The Sea Otter Classic Write Up

I just posted my write up of A Day at the Sea Otter Classic over on NorCal Bikers. Lots of fun, lots of new people, lots of pictures and some sweet BMX video as well!

Snow Day Wrap Up

Until we started to see the snow on the side of the road, some four plus hours after leaving home, I wasn't convinced we were going to actually get to the snow before we reached the closed off mountain pass at Sonora. But it started with chunks of dirty piled up snow on the side of the road and progressed until the entire hillsides were covered in the beautiful white stuff.

With some trepidation, we decided that the outing would be an all-family outing. That means including Nande, who's not known for being an especially calm or pleasant traveling dog. She has a tendency to breathe heavily, whuffle and whine and occasionally bark for no apparent reason. She can be quite trying on the nerves.

But she'd never been to the snow, nor had Sullivan. And we decided to give it a try. We also decided not to try and subject the cat to the journey and let her have a day at home alone. We hadn't counted on Nande's rather obnoxious flatulence but we dealt with it as best we could. She was surprisingly pretty good in the car aside from when we were on surface streets and she could find things to bark at.

We chose to head up to Sonora because it would give us a chance to stop by my wife's parents to say goodbye to the boys' cousins who were heading back to Colorado shortly.

From Pleasanton we headed east on 580 for several hours making one quick and awesomely delicious stop at an In 'n' Out Burger along the way. Why there is no In 'n' Out in Santa Cruz is a complete mystery to me. They have the best fast food burgers anywhere.

Once we got to the hills, I changed my GPS over to altitude to keep track of our climb. We started out just a few hundred feet above sea level and quickly climbed to about 2000 feet and then kept going up and up and up. We saw snow along the side of the road at around 4500 feet and then the hills were good and covered by about 5000.

Once we'd gotten into the snow country, the next step was finding a good spot to get off the road and into the snow. The first good candidate was a huge open sledding hill but it was also pretty full of people and, we later learned, bottomed out into a creek that got a bunch of sledders soaked. We kept going until we came upon a small turnout with a monster snow removal machine and a couple of cars. It turned out to be the perfect spot for us.

There were some paths already stomped into the snow which made life alot easier for Nande as she got used to this new world. She didn't much care for going off trail for a little while when her first foray ended up with her chest deep in the snow. After she got used to it, she had no problems with going anywhere and really had a ball.

Sully needed a little acclimatization as well to get his snow legs under him but he got used to it as well and had lots of fun sliding face first down small hills, climbing up slippery slopes and, as Grady loved to do too, eating the snow.

Grady was very small when we were last in the snow but he had zero problems getting down with his wintery self. I think we were there for less than five minutes before he started chucking snowballs at me.

My wife only wished she'd had some boots but otherwise had a ball riding down the hill on our shiny new hippy sled (it looked like a plastic tie-dye) and playing with Sully.

I enjoyed the heck out of myself doing some sledding, tossing snowballs at Nande and the boys and taking lots of pictures.

We had prepared for some hard core winter action with extra layers, changes of clothes, waterproofed gear and the like but we really didn't need much of it at all. The spot where we'd stopped was sunny and, maybe not quite warm, but it wasn't cold at all. I found myself peeled down to just my long sleeved shirt in no time.

We literally could not have chosen a better spot with better weather. The snow had a crust on it which made it fun to walk on, sometimes you sank in, other times you didn't. Both Grady and Sully got stuck a couple of times but they took it in stride and really just had a ball. Nande must have run miles and miles in the snow, she had as much fun as anyone else even when she'd step off the trail and find herself deep in the snow. She figured out how to jump like a jack rabbit to get herself free and to continue her off-trail forays.

Major kudos to my wife for suggesting the trip and putting together much of the gear, food and clothes we would need. Kudos to me for driving up and back, thinking to fill up our big thermos with delicious coffee that was so, so, so awesome when we were packing back up to leave. Kudos to the boys for being patient on the drive there and back and major kudos to Nande for going many miles to dispel the myth that she's not a good traveling dog.

Here's a taste of what we saw at the top of the hill. The full sized version is freakin' huge and awesome!

The Last Day of School

Today is a big day in the school district. Every kid and every teacher has been looking forward to it for weeks now.

It is, of course, the last day of school. This whole last week has been more like a party than a school with trips, games, events, plays and lots and lots of cleanup.

And pranks. I haven't heard about too many of them but there is one good one that took place at my school I'm at today. The students all showed up early and relocated the classroom from inside the room to the asphalt playground outside the room. Every desk, every chair including the teacher's desk which was adorned with an archway of blue and white (the school's colors) balloons.

And the kids? The kids are pretty darned proud of themselves for stirring up some fun, as they should be! The teacher thinks its really funny but is now at a loss as to what to do with her class today. And its going to be a hot, hot day here!

Kind of reminds me of the pranks that were pulled when I was in high school. One very famous one at my prep school was incredibly funny, hard to pull and just as difficult to undo. A bunch of seniors carried a teacher's VW Bug up a couple of sets of stairs and placed it on the stage in the assembly room where the entire school was going to meet up later that morning. Sadly though, I think they got some kind of disciplinary action because of it but my memory may be failing me a bit.

What are some pranks you've heard of, pulled or had pulled on you?

Hello Summer Head

It was time to get into the summer mode mentality and that means spending a couple of hours with nasty chemicals on my head to bleach out the brown and replace it with the blond. I'm lucky to have a wife who's a pro so I can basically just let her do her thing and just try not to go insane from the burning and itching on my scalp.

By her own admission, this is the best bleach job we've done so far on me and I'm pretty happy with it. It was a bit too bright last night but a couple of showers and some de-brasser shampoo and conditioner and the color is mellowing out and, I think, looks pretty damned good.

Of course, the kids at my schools think its absolutely freaking awesome-tastic.

And it makes me smile everytime I see myself in the mirror which is good for me and my mental health. Hard to be too serious when you've got a pile of hay for hair!

There's a part of me that wonders if having a blond head will negatively affect my job hunting but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it and I'm starting to interview. Speaking of which, based on my sister's excellent advice, I'm going to start planning and requesting some informational interviews with a couple of companies I want to work for to see if I really want to work for them when I get a closer look. Its also a good way for them to get an informal look at me.

I will report back on whether or not blonds do, in fact, still have more fun.

Two Thumbs Up for the Alameda County Fair

We joined my wife's brother and his family and my mother-in-law last night to go to the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, California.

We were smart and opted to wait until the sun had gone down as this area was hitting triple digits with the heat during the day. And it was still warm after dark but a nice warm, not a sweltering heat.

Having been to county fairs before, I wasn't really expecting all that much but I was more than pleasantly surprised. It was huge, reasonably priced and had lots and lots of rides for the kids to have fun on. And a bunch of those rides allowed a parent to ride with the kid. There were also almost no lines for any of the kid rides, that made things alot more fun as we could ride, go to the next one, ride, and then go to the next one without having to wait around at all.

We started Grady and Aiden, his cousin, off easy with some of the tamer rides before we started to go to the mini-roller coasters and the spinning flying thingie.

We enjoyed some frozen margaritas (which weren't reasonably priced) that really hit the spot perfectly. And the bigger boys had loads of fun while Sully watched and wanted to play alot but was a bit too small for the rides. His cousin, Sierra, went on a couple of rides before deciding that she'd just as soon watch too.

Time flew by and we ended up staying until nearly 10:30. And it was just about midnight before everyone got into bed. I'll upload some photos after we get back home later today (and out of this mad, mad, mad heat!).

I also stopped by a place in San Jose on the way up and bought a new lens for my camera from someone on Craigslist. Its an excellent Tamron telephoto, not auto-focus and not light at all but its optics are superb and I'm really looking forward to getting to know how it works better and making it work for me. Of course, I still want the $1600 image stabilized uber-lens but this Tamron will serve me beautifully until we can justify that cost.

The only bummer is that Sully and I have a pretty gnarly case of pink eye right now. My left eye was cemented shut this morning. So we'll be hitting Doc in a Box later today for some meds to clear it up.

Fabulous Day at the Beach

We had a blast out on the beach the other day. We have been working through a wicked heat spell right now which makes the beach a real possibility even though that water splashing over Graydon is really, really cold!

He had his best time ever at the beach. He would chase the waves back and forth, would scream in delight when a wave would bash over him and he loved it when I'd rocket him up above a breaking wave.

And, oh yeah, he slept like a rock!

And I got a whole bunch of fun photos too. Man, I really need a full sized DSLR to start to really leverage the photo opportunities. Hard to justify dropping a big chunk of change right now though.