Fall Semester Begins

This is Gabriel, our adopted college student. He's a music performance major at our local university; lucky for us. He serenades us with Chopin, Rachmaninoff, etc. when he comes over. We usually have him over to eat Sunday dinner with us after church.
Our church has this program where college students who want to be adopted while they're in school in our town and going to our church sign up. They're then placed within our church families.
We've had some not so good ones in the past, but we scored big with Gabriel. He's only a sophomore, so we'll have him around for a few more years.
I gave him the score from the movie Pride and Prejudice for Christmas last year. It's the most beautiful music I've ever heard. Within a few weeks he had it all worked up and was playing it for us. There are definite perks to this adoption thing. Now if he'll only do the dishes!

Snowpack Profile Update. Waffles!

Wow, big news here at the Old Station in Paradise. We now have a computerized weather display running 24hrs and Waffle Weekdays will be starting this week!

The computerized weather display is located inside the Old Station in the windows to the left of the inner door.

You read that right. If you can't get enough of the Mountain during the weekend and can make it up on Friday you can join the ranger(s) in the Old Station for hot drinks and waffles. Start your weekend early between 11 and 3 this Friday, February 10.

Please bring your own cup or mug, donations of hot drinks, waffle makings and fixings will be gratefully accepted (new and unopened) to keep Waffle Weekdays happening.

Now for why you really read this, the snow pack profile update. No failures were observed in either the compression test or extended column test. All layers were fairly dense and well settled.

Checking Out the Trails

Feeling really good yesterday morning, I headed out for a ride checking out damage to the trails caused by the recent storms.
The from the Wabash Trace Trailhead, I rode about 3 miles down the trail. I rode that same section Sunday. This time, I took time to photograph some of the damage. Today - Tuesday the 1st, trail work is scheduled. Meet at the Trailhead at 4:30. Should end up in Mineola about 9pm.
From there, it was over to Lake Manawa Mountain Bike trails. Lots of branches down on the trail. A big tree down across the trail close to the kiosk. Trail Work scheduled to Thursday, July 3rd - 6-8 pm. See the THOR-Trails blog for more information.
Still feeling good - on to the Trail Center. Lots of signs from the storm - broken trees, limbs/branches down, corn ripped from the wind. On the way back, I saw how the flood waters of the Mosquito Creek has damaged the paved trail.
Rode over to Xtreme Wheels to see what's happening. By the time I got back to the car, I logged just short of 29 miles. That made it over 1100 miles for the first 6 months of the year.

Swanning Around?

Just a quick post today because we spent the morning with the Aged Aunt and didn't get home until mid afternoon - which was when we began working on the garden, again!

Can you see the water dripping from the swan's beak?





Our journey home took us through Burwell and past a farm which has a rather lovely pond. There are a couple of boats and a lone swan on it. It all looked so lovely in the cold spring sunshine that I just had to take a couple of photographs.

This photograph was taken through a hedge, so the detail is not great, but I think you get an idea of how lovely it is.

I'm sure you don't want to see yet more photos of the polytunnel base, or the vegetable beds, so I'll spare you that. We have made good progress again today.

The good news is that the tunnel will be with us tomorrow - eek!

I may be quiet for a couple of days, it is hard work.

I hope you all have a good weekend!

Summer on Northern Light Lake

I spent a good portion of today kayaking on the Brule River and Northern Light Lake. My hope was to see Moose, but that did not happen. I did, however, see two Bald Eagles, a Kingfisher and several ducks. It was a beautiful day to be on the water!

Winner! Pressies! Such Goodies - Oh My!

First, gotta say that I believe mama got carried away with the big, bold red Post announcement yesterday. It still looks like a major emergency happened all over my page hehee! But most of all, however, I send humongously loud woofs to thank so many of you for commenting and/or e-barking and even Facebooking me yesterday. After scratching my head a bit and woofing with ma, we would probably do this differently if we had something like this again. As we mentioned to the twenty-two of those who emailed, we wish we only had 4th email places in our box hehee, but we don't. We want to congratulate the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Sedona (http://tollertales.blogspot.com/) for being the 4th e-barker to paw my address yesterday! You'll get your goodies plus the Happy Hearts cookies very soon!!!

A true Awwwwwww pic of you, Sedona!

And in breaking news...

Ding dong! (Lots of Wuffa greetings...) This smells outrageously delicious!!! I can only tell that the package is from Ohio - hmmmmm - it's not my barkday... hmmmmm.

I wrestle with the box, but am not nearly as dextrous as my pal, Mason Dixie, who is a pawsome Houdini at getting goodies out of packages!
Oh my dogness! Look at these goodies! A huge bag of Salmon treats from Zuke's (I LOVE these!) and some more treats that are blueberry and pumpkin flavored - they smell so good that mom is going to figure out how to use these ingredients for a people recipe!
There is the cutest squeaky stuffie (I'll try not to demolish it, promise!) and BuBBLES - for humans to entertain me! Mom loves making bubbles for me!
And we finally figure out who to thank for these fabulous pressies! Gus and Waldo pawed these to me in friendship - how sweet is that? Thank you so much, sweet Gus and Waldo and mom, Allison. What a generous spirit - I just love these gifts and foodables; a zillion woofs! Please drop by to sniff around Gus' and Waldo's place at http://reflectionsofadogmom.blogspot.com/ for some fun!
Look at my state of bliss as Dad feeds me the blueberry and pumpkin treats! YUMZERS!!!

"Recovery"? Ride

After 2 speed rides in the last 2 days, today was a recovery ride. Another beautiful morning - upper 70s, sunny, stiff wind from the SW. Weather for a ride on The Trace.
Was planning to ride Silver City to Malvern. When I got home yesterday, the "Low Tore Pressure" light came on. So this morning I had to check that out. Went into CB. Tire was fine. While in town, (a little early for the bike shop) stopped by Jenny Edmundson for a visit.
It was nearly 11 when I got on the Trace. Riding the 4300 (my "Trace Bike), and carrying the good camera. With the wind and the climbing Dumfries Hill, I was wondering if the ride was a good idea. My legs were complaining. They seemed to be saying: "thought this was supposed to be a "recovery" ride".
At times, I was not sure if I could make it up the hill. Rode up the hill at 7-10 mph - slowest climb in a couple years! I made it, but sure didn't want to ride on to Mineola (and have to climb the hill again).
Stopped at Margaritaville for granola bar and G2. Took it easy (mostly costing) down the hill. Almost 1 1/2 hours for the 15 mile ride.
The legs are still complaining this evening. That's OK, tomorrow is a drive to Maskenthine to shoot the race - no bike ride for me.

Volksmarch

I enjoyed walking in the Broadway neighborhood so much last week, that I had Bob join me on Saturday. However, we did 5K (3.1 miles) instead of 11K (6.8 miles), due to his plantar fasciitis which is still giving him problems.

We started the walk at 7:30 a.m. and finished walking a little after 9 a.m. We walked through the campus of University of the Incarnate Word, then added a little extra by going to the Witte Museum parking lot, then Bob took me down Avenue B to look for the Little Aussie Bakery and Cafe. It wasn't open until 11 a.m. so we couldn't check out their menu.

Here are the few pictures I took while we were out...

Bee looking for cactus pollen.

The original San Antonio spurs...

Sculpture in front of Witte Museum.

Pretty sculpture on Witte Museum parking garage.

Hamming it up for the camera.

Another sculpture in front of Witte Museum.

If you enlarge the photo of the seed pod below, you will see it has orange bugs with black spots on it. Interesting color.





One of the shops along Broadway in San Antonio.



The walk was just right. After the walk we headed back to the 5er and Bob went to work until almost 6 p.m.

Bob and I love watching the hummingbirds coming to our feeder. Here are a few more photos.











What blog would be a home without photos of the cats?

Bowie

Sunnie in the sun.

Sunnie giving himself a bath.

Th-th-that's all folks.

Placid

Sometimes it takes me too long to update this page. The promised high winds from earlier in the week didn't eventuate. I had a feeling this would be the case when the Bureau of Meteorology website managed to avoid getting quite as excited about the forecast as the tabloid "news" sources did. Still, it was nice to get the opportunity to finally ride in some cooler temperatures (even if they didn't last long).
There's something placid and relaxing about those cooler temperatures. It's not something that drains you the way the summer humidity does, but it does tend to take the edge of whatever trepidation one is feeling at the time. Wednesday morning I recorded a minimum temperature of 4 degrees C while taking a pre-dawn ride to Little Nerang Dam. It somehow become one of those rides that I really wanted to savour. Even when I realised I had to hurry things along a little due to time constraints, I didn't feel agitated in any way. Perhaps that might explain the more laid-back attitudes I find in people I meet when I visit places with cooler climates than this one.
In other news, I appear to have just about tied up all the loose ends in my life before going away. The process has been more than a little frustrating, and at different times I've "vowed" to sue government agencies whose incompetence annoyed me (and cost me money), and even start my own country to avoid having to deal with them again. Unfortunately, we seem to have created a society where nobody can think for themselves, and can't even so much as press a button on a computer to print a document they've stored for years without orders sent in, sent back, signed in triplicate etc etc. Then of course, they act all surprised that anyone should get annoyed when they fail to meet their stated "service standards".
They're no longer interfering with my life for the moment, so I no longer care about them, but it has been a frustrating process. About the only saving grace has been these placid early morning rides to reduce the stress levels for a couple of hours each day.

I Have “Mitaines Rouges”

The picture below might lead you to think that winter has returned to Virginia.  It hasn’t.  I simply couldn’t resist trying on my brand new “mitaines rouges” to show them to my penguin buddy!  He approves!

These fleece-lined red mittens are gift from Sue of Bigdawg and Freeway fame!  It turns out that I was the lucky person to leave the 5,000th comment on her blog and she wanted to reward me to mark the milestone.

Thanks Sue, I greatly appreciate the gift; but I sure hope I won’t have to wear them anytime soon ;-)

Rush hour in Blount county

Cute little guy, but he wouldn't let us anywhere near him. A little girl was making friends by throwing something edible at him, so we left them to it.
That is a belt around his neck, which I did think was a little strange.
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Updated: After a few emails, I can see that it is not obvious for people with those nifty little lightweight, but tiny-screened, laptops. That is a GOAT in the road!
By the way, you can always click on any of the pictures to make them larger.