Chad-o-matic

Valentine from Nimue

2012-02-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

Nimue currently likes acrostic poems, as evidenced by the Valentine booklet she made for me and Chad. I'm almighty; chad is divine. I'm not sure who came out ahead...

Godzilla vs. Mission Santa Ines

2012-02-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

At school, I was assigned a project on building a model of one of the Spanish California missions. Since I was already doing a report on Mission Santa Ines, which is near Santa Barbara, I did the model on it, too. Although it took half our time and made me feel like it would never end, making it was fun, and it turned out great, too!
I think that this was an awesome, totally fun project even though Ma thought it took too much time!

Mud

2012-02-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Despite the lack of rain, Chad managed to find mud on his mountain bike ride the other evening and came home speckled. You don't even want to know what the bike looks like...

Sleepover

2012-02-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

It's always a good sign when both kids at a sleepover show up in matching pajamas. Nimue pointed out that they are all set up for both "Twin Day" and "Pajama Day" at school.

More complicated than it should be

2012-02-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

Compulsive tapping at the computer required at 8:00 am this morning.

Every year, Sarah's Mountain View Mom Mafia organizes several local group camping trips. We usually catch a couple of them -- especially the one the last weekend of summer before school starts. It can be a lot of fun. The kids more or less form a feral pack and run around in the woods; adults only intervene if they do something extra-foolish like all trooping off into the woods in the dark for an off-trail night-time puma hunt.

Of course, this works best if we all have sites close together, and given that we are near a large urban area, summer weekends at nearby campgrounds are always full. Online reservations open on the first of the month at 8:00 am, six months ahead of time. That means that if one wants to go camping in August, one had to do it this morning(!) to be assured of getting the correct spot.

Various members of the group are uber-organized, so the process is highly honed. Here's how it goes:

1. Six and a half months ahead of time, someone decides on a campground, usually with a tent-only loop (no noisy RV's!), and sends an email with the proposed loop and dates to the group.

2. People decide on target sites that they will try to reserve, so that we aren't all directly competing with each other in step 5.

3. A Google Doc is set up with all nearby sites and who wants what.

4. Reminders get sent out

5. We all compulsively log in at 10 minutes to 8, fill in the reservation form, and stare at the computer with glazed eyes until it is exactly 8:00, and click "Reserve Site". (Keep in mind that for those of us in Sunnyvale, this is right when we also need to take kids to school.)

6. Wait for the overloaded server to respond, with caffeine from morning coffee coursing through veins. Watch the pretty blue lines blink across the screen, hoping it doesn't mess up...

7. By 8:10 the spreadsheet is all filled up with everyone's confirmations of sites. Also filled with gratuitous comments about how annoying Step 6 was.

8. Closer to the actual weekend, emails again fly to organize one big joint meal, and the same spreadsheet is used to coordinate who brings what.

What happened to the good old days when you could just roll up to the campground and pretty much always get a site?

It's only going to get worse if/when all of the slated park closures due to the woeful state of the California budget start to kick in.

On the bright side, since I took this task, Chad and Nimue got a little extra bonding time this morning, as he had to take her to school. They had to drive (gasp!) , as she had a large foam core model of Mission Santa Ines that she made to go with her mission report that she didn't want damaged.

Something awry with the weather

2012-01-31T17:05:00.000-08:00

The weather is still weird. Warm, sunny, no rain here, and no snow in the mountains, so no skiing. Boo. Perhaps the most telling statistic is the record cycling month I've had, with 648 miles. Chad's had comparably many; Nimue's put in 236. In January. January, I say, not June. Most peculiar.

Tree Carnage Again

2012-01-27T14:15:00.000-08:00

The most difficult thing about pruning the bits of Allergenic Enemy Tree hanging over our fence from the neighbor's yard is knowing when to stop. Really, all I set out to do was clear out one broken branch that was leaning on our phone line, but next thing I know, the sideyard is full of detritus, not just from that tree, but also from the next one over...

Touring Bike Action Magazine

2012-01-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

Over the recent three-day weekend, we briefly bemoaned the lack of snow for skiing this year, and then looked on the bright side and took advantage of the abundant California sunshine to take a bike trip down to Monterey. There is some motivation to work on the family bike trip logistics this year in order to prepare for this summer's grand adventure to France.

The tandem comes apart for easy transport :) We knew this, but had never tried it before. This time, we loaded up the bikes, drove to Chad's friend's house over in Scotts Valley, and rode to Monterey from there, giving us about 50 miles of rolling riding. (Given that it is still early season for biking, I didn't want to ride the 90 miles and one giant hill from home.)

Always bring the tiger. My rule is "Only one stuffie." Nimue's rule is "We have to take Tige!"

While riding on the tandem with Nim, silly conversations ensue. This time, given that we were riding through quite a bit of agricultural land, Nimue started the ongoing discussion of how there is a vast conspiracy to cover up the fact that cows are really plants. You see, in Nimue's world, the cows grow in plant pods and hatch as itty-bitty cat-sized cows, which are then collected up by the farmers before anyone can see them and put into warehouses. When one wants a big cow, an itty-bitty cow is fed radioactive hay and it balloons in size overnight and can be let out in the field where it then proceeds to act like a mammal (even though it's not). Therefore, your hamburger for dinner is really a vegetable.

One can while away hours on topics like these....

We stayed at a motel across the street from the beach in Monterey so Day 2 could contain leisurely enjoyment of the coast, to give the small one (and us!) a break. We took a small morning to ride over to Pacific Grove to see the migrating Monarch butterflies, which was a good excuse to stretch out our legs. And there were a couple of trees infested with butterflies, which was sort of interesting, plus there was a good cafe for breakfast on the way over.

Lots of good playing for the sand monster at the beach. Though she looks cute, in this picture you see Godzilla, after she has rebuilt and destroyed Sand Tokyo for the umpteenth time.

While Nimue played at the surf's edge and spun herself silly, a cold front came in and the temperature dropped 15 degrees.

The sun, however, continued, so we had a chilly, but gorgeous ride back to the car the next day. There's a nice bike trail along the coast for much of the route, followed by a detour around Elkhorn Slough, a trip through the agricultural land looking for cow pods again, and the final climb up to the truck at the end of the day.

Chad took the voice recorder with us, and periodically interviewed Nimue for the fictitious "Touring Bike Action" magazine. A recurring theme in Nim's comments is hunger (kid must be fed copiously about every 10 miles). Here are her comments from the last bakery stop:

Nim played with Chad's friend's dog Mango while we got everything loaded back into the truck to head back to the land of homework once again.

Bootleg recordings

2012-01-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

Catching up this morning -- here are the files from Nim's concerts last month. Long files for doting grandparents...

her singing group, in two parts (I didn't bother to record the intervening stuff that the older kids' groups did without her group.) The first file is long, so give it a moment to load.

Cherry Chase Beginning Band. I trimmed this after Nim plays a short duet with one of her friends at minute 5:48, as the whole thing ran about 45 minutes.

Santa's Wishes

2011-12-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

This year, instead of giving Santa Claus milk and sugar cookies, like everyone else (we figure that he's pretty sick of all those sweet treats), we're going to give him whiskey and carrots (We are also probably going to include a carrot for each reindeer, just to be fair). Last year we also gave him carrots; though not the whiskey. Let's wish a merry, merry Christmas to all!

I CAN HAZ BREAKFAST!

2011-12-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

The Bobber (aka Pretzel, the fluffier/more OCD of our two cats) likes anything even slightly buttery... such as this morning's toast.

Is that TOAST I spy? With BUTTER!

Lucky for Nimue, I rescued it just before the cat actually got in a lick... but only just!

I CAN HAZ BREAKFAST!

Santa's Helper

2011-12-21T17:28:00.000-08:00

Nimue says Anna's new bike jersey makes her look like Santa... well, maybe a slightly demented, capon-weilding Santa's helper? You be the judge! And yes, that is really a capon. I always thought "capon" was just a renaissance term for chicken, but apparently capons are a bit bigger. Now we're thinking about recipes for a whole renaissance meal (but not for *this* Christmas; maybe next...)

Business Day Chaos

2011-12-15T14:54:00.000-08:00

Today was Business Day for the first trimester at our school, and I was selling Sweeping the Skies Kittens, their best friends (caterpillars), and broomsticks. I sold out (yay!), and I hope next Business Day will turn out as good as this one did.

The object of Business Day is to make a wonderful product (You need 20), make up a price under $2000 Charger Cash (The fake money the school uses for Business Day), make a poster, fill out the forms, and sell your product on the assigned day. Only the fourth-graders do it, and on Business Day, the fourth-grade rooms are chaos. It makes me tired just thinking about it!

Trials and Joys of Ma

2011-12-11T14:25:00.000-08:00

Decide for yourself which are trials and which are joys:

Still choosing a New Year's card picture, given Nimue's apparent desire to be Calvin. (Yes, ours are officially designated as New Year's cards rather than Christmas...)

Old commute bike suffered one too many broken parts.

New commute/adventure bike: the Salsa Vaya. The shop (Roaring Mouse) was nice enough to build up an orange frame with a triple for me, even though the orange one doesn't usually come with this gearing. This thing is awesome -- fun to ride on the road, while still quite capable on dirt singletrack. She likes climbing dirt roads best. And she is definitely a she, as well as being a big happy orange bunny rabbit of a bike.

Cherry Chase Band concert. Nim got to do a duet. (Concert recordings coming in a later post, so you too can enjoy.)

Malfunctioning flute discovered the afternoon of said concert.

Lots of singing, for both Ma and Nim. Nimue's group (Cantabile Youth Singers) is quite good, given the ages of the singers; mine (Stanford Early Music Singers) is the same as it has always been.

Invasion of the Grammas: Both Linda and my mom visited at the same time last week to see Nim's and my concerts.

Discovered a brand-new section of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, sort of by accident. Chad and I rode up Sierra Road in San Jose, with the notion of exploring side bits off of it, and found a beautiful new trail that wound its way back down to Alum Rock Park. Leaving your exact route open to serendipity has its rewards.

Mountain biking in the frost with my Frost.

Full moon hike up at Montebello Open Space Preserve last night. It was docent-led, but truly excellent to be allowed to hike to the top of Black Mountain in the dark, with views of the twinkling Bay Area lights spread out in front of us in one direction and moonlit hills rolling off toward the ocean in the other.

10-foot Christmas tree (labelled as a 7- to 8-footer) that had to be trimmed to fit in the living room. I put it up myself, with only minor help from Nimue. Now I'm in denial about her need to put up ornaments today.

We ate the photographic evidence

2011-11-24T21:03:00.001-08:00

2011 Thanksgiving menu:

Starters:
Caramelized onion tart
Goat cheese on crackers with pickled bay capers
Bacon, avocado, and cucumber sushi (Nimue's contribution)

Main Course of excess:
Rosemary-Juniper dry-rubbbed turkey with celery acorn stuffing
Roasted potatoes with bacon cream (adapted from Sunset)
Homemade dinner rolls (with recipe from my college friend Di)
Roasted cauliflower and kale with cilantro, cumin, and sesame (adapted from Sunset0
Roasted mixed veggies with balsamic glaze
Green beans and asparagus in tarragon white sauce
Cranberry-gin sauce (Sunset recipe)

I forgot to make the gravy. Ooops.

Dessert (all baked by Sarah)
Apple pie
Pumpkin pie
Chocolate pecan pie

Lots of good wine.

Hope you all enjoyed your dinner as much as we enjoyed ours. Happy Thanksgiving!

One of my pictures

2011-11-22T10:25:00.001-08:00

The local open space district used one of my photographs in their winter newsletter. It's the one of Ravenswood Open Space Preserve on page 6 at this link. Yay. Micro-fame.

Bay Nut Pinwheel Cookies

2011-11-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

I took a couple of native edibles workshops given by Jolie Egert of Go Wild Consulting in the last few months, and one of the more interesting things she had for us to sample was a surprising chocolate-like substance that was made from the seed of the fruit off of California Bay trees. There are LOTS of these trees around, so I devoted a mellow bike ride a couple of weeks ago to pick up roadside bay fruits for experimentation.

The fruit itself is pretty nasty (I tasted), but the nuts inside were what I was really after. After removing all the squishy bits, I tossed the nuts into the oven on a cookie sheet and started to roast them. After a few minutes, there was a bizarre noise -- the shells had started to crack and as a result, nuts were bouncing everywhere in the oven. I had to put a piece of foil on top to restrain the little buggers.

Fun toasty smells ensued. After about 30 minutes, I pulled them out and shelled them, as they had started to brown and I didn't want to overdo it. At this point, I sampled one of the darker ones. Mmmm. Interesting toasty, slightly bitter, nutty flavor with underlying complexity reminiscent of chocolate. Chopped up, these would make a nice garnish on a number of things.

Unfortunately, not all of them were quite as brown. I think on average they were under-roasted, but didn't realize this until after grinding them all up in the food processor into a paste and adding some powdered sugar and dry milk. The paste looked promising, but had a vile sort of sour, leafy aftertaste. What am I doing eating weird plants anyway????

What to do, what to do? Clearly there were some flavor components that should have been roasted all the way out, but weren't. I didn't want to toss the sludge into the oven at high temperature, lest I end up with a horrible burnt sugar mess, so I put in a pot on the stove on low heat, hoping that the weird flavor components would be volatile enough to come out with gentle heating. After half an hour, it was clear that this was improving things, but slowly.

I left the goo on low heat on the stove all day, occasionally stirring and tasting it, until the acidic aftertaste was gone. Yay. Another miraculous recovery. (So many things in our kitchen need magic recovery treatments...)

The resulting substance is interesting. Sort of nutty, sort of chocolatey, with a lot of underlying flavor complexity. It's gooey at just over room temperature, but completely solid at refrigerator temperature.

I took part of it and made pinwheel cookies, which all three of us like. Even the kid deems them yummy!

Bay Nut Pinwheel Cookies (base dough recipe from my friend Sarah)

whisk together
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda

beat on medium until fluffy and well blended
11 Tbs unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg

gradually beat in until well combined
3 oz cream cheese softened and cut into chunks
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp lemon zest

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until smooth. Divide dough in half.
Mix 4-6 oz sweetened bay nut goo into half of the dough (pick the amount that tastes good to you)

Refrigerate until slightly firm (1 hour). Roll out each half of the dough into a rectangle (very sticky, so do this between sheets of wax paper with a liberal dusting of flour), stack the rectangles, and roll them into a log. Roll the log up in wax paper twisting the ends.
Freeze for at least 3 hours (or up to a month)

To bake, place 1/8 inch thick slices on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 7-11 minutes until tinged with brown at the edges.

11/21/2011: a better roast on the next batch

Aaaagh!

2011-11-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

We just got our first Christmas card in the mail today. It's not even Thanksgiving! Of course, stores have had Christmas displays up for a month already, so no wonder people are confused.

Another fine mountain bike ride with Nim at Coe

2011-11-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

The excellent kid had a nice ride at Hunting Hollow again.

We liked the moss,

the water-droplet-covered tarantula,

and the fall colors!

Yosemite in pictures

2011-11-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

We took a quick trip up to Yosemite to make good use of the three-day weekend.

A bit of rain on Friday didn't stop the fun. It didn't help Nim keep her tongue in her mouth, either.

The rain in the valley did lead to a nice dusting of snow on Half Dome Saturday morning. We spent a cozy night in our tent cabin.

Nim thinks the shuttle bus is fun, despite the wait and the teeming hordes of others getting on at the same time.

Spectacular conditions for the hike up to Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls. Don't we look angelic?

Ice on the John Muir Trail, coming back down from Nevada Falls. At one point, a big bit of ice and snow slid shooting over the trail from above, down into the abyss below. Staying close to the rock face was definitely the best strategy.

Mist in the valley during our pre-brunch hike on Sunday.

Time to run back to the Ahwahnee for brunch. Mmmmm.

What Do I Have in My Pocketses

2011-11-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

When you're Ma, you end up with a lot of weird stuff crammed into pockets, bags, and otherwise affixed to the bicycle.

You can take a road ride with a stapler in your jersey pocket (needed for before-school garden club registration, on the way to to the ride)

Loose change found on the road: a no-brainer.

The occasional hammer, scissors, screwdriver, etc. that fall off of contractor trucks. I can't seem to pass these things up.

A gigantic Bowie knife (found on the edge of a very obscure road up on the ridge), complete with case (found 10 feet down same road) in your jersey pocket makes it feel distinctly like you're riding with a sword strapped to your back for the 35 miles it takes to get back home. Take that, vile automobiles! I don't even want to know what the other cyclist who passed me from behind just before I got home thought. (Note the ballpoint pen, for scale)

Many and varied groceries, musical instruments, sporting equipment, and other detritus of family life in the suburbs.

A 10 lb box of satsumas (on SALE!) balanced across the handlebars.

This morning was one of the weirder ones, though. Yesterday, when I was out on a road ride, I noticed a huge drop of good-sized acorns along side the road, and decided to return later to retrieve them. Necessary for Thanksgiving, don't you know? The experimental acorn bread made earlier in the year was good enough to warrant further experimentation, especially as those were the few puny acorns from the initial drop and not the bigger, less buggy, more numerous ones from the main October drop. I had spotted two corners that looked to be good collection sites, with lots of acorns, and some modicum of a safe place off the edge of the road for me to collect.

It was the mountain bike and a backpack for me this morning, as I thought it would be fun to ride the dirt along the train tracks on the way over to the collection site (and maybe there would be more acorns or other local feral delicacies to be had), instead of the commute bike with the large pannier bags.

Ooop. Always take the Big Bag.

I collected quite a few acorns from a spot along the railroad track dirt and put them in a plastic bag in the backpack, and then rode up the hill to the planned collection spot. I did stop at one additional unplanned spot and picked up some more, giving a total in the backpack of about 5 lb at this point. After a couple more corners, there was planned spot #1, aka the Mother Lode.

I nestled my bike in a pile of leaves on the side of the road where it was out of any possible traffic and yet wouldn't fall down into the creek, set the backpack down next to it, and pulled out a plastic Target bag to put the new acorns in, figuring I'd probably double what I already had, and bent over to start collecting. Then I just sat -- the acorns were so thick on the ground that all the bending over was clearly not the way to go. Cars whizzed by, bikes climbed slowly by, their riders giving me quizzical looks. I just kept picking up the nuts, which had pretty much paved the shoulder in a uniform, densely-packed layer of vegetable protein. Pick up acorns, scoot bottom over six inches, pick up more acorns, scoot again...

After a mere 10 minutes, I sat up to stretch, and the Target bag, now overfull, spilled a little. Hmmm. Said Target bag is actually bigger than the backpack, and the plastic is beginning to stretch, making the self-rending of said bag into a spiderweb of holes imminent. Uh Oh.

Acorns WON'T FIT into backpack.

But I'm not even done with this patch.

Plastic bag will BREAK if picked up off the ground.

Hmmm.

I filled up all my pockets in my clothing with as many as I could, but the remainder still would not fit into the backpack. But -- O Glorious Moment -- my emergency fabric bag that rolls up into its own pocket was in my vest pocket. I poured as many acorns into the backpack as I could, and the rest into the fabric bag, thinking that I could ride gently home with the bag hanging off my handlebars.

Now the bag-off-the-handlebar maneuver takes some skill, lest the bag start wobbling and run into the wheels. I'm reasonably well-practiced at this, due to the occasional optimistic miscalculation of volume of groceries purchased. In my less-practiced student days I accidentally sliced up a bag of peaches in my front spokes turning into the apartment driveway, but this never happens any more.

This time, however, it wasn't going to work. Too much weight in the bag and a curvy descent home. Plus there was so much weight in the backpack that my balance was all funny anyway.

Next thought: Balance bag on top of the handlebars.

No dice. Too floppy. I could, however, run the waist and sternum straps from the backpack through the bag's handles and sort of balance the bag on the top tube. Hard to pedal due to the fat bag of loot balanced at knee level, but the weight was at least centered on the bike and couldn't get stuck in the wheels.

I rode this way about halfway home (mostly downhill, aside from a minor climb that just seemed egregious), until I couldn't stand the awkward pedaling any more. Didn't want to damage a knee or a foot by pedaling with my knees pointed out at some goofy angle.

Ok, now what? I threaded the bag through the waist strap of the backpack so that it was hanging behind me instead of in front of me and cinched up the strap as tight as I could so that the bag wouldn't droop onto the back wheel. How much air do I have in the back shock anyway? Lots of weight pulling the strap back. Acorns trying to cut me in half with the strap. Ow Ow ow. But I could pedal.

Ow ow ow a few more miles home.

Tried to take backpack+bag off, got tangled, and fell over. How much does this thing weigh, anyway?

Answer: almost 50 lb. Which really isn't that much weight, had it been well distributed instead of dangling off at odd angles. If I had, say, taken the bike with the rack and big pannier bags. Hmpf.

Keep in mind that 45 lb of this was picked up in one spot in about 10 minutes. No wonder acorns were such a staple in the local diet for so long. Tasty, easy to gather, and plentiful.

Now all that remains (besides processing the acorns) is to decide whether to repeat the process tomorrow to harvest from the other site I had been aiming for, or whether perhaps we have enough...

Trust me, it's heavier than it looks.

Halloween in Pictures

2011-11-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

Halloween Preview

2011-10-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

Question: Why is Ma beheading a rubber chicken after dinner, even though she's tired from a ride with 7500 feet of climbing, including a substantial dirt section, earlier in the day?

Answer: Nimue is going to be a prairie girl who is making chicken for dinner for Halloween. Costume required for school parade and Fall Festival today. The cardboard cleaver, still to be made, is not needed for school event, since fake weapons are banned. We're sort of skimming the edge of the "No blood" rule (with her teacher's blessing).

Note: The decapitated chicken has been carefully engineered with magnets so the head can be detached and reattached.

There's an excellent demented juxtaposition of the cute and the macabre that seems to come in at this age.

My mom has peeps

2011-10-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

A quote in a email from my mother this week "Of course I'll have to run it by the appropriate peeps at work."

Not being of the young social-networking-addicted set myself, what I envision when I see "peeps" are these:

My mom had a great fondness for them, so Peeps always appeared in our Easter baskets as kids, regardless of how well we liked them or not in any given year.

Now she has a fondness for Facebook, and it appears to be affecting her slang vocabulary. One sort of expects this to happen with one's children, but clearly my mom is a special case :)

I've been chuckling all week.

Levi's Gran Fondo, Willow Creek dirt

2011-10-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

Just another little weekend ride -- this time Levi's Gran Fondo, up by Santa Rosa.

I could write about the crazy zoo on the road that comes from having a mass start of 7500 cyclists all at the same time.

Or the climb up King Ridge.

Or the cloud/rain we rode into, despite a clear forecast and balmy conditions at the start.

Or the treacherous steep slippery descent down to Hauser Bridge, only to find a bad crash at the bottom, and the subsequent subdued climb back into the fog.

Or the freezy windy lunch stop with supposed coastal views, or for that matter any views at all, entirely obscured by fog.

Or the glorious moment near Meyers Grade where the strip of bright light under the fog bank resolved itself into a view of the sea stacks in the ocean near Jenner.

But what I really enjoyed, and what set this ride apart from others this year, was Willow Creek Road. At about 70 miles in, we had the choice of continuing along Highway 1 into the headwind and coping with the still-teeming hordes of cyclists and the inevitable boneheaded jockeying for position that always occurs when there are that many people on the road, or turning inland onto Willow Creek Road for an advertised dirt road climb option. Needless to say, when everyone around us zoomed straight on up 1, we turned left.

Ah, bliss. It was quiet. It was protected from the wind. It was pretty. No one followed us. An oasis of calm in the middle of the crowded circus that is this type of ride. We rode along for a couple of miles on a flattish section for a few miles, watching the pavement degrade into dirt and dodging the occasional pit of deep gravel. Quiet. Warm. How could it be that we were riding in chilly windy fog surrounded by other riders with worrisome habits just half an hour ago?

Then things really got good. We went around a gate (meaning no cars for a few miles!) and started to climb. The road surface was fine for skinny tires, being well-packed gravel/dirt mixture, and the road climbed steadily, but not too steeply up. One could worry that we were on the wrong route, but for the bicycle tracks striping their way up ahead of us. Said bike tracks were quite handy at the one ambiguous unmarked intersection.

The road climbed quite predictably and steadily; I think it averaged somewhere between 5 and 6% overall, with only two short bits that were steep enough that one had to pay attention to traction. The road surface and gradient reminded me a lot of the Butano Fire Road down in our neck of the woods.

For a long time, the only people we saw were hikers -- it looked like there was a church group on an outing, and they were all quite friendly. At one point, a string of three boys about Nimue's age all held out their hands, wanting high-fives as we rode by. Of course we obliged, despite my vague wondering if I could climb on loose dirt with only one hand on the handlebars at 75 miles into the ride. (I can.)

We did, in the end, see about half a dozen other cyclists on the dirt climb, all of whom cheerily chatted for a moment as we passed. I think the cyclists prone to taking the wacky dirt option self-select to be a jolly bunch -- definitely none of the grim cyclist too busy training to acknowledge others' existence here! I talked to more people on this section than the entire rest of the ride. For that matter, in my experience, the smaller rides like the Summer Solstice ride out by Quincy or the Unknown Coast up by Eureka lead to more interactions between riders (at least more interactions than "On your left!") than some of the big mob scene rides that are more popular. Or maybe they just attract more of a touring crowd than a racing wanna-be crowd. At any rate, we liked the dirt section on this one :)

One other advantage of the dirt option was that it topped out and gave us a little descent to recover before joining back up with the main route, which at that point was in the middle of a big slog of a climb. There's definitely a psychological boost to being able to use momentum to slingshot up the top part of that hill past riders who were stuck in suffering mode. Past that point, all I had to do is follow Chad's (very fast) wheel to dinner at the end.

It had to be a record for a hilly century for me, at 7:08 moving time and 7:37 total. I've ridden a hundred miles faster, but only on pancake-flat roads. Being lazy for a couple of weeks ahead of time (I call it a recovery taper...), and having Chad's wheel to follow through the crazed beginning section was definitely helpful!

I should also mention that the support for this ride was above and beyond the norm. Big green arrows at all the intersections, so I couldn't possibly take a wrong turn, lots of good food (someone handed me a yummy roast beef sandwich as I rode up to the lunch stop, removing the need to even figure out where the food was), plenty of racks for bikes at the stops and well-organized volunteers to manage everything, giant delicious paella at the end.

The 95% of the riders who didn't do the dirt really missed out. Except perhaps Chad's buddy Randy, who didn't do the dirt, but by virtue of being long-time riding partner with the founder of Specialized, got to start up in the front with Levi and take advantage of the VIP dinner afterward. Though I guess that meant he missed out on the paella, so we still probably came out ahead on the enjoyment scale.

Scruffy us waiting for food.

New appliance

2011-09-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

Chad and I are happy to have a functional fridge in the kitchen again, finally. The small one is more excited about the box.

More Feral Food

2011-09-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

8:30am is clearly Turkey Time at Long Ridge this time of year -- the preserve was positively infested with them this morning when I went mountain biking. I don't know how to hunt them, and the preserves are off-limits for that sort of aggression anyway, but every time I came around a corner, there they were, gobbling away and making me hungry.

It's also acorn season. I finally got around to collecting some this year, after seeing a talk by Jolie Egert of Go Wild over at Hidden Villa. Right now, they are drying in the oven, filling the house with a sweet, nutty aroma. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of it all -- the first batch is some crummy small live oak acorns, which will probably be a pain in the butt to shell, but I have another batch of bigger ones too. I got to taste acorns in various stages of processing at the workshop, so am at least not flying totally blind on this one.

Please note that these acorns were collected along side the local roads, and not in the preserves, where collecting anything at all is forbidden. I probably looked like a complete goofball picking up orts from the side of the road in my bike helmet, with the bike leaned over against the bushes, but what else is new?

Feral Food

2011-09-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

I ran across a package of meat at Sprouts the other day that was too interesting to pass up:
It was the "From feral swine" part that got me -- it conjured up memories of herb-scented sun-baked late afternoon hillsides at Henry Coe State Park. These inevitably are haunted by boar if one waits until sunset.

But what does one do with ground up feral pig? My solution was meatballs.

Mix the meat with a slice's worth of ground up sourdough bread, a small chopped onion, a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh rosemary, and some salt and pepper. (Garlic would've been good too, but Nim can't eat it!) Make 2" meatballs.

Brown the meatballs in some olive oil on the stove, then pop them into the oven at 350 for 10 minutes to finish cooking. Pour off the excess oil, deglaze the delicious fond with red wine sludge, add a can of pureed plum tomatoes, season with italian herb seasoning and salt/pepper, and toss the whole mess over pasta. We had some leftover green beans too.

Mmmmmm. Tasty beasties. The meatballs were noticeably more flavorful than ones made with the usual supermarket meat selection. You just gotta love the weird meats case.

Silver lining pie

2011-09-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

One bright side of the fridge's demise is that I was forced to make a pie out of all the partial bags of berries that had been in the freezer. An arbitrary mixture of raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, and mixed berries took quite well to my mom's tried-and-true berry pie method of dumping flour and sugar into the berries in until it looks right, then dumping this filling dotted with butter in the old standard Betty Crocker oil crust, and baking at 425F until it smells good. Mmmmm. Fortunate friends got to come over and share it with us while we watched the replay of the day's Vuelta a Espana stage projected on a big sheet in the atrium.

Another bright side is the sheer quantity of bacon we've been consuming. Who knew there was so much squirreled away in the back of the freezer?

Stranger food in the coming days for us, as I work through the dregs.

Beware the Click

2011-09-09T10:48:00.001-07:00

I wake up in the middle of the night.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Hard to go back to sleep, waiting for the next click, and wondering what it really is.

Later in the week: stand in the kitchen.

Click.

Click.

Sounds like an electrical relay.

Is the stove still on? No.

Click.

Is the dishwasher drying? No.

Click.

Noise near espresso machine. Is the espresso machine plotting a nefarious explosive disaster? Unplug machine.

Click.

Listen near outlet.

Click.

Kill power to outlet.

Click.

Hmmm. Gotta be near it.

Aha! Click is loud and ear is right next to icemaker in the freezer. Icemaker likely to be dying due to ice cream and leftovers being shoved into ice bin. Awful side-by-side fridge/freezer that came with the house doesn't allow practical loading of freezer. Or the fridge.

Maybe fridge will die! Hate this fridge! Nothing ever fits!

Ooop. Attempt to atone to fridge gods for blasphemous thoughts by going grocery shopping.

Put groceries away. All seems well.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Decide to process leftover strawberries into popsicles an hour later. Open freezer to see if popsicle molds are in the door.

Whoosh! Flood! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaghh! Bag of frozen peas that would have been the usual object falling on my head upon opening the freezer instead goes splat onto my arm. Formerly frozen peas. Gross-O!

All ice cubes are now merely formerly frozen ice cubes. Thus the flood. Fridge/freezer has become stuffy cubical of warm air.

Click.

Click. Must be the relay for the now-known-to-be-broken compressor. Sadly, more fundamental than the icemaker.

Have an eighth of a grass-fed cow in the freezer (friend has ranch = we can buy good beef cheap). Don't want to lose a year's worth of moo meat. Argh!

Discover that Diddams is the local source for dry ice. Drive over to get it. Yuck. This part of town is easier to get to by bike but have large cooler and not much time. Beef temporarily rescued.

Realize kid has come home from school complaining about headache, sore neck, and having been hit in the head with soccer ball in PE. Assess for damage, administer sympathy. Fortunately, just sensitive kid.

Everything else into other cooler with ice packs.

Another mooshy bag thawed formerly frozen peas. Eeew. Not sure why this grosses me out so much. Peas not supposed to splat.

Hand kid half-full carton of ice cream and call it snack. Consternation! Apparently too gross to eat when molten. Hand kid glass full of melted popsicles; that deemed yummy.

Hop in the car and drop kid off at rehearsal, decide that ancient already-hated fridge of betrayal must go away rather than be repaired.

Drive all over creation at rush hour to get consumer reports from library and put eyeballs and fingers on all likely fridges while Nim is at rehearsal. Traffic. Bleah. Standard fridge configurations these days = double bleah. Bottom freezer models have morphed to a dumb freezer-is-drawer configuration that is just *asking* to be overloaded and then broken or jammed stuck upon closing.

Why no nice bottom-freezer fridge with an actual door and normal shelf? Need ability to put large awkward objects in. Multiple large awkward objects. Cookie sheets covered with strange delicate things. Culinary foibles live in my kitchen.

Chad locates friend with spare freezer capacity for temporary beef storage. Dinner ready when we get home. Yay spouse!

Appropriate small garage beer fridge for milk and veggies. Thank you spouse.

Drop off meat at friend fridge in the morning, look at top candidate fridges again. Chad's sharp eyes spy a decent bottom-freezer model from an older year with a door. Yaaaaaay spouse! It's on sale.

All is well?

No.

New fridge can't be delivered until 9/23. Everything backed up due to others' purchases at Labor Day sales. Argh.

Now apply patience for two weeks. Then all will be well.

First Day of School

2011-08-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

Fourth grade officially started today. I'm not sure exactly why Nim came home and painted "Mr. Squiggles", among other things, on her arm, but she seems cheery enough. Note the excellent tentacles on her fingers; she can animate Mr. Squiggles :)

I enjoyed the first day of freedom by riding over to the coast and back, up Old La Honda and Tunitas roads, racking up 70+ miles and a whole mess of climbing. What a great way to shed the mental detritus of summer!

I think I forgot a vacation...

2011-08-25T17:55:00.001-07:00

Assorted pictures from our trip to WA, complete with camping on the way up and back and a bike trip in the middle. Maybe there will be more later, once the dust has settled from the start of school.

Small Tent Monster of Doom at Valley of the Rogue State Park, OR, before she went and picked the morning blackberries. Food is always restorative.

Driving Murray, my dad's friendly lawn tractor

Many hours spent bouncing

Oooh, a mini bike tour from my brother's house back to my parents' place, the long way around Mt. Rainier

One of many beaches on our way back down the Oregon Coast.

Camping in a yurt at Bullard's Bar State Park in OR

Camping trip in pictures

2011-08-23T16:52:00.001-07:00

A good camping trip to Big Sur includes...

The beach

Kids tormenting adults; adults tormenting kids

Mountain biking on Old Coast Road (Nim even made it up the first climb, for a total of 700 feet elevation gain; Chad did a great out-and-back ride of the whole road with considerably more climbing)

The kids re-formed Camp Nitro, from last year. I particularly like the bark sign, inspired by the lack of paper.

And of course, marshmallows with good friends!

Overdue

2011-08-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

Bad habit: Every five years the siren song of the emergency room calls out, and I find myself heading in with some minor damage. Never anything truly threatening -- the sort of thing that requires a small amount of attention, the appropriate bandage and instructions to take ibuprofen until it feels better. Sort of the grown-up version of a band-aid and a kiss on the boo-boo.

Lately, I thought this trend was broken. It's been a whole eight years since the last incident (broken ankle coming down from Joe's claim). Maybe at 40, one grows out of this sort of nonsense, or has developed better woe-avoidance skills. It's certainly not that I stopped doing interesting things. (I hope)

Alas, it was merely overdue.

This time it was four stitches on my chin. I was minding my own business, riding a consistent 24 mph downhill in the bike lane along Foothill near the 280 on-ramp near the end of my ride two weeks ago when a clueless and/or evil driver attempted to maneuver his/her car into the same space I was to occupy.

On the bright side, despite the car's apparent intention to inhabit my space sneakily from behind, I did have the reflexes to avoid it. However, the thought "Phew that was close -- jerk!" was closely followed by "Oh no -- there's no way I'm going to avoid going down..." Because I had to veer off my line and brake hard to avoid the car, the bike then fishtailed toward a curb. One could argue that the fishtailing would have been avoided by not hitting the back brake so hard, but in the heat of the moment, all possible braking power was needed.

A real rider would probably have been able to bunny hop up the curb, but I still lack the ability to reliably execute this skill. So I hit it -- hard. Argh. I did manage to aim myself in such a manner to end on the sidewalk instead of in the road. It just seemed prudent.

The bike toppled over gently once it ejected me; I got to experience a slow-motion Superman flight while musing that Chad would be annoyed by me damaging myself just before a trip, and then the sidewalk came up and met my hands and chin.

Did I mention that, quite uncharacteristically, I had forgotten to wear my gloves that morning? Ouch. I forgot my phone too. Bad Ma.

It was pretty apparent almost immediately that all the major parts were ok. I pulled myself into a sitting position next to the bike and reached for my water bottle to take a drink while collecting my thoughts.

Problem-Car did not even bother to stop, but Roberta, the next driver on the road did. She was incredulous at the dumb move of the other driver and wanted to know if there was anything she could do to help. A passing pedestrian also stopped -- he was livid about what he had seen and wanted to call the cops. I didn't see any point, as the only part of the car I saw was the side passenger door, and it all happened so fast that I'm not even sure what color it was, much less who was driving or what the license plate number was.

Amidst this discussion, I realized that my chin was bleeding a lot, and decided to take Roberta up on her offer of a ride. She kindly put the bike in the back of her truck, found some water and a wad of paper towels so I could clean off a little (with a quick peek at the gouge in the mirror -- eeew!), let me borrow her phone to leave a message for Chad, and dropped me off in downtown Mountain View. I wandered into the Minor Injury Clinic at Kaiser, hoping to get an appointment for later in the day to get stitched up.

Yes I was dirty, but do people in the waiting room really need to stare so much when you limp your bike into the doctor's office?

Fortunately, the staff at Kaiser in Mountain View are quite helpful and good. They squeezed me in between existing appointments and did the standard crash check, x-rayed my hands, and scraped the gravel out of my chin before stitching it up.

I reclaimed my bike from the security desk where the receptionist had left it and walked a block down the street to the bike shop to get help untangling the chain, which had dropped off the inside of the rings and jammed itself up against the frame. The guys in the shop didn't seem as actively disturbed by my appearance as much as those in the waiting room, presumably because I was no longer actively bleeding, but one of them did comment that I seemed remarkably cheerful for having just crashed. I only wish I had been able to come up with the reply that occurred to me later: "What would Jens do?"

(Jens Voigt is the epitome of the hard man of the cycling peloton, for those unfortunate enough not to know already. He bounces off the pavement, gets back on, and gets the job done. Most admirable.)

At any rate, once the bike was taken care of, I rode gently back to Sunnyvale, just in time to pick Nim up from camp and pack for Downieville.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized that my bike jersey was (a) covered in blood and (b) riddled with holes across the chest. No wonder the other people in the Kaiser waiting room looked at me oddly.

Lest you worry, I was out on the mountain bike at Yuba Pass the very next day. You can just barely make out the little black threads of the stitches hanging down from my chin.

And now, just a couple of weeks later, all is healed up, and my hands no longer hurt, even after logging a 100+ mile hilly day near Mt. Rainier this week. More later...

Sand

2011-08-14T13:37:00.001-07:00

Five years later, she still does the same things at the beach.

Nov 2006

Aug 2011

4th of July in Downieville

2011-07-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Fourth of July is always entertaining in a small town. Here are a few highlights:

Nim decorated her bike so she could be in the small town parade down Main Street. Linda walked with her so Chad and I could be spectators.

The fire danger up there is too high to allow fireworks, but one couple in town has a tradition of unrolling two giant rolls of bubble wrap down the street at the end of the parade, which everyone duly stomples -- it sounds a lot like fireworks, and is just delightfully wacky to watch.

The rest of the afternoon brings a tug-of-war and foot races down Main Street. Nimue entered the 8-year-old race, came in third (of three) and was frustrated, only calming down after I grudgingly ran in the over-30 women's race. I'm not a sprinter, but managed to strategically place myself in third, just like Nimue, which cheered her up immensely. (Good thing she didn't come in second; I let myself get boxed in, and probably couldn't have placed myself in that spot!)

Race written up in the Downieville Mountain Messenger. Oooh, we're famous... (Click on the image to blow it up and see our names.)

Much water play. It was up around 90 degrees the whole time we were up there, so the kiddie pool, sprinkler, and mister were much appreciated. The first small pool suffered a large woe after being cartwheeled into one too many times, was resurrected as a circular slip-and-slide dance floor, and then replaced with a bigger splash pool.

Chad and I took an entertaining bikepacking trip on local dirt roads and trails --more on this later.

Fishing at Upper Sardine Lake, at the base of the Sierra Buttes:

Nimue's other big project in Downieville was to try to make money to buy more Zoobles. For those not in the know, Zoobles are disgustingly cute little plastic critters that come be folded up in a ball; they pop their ears and eyes open when the little magnet inside gets close enough to something metal. I keep finding an armada of them bristling off the refrigerator door.

At any rate, she had a few, wanted more, and decided that selling chocolate chip cookies in Downieville was the way to make money more quickly than waiting forever for her allowance savings to build up. Being a Towle, she quickly set up the "Towle House" cookie booth, and smiled and waved at every passer-by until all the cookies were gone.

She made such a haul at the first attempt (something like $40), that she was motivated to repeat the process the following weekend. By chance, this was the weekend of the Downieville Classic bike races, which multiply the town's normal population by about a factor of 10 and fill the main street with a mountain biking festival. However, it was less of a cookie-eating population (a beer stand would have gone over well, albeit illegal for the small ones...), and some of the local kids got in on the action to provide some sales competition. Nimue banded together with them and did sell more cookies during the bike races, though her take was not quite as much as the previous attempt.

Part of the deal with us to allow her the second stand (these things do require parental/grandparental effort and resources, after all) was that she would donate some of her profit. She chose to give 25% of her take from both sales days -- $16.27 to be precise -- to the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship operation that maintains the trails up in that neck of the woods. The woman who got the envelope was so tickled that she immediately took Nimue over to the race announcer, who not only announced her donation to the entire town, but also interviewed her over the very loud microphone. Linda could hear it all the way over at her house across the river! Nim was nervous, but spoke very well, and was clearly on a high, feeling famous, afterwards.

Scan Pile Procrastination

2011-07-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

I've been working through the scan pile this morning, procrastinating other things, and trying to clean up the office enough to locate the missing truck service coupons. Here is another batch of Nim's work for your enjoyment.

Peepie Cheepies

2011-06-30T08:31:00.001-07:00

A quick update on the finches who needed help with their nest:

6/20: Three little hatchlings, small enough to hide under the pile of fluff. You could see them poke their little heads up only when it was feeding time.

Today: Looking like awkward teenagers.

I suspect they will be gone by the time we get back from Downieville.

First Week of Summer Vacation

2011-06-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

Not much writing lately, as we've been too busy doing stuff since school got out.

The first week of vacation included:

1) A trip to Gilroy Gardens. I took her friend Jenna along too since it was "Bring a Friend Free" week. The place is small enough that they could explore the park in a more or less free-range fashion.

2) A sub-24-hour backpacking trip up to the Black Mountain Backpack Camp. Nim and I hiked in with most of the stuff on Wednesday afternoon; Chad joined us by bike after work. We enjoyed the sunset, stars, fog rolling in over the ocean, and city lights twinkling around the Bay, and had the entire place to ourselves. In the morning, Chad rolled down early to work, and Nimue and I headed out later in a more leisurely fashion. Nim carried her own sleeping bag and all of her stuff!

3) A most excellent piano performance by Allen Toussaint, as part of the Stanford Jazz Festival.

The second week of summer vacation started out with a dinner party (butterflied leg of lamb, grilled -- yum!), followed by me essentially giving my finger a gooseegg by slamming it in the garage door. Big purple swelling on the pad of the fourth finger on my right hand; the photo below does not do justice to the violently dark purple color it is at present, but does give you an idea of how much bigger it is than the other one. Nim said "You should be more careful with your body, Mommy!" and then got me ice and tea, all of her own accord. "That's what you do when I get hurt," she says. Good kid.

Butter Fail

2011-06-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

I went mountain biking this morning, to shake off the aftereffects of helping with the early part of the end-of-year 3rd grade picnic of chaos. Naturally, going mountain biking means making butter.

Normally this is a straighforward process: add a spoonful of yogurt or buttermilk to a cup of cream and let it sit in the bottle overnight on the counter, put bottle on the bike and go for a ride, and drain the buttermilk/rinse the butter when back home.

Not so easy this time, sadly. I realized about halfway through my ride that I had put two cups of cream in instead of one, and they had rapidly whipped and expanded to fill all of the head space in the bottle. Doomed from the start. I figured it'd be no big deal -- just throw the goo in the stand mixer at home and that should be the end of it.

Not so. Ten minutes later, there was still no separation of butterfat solids from buttermilk. It was so warm in the house that I suspsected that was part of the problem. Let's add some ice water to the mess in the mixer to cool it off...

Fling! Watch the ice cube describe a beautiful parabolic trajectory across the kitchen, as the splotches of butter substance that came out of the bowl with it de-adhere and splatter everywhere. The cats will celebrate when they discover the happy scavenger hunt.

Still no separation of the buttermilk out. The gloop had a nice whipped texture, as well as a yummy flavor and aroma, so I delcared it to be "Delicious Buttery Spread". Selling these creations to the rest of the household is all about the right name -- Buns of Happiness (random leftovers chopped up, encased in bread dough, and baked) will be cheerfully eaten, whereas Cheesy Gloop (random leftovers mixed with cheese sauce and baked) is roundly rejected by the small one. In this case, the mystery substance is indeed quite buttery, and delicious!

Make your own gum kit

2011-06-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

I've been fighting a cold for the last few days. The insides of my lungs feel like they are covered in sticky goo, and coughing it all out is slow going. So, when Chad got up early this morning to go out on a mountain bike ride, Nimue and I decided to slug about the house instead of going for a ride as originally planned. She lazily watched way too many cartoons, while I enjoyed the latte Chad made me before he left (thank you!) while reading in bed.

Eventually, though, I had to get up. I figured that *something* useful should be wrung out of the day, and headed out into the yard to find some gentle chore to putter away at. Maybe just some light weeding...

which led to the realization that the bushes needed to be trimmed,

which led to the thought that maybe the shredded cedar mulch sitting in the side yard should be put down on the spot that had just been weeded and cleaned up,

which led to the thought that perhaps the other section of the yard needed the same treatment...

You see where this is going. Eventually I managed to stop and emerged back into the house, battered in cedar tufts adhered to me with multiple varieties of sticky sap.

Thankfully, Nimue's morning pancake project hadn't involved any major kitchen mayhem. However, at this point, she had gleefully dug a project out of the pantry: The "Make Your Own Gum Kit".

If one of your kids ever receives this item of wonder, you might want to consider conveniently "losing" it. It looks like an innocuous little box with a few bags of stuff that need to be microwaved and mixed up, and voila -- gum appears.

Right. I was suspicious, and decided to have a snack before taking a shower so I could vaguely supervise the action. Good thing, too.

Step one: put the little bag of corn syrup in a cup of hot water so it'll be runnier and easier to get out of the bag. So far, so good.

Step two: Heat up the chicle pellets in a little plastic tray in the microwave. Nimue grabbed a spoon to stir it. Said spoon got covered in sticky goo, so naturally, she grabbed another spoon to scrape it off. Now there were two spoons covered in incredibly sticky, non-water-soluble stuff. Great. I stopped the process before any more spoons were involved, and got most of it back in the tray, and went out to the garage to find the Goo-Gone.

Step three: Mix the corn syrup into the chicle and knead the whole mess in powdered sugar. The usual powdered sugar mushroom cloud ensued; on the bright side, Nim knows how to clean this one up. I continued to work on the Goo-Gone-soaked spoons. Much kneading ensued.

Step four: Knead in the powdered flavor. Seems simple, right?
Not if you've already kneaded in so much powdered sugar that the mass is stiff and crumbly. Nim took a little break while I finished cleaning off the spoons, and then I effected a recovery of the crumbly gum by getting my hands wet and kneading in a little water. Sounds unwise, I know, but it worked -- aside from leaving a monolayer of sticky gum over every surface of my hands.

Step five: roll the mass out thin and cut into sticks. No way was this stuff touching my rolling pin or knives. We ripped off hunks and rolled them into gumballs instead.

The end product was a gum-like substance, which Nimue reports has good flavor...for about 30 seconds. "Kind of messy, but ok," she reports. Also the grumbling about kid kits that can't be completely done by the kids, on both of our parts. All kid projects should be water soluble, too.

So let's recap: sticky mucus in lungs, sticky sap covered in bark dust all over body, gum-covered hands. A humdinger of a Sunday morning, for sure. Nimue did learn the trick of cleaning gummy hands by rubbing them with olive oil before washing them. As I tried to scrub off the sap in the shower, it occurred to me that I should have brought the oil in there with me too. Clearly, I need a strigil. Or fewer sticky things in my life.

Crazed creatures this week

2011-06-10T08:45:00.001-07:00

Insane cat.

Demonic butterfly on Mt. El Sombroso.

Results of tired Ma + crazed child.

Gratuitous mariposa lily picture.

Water Chickens at Alviso

2011-06-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

Amidst all the weird June rain last week, I snuck out between showers for a quick mountain bike ride along the levees at Alviso Marina County Park. Naturally the length escalated as I rode from home, and added on loops at Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge and Sunnyvale Baylands, leading to a delightful 40 mile ride. At any rate, there were a lot of scenic rain clouds to look at, as well as many, many shorebirds -- also known as "water chickens" in Nimue-parlance. Here are a few shots for you all to enjoy.

The hills to the east
Friendly-looking avocet
Great Blue Heron. This one surprised me by taking off and flying across the trail a mere six feet in front of me. They're big!
Pelicans
The blurs in the previous shot were actually part of an apocalyptic cloud of bugs; it was actually hard to breathe for about half a mile due to the sheer number of these little gnats. Fortunately, I eventually went around a corner into the wind and they all blew off. Blow up the picture and you will see layers upon layers upon layers of bugs.
Cute little white flower that was everywhere, which turns out to be an invasive non-native: broad leaved peppergrass.
Fun little scraps of trail along the way home. I'm amused by the juxtaposition of mustard-strewn singletrack with the high tech Silicon Valley buildings.
The interesting part of the route
If I had more time and inclination, I could have continued from Sunnyvale Baylands along the dirt road behind Moffet to Shoreline Park, then through to Palo Alto Baylands, and along another trail to Ravenswood Open Space Preserve. Then maybe across the Dumbarton Bridge to to the levees on the other side to ....

Poor dumb birdies

2011-06-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

I refilled the birdfeeder the other day in order to enhance the "kitty TV" experience -- the cats love to watch all the avian activity outside the big dining room window. As expected, the new seed attracted a bunch more birds, and it still being spring, a pair of house finches started to try to build a nest.

We watched them hard at work during breakfast for several days, but no nest was forthcoming. Upon investigation, I found a sad pile of twigs that had rained down on the bushes below the corner they were trying to colonize. Alas, the common house finch lacks both common sense and engineering skills -- this pair had spent days diligently trying to build a nest cantilevered out from a nearly nonexistent ledge.

Ah, I took pity and put some tape up, and an hour later there was a nest.

They're gonna have to manage the next step on their own. Stay tuned.

Bike Stoplight

2011-06-01T14:17:00.001-07:00

One of my minor pet peeves is the bad habit of bike trails to have awkward spots that spit you out on the wrong side of the road or otherwise lead people to do bad things like ride the wrong way on the sidewalk to get from one side to its continuation.

This spot on the new section of the San Tomas Creek Trail is a delightful exception, as there is a clearly defined way to get from the trail on one side of the creek to the other. If you blow up the picture, you'll see that the lights on the special stoplight for bikes are bicycle-shaped :)

Concerts

2011-05-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

Heading toward the end of the school year, there are an awful lot of events. Here are a couple of pictures from Nimue's recent concerts:

The combined group at the big concert (blurry because I couldn't use the flash). Nim's the one near the middle with the two ponytails.
The crazed singer
Her adoring audience

Music links:

Here's a short clip from one of the songs "Three Quotes from Mark Twain".

If you can't make it out, this one says "Mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."

Nimue's favorite song from this concert: "This Shall be for Music".

Mutant Strawberry

2011-05-24T17:14:00.001-07:00

The strawberry has gone wild and grown itself a head. At least it's fresh!

A fine place for a picnic...or a bike race

2011-05-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, as many of you know, Stage 4 of the Tour of California came through our neck of the woods, going over Mt. Hamilton from the back, down the relatively technical descent on the front, and then up Sierra Road . Unlike last year, and much to our aethetic preference for bike races that end on a hill, the San Jose stage finish this year was at the top of Sierra.

Our original plan was to climb up Sierra earlier in the day to watch the finish and enjoy the spectacular view and people-watching, but alas, we had to be able to get off the hill in time to get Nimue to her singing group's concert that night. Drat. Also, Chad was feeling a bit under the weather, and the weather itself was a bit under the weather, with residual clouds and rain from the storm earlier in the week. Double drat. As a result, we decided instead to ride up the lower slopes of Mt. Hamilton and plant ourselves in a spot with good sight lines for the descent -- right at the entrance to Joe Grant County Park, at the beginning of the last little roller before the final drop into the city.

Since it was going to be a shorter ride, and would be sort of across lunchtime, of course I had to pack a hedonistic picnic spread in my backpack :)

This turned out to be a mellow, but entertaining place to spectate and picnic. The view of Hamilton was good (when the clouds opened up), we were in a bit of sunshine (again, when the clouds cooperated), and it just happened to be right next to a very talkative course marshal whose job appeared to be to wave over all the cop cars and photo motorcycles at the front of the train who came down ahead of the riders, so they wouldn't get too far ahead.

After seeing the conditions on the road (sort of cold, even where we were), we decided we had made a good choice of location -- before the Tour came through, there were a number of other cyclists coming down from the top reporting 39 degree drizzle.

One thing I noticed last year was that you can tell when the riders are getting close by the location of the helicopters. In this year's instance, I happened to glance up the hill and thought "My, that helicopter is down low!" A second glance showed the string of riders in the big lead group. (Click on the picture to blow it up, and you'll see 'em too.)

A close look at this shot as they went by reveals Chris Horner (the one with the funny all-red shoes in the center and the eventual winner of the stage with a most excellent performance up Sierra), Levi Leipheimer bent over behind him, and Andy Schleck next to Levi.

More riders in the lead group, looking focused and intent on the ride. We think the Rabobank rider (orange and blue) in the middle is three-time world champion Oscar Freire.

After this group went by, there were several more relaxed-looking riders trailing through on their own or in pairs -- some even chatting and looking like they were enjoying the ride. These must've been the guys deliberately dropping back from the serious lead group to the bigger peloton at the back.

Eventually the main group did show up; the most amusing thing to note here was that their facial expressions really told the story of having suffered up the HC climb (hors categorie, or hill of the hardest kind) only to encounter 39 degree mist and a treacherous twisty descent down pavement that could be described as having terrain-park-like features, knowing full well that they still had a wicked-steep climb ahead of them.

Another shot of suffering, this one with current world champion Thor Hushovd in the rainbow jersey.

Eventually, the entire parade including all the team cars and support people in the back passed through and we were able to roll down the hill and rush home, just in time to shower and head off to Nimue's concert. More on that later. We did avidly watch the Versus coverage of the stage when we got home -- it was a minor bummer that they went to commercial break when the riders passed us, and when they passed our truck at the bottom of the hill, but most impressive to see Chris Horner take off and leave everyone in the dust going up the final hill!

Is this the trail?

2011-05-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

I had another reasonably amusing mountain bike ride yesterday. The goal was to go up to El Corte de Madera Open Space Preserve (aka Skegg's Point) and try not to get my tired legs into too much trouble. As usual, plans changed once the day got going.

As an aside, the tired legs stem from last weekend's Tour of the Unknown Coast up near Eureka. Gorgeous ride through interesting country on roads with lousy pavement and resulting scary descents. I could gloat about being the first of our party to finish, but it wouldn't be fair as it only happened because one guy had the bad luck to get not one, but FIVE, flat tires.
Plus I took a 40 mile recovery ride on Monday. Not much self control in May with the upcoming summer vacation/ all-kid-stuff-all-the-time arrest staring me in the face.

At any rate, when I drove up to the ridge yesterday morning and turned toward Skeggs, the marine layer was still pretty thick, and got thicker and darker and damper the further I went. Wet road, thermometer reading 43 degrees. Yuck. Who wants this in May??

Good sense took over, and I turned around and headed back toward Russian Ridge. It was still foggy here, but at least it was a bright fog, with the promise that it might break up, and the ground wasn't soaking wet. Plus, the wildflowers are often good this time of year.

I took off into the bright white impenetrable fog. After getting over the initial heebie-jeebies of not being able to see very far, I quite enjoyed zooming down the singletrack Hawk Trail in the fog. The bird song seemed magnified as the visibility decreased, big patches of two-toned tidytips and other blooms covered in dew periodically loomed seemingly out of nowhere, and a giant deer with big fuzzy antlers boinged over the trail right in front of me. It was a sufficiently amusing distraction from the tall grass whipping my ankles with wetness in the narrower sections. Come to think of it, that was rather jolly too.

As the trails took me further south, the visibility got much better. I actually started seeing shadows when I hit the southern end of the preserve and headed across Alpine Road into Skyline Ridge. Woo hoo.

Normally I dislike Skyline Ridge on the bike. I usually come in from the other side, after riding up from home, and there are several ugly steep ramps on the #$&$@#$@ Sunny Jim Trail (actually an ugly exposed fire road) that come too far into the ride to cause anything other than intense misery. I always look yearningly off the fire road onto the singletrack Ipiwa Trail (bikes not allowed), and rue my law-abiding tendencies. Feh. This time, however, as I came in from the north side and wasn't tired, I finally had the motivation to explore the dead end stub of the Old Page Mill Trail. It's only a mile and a half, but I hadn't ridden it before, and if you look at it on Google Maps, it looks like there might be a way to go further than what the official park map indicates. My delight in looking for the obscure route through kicked in.

Obscure this was. Punishing, it was not. Unlike many trails in this preserve, the Old Page Mill Trail is a relatively uniform old dirt road reverting back to skinny trail, with a gentle grade, through some gorgeous woods. Just what my tired legs needed. It dropped maybe 500 feet over that mile and half, getting gradually more overgrown (see picture at top), until reaching a creek.

At this point, the path had clearly been washed out at some point in the past, and it was clear from the map that I was at the "official" end. It looked possible to bushwhack across the creek and continue down the other side, but 1) I was trying to keep it mellow, 2) didn't want to turn into a mud monster and send a bunch of sediment down into the creek, and 3) the theoretical way out would involve going through some closed parts of the preserve and a tiny bit of private property (that darned law-abiding thing again...). One can only hope that the open space district's long term plans might include opening this up -- especially in a manner that would allow one to pop across Alpine Road after riding to Mindego Hill on the other side, so you could ride back up Old Page Mill on the way out.

For once, self-control and common sense won. No major epic -- just a bit of fun for the morning :) Surprised?

On the way out, I rode back into the fog, through clouds of bugs, and over Borel Hill. I need to come back here in a week or so on a day when the marine layer has broken up, as the flowers are just starting to get good!

Mystery on my camera

2011-05-04T22:13:00.001-07:00

Nimue had my camera during the recent garden club day, ostensibly to document her plant project, and actually took a decent shot of me while I was showing a weird burred seed to one of the other students. It's good to know I don't always look like Mutant Ma.

The Scan Pile

2011-05-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

Heartless evil mom that I am, I occasionally scan a giant pile of Nimue's papers so I can recycle them, lest we end up buried in paper. Here are a few for you to enjoy:

I love her vocabulary pictures from school.

Occasionally she gets bored with just doing "her" vocabulary word, and tries to incorporate the whole set of five or six words into one sentence.

Lots of good pencil cartoons that I don't see until she cleans out her room and says "Please scan these before you recycle them." I happen to like Space Kitty.

Many, many cats...

And I had totally forgotten about "S day". Funny kid.

Less suck. More awesome. Your tax dollars at work.

2011-04-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a brilliant example of why I think NASA is a deserving recipient of your (and my) annual tax contribution. In a sea of suck, NASA is mostly a little island of awesome.

Pictures from the Week of Big Fun

2011-04-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

Vacation overload. Too many pictures... No room in brain or energy for words. In a nutshell, Big Fun was had by all.

The Concept: Drive through Sequoia on the way south, camp at Joshua Tree for a couple of days to enjoy the hiking, climbing, and wildflowers, pop over the mountains for a surprise trip to Disneyland, and camp again at a location TBD on the way home. Lots to pack into one week. Lots of pictures and memories to bring home.

Remember to click on an individual picture if you want to look at it more closely.

Sequoia, with a fair amount of snow on the ground, big trees, and a fine spot for a picnic breakfast. It looks to me like this would be a fun place to go back and explore on skis; the Wuksachi Lodge makes a fine launch point, plus they have a pretty decent restaurant.

A most excellent campsite at Indian Cove. I love camping in the desert this time of year -- the air is balmy even at night and there's no chance of mud.

The full moon. they say it's bright enough to climb by moonlight; I believe it!

Many flowers. On one hike, we saw approximately 35 different species of blooming plants (counting quests motivate the Nim).

Small critters. I had to save the tortoise from being squashed by relocating it off the road.

Lots of hiking and exploring.

And of course climbing. It was nice to be able to boulder right in the campsite; Nim and I got up early on morning and played on the rock before breakfast while Chad slept in.

Excellent Sonoran desert plants on the way out on the third day.

Then we all piled back into the car and headed over the hills. Nim, by now was worried that the number of days wasn't adding up right, according to her knowledge of the plan, and of course we didn't tell her where we were going next until she figured it out herself. The contrast between "I'm bored! Just tell me where we're going," and "Really???? I really get to go to Disneyland?" was striking, as expected :)

We stayed right across the street from the main entrance. (The Park Vue Inn is recommended, by the way, by virtue of location, price, breakfast, and the fact that one can see the fireworks from one corner of the hot tub.)

Lots of rides: Matterhorn (we started here), Autopia (Nim was a very weebly driver at first, I would have to say as the driver behind her...), a very wet ride down Grizzly Mountain during the one short period of time it rained (there was no line!!), the carousel just before the fireworks went off, and the ever-favorite Spinning Teacups.

The many faces of Nimue in the many lines, ranging from goofy to bored to obedient to cute to shy to crazo.

Space Mountain with the lights on during a failure; after a few minutes a couple of guys climbed up and manually push-started all the cars so we could get to the bottom and start over. It was neat to see what the normally picth-black-specled-with-stars chamber actually looks like. This one was Nim's favorite ride.

Quieter moments in the less crowded and chaotic sections of the park (we didn't figure out we needed this until the second day):

We took advantage of the Fastpass feature of the tickets to go on the big California Screamin' roller coaster over and over and over and over and over and over again. (iphone picture of the display of pictures they were trying to see when you got off the ride...) By the last time, Nimue was able to keep her eyes open even for the upside-down part!

After all this, it was time to escape the crazed urban mayhem and go camping again. On the way back to the Bay Area, we stayed at the Selby Campground in the Carrizo Plain, where one can find big scenery, views of the San Andreas Fault, wildflowers, good hiking, and relative solitude (aside from the other mellow happy people camping here -- Nim had great fun playing with the boy from the next site over).

Strange Creatures on the Trail

The last morning, just for jollies, we took the dirt East Pozo Road across the mountains back to civilization. Fun route; might even be good on a road bike aside from the lack of water.

We're now back home, starting the 7-week sprint to the end of the school year, when the vacation fun starts up again!

Easter

2011-04-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

Continuing a now well-established pattern, we had a delightful Easter bruch with Todd & Sarah & kids. Above, you see the typical Easter Egg hunt; things then degenerated into post-candy crazed face paint imaginative play (below). Nimue's artwork: a bunny (somewhat devil-like) and a really scary raccoon. Cathryn painted the somewhat more benign-looking tiger.

Obnoxious Feline Habits

2011-04-27T12:24:00.001-07:00

Mariam has decided that ALL POST-ITS MUST DIE!!!!! This presents a difficulty, given my habit of storing bits of information on little yellow stickies near the computer. Argh.

Spring tour

2011-04-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

We're off on a week-long road trip - you can follow along if you like, we'll post photos and comments as we go!

Sprained

2011-04-13T08:55:00.001-07:00

Nimue sprained her foot yesterday at recess. The incident somehow involved a game of tag, a hole in the grass, and a multi-kid pileup. She's been remarkably cheery about the whole thing, despite not being able to walk on it. We're all hoping it heals up at least partially before we head out to Joshua Tree for spring break on Saturday!

Yummy Foods

2011-04-13T08:51:00.001-07:00

Funny things from the vegetable box make me happy:

So do birthday cheesecakes made by Chad:

And in case you're wondering, I had a lovely ride up Mt. Hamilton on Saturday (a full 15 minutes fast up the climb that I could do it a decade ago), followed by the above cheesecake shared with Todd & Sarah, followed by steak dinner. Thank you notes for the heap o' gifts are in progress. You'd think this was a big birthday or something....

Reconnaissance

2011-04-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I took a jollier-than-usual mountain bike ride on Wednesday. The goal was to head over to Big Basin and Butano State Parks to do some mountain bike exploration of the fire roads back in that neck of the woods to see if any of them would be reasonable to ride on a road bike as part of a bigger home-to-coast-and-back loop. After all, I can't be expected to do the same loop over and over again :)

It seems that there is little information out there about the surface condition of these routes -- maybe because they are obscure, but maybe also because ye olde average roadie sticks to the paved routes, and the general mountain biker wants singletrack. I'm more of an "anything goes as long as it's interesting" adventure cyclist who will happily take the "wrong bike" down a route if it has promise to be scenic. This leads me to covet the not-yet-invented "One Bike To Rule them All" which will happily forge its way up and down any terrain and serve as my only bike, but that's another story....

At any rate, I picked out a route after looking at maps and other people's GPS tracks of rides on Strava with two goals in mind:

1. Explore Gazos Creek Road, which I previous knew of as a dead-end road off of Cloverdale Road near the coast -- but actually has a dirt connection into Big Basin and thus up to Highway 236.

and

2. Climb the Butano Fire Road, another dirt road which appeared to have a reputation as a nice climb up to an abandoned airstrip, and also looked to connect back up to Big Basin a couple of miles above that.

Given the time constraint provided by the school day (I had to be back to get Nim at 2:30), I loaded up the mountain bike on the truck and drove over to Big Basin to check it out from there. I bought a new map at the ranger station to replace the ancient one I had and set off through the redwoods. I chose to ride down Gazos Creek road based on a comment I had read about steep sections if one were to climb it. For several miles, it was really unclear what those comments might have referred to -- the dirt road had a good surface and undulated gently through the park. I tried really hard not to think about how good the singletrack trails heading off in either direction might be (bikes only allowed on dirt road in the park and not the skinny trails -- boo hiss).

So far, all would be quite pleasant even on my road bike. Of course, this all changed once I hit the park boundary. Here the road starts to plummet precipitously and clearly the creek wanted to become one with the road in some places. Nasty ruts, gravel strips, strange bumps reminiscent of Dr. Seuss illustrations, and double digit grades made up the next three miles or so. Given that it was dirt-road width, one probably *could* pick a line and ride up it on a standard road bike, but it sure wouldn't be pleasant. On the bright side, going down it on a mountain bike wasn't bad at all. I eventually had to hop a gate where the dirt met the pavement near the bottom, and enjoyed the fast descent down to Cloverdale Road.

There's always wind out near the coast, and this day was no exception. A corollary to Murphy's Law dictates that for any given day, the direction I want to go on this stretch of road is always into a stiff headwind. It doesn't matter which direction I'm planning on going -- whichever it is, is always the hard direction. I was starting to watch the time given that the careful descent down the rutted section ate more time that was allocated, and had planned to make up some time along this paved section. Ouch.

After a mile or so, I turned out of the wind briefly to ride in the main entrance to Butano State Park to check and see if they had a better map than my ancient one (they didn't) and then headed back into the wind until I found the unmarked Butano Fire Road heading up the edge of the park.

What a delightful idyllic sunny climb through beautiful coastal California terrain! I can't believe I hadn't ever run across this one before. The surface is smooth and predictable despite being dirt, and the road winds its way up at a gentle and uniform ~6% grade, part in the sun and part in dappled shade.

Just as I was musing on what an excellent find this road was with a giant grin on my face, I came around a corner and my inner monkey brain made me come to a sudden halt. There was an animal on the trail about 150 feet ahead.

A very large animal.

A very silent animal.

A tawny golden brown animal with a loooong tail and feline features, standing broadside across the road. Very big paws. Lean and muscular, and powerful.

I stood there for what felt like almost a minute in sheer amazement at actually seeing a mountain lion in the flesh before realizing I had to figure out what to do about it. Of course, the whole experience had some of that "time stands still" sensation that also happens during a crash, so it was probably briefer than it felt.

What an incredible animal!

I didn't want to turn around and go back down the hill because (a) I wanted to explore more of the trail up above, (b) forward was the shorter way back to the car, and (c) if I turned my back and ran, I'd look like prey. Not a good plan. So, I stood over my bike waving my hands in the air and started yell-singing. "LA la LA la LA la LA LA LA LA LA LA!" The cat turned its head ever-so-slightly toward me, acknowledged my existence -- barely, and disappeared off the trail downhill into the woods.

Ok, now what? I stood there yell-singing for a couple of minutes, marvelling at how silent the creature was as it took off through the brush. Most critters, especially ones of that size, make a bit of noise as they move through the bushes. Not this one -- it didn't make a sound as it took off. Great. The lion is encased in velvety silence, I'm making an unholy racket, and I can't keep track of where it is.

And come to think of it, how many more are out there? This is well known to be mountain lion territory. A few months ago, when I took an animal tracking workshop just across Cloverdale Road from here offered by the Midpeninsula Open Space folks, we saw all sorts of lion scat, and the rangers were certain that there are quite a number of them in the area.

Big Kitty is watching you.

Most unnerving. I continued to caterwaul "LA la la LA la LA la LAAAA! I'M NOT A DEER! LA LA LA LA LAAAAA! YOU'RE NOT GOING TO EAT ME!!! LA LA LA LA LA LA! I'M KING OF THE RANCHLAND! LA la LA la LA la LAAAAAAA!" for about another mile as I continued to ride up the hill, until I was so hungry I had to stop and eat my lunch. Hollering is hard work.

For better or worse, there was no one out there to witness this performance. I didn't have to be embarrassed by the racket, but on the other hand there were no numbers in which safety could be had.

I convinced myself that my shape and demeanor was not very deerlike, that I was heading into the woods soon and the cats hang out in the sunshine, that my rattletrap mountain bike was really quite scary. Maybe the squeaky chain emits high-pitched cat-deterrent noises. I can convince myself of all sorts of notions when I have to, but the underlying heebie-jeebies were still there. And the awe. And the relief that the silly chattery monkey-brain response was effective in this case.

Lunch was had at the junction with Jackson Flats Trail, which fueled more climbing. The road is quite spectacular through this section, as it is open and runs right along the top of the ridge and you can see down on either side of you. Plus, there's nowhere above for a cat to be lurking.

The road gets steeper for brief sections past the airstrip and runs through what feels like the middle of nowhere in the woods. Somewhere in there I hit the park boundary. Time felt like it was really getting quite tight at this point, so I had to push pretty hard. At least the road was pretty -- a needle-covered track heading through evergreen forest. There were reassuring patches with bike tracks, indicating that others had been this way and I couldn't possibly be lost. My now-tired legs pushed their way up the hill until -- yay -- I popped out onto China Grade Road and relative civilization. At this point, I had the choice to ride to longer route down China Grade, or head directly back into Big Basin along Middle Ridge Road.

Still exploring for future road rides, though. I've ridden the steep section of China Grade below 236 a number of times, but had never gone on this dead-end stub above it. This part rolls along relatively gently in an obscure one-lane road sort of way before descending back down to the main road, and I enjoyed the sunshine in between navigating around the numerous potholes. At one point, I came around a corner and narrowly avoided hitting a port-a-potty truck that was trying to turn around. Quite oddly, I had more of an obvious adrenaline rush from this incident than the mountain lion, and clearly the driver was just as surprised to see me as I was him.

Finally out to the main road and ZOOOOOOOOOM, a fast four miles down to the car. I tossed the bike on the back and made it back to the school with exactly two minutes to spare. The ride ended up being about five miles longer with a full thousand feet more climbing than I projected from my somewhat inadequate maps before starting. The final total was 30 miles, 4000 feet of climbing, and one mountain lion. All in all, a fine day's adventure.

For the record, the entire section of Butano Fire Road that I rode could be done on a road bike without too much pain, if one were mentally prepared for the many miles of dirt. Just be ready for the steeper parts up top and mind the felines...

Big Kitty is watching you.

The route and profile. The little yellow marker labelled "1" was just uphill from the mountain lion sighting.

Groceries

2011-04-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

The only problem with going to Safeway is that I don't go frequently enough to have the checkers trained not to look at me weird when I insist that everything go into my two bags, regardless of weight, so I can take everything home on the bike (toilet paper -- which gets strapped on top -- excepted).

After hours needs

2011-04-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when Chad decides he needs a haircut after our favorite $8 haircut place has closed for the evening. Much fun for the whole family...

Small Monster of Energy

2011-03-26T16:55:00.001-07:00

As if completing 47 laps at the walkathon wasn't enough yesterday (an estimated 11 miles!), Nimue came home, made herself an armadillo costume out of a cardboard box, and bounced around the house for the rest of the evening.

Wet Hike

2011-03-20T15:20:00.000-07:00

Me and Ma went on a hike at Long Ridge today. We saw lots of cool things, like mushrooms and flowers. We even saw deer! We also found a dead squirrel that freaked Mommy out. There were some fire houses here and there along the trail, too. Ma pointed all of them out to me. We also saw all sorts of views. I walked more than 3 whole miles, and I felt proud of myself. At the end of the hike, I was able to get new hiking boots at Big 5. Fun for all!(Even though I was tired.)

The Blinky Thingie

2011-03-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

Today me and Daddy used some parts to make a blinky (that works incredibly well). How we did it is this: we soldered some LEDs and some wires into a circuit board, then we soldered a battery box (with batteries) into place. We turned it on, and ta-da! By the way, I had fun learning to solder. :D

In case you need your Nimue fix...

2011-03-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

1) Silly kid when we went up to SF over the weekend to see Frosty

2) Post rainy/muddy mountain bike ride at Coe (note the mud splats on her face!)

Week of Winter

2011-03-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

What you want to see when you're headed to Downieville and then Tahoe for ski week:

Snow snow snow ---wahooo! As we drove up Friday night, it was snowing at lower elevation than I've seen on the way to Downieville. As an added side benefit, Chad got to trigger all the traction control features of the truck and prove that it is quite capable in these conditions.

Saturday morning dawned sunny and lazy; we spent the day showing Nimue how to use her rented cross-country skis on the snow-covered school field, Linda practiced her snowshoe-running technique (not as easy as it looks in the Title Nine catalog!), a snowman was built, and Nim got to play on the powder-covered jungle gym, followed by much lounging and reading back in the cozy house.

The next day, we all headed up to Lunch Creek to do some real skiing. Nim learned how much difference there is between breaking trail in more than a foot of snow vs. following someone else's track. Chad and I discovered that there is a temperature at which the deep snow is sticky enough to clomp onto the bottom of the skis, making downhill sliding impossible, even at a relatively steep pitch. It is quite eerie to have one's skis pointed straight downhill in the trees yet not be able to budge. We all eventually devolved to playing with the saucer -- quite fun, once Chad plowed the initial path.

Fortunately when we went back the next day, it was colder, and the snow lived up to its potential. Chad and I skied out a couple of miles in on the road at Lunch Creek and then yo-yoed joyfully up and down the hill off to the side in the best backcountry snow I've ever seen. That slope was covered in several feet of bottomless boing-y powder that launched us flying at every turn. The beauty of skiing out there, of course, is that we had the entire hill to ourselves! I'm quite enjoying having a good set of randonnee gear (the lightweight Dynafit bindings are key, but I also like the comfy yellow boots, decent skins, and Black Diamond Kilowatt skis) so I don't have to try to telemark anymore.

On Tuesday, we finally made it up to Yuba Pass, where we again bopped up and down the hill after skiing in a bit. Chad and I ran into his/Linda's friend Gunnar while we were in the process of tracking up the secret stash of snow Gunnar had been headed for -- fortunately there was still enough for all to enjoy (the excellent skin trail that Chad had put in place didn't hurt either!)

Linda joined us for much of the fun, as well as watching Nimue when Chad and I took off to yo-yo up and down the hill on skis. (thank you!)

We all enjoyed the view across the Sierra Valley from Yuba Pass. (Hello, Hallelujah junction!)

Also enjoyed the Monkey Face:
Note: Nimue told me in no uncertain terms that this is NOT a monkey face, but rather "Silly Tongue Face #2". This one's gotta be genetic.

After all that, we still had the second (Tahoe) half of the trip. We had an uneventful drive over to Stephan's cabin, where we met his family for dinner before they headed home and we settled in for an evening of listening to the next storm roll in.

6" of fresh snow overnight + storming all day + lesson with instructor she already knew = one happy Nim. I was quite gratified to hear her say "Whenever something seemed hard, I thought 'Tough like Ma', and that made it better." Chad and I had a lot of fun in the deep snow in the trees (aside from the one run which dumped us on the low-visibility powder bumps; I quite liked them, but they were apparently quite challenging for those on tele skis...).

The snow kept coming down in true Sierra fashion all night, giving us a few more feet of the good stuff. Chad carefully drove us over to Sugarbowl again in near-whiteout conditions amidst the snowplows and other drivers exhibiting varying levels of foolishness. My job was to point out any obstacles, oncoming vehicles, the edge of the road, etc. in a calm voice. "You are now close to the snowbank on the edge -- veer left." By the time we made it over to the parking lot, I had my doubts about the wind, but we were there, Nim's lesson was non-refundable at that point (at least on paper), and there were fresh tracks to be had.

We dropped Nim off for her lesson and headed up the hill.

Wind! Blowing snowing white wind! Good thing we had the right clothing for the conditions. We were warm and cozy (at least I was). A couple of the lifts were running, with very few other skiers around. Not being able to see the ground? Minor detail. Skiing by braille is entertaining when you know you're on part of the mountain where you can't get into too much trouble.

At one point, we saw Nim out with her instructor; all appeared to be well, and she can clearly handle herself in the powder. I suspect she likes it partly due to parental brainwashing ("Of course this is fun!") and partly due to the fact that the deep snow makes it easier to control one's speed. She's the careful, deliberate sort of kid skier rather than the speed demon type.

We quickly figured out that the thing to do was to ski along the edge of the trees where you could sort of see each successive piece of tall vegetation looming in front of you as a guide to the bottom. Normally I prefer to ski off trail, but there was so much new snow that the trail itself might as well have been off trail. Actually skiing in between the trees was an excercise in foolishness, as the snow had blown in so deep that you couldn't make headway except in the really steep parts. Snow blowing everywhere -- horizontally, from the left, from the right, with occasional gusts strong enough to either make you come to a dead halt, or go screaming off further than you meant, depending on which direction you were trying to go.

Great fun. I was apparently laughing my head off (the ski instructor who saw me go by made fun of me later when I picked up Nim). Both of us turned into giant snowballs at various points. What else is one to do?

Also quite disorienting -- poor Chad suffered from a bit of vertigo, which was partially mitigated by following closely behind me, thus having a reference point to determine where the ground was, and apparently Nimue and her instructor had to help another couple of skiers figure out how to get out of the trees and down the hill.

After a couple of hours of this, all the lifts went on wind hold (reported gusts to 90mph) along the top of one of the ridges) so we headed over to the lodge. I popped over to the kid hut to see how Nim's lesson had been going, figuring they'd be in for a hot chocolate break. It was tricky even navigating from one building to the next as it felt like I was in a snow globe that was in the process of being shaken by a demented monster monkey.

Not too surprisingly, the kid hut was full of staff and a few brave kids having hot chocolate. Nim's instructor saw me as I walked in, and immediately jumped into a description of how she was doing great, and was happy, and was pretty much the only kid willing to go out in those conditions. A minute later, a happy, pink-faced, hot-chocolate-bearing Nim popped around the corner to confirm. Yay Nim! I was afraid she'd be disappointed at the outcome of a conversation I had with the supervisor at that point about possible lesson refunds if the lifts were all going to close (the lessons here are excellent, but expensive), but upon hearing that all lessons were shutting down she said "Oh good. That wind is crazy!" Even I had to concur. With the storm blowing everyone off the mountain and the promise that our tickets would be refunded, we headed back to the cabin.

Minor adventures getting back to the cabin, as we had to go back over Donner Pass, but the truck with its monster chains shows every sign of being unstoppable if treated carefully, and there wasn't much traffic going in our direction due to the stretch of freeway downhill behind us being closed due to a downed tree. The last stretch of neighborhood street before the cabin had accumulated enough snow since it had been plowed a couple of hours previously to seem more like something one would ski on than drive over. The truck appears to be as good for winter silliness as it is for that of the summer variety.

Once snug and safe inside, we had a relaxing afternoon reading and watching the wind and snow rage outside.

Our last day dawned clear and sunny; we headed over to Donner Ski Ranch for a day of family powder skiing. This is a good choice for a day when skiing with Nimue, as she's good enough to ski all the trails there -- i.e. I can't possibly lead her astray like I do with Chad occasionally... Given that it's a smaller old-fashioned resort, there are way fewer people there, making it possible to find deep untracked snow all the way until we left to head home :)

For now, it's back to the warmer lowlands. There was clearly quite a bit of snow in the hills in our home neck of the woods over the weekend too, as I've heard reports of 6" on highway 17, seen pictures of snow at Rancho San Antonio (that has to have been down to 1000 feet or lower), and shivered past the remnants of snow on the side of Skyline Blvd several sunny days after the storm on my bike. (Brrrrr.....) Despite this, the irises are blooming in our front yard. Spring? Winter? Dunno.

Last sunshine for a while

2011-02-14T17:13:00.001-08:00

Over the weekend, before the storm doors re-opened, we headed down to Henry Coe State Park to enjoy the last of the good weather. Chad needed to get a good ride in, so he took his mountain bike; Nim and I hiked, as that was where her motivation was. (When you're expecting a kid to happily traverse a trail with 1800 feet of elevation gain, you don't quibble about the mode of travel!) We all set out from the Hunting Hollow entrance, with snacks, reading material, and comfy chairs left in the truck for whoever got back first. I really expected that'd be Nim and me.

Nimue and I hiked up Middle Steer Trail, which, like most other trails in this park, has its steep bits. For the most part, she stayed quite cheerful, and we stopped to snack and/or try to catch bugs whenever her energy started to wane.

The wildflower season is just starting. The best of the blooms, at least as far as my camera was concerned, was this shooting star -- other than that, I amused myself with the bugs while Nimue ate her snacks.

Us at the top. At this point, Nim was convinced that I was Mean Ma and that she would be wiped out by the time we made it to the bottom. Still cheery though.

Fortunately, it was pretty much all downhill from here, and we went down what must be a recent new realignment of the Jim Donnelly Trail. It was surprisingly gentle in terms of grade compared to everything else around, and definitely fit Nimue's oft-repeated chant description "Skinny skinny Singletrack! Skinny skinny Singletrack! I don't know where we're going, I don't know where we're going. I hope we get there soon." This inspired a lot of skipping. I definitely want to ride up this trail now, as it seems so humane compared to the alternate routes up.

There is a map of the area we hiked here, or you can get a sense of the terrain from the GPS trace:

In the end, Chad beat us back to the truck by about an hour. This didn't seem like a bad fate, as he was happily sitting in a camp chair in the sun with a bottle of homebrew when we found him, post 20+ mile mountain bike climbathon :) We stopped at In-n-Out on the way out so Nimue could get the double cheeseburger she had been fantasizing about on the trail, and she bounced in the back seat all the way home.

This morning brought rain and crazy wind (which didn't stop me from biking, although it arguably should have), and rain is on the horizon for at least the next week, so this is probable the last of the California sunshine gloating for a while. On the bright side, next week is ski week!

Yoda meets Space Kitty

2011-02-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

Nimue's been taking an after school cartooning class, with predictable results.

Signs of Spring

2011-02-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

Despite all the snow in other parts of the country, it's been acting like spring around here, with highs near 70 degrees. This means that it is time to weed out all of the evil oxalis that tries to take over the lawn (left, looking rather pretty), and also that the daffodils are blooming.

It also means it is time to drag the family out on hikes:

enjoy the views from the top of the ridge:

and ride to wretched excess!

Award-winning poster

2011-02-09T15:23:00.001-08:00

Nimue was quite proud of the fact that her class voted her poster from Drug-Free Week to be the best. We just got it back after its sojourn on the school office wall.

Can you tell she was happy?

2011-01-28T14:13:00.001-08:00

At the school flag salute this morning, Nimue was surprised to find that she was one of the January Citizens of the Month for Honesty.

Images from this week

2011-01-27T15:34:00.000-08:00

Birthday Cheesecake: (late but worth it!)

Deslightful excess on Monday: about 80 miles and 7400 feet of climbing; almost 70 degrees out!

Surprising skink in the front courtyard

Not pictured: woman brushing her teeth while riding her bike, who I spotted while riding over to the school to get Nim this afternoon. I used to think my mom was weird for keeping a toothbrush in the car, but that oddity has now been dethroned.

Building Bikes

2011-01-24T07:53:00.000-08:00

My friend Emily has been trying to get one of her bikes on the road, and I offered to help out -- but putting a bike together is never as straightforward as it ought to be!

To complicate things, she's trying to keep the cash outlay reasonably small by swapping as many parts as possible from her damaged frame, onto a new frame, but the old bike has an ultra-modern gee-whiz aerospace-grade Trek composite frame, and the new one is old-school small-diameter classic steel. Therefore, almost nothing from the first bike actually fits on the second bike! It was easier in the "good old days" when all you had to watch out for was French and Italian bottom-bracket threads...

Our mutual friend Dave made a pretty funny animated cartoon of the process:

Friday adventure

2011-01-21T15:46:00.000-08:00

We took a ride out on the trail along the edge of the Bay behind Moffett this afternoon -- the pictures are classic Nim...

(Nine miles in the freakishly warm 67 degree January sunshine, for the curious)

Origami

2011-01-21T15:40:00.001-08:00

I went into Nimue's room this afternoon to look for something, and found that all of her money had been transformed into butterflies. Who needs to buy toys when you can make them?

Gone Goofy on the bike again

2011-01-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

After skiing for the first time this year, my legs were tired. Maybe not as wiped out as Nim's, or Chad's (he skis the hard way, on tele gear), but tired enough. So, this week was supposed to be about mellow slow flat rides.

It's sunny and almost 70 degrees by midafternoon here. Tuesday morning, I set out on the bike with my new bike speaker and ipod attached to the handlebar and headed toward the edge of the Bay. No hills there, no sirree. I was good, explored some small sections of trail I hadn't yet ridden over near East Palo Alto, and enjoyed the fact that the levees in the baylands parks on the way over had dried out enough for me to ride on the dirt without fear of being sucked into a sticky quagmire. Fun stuff. I found some big mushrooms out near the end of the trail at Ravenswood Open Space Preserve, and generally enjoyed the Bay views and shorebirds. My legs felt like they were getting just the recovery ride they needed.

Then I turned around and headed home. Hungry! Need to pee! ipod decided to give me energetic music! My speed crept up, and I accidentally rode pretty hard on the way back home, sending me right back to tired-leg-land. All that gentle recovery riding on the way out was for naught.

So I stayed off the bike yesterday, and tried again this morning. The plan was for a nice flat recovery ride through the gently rolling foothills. The legs were feeling ok, and Alpine Road isn't really that steep, so it seemed like a good choice. I rode gently out.

Now the paved part of Alpine dead ends, and I much prefer loops to out-and-back routes. It was 67 degrees and gorgeous when I got there. The speaker was wafting 15th century Spanish pilgrimage songs at me. Still lots of time before school was to get out. My crafty road bike steered itself up onto the dirt trail that starts at the end of the pavement.

This trail ultimately links up to Page Mill, making a loop. Joy and happiness. Last time I rode it on a road bike, I seem to remember leading Stephan's Wednesday night ride crew astray, laughing maniacally at the sheer silliness of the route most of the way up, and then vowing to use the mountain bike for that location henceforth.

After 5 years, one forgets those thoughts. Today, most of it was actually not too bad, except for some steep sections full of roots that were also full of sticky mud.

As the grade picked up, so did my riding intensity, perhaps fuelled by the eclectic mix of Notre Dame polyphony, bluegrass, Tuvan throat singing and grunge coming out of the stereo. By the time I got to the pavement at the top, it seemed like a good idea to cut through the other preserve at the top on the way back; furthermore, the singletrack was clearly going to be more fun than the dirt road.

I've got no self control when it's this nice out, I tell you.

The beauty of having one's bike be already dirty from a previous ride is that there's very little barrier to taking it back out onto the mud. Even if it does make Chad cringe to see the condition I routinely leave it in... It's also interesting to ride the Ruby on the dirt; while it absorbs shock pretty amazingly well, it does handle quite differently and just doesn't feel like my more solid mountain bike. I had the weird sensation that I could sort of unweight everything going over the rocky bits so as not to damage the skinny tires, which led my carcass to be much more relaxed than usual on the trail -- one suspects that this is good for technique improvement.

I surprised a couple of hikers near the top (Miles Davis with your hike, anyone....), and then proceeded to zoom down Montebello Road to home and lunch.

This Ride is Clearly NOT Flat. Oops. Plus there were about 7 miles of dirt. It's back to the land of tired legs for me.

On the bright side, I wasn't hauling a tuba on a bike trailer like the kid I saw on his way to the middle school the other morning, and I did see the first poppies of the season on the roll down the Mary Avenue bike bridge :) And tomorrow's riding is a flat mountain bike ride with Nim, so it can't possibly escalate too badly.

Done

2011-01-20T21:51:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, we headed up to the mountains to get our first skiing of the year in -- and Nimue's ski instructor at Sugarbowl apparently did his job well. Nim was all used up by the end of the day:

Imp

2011-01-17T12:44:00.001-08:00

Nimue got sick of tangles in her hair, and decided that a short cut like her friend Cathryn's would be cute and practical. Plus, in her words, it would be fun to have a big change to freak out the boys in her class.

We think it brings out her inner imp.

In case you need your Nimue fix...

2011-01-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of shots from last week's Friday Adventure with the new (used) bike. Nim charged around Fremont Older Open Space Preserve with great glee.

She also learned pig latin this week. Ethay otherway arentspay illway igurefay outway atthay itway asway ymay aultfay andway unthay emay ownday, I'mway uresay. Osay unfay orfay ethay irdthay adersgray, oughthay -- Iway ouldn'tcay esistray.

This week, our Friday Adventure is to head up to the mountains to do some skiing. Just a day this time to get our legs under us, with more to come the last weekend of January.

Highlight of the Week

2010-12-30T11:02:00.001-08:00

Poor hungry cyclist Ma rolls off the hill after an idyllic sunny CA winter ride, stops to pick up kiddo from cooking camp. On arrival, presented with warm pastry filled with savory creamed turkey with peppers, followed by a cinnamon roll. Mmmmmmm......

The Young Chef's Academy is highly recommended; Nim quite enjoyed her 3-morning camp this week. Plus, they appear to do Friday kid cooking nights so parents can go out :)

Woe of the Week

2010-12-30T10:55:00.001-08:00

The cat seemed off earlier this week -- not really eating or drinking, grumpy, and yowly if you dared pet her hindquarters. I took her to the vet yesterday; they found and drained a large gooey abscess on her tail. Poor kitty! One suspects Bad Bobber had something to do with it. I get to irrigate the wound twice daily, holding Mariam down with my famous "clamp the cat down between your legs" technique. (Poor Ma). The tubes come out tomorrow, which will make the whole thing seem a bit less grotesque.

Christmas Holidays in pictures

2010-12-28T16:24:00.001-08:00

In the holiday aftermath, here are a few pictures for you all to enjoy:

Nimue's concert; she's the second kid in the back row, unable to keep still.

Taking notes about the airport art; in pajamas due to the redeye to Boston.

Not enough sleep on the plane; lucky Nim slept in the car up to Maine.

Poking ice in the woods with the best walking stick ever.

Interesting imprint in the ice after Nimue peeled up a frozen leaf.

Fun with Gran and Grandad.

Snow! Fortunately enough to be fun but not so much as to cause trouble driving.

Fun with cousins in Rockport.

Waiting for the hours-late airplane home, in an exceedingly cute hat.

Christmas at home. Yay!

Post-Christmas hike. We love CA.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

Forget the cookies and milk -- Santa and the reindeer get CARROTS from us. Merry Christmas to all!

Best Laid Plans

2010-12-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

Every year, it is interesting to observe the pattern of holiday card arrival. They almost always catch me off guard. How can it possibly be December again? I'm quite sure it's still supposed to be September.

Then the guilt to catch up and send out one's own cards sets in. Usually I don't even have cards by the time the card from my aunt Bobbie showed up. Her card was traditionally the harbinger of the Christmas season; the last couple of years, cards from a couple of others have rivalled her card's usual first-week-in-December arrival date (but I still think of hers as the first).

Over the next two months, we watch the rest trickle in. To date, the usual pattern is that ones from the older generation of the family show up first, followed by friends from high school, followed by college and grad school friends without kids, followed by all other friends and siblings with kids.

Somewhere in there, I send out ours, and have resigned myself to the fact that they are more often than not New Years cards. Happy Holidays is a generic sort of wish that doesn't have to be rigorously tied to the 25th of December, right?

There are some in my acquaintance who happily maintain that theirs are Chinese New Year cards. I respect this :)

This year, however, I succumbed to a "50% Off All Holiday Photo Cards" offer back before Thanksgiving, madly looked through our year as documented by photos while the offer was still good, and put in an order. They arrived, miraculously, before anyone sent us their Christmas cards. I felt smug and ahead of the game. This is the year we send out cards that actually arrive before Christmas! Of course, life is busy and I set them aside, to be buried under piles of stuff to deal with in the office.

For 2010, a second-cousin-in-law-umpty-times-removed card showed up first, followed by several of Chad's friends, followed by my aunt. Ok. If I have the cards, I should just get 'em out, right? I threatened to write a terse holiday letter in the form of a haiku, at which point Chad produced a lovely summary of our year's events. Woo hoo -- let's hear it for teamwork!

Skip tedious part about finding list, marvelling at the length, and then browbeating small child to sign all letters. The rest will be easy.

Not so easy. Something seemed funny about the pile of envelopes as I worked through all the addresses this afternoon. It was oddly small. Quite small. Twenty envelopes short of the number of cards small. Aargh!!!! My normal paranoia about others screwing things up did not extend to counting the Christmas card envelopes when they showed up (I did count the cards themselves, though...) My plans to get everything out on time risk being thwarted!

The upshot: If your card shows up in a bizarre envelope that doesn't seem right, it's because in my determination to actually get things out on time this year, I pillaged all the rogue leftover envelopes from Christmases past to round up a quorum for this year. To the point of shaving half a millimeter off of two cards to fit into the last two slightly-too-small envelopes to make it work. It's not my fault, really. We wish you all the best, and trust that you realize that it's the thought that counts. Plus, most of you realize by now that everything I do is slightly scruffy :)

Merry Christmas / other Winter Solstice Holiday of Choice to all! We hope to see you in the new year.

Sledding in SF

2010-12-13T09:12:00.001-08:00

Nimue found some unexpected fun in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, along with the planned fun of dinner out at paul k (highly recommended) and the San Francisco Nutcracker (also quite good -- though, for me, not as shockingly amazing as seeing John Adams conduct his oratorio El Nino at the symphony the previous week).

Bike Camping in the Rain

2010-12-06T23:08:00.000-08:00

Our original Thanksgiving holiday camping plans having been clobbered by the villainous rats, we still felt the need to get out and bike-camp a bit. However, the Prius we have on loan until the truck gets fixed can't really carry bikes. Thus, we needed a bike ride that would start and finish from our house, but there are precious few campgrounds withing reasonable pedaling distance of the Anna+Nimue tandem team.

The best choice seemed to be a campout at Joseph D. Grant park. We've hiked there a few times, but had not yet camped; it's a pretty park, about 25 miles from our house, and they had a spot open. We'd depart on Friday, camp that night, and come home Saturday.

"There's some precipitation that might come in Saturday afternoon" warned my charming wife. No problem, I replied, we'll be almost home if it does start to sprinkle.

We've found on previous bike voyages with the three of us, that we have two fairly evenly matched bikes if I take all the gear, and Anna gets Nimue and the tandem. Soon enough, Nimue will be putting out more than her share of power on a continuous basis, but for now it's kind of intermittent, and she does weigh 65 lbs now! With the added bulk of winter-time clothing and sleeping bags, I quickly found my bike equipped with both front and rear panniers, plus the trailer... and hoping my gearing would be low enough for the hill.

Did I mention the hill? Oh yes, Joe Grant park lies halfway up the climb to Mt. Hamilton, one of the favorite big mountain rides in our area. It's not a steep climb, without a burden, but we were about to find out what it feels like toting an extra 60-some-odd pounds.

As it turns out, it's not that bad. We had a nice, mostly-flat ride from our house through Santa Clara and San Jose, winding our way over towards the hill. The key to getting across the valley on bikes is figuring out where to cross the freeways. Anywhere south of Sunnyvale, bike/pedestrian over/under-crossings of the freeways are almost nonexistent. The routes that do go over the freeways are mostly treacherous high-speed, multi-lane, cars-only affairs... fortunately, Anna has scoped them out thoroughly on her previous rides to teach at the schools in the area, so she picked crossings as good as can be found, and on an almost-holiday Friday the traffic was very light.

My heavily-laden rig was entertaining to keep going in a straight line at first -- I'm used to towing the trailer, or carrying rear panniers, or a small load on the front, but not the combination of all of them! Small changes in grade (imperceptible to the eye) made themselves known immediately through the pedaling effort. Once we started up the hill, and I dropped into lowest gear, I figured I'd be able to pedal all the way up to the park without trouble, but knew that I'd work up a good sweat in getting there.

I was happy enough to see the park entrance, but the views out across the valley on the ride up the hill were great. There was a last steep pitch getting into the campground, that pretty well used up what was left in my legs at the moment. We had a nice campsite tucked on the side of a scenic oak-covered hill. Sadly, the campground host had left for the season, so no firewood was to be had, and it quickly was turning chilly in the absence of internally-generated heat from our earlier pedaling efforts.

We huddled around a little stove and made some hot tea, and got the tent put together. Anna and Nimue played a vigorous game of scrabble, while I took a warm-up rest in the sleeping bag.

You know you did a good job packing when, after arriving at your campsite and getting set up, all the bags from the bike (or backpack) are empty... we quickly reached that state, as every item of clothing found its way onto our bodies. We cooked up some soup for dinner, along with more hot tea and cocoa... as a light wind was coming up, we dove into the warmth of the tent as soon as dinner was finished. I think we got in the tent by 7 pm, and were asleep by 8. The stars were out, clear and bright.

At 5 am, the rain started. Lightly at first, just a sprinkle. But it gained energy as the morning dawned, and I worried how dry the tent would keep us. It's just a little backpacking tent, for two really, with two adults and a (growing, and sometimes wiggly) kid stuffed in there... By 7ish it was really pouring, but the tent was keeping the water out.

There was a break in the rain around 8, and while the girls made a run for the restroom I took advantage of the now-extravagant spaciousness of the tent to get everything inside it packed up. We then folded up the soaking tent, and loaded the bike while cooking up oatmeal for our breakfast. Just as we started eating, the rain picked up again... but having the gear packed, I really didn't mind too much. I knew that soon enough, we'd be back on the road and pedaling, and I much prefer that to just standing around in the rain. Somehow, the addition of motion makes the rain much more tolerable.

We did realize that our day's ride would start off with a long, wet descent, back down the hill we had climbed the day before. We left all our insulating layers on, under the waterproofs. Normally, when pedaling the bike, this would be a recipe for near-instant overheating. I knew I'd want the luxury of that warmth soon enough, though, and could take it all off when we got to the bottom.

As soon as we started out on the bikes, our moods lifted. We rolled down the hill at a good clip, and the rain even let up; the storm cleared out of the valley as we rode above it, giving us spectacular views through freshly-scrubbed air.

Once down in the valley, the rain gradually built up again, leaving us pretty well soaked but happy to arrive home where warm showers and dry clothing awaited.

We figured out, over the next couple of days, that the cold of Friday night, and the next day's soaking rain, had really used up a lot of calories, and our tasty soup-dinner represented only about 100 calories -- far fewer than we probably needed. Other than that, our rather wet little trip was a good success, helping to get the touring gear sorted out and ready for longer expeditions.

Broken Stuff Karma

2010-11-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

Just a small rant for the morning -- this fall, everything is breaking. To date, things that have gone down include:

the main computer in the office (replaced and then resurrected as the garage computer)

my Garmin bike GPS (replaced; Chad dissected the dead one in preparation for fixing the flakiness in his)

the Roomba's bumper sensor (diagnosis/repair still in progress)

my kindle (warrantee replacement coming in the mail)

Nim of course is most upset about her wind-up whale bath toy, whose tail fell off. Waaaa.

That's not the worst of it, though.

Sunday morning, we went to start the truck, only to find that several warning lights came on. It was also running pretty rough. Given that the vehicle is still pretty new, we assumed that maybe there was some defect that would be fixed under warrantee. Maybe rain got in and fried its little brain, or something rattled loose, or the like.

Not so. Much more diabolical.

Chad got a call from the shop after they got it on the lift and the report was "Rodent chewed up cyl 3 harness"

Eh? Rats are eating the wiring in the car? To the tune of a couple thousand dollars of repair work? Devouring my tomatoes is one thing, but this is ridiculous! This means war.

On calling the car insurance, I found that "Rats ate my car's wiring" is not an unheard-of claim (and fortunately is a covered event). And of course, one can find all sorts of tales of woe/tall tales on this subject if one uses the power of Google. Apparently, rodents quite like some of the new soy-based plastics used on wiring in the last 10 or so years, if you believe everything you read.

We already know these vermin are not nesting in our yard; they have enough range to be coming from one of the larger brush-filled yards nearby. I just picked up some more traps and sent in the online request for the county vector control people to come out and investigate where the beasties are coming from.

Maybe we need a pet snake in addition to a pet barn owl. It wouldn't take care of the various broken electronics gizmos in the house, but it would be satisfying to watch the vermin be decisively defeated. Chomp.

Unfair. Argh.

Not All Bad

2010-11-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

Despite the tenor of the previous post, most of our anniversary weekend was quite enjoyable, and full of mountain bike exploration. By far, the most interesting route was following an obscure trail out of Columbia that ran along side, or in some cases on, the Tuolumne Flume, then along an old rail grade, then on a series of little-known dirt roads heading north from Lyons Reservoir.

The next crossing was both much longer, and only had one board to walk on rather than two. Not the usual mountain biking terrain feature!

Route finding is left as an exercise for the reader, or bug Chad for the GPS trace.

Phobias

2010-11-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

Kids are sometimes irrationally terrified of things. For a while, Nimue was terrified of sea urchins, as they sometimes project a little bulbous eye-like thing on a stalk out between their spines. Unbelievably creepy -- to the point that she would run screaming out of a room if one were encountered -- until I did a little poking around on the web and was able to explain that that was the part of the urchin's anatomy used for excretion. (Bottoms are inherently funny to my small one, as mentioned in the past.)

Then it was old maps of the distorted not-quite-right "Here There Be Dragons" variety -- I still can't figure this one out, except that the juxtaposition of authoritative sources with the unknown bothers her. Most recently, we went through a spate of fear of skeletons. I was afraid that trick-or-treating would be traumatic until I hit upon the idea of routinely talking to and cracking jokes with any freaky Halloween decorations that we ran across on the way to school. "Nice to meet you, sir!" I shook hands with many, many unsold plastic skeletons at OSH before she relented and started doing it too.

For me, as a kid, the phobia was of the neighborhood Doberman. We never saw this dog. It lived behind a tall fence in the spooky corner of the neighborhood near the woods, and would bark its head off any time a kid went by. You could almost hear the feral dog slobber spraying across the fence as he paced you. I was certain it must be six feet tall with balefully glowing eyes. Older kids would tell stories of how their best-friend-from-second-grade's cousin's teacher had a bite chewed off the last time the dog got out. I was terrified.

Over the years, I've learned to suppress my inner distaste for the critters. For the most part, dogs seem to be good at following at clear expectations if your voice and body language match, so I usually force myself to relax and say "Nice dog", or perhaps "Stop!" or "Down!" if it is approaching too quickly. Even when one is on a bike and the dog has to fight its normal chase response, this is generally successful.

Occasionally when I run into a large-ish, but well-behaved dog out in public and respond with my default "Nice dog" mantra, it is misinterpreted by the dog owner as actual admiration rather than me trying to send a brain wave to the beast that it WILL be a nice dog and will NOT chomp me. "He's friendly -- go ahead and pet him" says the dog owner. "No no nono no no no no nooooooo!" says my hindbrain, as I dutifully pat the top of the head, trying to avoid the slobbery teeth. This is not what I want to do. I don't like dogs.

As it turns out, this is justified.

Chad and I were heading out on mountain bikes this weekend, riding up a hill through a rural neighborhood near Columbia on our way to a trail that runs along an old water flume when we came around a corner to see a woman walking with four large dogs. As Chad passed her, she had control of three of them while the fourth ran wild. She said something about that one not being her dog; it got all excited and started chasing Chad, who quickly outpaced it up the hill.

In cases like this, being the second rider sucks.

The dog was all raring to go, ready to chase bikes, and annoyed by the escape of the first cyclist by the time it noticed me. Charge! I rode to the other side of the road to go around it, but of course it was charging down the hill straight at me and matched every move. "Be a nice dog. Stop! Down. Nice Dog! Be a good dog! Ow!!!"

Ow? There were teeth making contact with my flank. Huh? This isn't in the script. "Be a nice dog." He let go and huffed hot breath on my calf, ran around the front of the bike, and chomped the other shin. "Stop that!!"

Meanwhile, the woman walking her other dogs was yelling at this one. Chad's impression was that she was calling it "Splitter" when he went by. I heard something slightly different. One of us must have misheard, or the name had morphed to something unprintable, which roughly translates as "One Who Defecates", by the time I was trying to avoid hitting the beast.

There's humor in the juxtaposition of her swearing at the dog and my "Stop that! Be a good dog!", not that I noticed at the time. At the end of the day, I don't think it cared what either of us were saying, but merely found the spandex-covered mouthfuls of me that it got to be unappealing enough for me to be able to escape and ride up the hill away from it.

I probably should have gotten some information from her about the dog at the time, but a quick check showed that my shorts and legwarmers had protected my legs enough that I wasn't bleeding, and I just wanted to get the heck away. Chad and I proceeded to have a lovely 40+ mile ride (more on that later). When we got back and cleaned up, there were two sets of four bruises each where the dog's canines had made contact and one small scrape where one of the teeth had almost but not quite poked in. Ow.

I did call Kaiser yesterday morning after we got home, as I was overdue for a tetanus booster anyway -- they made me come in to get it looked at, and insisted that I report the incident to animal control. Joy. I spent quite a while on the phone ("Hello, Tuolumne County Animal Control? I'd like to report that a dog with an unprintable name bit me on Yankee Hill Road..."), and had to fill out another form with the same information when I went in for my tetanus shot. Apparently a dog bite does not have to cause bleeding to count as having punctured the skin (the scrape from the pressure was enough). Fortunately, there's not been rabies in dogs in CA for quite some time. (Just don't get a bat or skunk bite.)

Funny thing, when you go to Kaiser with a dog bite, the staff are much more solicitous than normal, radiating a bizarre "Oh, you poor thing!" mien that's so strong it's almost cloying. This doesn't happen if you go in with a broken bone, sprain, or profuse bleeding from some other accidental self-induced trauma, or even if you're taking your small child in with pneumonia. It was weird -- everyone from the person on the phone, to the advice nurse, to the receptionist, to the nurse, to the doctor seemed to treat me as if I was fragile, despite all that really happened was some bruises, a scratch, and the need for a tetanus shot that was already overdue. Maybe others have the same subconscious response to dogs that I do? Or a primal response to wild-acting critters? This level of dog bite is much less of a problem than, say, breaking an ankle in the backcountry.

When I told Nimue the story, she wanted to know the dog's name; I told her that I wasn't sure, but it sounded like it might have been a bad word. "Oh, like Poopsie-Whoopsie?" she asked. Bottoms are inherently funny in the words of an 8-year-old. I'll probably remember that and crack up the next time I see a threatening canine. And start riding the other direction very, very fast.

Not bad for a rainy day

2010-11-07T12:23:00.001-08:00

Nimue had so much fun running the Fun Run at her school a while back that we had to sign up for another event. The Title Nine 9k promised chocolate, plus it looked to be a nice route around the Palo Alto Baylands, so we were in!

Of course, being early November, it decided to rain on us. Nim and I arrived at the start early as recommended, checked out the situation, and retreated back to the shelter of the truck for about half an hour. We had to amuse ourselves by perusing the Title Nine catalog of cute but expensive stuff that was in the registration bag (evil evil temptations), as that was the only reading material in the car. About 15 minutes before the start, we got back out and huddled in the mob loosely arranging themselves at the start line. It's actually quite warm when you are in the middle of a bunched crowd of 1000 runners :)

Finally, it was 9:00, and we were off! After the usual disorganization of a bunch start, we found an open patch and Nim settled into a nice steady pace. Even though we had planned on a strategy of half mile run/1 minute walk repetitions, she decided in the heat of the moment that she wanted to run straight through, only stopping briefly at the aid stations drink and snack. Crazy determined kid did it, too!

Brief learnings:

Nim has decided that Gatorade is yummy and is convinced that it contains some sort of analgesic in addition to sugar and salt.
One's hat is less likely to blow off if you look down. (only one hat-sailing incident)
One can kill a lot of time for thinking of other ways one could say tailwind, especially given the fact that an 8-year-old finds words referring to one's backside to be intensely funny. Booty-wind comes to mind.
It's hard to eat chocolate while running.
A slightly chilly windy drizzle is neutralized by having a nice warm Nim hand to hold :)

All told, we went 6 miles in 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 53 seconds, over a combination of pavement, dirt, and slippery mud along the levees. My watch showed a total moving time of 1 hour 13 minutes, so our Gatorade stops were shorter than they seemed at the time.

Nimue also pointed out that the course ran in the shape of a heart:

The excellent tired kid is now splatted in the TV room watching cartoons.

More celebrations

2010-11-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures from Halloween itself:

Like last year, Todd, Sarah, Cathryn, and Scott came over to share "Spooky Food".

The spider allowed Chad to sneak up on it.

Pumpkins. I'm sure I'm owed something for scooping them all out so others could decorate them.

Nimue and her haul, waaaay past bedtime.

Costume Preview

2010-10-29T11:12:00.001-07:00

In Nimue's mind, the the creature that most epitomizes evil pestilence while still being cute is the squirrel -- so that's what she wanted to be for Halloween. It took a couple dollars worth of fabric remnants, part of an old pool noodle, some fishing line, a few safety pins, and some face paint.

Halloween Spy

2010-10-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

We have a most excellent spider peering into our living room this week.

Bike musings for the week

2010-10-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

At 42 degrees Fahrenheit, it is cold enough to necessitate gloves for the ride into school. Nim and I discovered this the hard way this morning.

Moment of utter surprise: A Grim Cyclist in full fancy bike kit bedizened with the requisite logos riding along at a fast clip actually came out of his zone and said hi to me as he passed. I usually greet these Grim Cyclists excessively cheerfully in an effort to break through the training gloom (biking should be fun!); it usually doesn't work. This instance was especially unexpected, as I was riding slowly in mom clothes on the commute bike with fully-loaded bags on the back -- a sure indication of inanimate object status in the eyes of the typical too-too-focused Grim Cyclist. Thought I was hallucinating when he happily greeted me...

A prime candidate for Darwin in action: the Stanford student who rode out erratically in front of the truck in the dark the other night -- no lights, no helmet, flip-flops for shoes, all the while yakking on her cell phone. The truly scary thing is that this is not an uncommon occurrence around campus. You'd think they'd have more common sense. Argh.

I helped a rider who had toppled over and gotten tangled with her bike at an intersection near work the other day. Ow. Pay attention!

An entertaining read: Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling. Go find it in your library.

Most charming of all, Chad and Nimue spent quite some time together in the garage cleaning out several years of accumulated gunk from her wheels while I made dinner the other night. It seemed quite educational, and the look of joy on her face as she realized how easily everything now spins as she pedaled out the next morning was delightful. "I'm in gear five and it feels like gear two!!!"

Triceratops

2010-10-26T09:43:00.000-07:00

Nimue is a triceratops. She informs me that this type of dinosaur only eats salad "kitty-style". Yet another example of our continuing Calvin-and-Hobbes-esque existence.

Who runs the universe?

2010-10-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

The new cat has taken semi-permanent residence behind the computer, as if is her right to run the nerve center of the house. Now if only she was secure enough to make the dash to the litterbox in the garage on her own... (I have to take her there, as she's afraid the Bobber will come molest her while she's doing her business.)

Fat Kitty

2010-10-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

This one's from Nimue about a year ago, but I still like it!

Nim's quirky vision

2010-10-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

I'm finally getting around to scanning the huge pile of Nim creations from the last year and a half; this poem from last summer is pretty representative of her work.

Inaugurating the truck

2010-10-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we headed up to Downieville for some mountain biking. As you can see above, we also used the trip as an excuse to try out the new motor vehicle's capabilities up in the general direction of the Lakes Basin.

You may recall that the last time I rode my bike in the vicinity of what I affectionately think of as Mt. El@#$$@well, I complained about the rocks. They're not really any easier to drive over than to ride on, and I have to say, it's most peculiar to drive one's vehicle through a spot that one really thinks of as only biking and hiking territory.

The road -- or in this case, the obscure Snake Lake OHV trail -- never looks as bad in the photos as it does in real life. This description from the Sierra Outdoor Recreation website says it all: (which incidentally, I ran across after getting home)

......Snake Lake/Little Deer Lake:

4WD, most difficult.

Pack your winches, tow straps, high lift jacks, and travel with another vehicle; you may need them. Going down is easier than up, so driving a loop is very challenging: rocky, narrow, ledgy, constant bouldering, tight turns, and steep. Dropping down from Snake Lake to Gold Valley is the easier route out. Camp at the pretty lakes and try the fishing.

Oops. Not really what we set out to do. At one point, we hit a tricky spot within view of the lake, and used a lot of mind over matter power and all of Chad's careful skills to work through it, only to find that we should have scoped out the next section beforehand. A narrow toothy granitic yaw full of drops, roots, and boulders was just around the corner. Argh.

We later found out that this stretch has a name: The Snake Lake Sluice; Chad found this representative picture of the spot at this site.

Fortunately, there was also an easy place to pull over off the road, which we did, and after fortifying ourselves with lunch, we hiked down to the lake. If you look closely in the picture below, you can see the cute little FJ parked on the side of the road. (about 1/3 of the way down, just left of center).

While Chad and Nim fished and I looked for bugs, we were treated to the entertainment of watching two other vehicles approach the spot, one from each side, and proceed to spend about half an hour discussing and maneuvering through it all. These were tricked-out, jacked-up, heavily-used, real adventure vehicles, and even they had some trouble -- so we didn't feel too bad about our decision to stop while we were ahead with the shiny new truck.

At the end of the day, Chad got to push all the fancy 4WD control buttons and did a fantastic job of driving through the gnarly bits. I directed through the hard sections and drove some of the mellower stuff. Nimue said "Stongman Daddy!" when he lifted a partially fallen tree the necessary extra couple of inches we needed to pass under it. We didn't get stuck. Fun was had.

The truck is now properly dirty and has scrapes on the bottom. As it should be.

The tan color hides the dirt well.

Lest you think we didn't do all our normal Downieville activities too, here's proof that we did:

Lazy

2010-10-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

Too tired to do anything besides take a short ride along the new section of the Bay Trail in Sunnyvale/Mountain View today, but it was scenic, with views of birds and the bay in one direction and Moffett field in the other.