Christmas

Yesterday was Christmas, and Ma asked me to write a post about it, so here goes:

For Christmas, Grandma Linda came down to visit us and share the holiday cheer :) .  Of course that is exciting for everyone, because grandmas are like that.

Lots of gifts were exchanged, the best one, I think, was a pair of overalls for me. I've been wanting overalls for a REALLY long time.  Some other memorable gifts are:

• A bike stand for Daddy
• A pair of awesome earrings for Ma that I made
• A stripy sweater for me
• A pair of fancy bike shoes for Ma
• My school photograph for Grandma Linda
• Adventure food for all of us
• The LEGO 4x4 Crawler, given to me by Santa Claus
• Fancy cat food/treats for the cats
• More iPad games for all of us

Tomorrow we are heading up to Gramma Eileen and Grampa Jack's house to visit relatives there.

Merry Christmas!

MacBeaky the Treetopper

Nimue has been working hard on an ornament for the top of our tree this week, and finally finished it last night.  Meet MacBeaky.  MacBeaky has been driving me crazy.  If you really want to bug Nimue, call him a turkey. (As in "Just put the last layer of paint on the turkey so I can have the kitchen counter back!")

Heading into Christmas

A few things for the you all, now that I've wrapped everything except for the item that was unknowingly ordered from Europe and won't get here in time.

Nim and I had a candy-making spree on Saturday, and she hasn't stopped bouncing since.  It's something about the sheer quantity of chocolate on the counter, I think.
Clockwise from top:  Coconut Bonbon, Nimue's Extreme Mint, Pecan Fudge, and Peanut Butter Square

The bi-yearly band concert.  Nimue played "Flos ut rosa floruit",  a medieval conductus that I transposed for piccolo, accompanied by her friend Clarissa on the bass drum.


She also enjoyed playing the woodblock in "Aztek Sunrise" (second from left in photo below).

Nimue had a choir concert too, but stupid Ma forgot the recorder and thus couldn't bootleg a recording.

On the street

We've had a number of interesting things to watch on the street out in front of the house lately.  First they chewed up the pavement: ("Nimue, you need to leave for school RIGHT NOW, or you won't get out...")

leaving it looking like this for weeks.  (Bad for bikes)

Then one random day I was stuck because of this

which at least improved the road surface enormously.

This morning, as Chad was leaving, he came back in:  "There's a fire down the street."

Indeed.  An electrical fire tried to turn the power pole into a torch.  I watched for a while as the fire department and PG&E arrived.  The PG&E guy was lifted up by the crane in the truck until he could reach whatever he was after with the end of his long pole, at which point the top of the pole lit up like a giant sparkler and all the flames and sparks from the bottom went out.  The fire department then sprayed everything down as commute traffic turned into the maze of streets to the sides in an attempt to get around the mess.

At least it has been wet out.

Ornaments

I knew there was a reason I had saved all the worn-out stripey socks!

Accidental Century

I kind of sort of accidentally rode 102 miles on Monday.  It was only supposed to be 40-50 miles and flattish.  However, at the turn-around point at the end of Canada Road, it was warm and sunny, so I headed down the Sawyer Creek Trail.  Ditto at the end of that section, so off to the end of the San Andreas Reservoir trail.  At that point, I was 40 miles from home, one thing led to another, and pretty soon, I was heading down the hill towards SFO to pick up the Bay Trail.  At some point, I realized if I kept the same pace up, I'd hit 100 miles around the time that Nimue was going to get out of band, so of course I had to add the bonus miles at the end to make that happen...

Many entertainments over that route included:

Wile E. Coyote's mailbox.

Riding under the spaghetti tangle of ramps going into SFO.  It is surprisingly easy to get through the airport on a bike, and I even saw helpful signs directing one towards airport bike parking.

Views of airplanes from the edge of the SFO runway, a helicopter taking off at the airport near the Hiller air museum, and low-flying small planes from the Palo Alto airport.  

A neighborhood of houseboats.

Lots of what Nimue refers to as "water chickens".

Almost getting doored near Mountain View High School at mile 99 (I was distracted looking at the giant construction project they've started).

Helping a small boy (maybe 4 years old) pick himself up after a scooter crash at the bottom of the bike bridge over 85.  His mom was way up the bridge out of sight, as he had apparently careened out of control to the bottom.