The post Back into the backyard wild appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Like most parents, March likes the idea of his kids, ages 7 and 9, getting out to play in the neighborhood. And like most parents, he has his reservations about letting a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old roam too far. If they could only play outside, but close to home, he thought. The answer came to him when he read a post on this blog in May: “Recreational paradise … in your own backyard.” The post was based on a story in the New York Times about UCLA’s CLEF project. The Center on Everyday Lives of Families was created in the wake of September 11 to take an in-depth look at the lives of middle class Americans. Among their findings: Our houses are crammed with stuff, save for our yards, which go virtually unused. That post and a subsequent one looked at turning your backyard into the aforementioned recreational paradise. March wrote asking for advice. He was particularly intrigued by climbing holds we had anchored onto the supports of our second-floor deck. “I’d like to do a climbing wall or climbing net but I’m not sure how I could do it.”

GGNC’s Recreational Consulting Team decided to pay a visit. As we pulled into the March neighborhood, it was immediately apparent that this would either be a piece of cake or we would keep on driving and pretend we couldn’t find their place. Half the houses “I hope their house backs up to the forest,” my stepson/creative assistant Ben observed.

Fortunately, it did.

The March home is ideally situated. It’s on a relatively small lot, good for minimizing maintenance. And it backs up to a heavily-wooded greenspace that screams “play in me!”

“Do your kids bike?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “On the sidewalks, in the neighborhood..”

I laid out my plan for an off-road trail network that would wind through this backyard forest dominated by young pines. With a rake and a shovel (and perhaps a mattock to remove stubborn rocks and the occasional root) I described how he could create a short, fun trail network that would let his kids ride their bikes in the much more entertaining woods, sans car traffic. We even discussed throwing in minor obstacles, such as a log stack or a low-lying skinny.

“I like that,” he said.

March had already been busy in the forest. Two hammocks were strung between pine trunks, there was a new chin-up bar and a tire swing that had met with mixed reviews. “It tends to be more of a spinning device than a swing,” he said. A tetherball pole had gone over well until it wobbled itself out of the ground.

Still, he was taken by the idea of a climbing set-up.

“What about a low-ropes course?” Ben suggested. He went on to describe a low-lying — about a foot off the ground — web of cargo netting and cable that the kids could climb on jungle gym style.

“Is there a playground supply store around here where I could get some cargo net?” March wanted to know.

“You’re probably better off finding it on the internet,” Ben said, noting that it would likely be much less expensive.

We turned our attention to the deck off the back of the March home. Their house is built on a slope, a slope dropping significantly from the street to the back property line. Thus, while the deck comes off the main level, it’s a significant drop to the ground — too significant to anchor climbing holds to the supports like we’ve done at our house. At our place, if you drop, you fall a little more than a foot. Here, you’d be looking at a three-foot fall, four if you’re a typical 7-year-old.

I noticed Ben checking out the substantial corner support system, which consisted of braced 6-by-6 support posts about four feet across.

“Plywood?” I asked.

Indeed, the two sides could be covered with half-inch plywood six- to eight feet up the supports. Climbing holds could then be anchored into the plywood, which is how it’s done at many neighborhood climbing gyms. March was intrigued by the idea, but it was tempered by that tell-tale look of reservation at the prospect of tacking up plywood to the outside of your house.

“It could be done very creatively,” I said. “You could paint the plywood, and the holds come in some pretty cool shapes and colors.”

We kicked around some more ideas, but it was 100 degrees in the shade (literally) and March seemed content — for now — with the trail, the low ropes course and the climbing wall. He’d have his hands full, his weekends accounted for, for a little while. He seemed genuinely motivated to turn his sedate suburban backyard into an outdoor playground. Still, we weren’t about to let him off the hook.

“Sound good?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I think we’ve come up with some good ideas here.”

“Great,” I said. “We’ll be back in a couple months to see how you’ve done.”

We’ll report back in a couple months to see how March has done.

* * *

Resources
Intrigued by the notion of building a low ropes course, a climbing wall or a mountain bike trail in your own backyard? Below are some online resources that will provide direction. Obligatory warning: Any of the following projects can result in injury if not executed properly. If you don’t know a shovel from a saw, find someone who does and can do the job for you.

Climbing wall. Even if you aren’t a DIYer, the Instructables web site is great browsing. Here, you can find out how to build an incredible array of … stuff, including a climbing wall. The site has several tutorials. Your best bet is visit the site, then type “build your own climbing wall” into the search engine. You’ll not only learn how to make a wall, you can learn how to make your own holds.

Mountain bike trail. A general Google search on “build your own mountain bike trail” will turn up pages of DIY sites. If you want to do it right, though, we suggested you consult the folks who set the standard for fun and enviro-friendly mountain bike trail: the International Mountain Bicycling Association. Go here and learn everything from blazing a simple trail to building a ladder bridge.

Low ropes course. Perhaps because of the liability factor, you won’t find quite as many sites with directions for building your own ropes course. One that shows you some of the more popular elements of a low ropes course is the AdventureSmith site. Check it out here.

Photo: Spence March with his tire swing. And bird house.

The post DIY: Planning a backyard rec room appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

OK, to be fair, that pool you see was already there, as was the teak lutyens bench to the farther corner of the pool. We lucked into a house with a small backyard pool that we have made good use of. The kids use it to whip themselves into an early bedtime, my wife swims laps in it, and I use it for 15 minutes a day to tread water. Actually, it’s more than just treading water: it’s 15 minutes a day of weightless physical meditation that does as much for my mind as it does for my body.

What’s new in the past two weeks is the climbing wall, which isn’t so much a climbing wall as it is a kind of rock climber’s monkey bars. Ever since we moved in, the kids and I have been looking for ways in incorporate a climbing structure into the house. They saw the two-story chimney as a natural; I saw it as a series of lawsuits stemming from my long history of not being able to drill and install firm anchors into mortar. Instead, we settled on the underside of our second floor deck, where a series of 2 x 8 supports and end beams seemed to offer a multitude of low-climbing (and thus, low-falling) options.

The easy part was finding the climbing holds. If you’ve been to a climbing gym, you know that climbing holds come in all kinds of shapes (some whimsical)  and sizes (some requiring the finger strength of a Vulcan Nerve Pinch). At our neighborhood REI, I scored a set of 5 Metolius Drips Holds for $34.95. It’s a good starter set because, as prefabricated climbing holds go, these are big and easy. As our under-deck climbing gym blossoms, perhaps we’ll add a Vulcan Nerve Pinch or two.

The not-so-easy part was the installation. We were planning to anchor our holds into the 2 x 8s, but the hex bolts that came with the holds were only two inches long, long enough to anchor through a 3/4-inch sheet of plywood, the typical surface of a home climbing gym, but not long enough for our 2-inch-thick (1 1/2-inch in reality; a quirk of the lumber industry). We concocted a variety of schemes that involved building out a thin plywood fascia around the lower deck, schemes that all would have been laborious and all in violation of numerous local homeowner covenants. Then a friend said we just buy longer bolts.

So now we have the beginnings of our under-deck climbing gym. As funds allow, we’ll add holds (including some of those itty crimpers) which will allow us to work our upper bodies, especially our  fingers, our hands, our forearms. The best thing: Most of these climbing workouts will be impromptu. Come back from a trip to the store — drop the groceries and climb for 10 minutes (5 if there’s ice cream). Head out to water the flowers, work in a 15-minute routine. Need to blow off some steam? Twenty minutes under the deck oughta do it.

It’s the best kind of workout: one you don’t even know what you’re doing.

* * *

So far, our backyard playground is coming together cheap. To date, it includes a pool (included in the cost of the house) and climbing wall ($34.95 for the holds, another $9.95 for anchor bolts and nuts). As we contemplate our next move, we want to hear yours. Tell us how you’re turning your under utilized backyard into your personal rec zone.

The post Climbing the walls of our backyard playground appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

I was reminded of my cul-de-sac-as-adventure-park youth Sunday by a New York Times story on UCLA’s CLEF project. The Center on Everyday Lives of Families was created in the wake of September 11 to take an in-depth look at the lives of middle class Americans. Researchers, in the form of graduate students in the school’s Department of Anthropology, spent nine years following 32 dual wage-earner families in the Los Angeles area to document and analyze a dizzying array of family life, from how chores are divvied up to how our rampant consumerism has created a critical storage crisis for most families. (American families, with 3 percent of the world’s children, own 40 percent of the world’s toys; Among other things, that means the family car(s) has been kicked out of the garage to make way for a plethora of playthings.)

The study finding that caught my eye — and prompted my frolic down memory lane — was this: Despite the fact our houses are crammed with stuff, we spend virtually no time in the least cluttered are of our domicile: The yard.

This doesn’t come as a complete shock. Previous studies have documented our growing reluctance to go outdoors, especially to let our kids go out unchaperoned.

A movement to convince kids — and parents more so — that it’s OK to go outside was spawned by Richard Louv’s 2006 bestseller, “Last Child in the Woods.”

What’s curious is that we have the antidote to our ailment literally in our own backyards.

Parents are reluctant to let their kids venture from the neighborhood for reasons real (inattentive drivers who make base jumping seem safe compared to crossing the street) and perceived (an increase in crimes against children, dubbed by Louv as the “Bogeyman syndrome” and debunked in the book “Damned Lies and Statistics“). And yet we have these backyard playgrounds that we rarely set foot in. Concludes the study: “Very few families put these spaces to much use … other than for viewing pleasure.”

Indulge me and go back 45 years to South Boston Court, in what was then an emerging suburb of southeast Denver. Here’s why we never needed to leave the block (although we frequently did):

• The Stoffels two-car garage. One late fall day in 1963 I heard a rhythmic thumping coming from a house up the street that had just sold. I walked up the street to discover Mike, Steve and Dave in the garage, playing basketball. Granted, the indoor hoop was only six feet off the ground, but we were barely four. For a couple years, at least, it was our sports sanctuary when the weather was bad.
• Cul-de-sac Athletic Park. Our 10-house block culminated in a cul-de-sac, a dead-end for cars, a perfect arena for baseball and kickball contests. With a streetlight at the end, night games were as common as day.
• Tightrope walking. Most of the fences in our neighborhood were a little over three feet high, made of wood and were topped by a tempting two-by-four. Instant tightrope.
• Hide-’n’-seek. In a paper addressing “Changing American home life: trends in domestic leisure and storage among middle-class families,” CLEF reports that, “During the early 1900s, new fence laws had the dramatic effect of making front yards for the first time into open, parklike spaces; in essence, a street became bordered by a long and uninterrupted expanse of yard.” Homeowners suddenly felt that their portion of this “uninterrupted expanse” had to be picture perfect: “Lawns are evaluated by passersby from the sidewalk or street, translating into an unending series of judgments about each household’s standing.” But to the neighborhood kids, these “parklike spaces” were just that, parks to be played in. We often extended that interpretation to the neighbors’ backyards as well, making for intriguing games of hide-’n’-seek.
• Sledding (a couple houses had sloping front yards), trampoline (the Stoffels again — what great friends they were), tackle football (what else to do on a level street with curbs for sidelines and driveways for end zones?) intricate bike routes (sidewalks, driveways, front porches to bunnyhop on my Stingray — our block had it all.

And, in all likelihood, so does yours. Just your backyard, that vastly underutilized space that we only view from our cramped and cluttered indoors, holds untold recreational opportunities. All you have to do is take a minute to seek them out — which is your homework for next week.

Go out, explore your grounds. Keep an open mind, think about what you like to do, think about how you might be able to make that happen in your yard. We here at GetGoingNC will do the same. Let’s reconvene next week in this space and share what we came up with.

I wonder if the neighborhood covenants say anything about zip lines …

Photo: These guys have a pump track in their backyard.

The post Recreational paradise … in your own backyard? appeared first on GetGoing NC!.