![Image](https://i.imgur.com/FNTUnYa.png)
# WINS
My partner took me to her favorite burrito spot in New Mexico. The burrito was HALF fresh roasted hatch green chili salsa. I am a burrito and taco connoisseur. This burrito was close to a religious experience. My mouth burned for an hour afterwards. I have had Southwest burritos with various sauces before, but this was next level and hot peppers and Mexican style food is one of the main goals this year.
On my way back from New Mexico I stopped by Petrified Forest NP. I did 3 back country runs to see some rarely seen things for a total of 20 km. Another perk of having a running base is watching tourists stick to paved paths in a conga line of tourism while I am down in the canyon finding petroglyphs and other cool rocks.
Staying with @AxelHeyst for a few days was really fun. There was a straight line down a vegetated mountain side that was hard to reconcile with the topography. @AH named it "The Anomaly". We did a scouting trip and used my binoculars to see if we could come with any hypotheses. Rocks? Animals? Dirtbikes? The next day we hiked over and up the steep slope gathering evidence as we went. The rockfall hypothesis was starting to gain the most evidence. When we made it to the top we pushed large boulders down. Sure enough, one of them broke up after hitting another one and followed the line almost perfectly. SCIENCE! The other cool aspect was there were lupines growing only in the large compacted parts after recent boulder falls in the past few years.
# IMPROVEMENTS /INSPIRATIONS
We have the remote work in the van dialed in and after trying the Starlink out at fort dirtbag, that is a game changer for remote work.
I ran into JB on my local trail run getting after it. She is 85, just had knee surgery, and is out hiking to get back in shape for a long ebike trip in the coming weeks. She said she needed to "get her licks in while she still could as she did not have that many more to get." A lesson for us all.
# NEW DIRECTIONS
@AH recorded the podcast. This had the unexpected personal benefit of resolving some dissonance around what I plan to share on the forum. As a specific example, I would like to share more of the bushcraft illustrations I have completed, but I was unsure whether I wanted to keep those for my other projects. Now I can just reformat and share them as research notes for those zine projects. I also feel relieved to not have to think about or have spend additional time editing for "anonymous purposes".
# DRAWING
Various stats.
I subscribe to a number of artist newsletters. One recent artist that does amazing watercolor work came to the conclusion that they wanted their business to stay really small. They had made a large plan of how to grow and grow and grow the print/book business. However, after reading through some of the Journals/interviews with Peterson Field Guide Illustrator, he deeply regretted all the time he put into doing only art that paid him (the field guide books). I will take this wisdom from both as I work on my own stuff. This cements the idea that art for it's own sake is fine enough and incidental income is the ideal.
# OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
Various stats.
I got in some excellent desert runs in New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California this month.
I ran up into the high elevation Pecos Wilderness to fly fish some of the small trout streams up there that have Native Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout subspecies. No luck as it was still spring runoff. The area I chose based on map and satellite recon was a complete bushwhack struggle through thick willows to find small fishable runs. The willows are harder to tell from the satellite images... the map is not the territory... I look forward to coming back when conditions are better. That entire area is extremely pretty.
I listened to a Climbing Gold podcast where they interviewed Bill Ramsey. He is a philosophy prof and badass climber that is still cranking hard (5.14) in his 60's. I met Bill at Red River Gorge in the mid 2000's while belaying next to him. We had a lot of time to chat as our respective partners projected these roof routes next to one another. Really smart and thoughtful guy. He has this training idea of the pain box that he describes in the podcast episode. You can either put in the training pain (left) or deal with the under-performance pain (shame, right). Either way is pain. haha. That podcast is worth a listen.
# WORK
Finishing up a press release and various associated documents. A fun thing to learn.
The graduate student that I was mentoring finished their project and graduated. We are still putting in some final tweaks to the paper (dissertation chapter) that we worked on based on committee feedback.
4/4 Blog posts highlighting the science zines. I will try to maintain a weekly post from here on out.
# SOCIAL
We went to 2 weddings to bookend the month.
I volunteered for a gravel bike race and my partner participated. The volunteer coordinator knew I was into various suffer-festing so she sent me out alone to the most remote part of the course to run one of the timing stations. When I volunteered I planned to just sketch the entire time for a few hours and get an afternoon workout in. However, that station was an all day one as the difference between top racers and struggle bus racers was like 4 hours. haha. I also brought a small jam box and cow bell. The station was at the top of a hill so I put on some Old School hip-hop and danced for 4 hours ringing the cowbell instead of running. Many of the racers seemed to appreciate it. It was great to see my partner in the top 20 ladies.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)