Nim's quirky vision

 

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

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

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.

 

 

Ooops

Mom brain strikes again: After mountain biking today, I gleefully loaded the bike into the new truck and drove off. About a half a mile later, it occurred to me that I didn't remember putting the front wheel in... Sure enough, I had left it leaned against the rear tire of the truck, where it was so well camoflauged that I didn't notice it. Argh.

I'm hoping I get off with just having to replace the badly bent skewer, though I fear Chad will come home and exclaim in horror: "You mangled the [insert obscure expensive bike part name here]!" The truck, of course, was unscathed by the puny mountain bike wheel.

Yes, I made more butter, too. Adding a spoonful of sour cream and letting the mix fester on the counter overnight did marvelous things to the flavor!

Counterpoint on new vehicle

I have to point out, that this was not a case of "guy wants macho 4x4, talks girls into it" -- rather, Anna found the truck, and she and Nimue convinced me that it would be a fun and unconventional choice. In particular, for Anna it would be distinctively not a "soccer-mom-mobile" (as so often seen around our chunk of suburbia.) In Nimue's case, the "cute-mobile" beat out the "horky giganto" 4runner we were also considering.

Further, lest my eco-concious friends put me on the pillory, I must mention that we put considerably less than 10k miles on a car annually (while collectively racking up considerably more miles than that on our bikes.) The huge majority of our car miles are spent heading off on various adventures, often on bad or borderline impassable roads. Nearly all the city driving that we might do, is done on our bikes. Thus, fuel economy ended up ranking fairly low in our list of new-car requirements; adventure capabilities and durability rated higher.

Interestingly, the new Toyota is shorter than the Subaru (discovered when parking in our driveway for the first time!)

Can you tell what just happened?

2000 Subaru Outback

2010 Toyota FJ Cruiser Trail Edition

Dirt, ho!

Fun Run

Nimue decided she wanted to do the Cherry Chase Fun Run this year -- she ran the entire two mile course in 22 minutes with no stops. Yay, Nim! Chad greeted us at the end on his way out on a bike ride.


We may be insane, but are also signed up to do a females-only 9k out at Palo Alto Baylands in November. It turns out that taking Nimue running after dinner is a good way to work out the crazo "I've just been fed" energy, plus she likes the undivided Ma attention. I set the bike computer to beep every two minutes, at which point we have to think of a word that will either (a) make the other person laugh or (b) expand the small one's vocabulary. Nim's idea. Weird kid. Weird Ma, too.

Fleeing the sinking ship

I tore out a big allergenic Scotch broom bush yesterday; Chad cracked up at the larval exodus that occurred after I stuffed the detritus in the yard waste bin. Reminds me of the time when my brother at age 4 decided to throw away the loosely covered container of caterpillars he had taken in to preschool for show-and-tell in the kitchen garbage can, to be discovered several hours later.

You can't hide in an Eichler

One of the great things about living in at Eichler is that one doesn't have to look hard to locate one's family members, even when they are up on the roof. Chad is accumulating great house chore karma by replacing the roof sealant around the atrium by himself.