Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain

AGHH! I can no longer recall the last day it didn't rain! Make it stop!

Luckily, there have been some dry periods and even some "sun breaks". Last week I lead my first Beachwatchers beach monitor, and we managed not to get rained on. We combed the beach just below downtown Langley, and saw:

Pits in the sand where the gray whales have fed,

grey whale pits
and the ghost shrimp that they eat.

Big, scary looking, cool polychaete worms, some nearly a foot long.("sometimes called "goddess worms").

Pretty little chocolate-brown sea slugs with gold spots. Har to tell from the picture, but this guy is maybe an inch long.

Lots of shore crabs (hemigrapsus oregonensis).

And of course, Limpets, mussels, barnacles, clams.

Beach monitoring also involves "profiling" the slope of the beach, which is what we're doing above. The beaches around here vary an amazing amount from year to year. According to our measurements, this beach has filled in about 4 feet since last year. But this is right in the middle of the 10 year's worth of data we have... 500 feet out from the shoreline, the drop has varied from 6 feet to 13 feet over the years.

The movement of the sand really amazes me. At Maxwelton, just a few miles from my house, there's a boat launch where I've launched my kayak many times. Over the past several years, a sand spit has been growing near the boat launch, but last summer the launch was still usable. This year, not so much. Instead of water at the end of the launch, there's now a 5-foot sand dune!

Note: All photos in this post were taken by Mary Jo Adams.

There's no place like home

It's taken me most of this week to recover from our 16 hours on the road in a push to get home. We drove almost 700 miles on our last day, further slowed down by the hour and a half we were lured into spending at the Sierra Trading Post Outlet in Idaho. Then I had to spend the night at Nancy's, unload the trailer and return it the next morning, and then go into work for a couple of hours, so I did not actually get home until mid afternoon on Tuesday, at which point I just crawled into bed with Sabrina and slept for about a day and a half.

It seems so wrong that we had to drive clear back to Seattle to find spring again, but there you have it. Trees are flowering and leafing out, bird song is ramping up: the last few mornings I've awoken to a chorus of Robins, Varied Thrushes, and Towhees. Yesterday I lead a 30 mile ride here on the island, in bright sunshine. It's good to be home.

Not quite according to plan

March 14

We’re on our way home, just north of Salt Lake City. Nancy is driving and the freeway is so bumpy its hard to type.

What a week! After sitting out a day in Tucson due do the crummy weather, and spending another day riding a not-especially nice route around the south part of town, we loaded everything back in the trailer and drove down to Bisbee. As we drove into town we saw the PAC tour van, reminding me that Judy, a friend from a previous bike tour, was also down here biking this week. After checking into the Inn at Castle Rock (more on that later) we all walked over to the Copper Queen Hotel, where I asked at the front desk and sure enough, Judy and Marilyn, another previous-bike-tour acquaintance, were checked in. Although they were already in PJ’s, they invited the 4 of us up to their room for a visit. It was so great to reconnect with both of them. They are both such inspirations, To celebrate turning 70 last year, Judy rode cross-country all by herself, and is planning to do it again this year with her partner. Marilyn, as near as I can tell, has biked just about full time for many years.

Back to our charming hotel. I stayed at the Inn at Castle Rock the first time I ever visited Bisbee, which was…. Hmmm…. 2001? It was charming then, in a shabby-hippie-chic-sorta way. The next time I was there, it was closed, SO I was delighted to find that it had re-opened, just 7 months ago, is undergoing renovation, and is even more charming than before.

But first I have to describe Bisbee. This is an old copper-mining town On the edge of town is The Lavender Pit, a big old open pit copper mine, no longer in use. (Note that it’s not lavender colored,; it’s named after a Mr. Lavender). Bisbee itself fills the bottom and sides of a small, steep canyon.. The main street runs along the bottom, with dozens of long, steep staircases up the sides of the canyon, and picturesque houses clinging precariously to the hillsides. When I was here a few years ago with a couple of friends we rented the Hummingbird Hill House, near the upper reaches, and had a patio with a marvelous view down on the town.

This is also an artist’s community, with several nice galleries, and much eclectic, eccentric, and hard to describe artwork scattered about town on houses, fence posts, sides of buildings, and staircases: A house with dozens of pink-painted objects fastened to the front: A bicycle, a bunch of old etch-a-sketches, a shovel, a suitcase, boxing gloves…..A downtown building with a couple of exquisite bas relief plaques of desert scenes. Another house with angel and devil gargoyles surrounding it. The more you wander around town, the more of this stuff you find. You just have to see this place.

Another big attraction in the town for me is Café Roka, which I have to say is the best restaurant I’ve ever dined at. And you can get a 4-course meal there for under $20! This was my third time there…. Well, now its 4 times because the four of us enjoyed it so much the first night we decided to go back the next.

Now, the Inn at Castle Rock: Built into the side of a steep hill (like nearly every other building in town) and nearly over top of a creek, there are 2 floors of outdoor porches overlooking the street. You enter through a cosy stone-floored lobby with a small, free-standing wood burning fireplace, than back out onto the porch to your room. We scored the perfect room for the 4 of us, more like three rooms actually, all connected, with two bathrooms, 4 beds, and all for about $160 per night. And the decor: Nancy and I had “Geronimo”, where every available surface seemed to be covered with something Indian related. On our third day there we were still discovering new things. About a dozen dream-catchers, some nice bead work, a spear , original paintings. Cheryl’s room was named Faraway, and was mostly taken up with a huge bed covered with leopard skin bedspread,and about 50 animal themed pillows. On the porch outside our room, Adirondack chairs and porch swings (although too cold to sit out there). In back of the building, a bamboo grove and garden on the hillside. Off of the lobby, a common room with big refrigerator, kitchenware, etc, for our shared use. I highly recommend this place!

And a good thing, because we ended up staying there three nights. After our first night, we intended to to a 55 mile loop ride down through Douglas, on the Mexican border. But, as we didn’t get up and around until almost noon, we elected to do a shorter out and back ride instead. A bit cool but sunny, a nice coast down to the Sand Pedro river and a tailwind-assisted ride back up. We decided to stay another night so we could do the Douglas ride the next day.

The next morning, Nancy woke me up with “You’ve got to look out the window!. SNOW!!!!!! Just a half inch or so, but c’mon, dammit, this is Arizona! Well, we ARE at 5500 feet elevation…. Sadly, no ride to Douglas for us today. We spend the day happily climbing up and down the towns many staircases and shopping. , and decide to spend another night here.

March 12th
Finally on Friday the weather is perfect, but we have to head back towards Phoenix so Gerry and Cheryl can catch their plane northward Saturday morning. But I still want to visit my friend Kathy in Patagonia, and we want to squeeze in one last bike ride, so I drop off the other 3 about 40 miles from Patagonia and drive on to meet Kathy.

Patagonia is really just a wide spot in the road, and the END of the road at that, just a few miles from the Mexican border. But it has character to spare, and is well worth a visit. Kathy and her partner, Bill, have taken the train here from Pennsylvania and rented a trailer for two months, with no transportation but their bikes. I rode the Southern Tier with Kathy in 2005. Kathy and Bill met a couple years later when Kathy rode the Great Divide mountain bike route. Kathy and Bill the road the Northern Tier…last year I think. Anyway, they are just a couple of intrepid bicycle nomads.

After a great lunch at the Velvet Elvis Café, Kathy and I took off down a back road for a fabulous 20 mile ride over many cattle guards, low-water crossings, and a bit of hard-packed dirt road. I finally got to ride in shorts and shirtsleeves, in the sun! By the time we got back, Gerry, Cheryl, and Nancy were waiting for us, in a state of bliss from the perfect ride they had had. And off we went to Phoenix.

March 13th

Nancy and I have decided to take the more easterly route back north, through northern Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. We head north along the Vermillion Cliffs in clear blue sky, with Nancy, who has never been through here before, ooohing and aaahing all the while, and me trying to keep myself from spilling the beans about all the wonderful sights yet to come.

Then we see clouds gathering on the horizon (hmmm…have we heard this story before?). At 3pm we stop at the Page AZ visitor center, and it hits. Sideways rain, and then, you guessed it, snow. After lunch in Page, we push on, in winds strong enough that I get sore shoulders from holding the car in the road. The red rock cliffs are beautiful with a dusting of snow, but it’s not letting up, so we decide to stop in Cedar City Utah for the night.

And in the morning what do we have but … a good 4-6 inches of the white stuff! Well, we knew this was a risk of coming back this route, in high elevation and far from the gentling effects of the ocean. Thought my car has 4 wheel drive,with the trailer we have 6 wheels, two of them without brakes, so we are reluctant to drive until we’re pretty sure the roads are clear.

We try in vain to get the weather channel to tell us anything; they seem to think the country goes west only as far as the Mississipi. Well, they do mention Fargo once, but maddeningly, nothing about a winter storm in the southwest. I trudge through the snow to the local Starbucks, in search of information. We try dialing 511, and the recording nicely tells us there's a winter storm coming through Saturday night (last night) which we obviously already know, dammit, and that there are at least 3 “incidents” on the freeway north of here and 4 wheel drive or chains are recommended, but as near as I can tell this message was recorded at 8pm last night. Some guys in the hotel tell us they drove through that last night and it was awful. We finally call the Chamber of Commerce in Beaver, about 50 miles up the road, and the nice lady says the storm came through early yesterday afternoon and the roads are all cleared by now. So we decide to chance it. But while I’m cleaning off the car, another guy tells us he’s just come from the south and gotten off the here because it was so awful, and is going to hunker down here for the day. What do do????? The lure of home is just too great, so off we go. It’s snowing lightly, but the roads aren’t bad.

Until we get to the first of three or four 5000+ passes, where there's slushy stuff frozen to the roads, it’s still snowing pretty hard, and there’s quite a bit of traffic. We nail bite our way through this at 30 mpgh with our hazard lights on, big trucks speeding by spraying slush, and FINALLY get back to (relative) warmth and sunshine just before Salt Lake City.

Tucson Adventures

March 6th
This morning we picked up Cheryl and Gerry (aka “Geryl”) at the Phoenix airport and drove on to Tucson, with the intention of driving on down to Patagonia and camping. However, just as we were pulling into Tucson, I got a call from my friend Kathy who’s staying down there, saying they were predicting rain tonight and tomorrow, with highs only in the 50’s. Since Tucson looks warm and sunny, and is about 2000 feet lower in elevation, we elected to stay there. We found the very reasonably priced Days Inn where I have stayed before, right on the edge of downtown.

Tonight in the lobby there were 3 teenage girls just dressed to the nines, sparkly high heels, short skimpy dresses, all made up very pretty. I thought… hookers? But they looked so innocent, and so young. Then one of them asked me if this was where the party was? Party, what party? They are there to attend their friend’s Quinceneria. I tell them they are just so beautiful I can hardly help staring. They seem to really like that compliment!

March 7th
The day dawned with clear blue sky, and by the time I was up it was warm enough for just a long-sleeved shirt. Gerry and I located a Starbucks just a few blocks away this morning, while Cheryl contented herself with the hotel breakfast and Nancy went for a walk. By then it was in the high 60’s and off we went for a nice ride on the Rillito River trail. Like most “rivers” around here, it was just a dry bed. To start off with, anyway. After a couple of miles here came a little water creeping down the streambed. Then a bit more, and after 7-8 miles upstream, we had a full river. Perhaps this should’ve been a warning to us....

We rode to the end of the trail, getting sprinkled on just ever so slightly, and fighting a strong headwind at times. When we turned to head back, I checked my thermometer. 64 , then 62, then 57 inside of 5 miles, now raining pretty good. We decided to stop for lunch and wait it out. However, once back on the trail, OMG! Wind! Sideways rain! Sleet! We had to stop and huddle in a doorway at one point; it just wasn’t rideable. By the time we got back to the car the temperature had dropped to 47, and we were riding through half-flooded streets of cold water. But, we were all laughing about it by then… and adventure! Not one any of us wish to repeat, but still…

Soutward Ho!

March 3

We drove 650 miles today, and it was not bad at all. Our little U-Haul trailer is a breeze to haul, and even though “NEVER exceed 45mph” is clearly printed on it in several places, we’ve been tooling along at 55-60 for most of the day.

Nancy and I left Everett at 6am, stopped in Tumwater for breakfast, and were in Oregon before lunch time. In Sutherlin, south of Eugene, Nancy steered us to the coolest little coffee and lunch place she remembered from a previous tour. Called something like “White Horses” it indeed does have several huge white horse sculptures in front of it. And sea-monster sculptures behind. And very nice horse paintings hanging inside, all of these created by the proprietress. And inside also, an aviary full of several dozen finches and a couple of parrots. Quite a remarkable place! After an excellent lunch (and of course a latte for me and tea for Nancy) we were on our way again.

Soon I began to notice that the deciduous trees on the hillsides looked to be well into leafing out into pretty, pale blue-green. But no, it’s some sort of lichen, covering every twig and branch for miles and miles. Is this normal? An infestation that’s killing forests? Time, and a google search, will tell.

Soon we began climbing the first of a series of many mountain passes. First 1700 feet. Next 2000 feet. Just past the California border we came in sight of beautiful Mt. Shasta, and then we really started climbing. Neither of us has ever driven through here before so we were surprised to find ourselves well up into the snow with a 4500 foot pass. When we stopped in the mountain resort town of Shasta for gas, there were 4-foot piles of snow in the middle of the street…. Which they just got early this morning, and if we’d come through just a bit earlier we’d have been stuck, with chains required on the freeway.

The snow and mountains were fabulously beautiful, but 4 hours of winter is enough, and I am happy to be down in the relatively low lands of Redding for the night, heading back into spring tomorrow.

March 4th
Another 600+ mile day, mostly through endless groves of blooming orchards. Literally hundreds and hundreds of miles of olive, almond, grape, and who knows what all. Beautiful but a bit monotonous after the first 5 hours or so. We passed one horrifically huge feedlot, very smelly, and another that looked a lot like it but was full of dairy cows. OK, I’m really going to stop eating beef.

We got into the greater LA metroplex right at rush hour and enjoyed our last couple of hours crawling through traffic, finally finding a nice, reasonably priced Best Western in one of the southeast outlying suburbs. It was a perfect place to stay except for the long, loud argument outside our door at 3am.

March 5th

Here we are in Phoenix, or at least in Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix. Though we got in early tonight, just after 5, the first two hotels we tried were full, and we got the very last 2-bed room, a smoking one, at this hotel. Everyone and their brother is down here to watch baseball spring training.

We had a leisurely start this morning and took the time to drive through Joshua Tree National Park, well worth the 2-3 hour side trip. It’s in high desert mountains 4000-5000 feet. The rock formations are indescribable, but all the same I’ll try. Some of the hills just look like big piles of gravel, but instead of pea-gravel, imagine car-gravel, or even house-gravel. Then there are just big rocks and bluffs of every conceivable size and shape. And everywhere that’s not rock, there are, of course Joshua trees. They look a bit like yucca, if yucca grew into many-branched, 20-foot-tall trees, but are actually a member of the lily family. There are whole forests of them, but a thick forest here means maybe one every 30 feet or so.

We drove up to and overlook where you can see forever , with a very good view of the San Andreas fault, which really does look like a big crack in the ground running for many hundreds of miles. You also get a view of the vast wind farm we drove through on the way here; there must be thousands of wind turbines, some in the valley, some on the ridge tops.

A stressful couple of weeks..

A couple of weeks ago, I took my car in for a routine oil change. They called me and said I needed a new left-front CV joint.($250) OK, I said. Driving onto the ferry that afternoon, I remarked that the car in front of me was making an awful grinding noise. Remarked on it again as we were offloading. And as I turned into my driveway, there's that noise again.. must be that same car still in front of me. However, the next day when the noise was still there as I was backing out of the garage, I had to admit that it was probably coming from MY car.

What to do? I have to be at a meeting 50 miles up the island later today, and I'm now concerned my axle is grinding itself to pieces. So I decide to take the bus. I will call Jill when I get up there and she will pick me up and cart me the remaining four or five miles to her house. Halfway there, I check my cell phone and find I do not have Jill's number, although I swear I can clearly remember adding it just yesterday. No problem, I have my laptop with me and I know I have her number there. I open the laptop. Battery is dead.

Just in time, I ask to be let off at the fire station, where they kindly let me plug in my laptop, and use their phone, as I have no cell phone service there anyway.

After a 2-3 hour meeting I hop back on the bus, and half way home my phone rings. It's Crystal, my student from 25 years ago, who I was expecting to visit me tomorrow, saying they're coming up today instead, and could I please pick them up at the ferry. No problem, I am so looking forward to seeing her! I ignore the grinding in my car and hurry down to the ferry. My bike is in the back of the car and I need to make room for Crystal and her partner, so I haul the bike out and install it on the roof rack. Forgetting, in the excitement, to remove my garage door opener from it's usual place on the visor, as I always do, to keep me from driving into the garage with my bike still on top of the car. Which, wanting to show off my house to my guests, I promptly do.

Crunch!. Of course my first impulse is to back up. I get out to see the damage I've caused, and realized I've backed up ONTO my bike.

Well, the damage doesn't look too awful... I've only backed onto the wheel, not the frame itself. Off we go for a mini-tour of the island, trying to ignore the grinding sound still coming from the left front wheel. We have a nice visit and I make it home without the axle breaking.

The next day I take the car in for what turns out to be a very minor adjustment, and the bike in for repair. I need a new rear derailleur, not a problem as I was planning to get a grannier granny gear installed before this summer's big trip anyway. They even manage to true the bent rear wheel, but I opt to order a new one to be safe. ($300 + $250 for new wheel on order)

Meanwhile, I'm obsessing about how we are going to get 4 bikes and camping gear for 4 people to Arizona in a couple of weeks. Buy a trailer? Rent? Finally opt for renting a Uhaul trailer, only $15 per day, but that means I have to get a hitch installed. ($350) Oh, and I might as well buy new tires as long as I'm hemorrhaging cash anyway; I've got 90K miles on my old ones. ($550)

A couple of days ago, as I was doing some routine thing on my laptop, I began to get these very Windows-official looking pop-up messages saying that Windows had determined I was under attack from a virus, click here "for the scan you computer now", and wanting me to activate some previously unheard of virus protection software. Being a bit suspicious of Microsoft's lapse in grammar, I googled that phrase and found that this is most likely the Conficker virus and the "virus protection software" is bogus. After following all the directions on the Norton website, doing a complete scan of my PC (in which Norton found nothing wrong!), spending close to two hours on the phone with a Norton tech in India, I am no closer to resolution. I can't access the Internet, can't do much of anything, and every few seconds I get a pop-up saying "Want to activate your antivirus protection NOW?" I'm off to take my PC to the local tech ($??). Hoping they can save my turbotax file, as I was 99% finished doing my taxes.

Hoping for some less stressful days soon....

Spring is coming....?

I'm hearing birds practicing their spring songs already. Yes, it's true that we could still get a foot of snow in April. But it's also true that there will be more overt signs of spring here in the next month or so. I've been so busy this winter I've barely noticed winter go by!

First of all, I've been doing volunteer database work for Beachwatchers and also for Anacortes Friends of the Forest. Really enjoying this, and hoping that it will pan out into a bit of paying work some day. Towards that end, I've gotten some business cards made and am handing them out to everyone who comes within 5 feet of me.

I'm still working a few hours each week at my paying job at Fluke, but it's dwindling. With my big project (moving all my Access stuff to SQL Server) complete and the manufacturing area in the process of shutting down, there's just not much left to do. I've put in a total of about 9 hours in the past two weeks.

Earlier this month, I joined the Whidbey Open Circle Singers. This is a choir for which no auditions are required, and yet they are very good! I've never sung with a group before so it is a learning experience for me. Being in the middle of a 50-person group singing 4-part harmony is quite wonderful. To end our weekly practice, someone sings a note and we all form a chord around it, to send out "vitamin H" (aka Harmony) to the universe.

At this group, I met a man who is trying to get a Sacred Harp (aka shape-note) choir going on Whidbey. (This is the music that you hear in the church in the movie Cold Mountain). So earlier this week I attended my first practice with them. So far there are only 5 of us, which is too bad, as this music seems really meant for a large group. But it's very interesting to learn. It's called shape-note because, to be more friendly to people who don't read music, each note has a characteristic shape and name. You start out singing the shape names; it seems strange but it really does seem to make it easier to learn a new tune. This tradition goes back several hundred years. We are hoping to be part of a performance at WICA in March.

On Friday, I am off to Michigan for a quick visit with my few remaining relatives. For the first time, I am going to leave my car in my garage. Believe it or not, Seattle finally has mass transit all the way to the airport, at least if I go during commuting hours on a weekday. There's a bus that stops near my house to get me to the ferry. Once I'm on the mainland, the Sounder train will take me to downtown, and the "Central Link" light rail will take me on to the airport. All this for $4 each way. Whatta deal!

My friend Nancy and I have started a tradition of taking the train to the city the first Thursday of each month. I've done this 3 months running now, and each time my gracious friend Ellen has picked us up at the train, driven us to her place, and fed us brunch. Again, whatta deal!

Nancy, Cheryl, Gerry, and I have hatched a plan for another bike trip, this one to Arizona in March. The plan is that Nancy and I will drive down with all the bikes and gear, and the Cheryl and Gerry, poor wage-slaves that they are, will fly down to join us once we get there. Although I am not totally sick of winter yet, I admit that some warm sunshine does sound pretty appealing.