December 21st, 2008

    Happy Solistice. We had our neighborhood party yesterday and it went very well.We were the cheese fondue house and that was the first time I've done that. It worked great! Then we went to Mark and Val's fondue meats and finally to Patricks for chocolate. Nice.

    We lit the bonfire around 10pm and it made a flame *way* bigger than anyone thought it would. Tree limbs thirty feet up were getting hit by sparks, we were very glad that it had rained yesterday. After a few minutes the initial blast died down and we enjoyed a nice fire until the wee hours of the morning.

    I've recnetly joined Facebook and so far it seems pretty nice. A nice casual way to stay in touch with friends and family.

November 28th, 2008

    I was very sorry to read in my NOLS Alumni this morning that Willie Williams, an instructor I was privilaged to meet on my Spring Semester in Baja has passed away. I knew Willie for only one short week and yet he had a profound effect on me to this day.

    Here's a good letter regarding his life and passing.

   

November 27th, 2008

    Happy Thanksgiving! This year will be just Kim and I for a dinner at home though we did have the good fortune of being called by Kim's cousin Craig yesterday for an impromptu meeting up in San Francisco. Craig and wife, Toni, are out with their two lovely daughters for Thanksgiving with Toni's brother who lives in Palo Alto. Yesterday they went to see Alcatraz and we met them at Fisherman's Warf afterwards for dinner and a stroll. It was very nice indeed and it was good to see them continuing to do so well.

    So a grateful Thanksgiving to one and all, with our families stretched from east, central to west coasts, we'll be raising our glasses in gratitude today.

November 5th,2008

    I am very happy to add my congratulations to President-Elect Obama on winning a very historic race. I look forward to a new president in 2009 and a new congress that are eager to guide the country into this new millenia. Eight years late but better late than never!

October 20th, 2008

    Sorry for the big gap in posts but frankly things have been pretty quiet. And that's been a good thing! Yesterday Kim and I did celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. We went into Santa Cruz and had a very nice dinner at Cafe Mare which really is an outstanding Italian restaurant, a notch above.

    Aside from one rain in early October it has remained dry but inreasingly cool. Hank and Buddy are doing well. Perhaps Hank better than Buddy who still combats with weight and low blood sugar.

    Kim has been watching the neighbor's house while they are away and cleaning up after the racoon who is stealthilysneaking into the car door while no one is looking.

    We both have been doing a bit of yard work. Clearing out some of the redwood suckers that clump around the base of the larger trees. Strangely we have been finding relics from residents of ages past: shirts, caps, a child's shoe, a skateboard with a swaztika carved into the bottom of it and a balanced throwing knife. We are hoping the trend doesn't continue with the discovery of an unmarked grave...

    The market panic is interesting but not so dire for us yet that we need to rush around and do anything about it.

August 24th, 2008

    We are home :)

    We had just a wee bit of drama with intense central valley heat and a wierd 3pm traffic jam on 80 west. What the hell are folks doing at 3pm on a Sunday that they can clog up a 4 lane interstate?

    Very sleepy suddenly, I think it's prolonged nap time.

August 24th, 2008

    The 24th, if our luck holds and all goes well we will be home this late afternoon or early evening. We get a good start yesterday and made tracks and are in a Super 8 hotel just outside Reno. Our, hopefully, last night on the road has been a good one with a very posh hotel room. Kim and I passed on gambling in the Alamo Casino next door but we did eat at the attached Iron Skillet. Nothing too exciting but it filled the bill.

    I have been going over the maps this morning, planning our daring entrance. Once we bypass the crossing guard, all should be well. The checkpoint has been moved up since our last sortie but the forces of ferretdom have reacted in kind and new alternatives have been presented. Today we will put their intelligence to the test.

    I hope to write the next installment from the comfort of my own office.

August 23rd, 2008

    We made it to Park City, Utah last night and ate at a nice Thai restaurant. Kim was thinking about driving to West Wendover after dinner which would have been another 3 hours on the road. I bonked so hard at dinner though that we decided just to stay right in Park City. We are at a Best Western and it's a little pricey but that's what you get for staying at a ski resort town. Still it's a pretty nice place. Too bad we don't have the time or inclination to enjoy it. I don't think I'll get a full rest until we get home which *cross fingers* might be tomorrow night!

    We stopped and got gas at Buford, WY yesterday. It can rightly claim to be the smallest town in the world with a population of 1. The guy who lives there runs a trading post which is actually pretty nice. I asked the clerk what happens when he dies and she said 'Oh, somebody else will buy it.' She meant the town! There are postcards that show when the population used to be 2 but the guy's son grew up and moved away. There goes the family dynasty.

    Just over 800 miles to go!

August 22nd, 2008

    We stayed at La Quinta Inn last night here in Cheyenne, WY. La Quinta has a company policy of being pet friendly and we certainly have seen lots of happy dogs here. We had a good drive yesterday, the car's AC kept the interior tolerable for the ferrets. We stopped for dinner right in Cheyenne at the Albany Restaraunt and Bar which was a neat old building with nice older photos on the wall.

    Hank is showing marked improvement in vigor and appetite. Hopefully he can bear with us for the 1200 miles we have to go! We think we may be able to get back Sunday night.

August 21st, 2008

    We are in Lincoln, Nebraska! We thought this would be a good place to stop, right past Omaha near an airport. There are lots of hotels, it looks like a busy place! On closer inspection many of the hotels are in a state of construction. We are at the Ramada and our room while functional and clean has very perculiar construction decisions. A very low sink, wall lamps set at odd angles, the wall switch turns on the TV and the coffee maker. The parking lot is filled with construction vehicles and dumpsters. I think the guys building the 'better' hotel next door are staying at this one.

    We went to eat at the Perkins last night but they were closed early because of soemthing to do with their carpet. We went to try 'Luckee's' which is attached to our hotel but were a bit put off the the partially eaten food decorating the bar and the fine ambiance associated with the clientel. Ironically, McDonald's was our preference over the bar. I'm afraid Ray Kroc would not be happy about the cleanliness of this particular franchise. The woman who took our order looked like she was holding on by dear life. I have also been unfamilar with McDonald's new decor choice of raw 2x4 lumber with exposed conduit. Perhaps it is just a test market here in Lincoln.

    So Hank is doing okay. We took him to the vet and found his injuries were much more substantial than we first observed. His whole lower back has turned purple into a big bruise and there are more puncture marks near that location. We have no idea what got a hold of him but it's amazing he's doing as well as he is. The vet checked for any broken bones or signs of internal bleeding and said those don't seem likely. He was a little concerned with some tenderness around his kidney but there was normal concentrations in his urine so things seem to be working inside.

    1600 miles to go. I'm dreaming of home.

August 19th, 2008

    This trip has been amazing in displaying that just when you think things could get no worse, well it goes without saying.

    So we arrived back at Daphne's place Friday night and had a good time watchig the Olympics and going to McCormicks for dinner. John and family came up Saturday afternoon and we went to the Latern which was holding a memorial birthay celebration for the late Donny Sr. Afterwards we went swimming back at Heather Ridge and had a very nice time.

    We ran a couple errands the next day and then went over in the late afternoon to Linda and Tony's. Kim's mom and her cousin Brian joined us for a dinner at the Silo and we again enjoyed watching the Olympics back at their house while having a nice visit. It got late but we decided to hit the road. I think when Kim started driving it was close to 11pm.

    She drove until about 2am and we crossed the Mississippi into Iowa. We found a nice Comfort Inn and parked to get some rest.

    That's when disaster struck. While unpacking the car Hank disappeared. We looked and looked but couldn't find him. The area is beautiful but full of wide open prarie land with sections of thick brambles. As one woman said, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

    We looked and looked. We looked with our flashlights until the sun came up and then kept looking. We told everyone we saw. Kim went to every neighboring business and told them. We used the hotel printer to print pictures and hung them up with contact info. Kim told the public works people she saw, she told the grave diggers in the nearby cemetary, she told the walkers, truckers and joggers. We bought bananas that Hank loves and walked around calling to him, trying to lure him out. The resident handyman loaned us his live trap to capture him, we rented one from the Humane Society too. We called the nearby vets, we even posted on the Ferret Mailing List for any nearby shelter help. The emotional strain was intense. I think I can say it was the most stressful thing I have ever experienced. I was exhausted in every way but couldn't think of rest. It was just after midnight last night when Kim and I were just beyond endurance. We collapsed in the hotel room and I was shuddering at the idea of having to drive on to California without Hank in the car. I don't think I have ever known despair so acutely.

    So I don't think you can imagine our joy when the night clerk returned our ferret to us at 2am last night. He was actualy tryig to get into the hotel on his own! This is one smart weasel. Hank had been out on his own for 24 hours. Considering that most ferrets are only able to stay alive outside for 48 hours on average...well 24 is a very long time. He has some small wounds and his fur is full of burrs but he is eating, drinking and sleeping well (and no blood in urine or feces so that looks good). Still we are taking him to a vet that knows ferrets tomorrow after we check out. This has really been a fairy tale ending. I don't know how we would have dealt with his permanent loss. The weight and grief during those 24 hours were just crushing. We are so, so, so extremely lucky. Oh my God.

August 15th, 2008

    Ha, the streak continues. The day we left, we drove until we got into Pennsylvania and the alternator blew up. We were in the Promised Land but there was no salvation for us at midnight. With 10 volts in the battery we checked the map and decided to drive less than a mile from the gas station we had stopped at to a rest stop. We were about 30 miles east of Scranton. I was thinking we could make it the rest of the way there tomorrow to find a garage but we didn't have enough juice in the battery to do it at night.

    We slept in the car at the rest stop from 2am until 6 and then got up and walked the ferrets around. Kim asked the attendant working at the rest stop if he had a recommendation for a garage and he did. It was Jack William's Tire shop in Hamlin. We got the car started with the Husky and made it there under our own power.

    Jack's opens at 7:30am and we were there by 8. They pretty much took us right away and sure enough saw that we needed a new alnernator which they were able to get right that morning. In fact the car was repaired and ready to roll by 10am. Just enough time for us to have a nice breakfast at the nearby diner.

    Kim was awake enough to get us to Cleaveland Ohio last night and I drove us the rest of the way to Chicago today. We are once again guests of Kim's dad and Daphne. Hooray!

August 13th, 2008

    We had very nice visits with Don on Monday and my sister Karin and her family on Tuesday. We even fit in seeing my childhood friend Jamie with his wife and two children that evening. We are cramming in the visits because we plan to pack the car and head out this evening towards home! Wow it will be nice to get back home but first we have to cross the 3000 miles of the United States to get there. We'll make a stop in Chicago to pay a family visit.

August 11th, 2008

    Hey the race is over. How surreal. Amazingly it didn't rain at all Saturday and it didn't start raining Sunday until after the race was over. You'd think that would be enough to make for a good racing experience. But alas, the month of heavy rain that had preceeded was enough to turn a few sections of the single track into a sucking quagmire. I don't think there was a rider out there that chose to ride the entire course. Over certain mud pits it just made much more sense to pick up the bike and slop it to the other side.

    That didn't stop the truly determined who endured carrying and pushing their bikes for the duration. Truly the best of the riders were a phenomenon, turning in lap times under forty minutes. My best lap time was one hour, eleven minutes. Our veterans Paul and Todd managed to get under an hour on their first laps and then slowed the pace down to weather twenty four hours of mud slogging.

    Kevin and I actually kept it up well on Saturday and a half hour after midnight we had accumulated nine laps between us. That's when we agreed it wasn't worth it. The hundreds of riders pushing, riding and crashing their bikes through the worst of the mud pits had churned them into a fetid stew. It was miserable. While seventy percent of the course was ridable the remaining thirty just filled us with dread. We had racked up enough laps to avoid disqualification so we decided to get some rest and resume in the morning.

    Kevin was going go out first at 4 AM or so and I'd take my first lap at six. When I got out of the tent a little after six, Kevin was still at camp and I couldn't really blame him. I didn't relish the idea of sinking back into the swamp either. This wasn't really what I had planned for during the race. I didn't feel that I was testing my endurance, riding technique or muscle so much as my willingness to tromp through muck, wash and regrease my bike after each lap.

    So when Kevin said he had one more lap left in him, I didn't protest at all when he suggested I just sit on the five laps I had done and he'd complete his 5th lap at the end of the race.

    Paul and Todd had the mental fortitude to stay at it for the duration and completed 18 laps, we settled for our 10, the best in our division got to 26! I think if we had stuck with it we might have pulled out 14-16 laps but I think I got the picture of where we ranked pretty early on without having to endure no sleep and hypothermic misery. Our lap times were a pretty good indicator of where we ranked in fitness and skill which was definitely towards the back of the pack. Which actually is fine with me, a good indicator that my fitness level has plenty of room for improvement. I'll have to search for trails in California that match the technical level of Great Glen if I want to do something like this again.

    We did narrowly miss finishing in last place as Kevin finished our last lap right ahead of the 16th placed team (appropriately named "We are Just Here for the T-Shirts"). Todd ad Paul took 7th place in Men's Pairs. The other rider from our camp, Ray, rode solo in the men's 50+ category and finished 16 laps with hardly a break during the whole race. Truly impressive.

    So Kim and I check out of the hotel and head back to Nashua today after visiting our friend Don in western New Hampshire. It almost time to start heading home! Hooray!

    Oh, as a postscript, Kim found the last of the missing octopus tentacles in the car while I was at the race. So Hank is in the clear! Hooray!

August 8th, 2008

    So tomorrow is the big day. I really don't know what to expect and that can be a good thing. I'll be happy with any finishing result (i.e. 4 laps each for a total of 8 laps). The course will be wet and muddy so the question will be how will Kevin and I cope with the bike for an hour (or two) and rest for an hour (or hopefully two! :)

    We got the camp site set up and it did rain today but it wasn't torrential. Just an on-again, off-again drizzle. I might hope for periods of sun tomorrow? at least I can escape the rain half the time and get warmed up in a sleeping bag. I'm not keen on going without sleep but then again, doing something physical like riding a bike is a great cure for drowsiness.

    Kim and I took the ferrets for a walk in the cemetary across the street today. After twenty minutes of walking around in rain they crawled into the shelter of their carrier and were quite happy to be taken back to the hotel room.

    I also had a great save at the Radio Shack. The power supply on the Eee PC blew out in the car yesterday. The guy at the store was really helpful and found an equivalent power supply that did the trick. It has half the current rating but sees to be working just fine.

    I also have to say that we visited Travis yesterday and his place is just amazing. Old 1800s house with garage and full size barn on 96 acres. Really nice. Too bad we only had a couple hours to chat with him. Well at least Kim got to. I fell asleep a little after 9.

August 7th, 2008

    Did some food shopping for the race yesterday and bought some spare inner tubes for the bicycle. Kim cooked up some mushrooms she found at Massabesic Tuesday night and they were quite tasty. We met Kevin for dinner at You You's in Nashua which was pretty nice then we went to see The Dark Knight at the IMAX which lived up to expectations and was a great movie. Today we pack up the car and head north. We'll stop along the way to visit our friend Travis.

August 5th, 2008

    Yesterday I was able to have a nice lunch time ride with Kevin. I hadn't been on the bike since July 24th! So it was good to get a short gentle ride in. It looks like the weather will be rainy with thunderstorms this week so the riding is likely to be wet and muddy! This could be a very tough 24 hour bike race. We'll just have to see how it goes.

    I've actually made plans to have a short ride with Paul today up in Manchester and then I think that will be the last ride until the race starts on Saturday. I've made hotel reservations for us for the weekend, so Kim will be taking care of the ferrets there and coming to the race site when it is comfortable for her to do so. I'm glad she'll have a hotel room as taking care of ferrets in a muddy and wet campground would be no fun.

    Kim, Shelly and I did manage to get over to Sharon yesterday to take my dad to dinner for his birthday. He was in pretty good spirits even with a sore back and foot and we had a nice time.

August 3rd, 2008

    Step 1: Get to NH from California - Accomplished.

    Kim and I are settling into the Nashua house for the night. The last leg of our journey went without incident and we arrived at the house I grew up in with a little daylight to spare. The funny thing is that no one else is here. :)

    I did talk to my dad on the phone a couple hours before we arrived but he was headed back to the Sharon house and my sister Shelly who is the primary resident here now works as an EMT on the weekends.

    Oh I shouldn't say there is no one else here. There are Tuffy, Puffy and the black gerbil. I believe there is also a cat named Pasta who lives here but she hasn't shown her face yet. We have figured out sleeping arrangements for the ferrets and after a cursory exploration of the house they are only interested in being asleep. Though they did rouse themselves briefly to eat a warm bowl of chicken paste. Yum!

    I asked my dad if he'd be interested in being taken out for dinner tomorrow as it will be his 73rd birthday. He's got a strained back at the moment but sounds like he might be able to enjoy a meal out anyway. It's nice to be home.

August 2nd, 2008

    So as expected we didn't leaves Daphne's place until 6pm. We drove until late and then ate at the Steak and Shake in South Bend, OH. Now with the switch to eastern time and the drive it was midnight. We thought about stopping for the night but instead we pressed on until just outside Toledo. Neither of us relished the idea of checking into a hotel at 2am, settling the ferrets in and the having to checkout in the morning. So instead we just pulled into a rest stop and caught some Zzzs in the car. I woke up about half past 5 and couldn't get back to sleep so I started driving while Kim slept fitfully in the passenger seat. She woke up properly around 11 and we continued our drive to here, in Syracuse.

    We tried the Day's Inn just off 635 but it was really really bad. We bailed. They were nice enough to only charge $10 for a housecleaning fee. We looked into a neat historic hotel near the downtown but the pet fee alone was going to be $50. So we headed back out into the fringe and tried the hotel right across from the Day's Inn, the Red Roof, which is just great. It's actually more room for less money...go figure.

    So now time for some dinner and some sleep. Tomorrow should get us to NH.

August 1st, 2008

    I forgot to mention last night that Kim found two of the three octopus tentacles that were missing and they had definitely gone through a ferret! So it is very relieving to find that he has safely passed two of them and also mysterious where the third could be...

July 31st, 2008

    Wow, what a nice reprieve. Kim and I realized that we needed to replenish the ferrets chicken supply and that means grinding up pieces of chicken and doing some cooking. We called Kim's Aunt Jackie but she didn't return our calls. So Kim's Dad and Daphne live right along our route so we thought to bother them next. Well it turned out that Kim's Dad is in Michigan right now watching our nephew Christopher, who is competing in out of state baseball tournament. Still, he said that Daphne was home and we should ask her if we could spend a night there, use her kitchen and do some laundry.

    Well it has worked out! Daphne has been very welcoming and we've managed to refill our ferret food supplies and have had a very nice dinner at a sushi restaraunt as well. What a welcome rest from our travels.

July 30th, 2008

    We got into Sioux Falls, South Dakota last night. We did drive through the Badlands and took a look at that which was pretty neat and also took in some grasslands perserves south of Wall. But then to allieve my anxiety I jumped on I-90 and drove until 9pm and we covered 300 miles.

    Well, we managed to get a little more than 400 miles done today and are at the Wingate hotel in Madison, WI. Kim and I both noticed that we feel more at ease now that we are in the Midwest. Buddy is in good spirits and sees to enjoy both turkey and chicken baby food. Hank is quite ready for the whole trip to be done.

July 29th, 2008

    In the world's smallest hotel room in the town of Wall, South Dakota. I confessed to Kim over dinner yesterday that I was touristed out and asked if we could just put on miles and get east.

    We did however, get to see Devil's Tower yesterday which was pretty neat. I personally like the native name for it a bit better: "Bear Lodge".

July 27th, 2008

    Drove from Cody to Sundance today, a little over 300 miles. Only 1900 or so to go! Buddy did his first genuine swimming today. Maybe all of 2 feet of it but we were impressed! We passed up the chance to go to the Buffalo Bill Museum but we did go see the new X-files movie last night. I'm happy with our choice. :)

July 26th, 2008

    So Hank has been fine. What has become of the rubber octopus pieces remain a mystery. After our Boise ferret appointment we headed into Idaho Falls where I bought a new back tire for the bike.

    Afterwards we drove to the Craters of the Moon National Monument and checked that place out durig a night hike. We checked into a small motel early in the morning hours in Arco. I did get a 30 mile ride in from the town of Shoshone up scenic drive 75 until the junction with highway 20.

    The next day we drove into Jackson and found a really cool campground outside of town called Curtis Canyon. We opted to spend all day Thursday there and I put the trail tires on the bike and rode 12 miles on dirt roads and a little mild single track.

    Yesterday we paid the $25 to drive through Teton National Forest and also Yellowstone. It was a little late in the day to do the whole Yellowstone loop so we just headed on out to Cody. We are now checked into the Green Gables Inn and have decided to stay an extra day because we had high ferret drama last night.

    Buddy did his normal routine of going to the bathroom and running around the room but then he just conked out on some of their bedding. I took a shower and was preparing their evening meal when it became clear that Buddy was not doing well at all. He was as limp as a noodle, not responding to food or water and drooling.

    It was after midnight so we used the room's yellow pages to call a bunch of vets. I finally got through to a Dr. Blessing. We really thought Buddy was just going to die right in front of us. He started having a major seizure and was making horrendous squeaking noises with violent convulsions. I got the vet out of bed at 2am and we drove Buddy to his clinic where Buddy was given 5% Dextrose subcutaneously and a couple warm water bottles to raise his body temperature. After a half hour or so of TLC he started coming back around. We had just experienced a ferret with insulinoma having a hypoglycemic seizure. By the time we got him to the vet he was barely breathing. We got home a little after 3am and decided a 10am checkout was a little too rushed for us and a poor ferret who had had a close brush with death.

    Dr. Blessing really saved the day and sent us back to the hotel with a complete care kit should anything like this happen again. We really need to be more vigilant about keeping Buddy fed. It's now strict orders of a small feeding every two hours.

    A 24 hour mountai bike race sounds really relaxing right now.

July 21st, 2008

    No Internet access since Thursday. More to come later.

    Arrived just outside the town of John Day on Thursday evening to find one of the ribs on the serpentine belt had torn. That required immediate attention. We stayed at the Clyde Holliday state park that night. The camp hosts were super nice to us and recommended a garage in John Day that should be reliable. I put the bike on the car, unloaded everything else and took it in. The mechanic said the belt would be easy to replace, it would just take a couple hours and I could wait for it. Good News! The bad news came about 1 hour later when he told me the bearing on the AC compresser was bad and the whole unit should probably be replaced. That would take until Monday.

    So we had a 3 day lay over at Clyde Holliday state park and there are far worse places to be stuck. The car was ready as promised on Monday and we packed up. Just as we did we noticed that Hank had pulled three tentacles off his rubber octopus toy and we are concerned that he has swallowed them. Bad news for a ferret! The good news is that he has made it the night and is in good spirits and still showing an interest in food. We found a ferret savy ferret in Boise and have an appointment with them today at noon. What next I wonder?!

July 17th, 2008

    Okay, I've got two shorter days of biking in. Between car trouble, ferret care and just logistics I haven't managed to get more than 3 hours of riding in each day. But I did go 42 miles the first day and 33 yesterday (which were mostly uphill) so I'm still working harder than I was at home.

    On Tuesday the Firestone place was pretty negligent with getting the work done. They were saying it might be finished before they closed on Monday at 7pm and it wasn't done until 10:45am on Tuesday. And that with an 11am checkout! So the 2 times we have stayed at hotels we have had mad scrambles to make the 11am checkout. We'll see if today is any different.

    So after checkout we had breakfast at a coffee shop and then took the ferrets to a small park. It was from that park that I started biking. I hadn't gone 2 blocks when the phone rang. Kim couldn't find the car keys. I biked back and tried to remember where I had put them. We started emptying out the car and Kim found them amidst the luggage. When I had gone to get the bike computer out of the gadget bag I had absent mindedly dropped the keys. Ouch. I had a second departure with much less fan faire.

July 14th, 2008

    Well we only made it as far as Eugene, OR today and still no biking. But I really can't count the day as dissapointing since we successfully reunited Michelle from Portland with her ferret Captain Jack. That pretty much went off without a hitch and amazingly, it was the birtdhay of her young son. He was jumping with excitement at seeing Captain Jack again. I wish them the best of luck.

    It was another hot one today and we ran the AC quite a bit in the car. Hank and Buddy seem to tolerate the heat very poorly and Hank will pant excessively if the AC is turned off. We are wishing for cool weather when we cross the midwest!

    I was wondering this morning if perhaps I would do a little afternoon biking today after we dropped off Captain Jack and Buster but then I remembered that the Saturn is due for an oil change (I follow the advice that it is beneficial to change the oil after 500 miles with a new engine). On top of that, Kim noticed that the Saturn was pulling to the right and I suspected low tire pressure. So I used the Husky to inflate the Dunlops only to see a disquieting bulge appear in the passenger front tire. ugh! So now instead of just an oil change we needed a new front set of tires. I suspect that riding on them at low pressure (and it was quite low...it can be hard to see that with a low profile tire) caused them to roll over onto the side wall while cornering. They were close to the wear marks in the tread anyway so not a huge loss and actually a win not to have to deal with a blow out on the road.

    So we are booked into a motel just around the corner from a Firestone, which agreed to change the oil and put on some new front tires. It is another nice room and inexpensive too. The clerk was a little suspicious about having ferrets in the room but let us stay with a $30 pet deposit. Fair enough.

    Maybe tonight I will get more than 4 hours of sleep. :) I look forward to biking. Driving is too hard!

    As a bonus here is an image of a drawing Kim made of the Central Valley.

   

July 13th, 2008

    Well here it is Sunday and I think, I really think it's possible that we may actually leave and start this trip. The car is stuffed, Kim hasn't slept (well not really true, she is taking a 2 hour nap right this moment) and I'm not going to list more things that would add to my anxieity. Aside from needing more storage space in the Saturn I think we're in decent shape. I'll write more, er...when I get an Internet connection later.

    Now it is 2:39 in the AM and Kim and I are in the land of the free ferret. In this case that would be Oregon. We had a fine dinner at Taco Bell and are now staying at a very nice Best Western in Ashland (the first description was sarcastic but the second is not). We have four ferrets in this room. Two are ours and two are being transported to their rightful caretaker. I need to get some sleep!

July 9th, 2008

    Hooray, we got the car back and it seems to be in working order. We hope to get on the road by Saturday which would give us a good three weeks and a couple days for travel time. I should still be able to get some biking in without the trip feeling too rushed.

July 3rd, 2008

    We are still here! Here being Boulder Creek. The car is back in the shop after having a short visit back at home. The good news is that the new engine in the car seems to be working fine. The bad news is that the refrigerant for the new AC blew out immediately on the ride home from the shop last Thursday. So I returned it there this last Monday and now they are holding it, scouring the nearby Saturn dealerships for a high pressure hose that seems to be hard to come by. So it looks like we will be around for July 4th and the Boulder Creek Volunteer Fire Department Pancake Breakfast and the 10 till noon parade. No fireworks though, since the fire danger is about as high as it can be.

    Kim and I went to see Wall-E this night and it is a fine and very entertaining movie. However, if you, as I have, hear or read comments that use words like 'best', 'amazing', etc. and so forth then please level a very skeptical and discerning eye towards the issuer. The movie is clever and fun but there are many reasons why you can argue convincingly that it follows Disney feel good formulae. My largest gripe stems from a scene at the very end of the film that brings the audience to a point of experiencing loss and grief only to wipe it away in a instant, as if to say 'just fooling!'. I thought it felt very manipulative and patronizing. Besides which, I thought the scene itself unnecessary. Still it is brief and easily overlooked. So yes, the film is worth watching but I wouldn't hold it up as the apogee to Pixar's work. For me that still remains 'The Incredibles'.

June 26th, 2008

    A month has passed since the last entry and I can no longer avoid a new entry in good conscience.

    Kim and I had at one time thought to leave for a cross country drive and bicycle June 1st. Well there has been a handful of reasons for us to still be comfortably at home more than 3 weeks later. The most compelling of the reasons would be that the Saturn is still at the garage getting repaired. We brought it in May 23rd to have a new engine put into it and to have the AC fixed.

    It seems an odd choice to spend the money on a new engine for a car that is going on 15 years of age and perhaps it is. For the same money we could have bought a newer used car. However, to find a car with the same or better gas mileage, manual transmission, same storage capacity and such was too tall an order. I suppose if a new-to-us vehicle was going to enter our lives then it was going to have to fill many desires that the Saturn did not. We have accepted the short comings of the Saturn as part of the family at this point but a new recruit would not be offered the same leniency.

    Well over a month later the car is stll in the shop. The mechanics have been tasked with Herculean efforts (evidentially). The AC had to have almost everything replaced, since the old refrigerant in use in the 1990s is not compatible with the new. After they had the AC working and the new engine in they were aghast to find the car overheating. I learned on Tuesday that they determined that the replacement motor was faulty and had to be swapped out with a replacement-for-the-replacement. So everything comes off the engine (again) and put onto the new(er).

    I actually feel bad for the shop guys. I'm sure they take no pleasure in doing everything twice for the same pay. And while we've had to wait and delay, it has given me the time to deal with the County and jump through, what I hope, is the last of their permitting hoops. But that is a story for another time.

May 26th, 2008

    A memorable and reflective Memorial Day to you all.

    Time to let slip information on what was been happening in the area for the past few days. On Thursday morning, the 22nd, a wildfire started just west of Gilroy and took root in the dry, brush heavy forest. With winds gusting up to 50mph it quickly spread and engulfed over 1000 acres and was uncontainable.

    This, just a short 22 miles from our home here in Boulder Creek. Kim and I exchanged thoughts on what our risk was. Our primary thought being that with much heavier populated areas between us and the fire and Highway 17 in between, it seemed very unlikely that the fire could spread this far.

    It has been very interesting and awe inspiring to see the fire fighting effort proceed. Within a day there were 300-500 fire fighters on site. Today there are almost 3000. Helicopters, air tankers, bull dozers and fire engines, all together 370 pieces of fire fighting apparatus.

    The wind died down after the first day and humidity went up. There was even a 30% chance of rain that didn't quite materialize but the cooler weather certainly helped the effort. The 2nd day they had 15% containment along the fire perimeter, the 3rd 25%, last night it was up to 50% and this morning I see it's at 70%.

    A couple nights, winds picked up and allowed the fire to jump fire lines. The fire grew from 1000 acres to it's present 3970 acres. It spread west towards us and is now 17 miles away on the leading edge. 36 homes have been destroyed and over one thousand residents are in evacuation.

    It seems the fire crews will have it contained by tomorrow or the day after and I feel fairly at east now. On Thursday though, I didn't do much besides monitor news stories. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but it is almost certainly caused by a human event (no down power lines, no lightning, etc.).

    Check out the CDF site for information.

May 8th, 2008

    A milestone today 1000 miles rode on the trainer. I've definitely improved my biking ability since I started training in February but there is still room for lots and lots of improvement (no real surprise there). Putting time into getting fit for an event really gives me pause to appreciate just how dedicated the people are who excel in their sports. Well either that or they are genetic freaks (aka mutants)...

May 5th, 2008

    Kim and I went to see Lewis Black at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium last night. We were introduced to him when Kim's dad sent us a DVD (he didn't like it and if you've heard him, you might understand why, you can't be shy of the F bomb) and we really liked it.

    He didn't seem to be in quite the same form as his 'Red, White and Screwed' show but it was still a roll around in the chair laughing performance so I can't really complain. What was really amazing were the hecklers in the audience. Heckling a caustic comedian on stage armed with a microphone and time: bad idea. Still it was good for some laughs but we think it might have tainted the rest of the performance. Lewis seemed a little miffed (well he always does but it's usually not at the people he's performing for).

April 29th, 2008

    Took the Ibis for a spin on the logging roads behind the neighborhood yesterday and had a blast and also duffed like 6 times. Still not used to those cleats. Also need to go out and clear some fallen logs and pulled out a couple more stands of broom. I serviced the Husqvarna today and neighbor Allen gave me a 1 gallon fuel can to mix the 2 stroke gas in. Maybe tomorrow I'll go out and tackle that. I had to hide in the bushes while 3 trucks with tandem beds went by on the logging road. They're busy up there! Heard them falling more trees on the ridge today. I'll have to go up tomorrow and see how big of a scar they've made.

    Also for you web comic fans here is a GIF I made from the Order of the Stick:

   

March 24th, 2008

    Happy Easter and Spring! Kim and I have our nephew Ben visiting from Chicago, for the week which was a surprise gift from ourselves and his grandma Leslie. Ben's birthday is exactly on the vernal equinox (well at least most years it is, including this one) and makes him a wizened old man of 11.

    We picked up Ben from the airport and with the shortest of stops at the house to drop off his bags, we then headed to the Tyrolean Inn for a Bavarian Brunch Easter Celebration. Our neighbor Allen and his son Michael were nice enough to join us. We didn't need to eat for the rest of the day (although a few chocolate eggs from the Easter baskets did find their way into my hand somehow).

    On the way back home we saw Harold and Eleanor and decided to pay them a drop-in visit which there were nice enough to allow us and once again delighted us with their stories. Afterward we had a nice walk around the neighborhood and then the travel and time difference caught up with Ben and he passed out in the guest room.

    Today we're off to buy some wood for some nice fire during the week and do a little provision shopping as the cupboard is looking distrinctly like old Mother Hubbard's.

February 28th, 2008

    A couple photos of happy plants.

    This one was a gift from my sister Shelly. It seems to be pretty happy.

    And here is our camelia tree bursting with flowers. Kim's also been doing a bit of pruning around the yard. She cut back a rose bush that was hidden amongst some trees. Some of the branches must have been fifteen feet long. This thing is a monster. Or it was. Now it is an very angry little stump. But perhaps by next year it will be a much more compact and happy rose bush, instead of a yard eating Audrey.

February 8th, 2008

    Well I have started riding a bicycle with the goal of being able to ride in a 24 hour bike race with my friend Kevin this August. I used to ride a mountain bike fairly often but hadn't since perhaps 2002 (and then just for a day). So the entry point was fairly steep to get back into it but now that most of the pieces are in place I'm pretty happy with the prospects.

    I bought the bike at a shop called "Another Bike Shop" in Santa Cruz which had friendly, knowledgable staff and a very nice selection of bikes. As such I should have no excuses around equipment when it comes time to test myself on the trail.

    Here is a picture of the Ibis growing accustomed to it's new home.

    And as I told Kim, there is no piece of equipment so fine that it is immune to what has become known as "A Chris Young special". Finding that the bike computer I bought is designed to sit on the front wheel, that does me little good when I am on the trainer. So I snipped it off and moved it to the back wheel. However, turns out the sensor needs to be within 5mm of the magnet that spins around on your spoke. So I had to put a shim in place to get it closer.

    Voila!

    Of course the cable is too short, so I have it strapped to the shifter cables on the top tube. Still quite serviceable...

    What's so wierd about that?

    So I'm off and running, er...pedaling. Soon I think I'll be buying a softer seat....Ouch!

January 5th, 2008

    Happy New Year to one and all. Kim and I celebrated the New Year by going to the Catalyst in Santa Cruz and listening to a few Blue Grass bands. Well one of the bands sounded more like Morphine meets Motorhead but they were still enjoyable.

    Also Mother Nature is finally getting around to giving us our back-ordered rain. The cable is still out so I can't check the Boulder Creek Weather station to see just how much we've got so far, but our neighbor Patrick has a rain gauge which he has emptied twice and estimated we have in excess of eight inches.

    There were many downed powerlines and roads blocked by mudslides and trees falling. We lost power around 5:30 am and didn't get it back until the next day. Still, thanks to the loan of a generator from our neighbor Patrick, we were able to keep the refrigerator cold and even watch Al Gore's "An Inconvienient Truth" on the DVD player, which I thought was very appropriate. I found the film chilling and absolutely compelling. The evidence seems plain that as a species, we will face our toughest challenge to survival in the next hundred years, a challenge that if we don't act immediately, can only get exponentially harder to deal with. Still there are good reasons to think positively and favorable signs of change. I'm sure this will be a topic that will dominate the remainder of our life times.