Halloween Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!