The great escape

Yeah, I escaped to the woods today to recharge my batteries, ride my bike and maybe shoot a quail or two. It was a glorious day, sunny and warm and I even found some quail to chase around. The aspens are starting to get colorful and I always love to see the variations of colors they get in the fall. I stood there watching the wind blowing the leaves, causing them to quake and it was a great thing to do. Ya gotta love the little things in life, and this was one of them. I had a little snack on some ripe currants I found, they were nice and sweet.


My little ride today was only 12 miles but there were some pretty good hills on this one and it felt good to get the muscles working. It's funny that when I first started riding my bike the hills were killing me. Sometimes I would have to stop and walk my bike up them until it leveled out a little. Now days I don't dislike the climb, in fact I enjoy the feeling of working my legs like that and I rarely have to walk my bike anymore.


The road I took today is one that I used to drive my family on going up to Antelope Lake. This road has been closed for some time but they didn't rip it and it's a very pleasant ride. It's a little grown over in places but the cows have kept a trail open through the brush. I kept thinking how I used to drive a Chevy Vega on this road...

I'll be leaving town soon and this will be the last time I get to ride up here for a while. But it's all good, I'm going to go help Karen with some stuff and of course I spent most of the day thinking about her. I just can't get that lady off my mind... but then I'm really not trying, go figure.

Goatheads

Man... took off on my bike after running around this morning doing errands, getting ready to leave town for a while. I didn't get too far before I accidently ran over a goathead vine. Those things are at their worst right now. The vines are all over the place, it's been dry so the heads are all prickly and stick like glue to everything.

I am always on the lookout for them this time of year but today I had a weak moment I guess, I didn't see it until my tires were full of those things. The first one I pulled out oozed slime so I knew it had gotten through. I have extra thick tubes with slime in them and that usually stops those things but when the green slime comes out the hole to the outside of the tire, that's not good. Needless to say I came right home and patched it before leaving again to ride the Canyon Trail up in Susanville Ranch Park.

Quail hunting on bicycle

Chris came over today and we strapped our shotguns on our bikes and had a nice easy ride. OK, so we were walking part of the time, but it was an easy walk. Well, there wasn't a trail some of the time except for cow trails, but they were easy trails. Did we see any quail? Well, not exactly. OK, we did see some quail but we saw them driving back along the paved road. We did chase those around a little and I managed to knock 2 of them down with one shot. We ate them with dinner and they were pretty good and neither one of us bit into any shot. Ya gotta love that!

I probably made Chris tired of hearing about Karen today. When we weren't talking about something else, she was the only thing I could think about. I'm hoping to be able to help her out with a project she has to do coming up soon and that's a really good thing since I get to see her again. I have the next few weeks fairly free so time to make myself useful.

Last 4 days...

I have spent the last 4 days with this pretty lady. Karen is an old friend and the object of my recent days of bike riding lost deep in thought. We haven't seen each other in 20 years so it was a reunion for us.

This is just the absolute biggest thing that has happened to me in a very long time. In fact maybe forever, I can't remember a thing that has happened to me that has had this much of an impact on my life.

It's quite interesting the twists and turns that life takes you on and when something happens like this that you never in your wildest imagination ever saw coming, well, it's just very, very big for me. I can't wait to see her again but she lives in another state so that will have to wait a while. I have a feeling I am not going to be able to go too long before I make that happen.

Feelin' a little punky...

Lately I have been feeling a little empty for some reason. So of course, bike riding somewhere pretty always feels good and Eagle Lake is close by and makes a great place to go so I did. It was a beautiful day and I rode from over near the CDF fire station all the way to Eagle's Nest and back. The paved trail is such a nice one to take and I had it all to myself. It was nice that I didn't see anyone since I was deep in thought most of the time and didn't need any distractions. Ridin' and thinkin', a great place to ponder.

Anyway, the lake is low and it looked to be about a foot lower than it was last year about this time. Since this is a natural lake and the level is not regulated in any way, the effects of the extended dry season this year are apparent. I remember some years ago when the lake levels were so high that the road along the north east side, Highway 139, was very close to the water. They were even talking about moving the highway up on the rim rock, but that never happened. The bottom picture is looking across Gallatin Beach toward the Jetty and Marina. There is an osprey nest at the top of one of those trees in the foreground, but it really wasn't the focus of this picture. Yada Yada Yada...

Eureka Ridge

Yesterday I drove over to Sloat and went bike riding with Chris up to Eureka Ridge. It was a 27.7 mile trip according to my GPS, with a 3600' elevation change. The route we took was not too steep, there were no places I had to walk my bike up. The Cold Fire from June of this year burned some pretty country and went all the way to the top of the ridge so we had to ride through some badly burned areas along the way. This picture of one of the burned areas shows how the fire was really quite mosaic in places. Spots like this will recover much sooner than some of the other "nuked" zones we saw.

On my way over I had to go through Greenville where I'm hoping to be meeting an old friend soon. I've had this lady on my mind for the last few weeks and driving through Greenville didn't help matters much. Not that I don't want to be thinking of her mind you, quite the contrary, but I guess I'm just chomping at the bit waiting to finally meet her face to face again after all these years. Soon...

Hops and agates

Got back yesterday from the coast and a fantastic visit with Tracey and her family. Last Saturday we went to the Hops in Humboldt in Fortuna. This thing is very convenient since it's bike riding distance from Tracey's house and after a few brews bike riding makes more sense than driving a 4 wheeled vehicle... not to mention much safer. I also have to say that I drank a little more than I did last year and was very close to having a little too much, but then my alcohol tolerance is way down there so it doesn't take a whole lot for me.

Tracey and I went up the coast later in the week and went agate hunting in her usual spot. We found plenty of them, well, maybe not plenty as far as Tracey is concerned, but still we got enough to keep things interesting. It was a beautiful day, a little windy but warm enough for shorts as you can see.

We used to be avid rock hounds and picked rocks up from all over the place, so Tracey is continuing in that tradition, having a huge selection of agates at home. We added these to the collection. The ones on the left are the ones I found and the the ones on the right are Tracey's, but they all live at Tracey's now.