Hamilton

Every year, I ride Mt. Hamilton on or around my birthday.  The year, the weather was gorgeous and I had plenty of time, so I drove over to the hill after breakfast and headed up.

Very slow to warm up.

Total and utter lack of motivation.

Really didn't feel like doing it that morning.  

Just rode up it last month.

Booooooring.  Crave variety.

As a result, after the first thousand or so feet of climbing, I made a right turn on Quimby and started exploring.  Despite the fact that this section of road climbed a little more, and more steeply than I had previously been doing, the bicycle ennui disappeared and everything immediately felt better.  Yay.

Of course, following this route meant I had to navigate without a map, ride some roads I had never been on, and ride some others in the opposite direction than I had previously done.  How fun!

But, yikes,  the steep part of Quimby looked like it would pitch me off the edge of the world.  I can't believe they are going to *race* down this on the Tour of California next month.  Some of the twisty switchbacks have an 18% grade, and despite the fact that the pavement looks ok to the eye, it actually has some weird undulating ripples to it that pitch you around.  Still, the views are pretty good :)

And yes, of course I've ridden *up* this before, just never down it.

After plummeting back down into San Jose, I turned south onto San Felipe Road, and discovered a gentle, rural, shady green climb that I had never climbed before.  Aside from a few suspicious cows at my snack stop, I didn't see much of anyone for miles.

San Felipe runs into the top of Metcalf Road, which was still covered in wildflowers despite the fact that many of the other hills are starting to turn brown.  I must have hit something weird on the phone with my sweaty fingers, resulting in a funny "old photo" effect being applied -- somehow appropriate to the atmosphere of this very rural, gorgeous section of road.

Another steep descent back into civilization, and then a bike trail along Coyote Creek, followed by some minor navigational challenges due to my lack of map, and I made it back to the starting point having covered more miles and gained more elevation than would have happened doing the normal Hamilton climb.  A most entertaining morning! (Happy Birthday to Me)

Happy Easter

Fun with chemistry: Vegetable-dyed Easter eggs.
Red onion skin
Grape juice
Artichoke
Yellow onion skin
Turmeric
Radicchio
Really pathetic leftover beets
(I quite prefer these to the artificial candy colors of traditional dye kits....even if a few of the colors just dyed white eggs brown!)

Kid hiding behind her bunny loot.

I sang a Palestrina double-choir mass as a singer added at the last minute for the church choir directed by the guy who does Early Music singers, and was almost asphyxiated by all the incense.

Hope you all had a good Easter.

Spring!

It's definitely spring here -- about 85 degrees and sunny, sunny, sunny when Chad and I rode out to Pescadero over the weekend.  No pictures of that (too busy trying to squeeze the ride into the time window encompassed by Nim's computer class), but I do have photographic evidence of spring-like conditions seen while mountain biking at Coe earlier in the week.

I was impressed that the microscope app on my phone took decent pictures of teeny-tiny flowers.  This filaree blossom was less than 1/4 inch across,

as were the butter-and-eggs,

and of course, the ladybug.

Family hike

I dragged everyone out for a short hike at Rancho San Antonio a couple of weekends ago.  We saw many and varied interesting things:

Turkeys!

View (trail, bay, and Mt. Diablo in the background)

View (NASA Ames)

View (San Jose and Mt. Hamilton)

View (rainbow over the expensive houses)

Many, many California newts

Followed by a very predictable result

Rides

Though some parts of the country are still in the throes of winter, that is not the case here...so I've been riding.  Guess where I rode (from home) last week:

That ride was followed up by a climb up Hamilton the following day.  Not bad for early-season riding!

Also forgot the chalkbag

Nimue thought her climbing chalk bag was ugly, so I made it into a monster.  Its LED eyes blink randomly, and lots of people have noticed it at the gym.  (the chalk bag hangs off the back of her harness and blinks down at everyone below; there is a hole in the top of its head for her to reach in to get chalk to dry off her hands)

Forgotten Valentines

I forgot to post these tasty Valentine's Day treats

Chad 3-D printed a miniature version of a cubesat.  I made a mold from it out of food-safe silicone, and then made peanut-butter-filled chocolate cubesats on sticks.

Yes, we are weird.

Not Ski Week

We headed up to the mountains for Nimue's February week of off school.  While this is traditionally "Ski Week", this year is about the most pathetic snow year I've seen around here.  Bad for skiing, and most especially bad for the drought.

Fortunately, there are other ways to amuse oneself up near Downieville.  We mountain biked, hiked, and spent a day exploring some of the old mining sites on back roads above town.

Can't you tell this was once the bustling mining community of Monte Cristo?

If you look around, there are remnants: shards of old bottles and dishes, saw blades, pieces of old stoves, and buckets like this one.

Nimue got bored, but the adults had a dandy time poking about.

Another old mining site up the road a bit.  I think this was the old Telegraph Mine.  Last year -- also a bad snow year -- when we rode up on mountain bikes, this was about the point where we were turned around by increasing giant slippery snow patches on the road.  None in sight here today.

When we got up to the top of the ridge, we took a small walk up a spur road to the Saddleback Mountain fire lookout.

It has about the most scenic potty hut ever.

At an elevation of 6690 feet in February, there was not much snow in evidence.  One fears a bad fire season this summer and fall.

Mt. Lassen in the distance.

We decided the weather station looked like an alien space probe.

And the old snags look like monsters:

There were strange messages carved by worms in the wood:

Our truck just looks like it belongs out here.

And it does.  This is the chunk of tree we had to drag up the road a bit with the truck to a spot where there would be space to pass it.  Notice the large furrow it dug.

Sadly, there wasn't much we could do about this tree without a chainsaw.  Alas, we didn't make it to the old mining town of Brandy City, which was the original goal for the day.  Not that it mattered much, since there was much fun to be had wandering around the maze of dirt roads up to that point.

Hmmm.   Snow.  What are Chad and Nimue doing?

Chad looks proud of himself.

Get out of the way, Nimue!

Here comes the truck.  Note the waning light...

Ah, traction!  As you see, we did find one shady part of the road that had several snow patches, and since they were melting fast, these snow patches were what my dad would call "slicker than snot".  Dumb me, I didn't put the chains in the truck for this trip (there was no snow after all...); Chad's clever notion of using sticks as traction aids got us out.  We had to move this set of sticks about four times onto different patches, after which we were done with the slippery melting snow and the sticks were just about pulverized.

There are clearly many more roads to explore close to town, even if they are "Not recommended for cars."  A most entertaining winter day for us.

The big kid

We were amused watching Nimue be the "big kid", emulated by the small kid, while we were up in the mountains.  I'm still accustomed to seeing her in the small kid role.