New Year's Day Road Ride

THIS ISN'T LOOKING GOOD. EXPECTING THE FREEWAY TO BE FLOODED THROUGH FAIRFIELD AGAIN SO DON'T EXPECT THE DAVIS CONTINGENT. THIS MAY BE A MOVIE AND HOT COCOA DAY.

If the trails are awash in mud, come join us on a road ride up Mt. Diablo. Seems a good way to welcome in the new year - not that Mad Cyclist's dirt ride wouldn't be just as good.

Princess Zippy is training for the DMD so she's going for the summit twice. She and her coach are starting at 8 am. The rest of us will meet them at the North Gate Entrance at 11 am.

I'm guessing that means being on your bike at Arbolado Park at 10:30 but I really can't remember how far the entrance is from the park so this time may change.

Probably head for the local pizza and beer joint after. I believe it has received the Jo Certificate of Approval.

If you want to carpool from Davis, you know how to reach us.

PS - Rain cancels, but if the skies just look threatening we may choose a more weather-friendly route.

Yellow's Yewtah "New Home" Adventures

As most of you know, I (yellow) relocated from Placerville, California, to Salt Lake City, Utah a couple of months ago. After living in a rathole for a month, we found a nice little restored home (originally built in 1890 at 850 square feet!) and moved in around the middle of November.

Our biggest challenge has been going from a 2100 square foot home in California to a 1400 square foot home in Utah. Now I think this is good because it has forced us to learn how to live with less (space, and therefore, stuff) but we've had other challenges that I didn't really anticipate.

Fer instance, the upstairs is a finished attic and while it is relatively spacious, there are few flat walls (most are the slope of the roofline) and only one smallish closet. Consequently, we still haven't figured out where to hang most of our clothes. We're looking into getting a "portable" wardrobe closet, but are having problems finding one that isn't too tall so that it doesn't come into contact with the sloping ceiling/wall. And how do you hang a mirror in the bathroom if the walls aren't flat? Oh, the challenges.

But today, this very morning, took the cake. We had our first very cold storm yesterday and last night (it got down to about 12 F), resulting in about 4 inches of snow here at the house in the city and a couple of FEET up at Alta, where I have been skiing. So OF COURSE I was going to go get some of that fresh, famous Utah powder. But...I go to flush the toilet in the downstairs bathroom and...it doesn't re-fill. Yep. Frozen pipes somewhere in this house that I'm still getting to know.

So I get on my grungy clothes and prepare to go under the house. I don't like confined spaces, so this is not something I am looking forward to. Fortunately, it's well lit, pretty spacious, and not nearly as scary as the Placerville house. And unfortunately, I discover that NONE of the very numerous (plastic) water pipes in the exposed area are insulated. Because there is more thawing required than can be accomplished with a hair dryer, I venture to Ace Hardware to purchase a space heater and some pipe insulation. I must have been a sight, all dirty from going under the house and, as I discovered later, with my shirt on backwards and inside out.

The good news is I got the pipes thawed and none of them were broken. I stayed down there and insulated everything as well as I could. And now that I'm done I'm pretty durn pleased with myself (though that doesn't make up for missing out on the good snow). My neighbor tells me this weather is not usual.

But the ultimate cruel fact-o-life is that it's not supposed to snow again in the near future, so I get crud tomorrow. It figures.

Cool and Pink!

Bubba and I had a few errands up in the foothills today, so we got in a quick loop in Cool. Mathilda has her new pink wheels and was just tickled . . . well, you get the point.

Don't think it got out of the 40s today. I think Old Man Winter is with us. Any place there are springs or the drainage isn't perfect, the horses have destroyed the trail. They even go off on the singletrack that was obviously built by the mountainbikers trying to minimize the damage. They're breaking down a bridge that should never have horses on it. Very frustrating what they are doing to public land.

Otherwise, we had a superb though quiet ride. We were the only bikers and most of the horse folk were finish up when we arrived. The bay berries were just glowing and the oak leaves were a carpet in some places. Knickerbocker Creek gurgled away but was very rideable. Some of our most memorable rides seem to be in the cold winter weather (see Utah rides below).

Guess we're just going to have to figure out how do help with the trail maintenance. Bubba's poison oak incident last year was very serious and I get sciatica when wielding a shovel. Maybe we can tote the lemonade. Need to find some way to help.