the future windows.

(The full moon is roughly opposite the sun, so a summer-solstice full moon traces a similar path through the sky as the winter sun. 
You can double-check it six months later if time allows.  Since most people only get a few solstices to observe while planning a building, and some of them might be cloudy, it pays to double up at each opportunity.  The Stonehenge builders sank dozens of log post markers before placing the permanent stones. )

At equinox, March 21/Sept. 21, the sun rises due east and sets due west.  If you are not 100% sure of the N/S axis of your property, this is one way to find it (not counting nearby hills).

Equinox also marks the average day length and sun angles for every place on the planet.  Winter days will be shorter, summer days longer.

http://www.homeenergy.org/show/article/nav/remodeling/id/1298

Summer sun rises higher in the sky and traces a longer path.  The winter sun takes a shortcut, low across the sky. Shadows are longer in winter, and sunbeams slant almost horizontally.

In the northern hemisphere, the summer sun rises north of true East, circles clockwise across the southern sky, and sets north of true west. The winter sun makes a shorter arc, from southeast to southwest, staying lower in the sky.  

(In the Southern hemisphere, it's almost the same but swap the north and south directions: the sun still moves east to west, but counter-clockwise.  Australian winter days are all north-oriented, summer days have a long SE to SW arc with a northern noon.)

In the equatorial regions, "summer" and "winter" may not mean much. Your temperatures stay closer to optimal year-round; tropical conditions warrant a separate discussion.

So in the temperate climates, where most people need heat:

We can orient windows and sunrooms to admit more light in winter, less in summer, which is exactly what we want in a temperate climate to offset our seasonal extremes. 

Sunroom: vertical windows let in more winter sun, less in summer

Skylight: lets in the most light, but more in summer and less in winter.

If you are setting up a greenhouse or attached sunroom, it really pays to think about your goals.
Good insulation, thermal mass, and passive-solar sun angles can help you create a more moderate environment (protected from overheating and from frost). 
Too much glass (not enough walls) can cause overheating in summer and heat loss in winter, but it does let in more light for plants.
Different plant species have different light requirements and tolerances for extreme temperatures, as do fish, poultry, and other common indoor-outdoor livestock.

The Bucket Test:

This week is a great time to get out in your sunroom with a bucket or chalk and see where the sun actually hits throughout the day. I like using a 5-gallon bucket because it's about the right height for a seating bench.  You want the winter sun to hit that vertical face for best heat collection. So you want to get the sides as well as the top of the bench into the sunny spot.

If you place thermal mass along the shady side of the sun/shade line, it will get some sun in winter, but none in spring or summer.

If you place it a few degrees to the sunny side of that line, it will get sun through about 3 seasons but not too much in summer.

You can also do this test with a camera – set up a tripod or put the camera on a ledge, and take a picture every 2 hours or so from sunrise to sunset. Makes a good record that won't get messed up as you build things.

Our clients in Chehalis are doing this in preparation for adding a rocket bench to an indoor/outdoor patio space.

Speaking of Chehalis, please check our schedule for upcoming workshops. We have two in Canada and three in the USA between now and June.  As a change of pace, we're throwing in some natural building and plasters as well as rocketry at the Ecological Living Summit in Montana.

http://www.ecolivingsummit.com

Please keep your fingers crossed that Ernie's infection will resolve quickly and he'll be released to fully enjoy these workshops.  Since his 2008 injury, we pretty much consider Ernie as a special volunteer, and any work he is able to do as a bonus.

We have delayed the Kickstarter launch for the Rocket Mass Heater Builder's Guide because of this situation and other reasons. Hoping the fallow time will turn out to serve its purpose, and there will be some benefits from it.  For example more and better connections to help us, and I can keep working on more rewards to offer as incentives once we do go live.

So if you'd like to help, and have good resources to spread the word, please remind me that you're interested. questions@ErnieAndErica.info

Yours,
Erica and Ernie

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

We are home.

Ernie walked down to his dad's house this morning.  Arrived with a shirt full of ground-fallen apples he collected on the way.  Like me, they marvel at seeing him strolling along, hands full of autumn bounty instead of crutches.  We had coffee and tea together, and gave them some pecans from Texas.

Still feeling grateful for all the people who've helped, shared the struggle, and otherwise been part of these amazing months full of hope, sweat, and grace.

Among the stories from our recent southern adventures that I haven't posted yet, Ernie competed in the Southwest Valor Games, and had the best time of the day in the 200-meter kayak race. 

The medalists in Ernie's class

Ernie circling back to cheer for his 2nd place competitor

They took lots of measurements of him walking in his old and new braces on Thursday.  Painful, but productive.  We're sort of hoping that the studies they're doing require calling him back for a follow-up, because it would be wonderful to see these folks again, and to cheer on the latest crop of intrepid participants on their road to recovery.

Pressure readings, timed measurements,
and some photo and video of the devices and his gait.

On Friday, coincidentally as a sort of graduation for us, they had a big patriotic event in San Marcos, with schoolkids, police and sherriffs' departments along with three biker clubs of veterans, and a big community-sponsored barbecue at a local airfield, following which they sent any willing wounded warriors up to skydive out of a small airplane.  Ernie liked it so much he sent me up for the final run of the day, too.

Ernie and Kimberly, and their tandem jumpers, going out to the plane.

The plane (flyby on its way to landing after a drop)

People landing who may even be Ernie and Jo

Erica, whole and grinning, back on the ground

Person landing who is very likely Erica

I don't know if you'll be able to view the video above, but it shows Ernie paddling like mad in one of the kayaks.  He's hoping to keep competing, and I am looking forward to being out on the water more as he practices.

For my next trick, though, it's past time to get our Builder's Guide out on the market.  I'm uploading the draft files to Scubbly.com, and recruiting people to help spread the word as soon as I get our Kickstarter approved for launch.  Apparently these things go better if you pre-sell a bunch before the Kickstarter... and I'm not sure if I can promote or organize that heavily without delaying the Kickstarter itself. 

First step is to vacuum the sand out of our good camera, and/or find a local videographer, and get the campaign application finalized and submitted.  While it's processing sounds like the best time to add frosting, pre-sell, or other hoopla.

Anyone eager to fill the role of videographer, and maybe gets some gorgeous fall footage of the Okanogan in the process?

Much love, and many thanks,
Erica and Ernie

IDEO in action

Ernie's first flight without crutches or wheelchair, returning to San Antonio for the final few weeks of training and fitting with his new IDEO brace.

Kayaks for practice

On the San Antonio at moonrise

Erica trying a racing kayak (tippy!)

Paddling in the sun

Ernie's getting comfortable in the racing kayak

Olympic kayaker Ben Kvanli lives in San Marcos (where the weather is suitable for boating all year round).  On Mondays he helps out at the Center for the Intrepid, coaching injured service members and veterans on kayaks and float-boards in their little swimming pool.    On Thursdays he invites veterans and a whole flotilla of experienced paddlers along on various river paddling trips - from shooting man-made rapids to exploring big broad reaches like this one near Austin.

Ben's back yard drops off to a convenient landing on the San Marcos river.  Ben's in-laws live in the area too. His lovely wife teaches third grade, and they are getting ready to start a family.  (Seems kind of like an alternate-universe version of what our life might have been like, except for them being very different people and very much themselves. Despite our lovely experiences here, I don't see Arctic Ernie voluntarily moving to Texas full-time.)

If we do "make it" back to where Ernie has the luxury of boating on a daily basis, we also hope to give back like they do.  I'd love to have weekly outings where kids, families, veterans, people of all kind can come together on the water.

If working with earth is "grounding," playing in the water seems to help get things flowing again.  Issues work themselves out - trust, confidence, body movement.  You start to regain a sense of rhythm, balance, and choice.  Staying balanced above your boat is a matter of constant adjustment, which soon becomes unconscious.

Yulia, my adventure buddy
(second time in a kayak, ever - first time solo.  Brave girl.)

(Watching my adventure-buddy Yulia learning to handle her boat solo reminded me that it's definitely an acquired art!  The first few times for anyone, you're usually nervous, which means most people tense up awkwardly, which of course means you have more difficulty balancing and tend to over-compensate with jerky movements.  The water will teach you fairly quickly just how useless such anxiety really is.  The more you tense up, the worse things go.  The more you relax, and learn to make smooth, powerful gestures in tune with your surroundings, the more freedom and success you experience.  Julia is a fast learner, and is starting to smile as we poke around and explore the river.) 

Once you can trust your balance and your boat, it's hard to beat the feeling of being buoyed up and supported, and the freedom and speed of gliding along as fast as you care to go.   Even if you stop paddling, the boat keeps going - there's a relationship, an elasticity, between the effort you put in and the return that rewards you.

Wading birds don't leave a river
just because it is full of plastic trash...
it's not like they can go to the fish market instead.

Our landing zone, and more lush greenery

We saw fishing birds, heard something (bats?) overhead going under the bridge decks.  I paddled along with Yulia for a while, then she and her husband Jon had some quality time while I poked around looking for wildlife.   Ernie and Ben had started chatting while they paddled and just glided off into the distance, easily leaving the rest of us behind.

It reminded me how far I've come from some of the early adventures with the Portland skin-on-frame crowd.  During one trip on the Willamette, our boat-provider started racing upstream with some of the other guys, and I felt like I was being left behind and tried to keep up.  For half-a-dozen strokes I was gaining speed and almost keeping up, and then I dumped the boat as hard as I've ever dumped a boat.  I got out, found my paddle, and got one arm around the partially-swamped boat and started towing it toward the nearest dock, which happened to be the OMSI one by the submarine.  The last little paddler in the group followed me, not sure what she could do to help (being even less experienced in water rescue than I was).  I was almost all the way to the dock before the speedy guys up ahead noticed that we were not following, and eventually came back over to see if we were OK.  Ernie was not along on that trip, since he'd already dumped the boat they had for him a couple of times starting out, and it just wasn't working well enough to be worth struggling with.  Those kinds of experiences tended to make me feel like I was not doing so well - and I definitely did not feel like I could trust or count on the more advanced paddlers in that particular group.

But in Texas, I was reminded that struggling to keep up with experienced whitewater and blue-water (open ocean) kayakers is pretty intensive training.  I started out by just asking for the open boats (the ones that you can't get stuck in if you flip them, recommended for novices), because I have never learned to Eskimo-roll, and I've always thought that was a prerequisite to being a "real" kayaker.
On the second trip out, Ben needed to swap an over-ambitious veteran into an easier boat, and asked Ernie if he thought I could handle being in a closed boat.  Ernie replied "sure," and seemed to think I could handle most any boat he had available.  By the end of our time together, I tried one of the racing kayaks, and seemed impressed when I handled it without dumping even once.  Apparently, dumping your boat is a normal part of learning to kayak.

The occasional bath doesn't seem to bother Ernie, or stop him from training, except that he gets frustrated if he can't help dumping the boat when he's trying to practice something else.  The IDEO doesn't fit in the boats, so it's all dependent on his ability to compensate and balance for that injured leg.  And whether he's wet or dry certainly doesn't affect my respect for Ernie's athletic abilities. 

I still think I should try to learn eskimo-rolls at some point, and I am still intimidated by them. (I never did learn to swim fast enough for crawl-stroke breathing to work out for me; I have a hard time trusting myself enough to perform precision maneuvers underwater that have to be completed before I can breathe again.) But as long as I get to keep my head above water while I swim, or stay on top of the boat, I'm having fun.

I tend not to want to stop when we're out here on the water.  Eventually you might get hungry, but we usually grab some drinks and snacks on the way out, and stay perfectly content for as long as the day may last.

IDEO progress

Ernie's new brace

 So this is what Ernie's new brace looks like.
He is not only walking without crutches after 8 years on them .... he is having important quality-of-life experiences like putting dishes away, taking out the trash, carrying food and coffee around.  (And other fun stuff, below.)

There's still a lot of leg-elevation time between activities. Swelling, dings and dents, etc. 

Ernie says everybody has seen him sitting around with his leg up, so here are some pictures of the fun stuff we've enjoyed over the past month.

This visiting therapy dog,
I'm told, is a Great Pyranees. 
Is this what they all look like in Texas? 
You'd have to see a highland Great Pyranees,
in all its wooly glory,
to fully appreciate the amount of shedding implied.

Here's a breed standard Great Pyranees,
still not as shaggy as the Highland working dogs I've seen.

This is what cows look like in Texas.

Ernie's second kayak outing

Erica trying the climbing tower as well.

Challenge course climbing - the knee
still doesn't bend as much as he'd like,
but that doesn't stop him.

Top of the climbing tower: nice view.

Zipline.  Just because.

Exploring Mission San Jose over the weekend.

We'll be going almost straight from here to Missoula, MT for the Innovators' Gathering.  There's one ticket left as of yesterday. 

I'll post more pictures of the 1700's Mission architecture we explored over the weekend, along with a longer video, next post.

-Erica and Ernie

Ernie walking, video

Ernie walking around and enjoying one of the restored walls in the Mission San Jose.  It may not load fast for those of us with mountain-grown Internet, but here's a short video.

A new IDEO

Picture: inside Ernie's lower leg:

Just returned from a trip to San Antonio to check out a new type of leg brace for Ernie.

As most readers know, Ernie was hit by a car in 2006, and has mostly been on crutches since then.  The damage was considerable (a compound crush injury at about 40 mph), and most of the expected healing has already happened. Latest X-rays show more bone healing, but Ernie still has shards of fused bone from the original accident and new growth, and very painful sensations of movement in the break area.  Problems with pain, mobility, and circulation continue, and in some cases have worsened despite ongoing care.

The leg brace he currently uses allows him to walk and weight-bear with only one crutch, meaning he can carry a cup of coffee or do some mobile work.  But the brace is designed to support by compression, meaning it cuts off circulation return from his leg.  Circulation return is already not great; further restrictions cause a lot of pain, and a buildup of blood and fluid below the brace cuff.  This limits the useful hours in the current brace to one or two a day, with several hours of foot elevation for recovery.  And there are certain things he just can't do easily in the brace, like rotate his foot into the passenger seat of a car.  This brace is a pretty standard approach for an injury like Ernie's, with instability in both ankle and knee.
 

current brace-
exterior carbon-fiber
cut back from skin graft.

Current brace-
interior side cut back (bone spurs).

Current brace
(Laces up like a corset.)

Mock-up for new brace:
hinged top allows easier entry and removal,
plus more rigid, firm-tissue support. 
Clear plastic behind contoured wings
will be replaced with carbon-fiber flex rods.

The new type of brace is designed for athletic movement; it's extensively used in the Return to Run program for active service members rehabilitating with a brace or prosthetic.  The IDEO uses carbon-fiber elements to provide some spring function, which can be tailored to specific activities like walking and running, cycling, or rowing. They offload the weight using molded supports fitting around hard tissue near the knee, with better results for circulation and force transfer.  Similar to how a prosthetic attaches to an amputated limb.
The foot-plate is full length, limiting kneeling postures, but that hasn't been an option for Ernie for years anyway.

IDEO w/ clip-on knee support
( from ncojournal.dodlive.mil)

Above, Ernie is trying on a thermal-plastic mock up.  The actual brace will look more like this:

IDEO brace
ncojournal.dodlive.mil

Fitting the template.

The Center for the Intrepid, which produces these braces and a number of excellent prosthetics, is impressive.  Nice facility, super-dedicated staff, participants who like Ernie are basically unstoppable (not immortal, just don't see any excuse to quit).  Many return to active service with their new limbs or braces.  For the past year the center has also been helping service veterans for whom this technology was not available at the time of their injury.

The CFI serves a lot of people any given week, usually over 100, with multiple appointments for each.  Most fittings and adjustments are done during morning and afternoon walk-in hours, where the head prosthetist and several assistants work with anyone whose brace needs adjustment.  We  met a Road to Recovery cyclist trying out a cycling-adapted IDEO brace, some guys who'd cracked theirs over the weekend playing soccer on a basketball court, and other folks getting specific adjustments for fit, stability, hot spots, and other issues.  Every brace is custom-fit and altered as needed to fit the particular injury and range of desired motion.  Most participants leave with their custom brace and a duplicate, so that broken braces can be sent back for repairs without interrupting normal activity.

The VA is picking up most of the medical costs, and the CFI coordinator helped us connect with the Fisher House and the Bob Woodruff Foundation to alleviate some of the other costs of the trip.  Both are good places to donate frequent-flyer miles if you have some that might expire.

We experienced warm welcome for veterans and military families everywhere we went locally.  Lots of very young, very athletic service members keeping their chins up as they adapt to a new range of activity.  We met some folks at the Fisher House whose family were in the BAMC's world-class burn ward as well.  Not what you'd prefer to have in common with people, a life-altering injury and all the uncertainties that go with recovery, but heartwarming to have the mutual support.
 

(The Fisher House we stayed in looks much like this, only with white columns.)

Lizard with a pink throat.
Anole?

Flowering tree- crepe myrtle?

The BAMC Fisher House dorm mother decided Ernie is her "Crocodile Dundee."  (Was it the all-weather Dorfman hat, the fishing vest with pockets upon pockets, or the stubbly chin?)

While we did not manage to cook up a lizard on a stick for her during this visit, we enjoyed exploring the Southern flora and fauna between appointments.

 This is just what we saw between the CFI and hospital on a daily basis.  There are a lot of other on-campus gardens, the river walk, and the historic Mission Trail to explore on our next visit.

Mystery bird -
acts & sounds kinda like a crow or jay,
size between the two, black/brown feathers.

 No matter how pretty, however, we're just as happy to be home for a few weeks before returning to start the training and customization process.   Ernie doesn't care for the muggy heat, but it beats being on fire, and also beats slick ice when you're learning a whole new range of motion.

We are looking forward to seeing what these guys can do for / with Ernie.  It does not sound like they are going to be satisfied with "better" if they can achieve "good" or "excellent."  And they have a whole bank of Ernie's favorite type of rowing machines.

both Ernie and the cats are glad he's home.