Toward the end of the often-disastrous 2020, social media got flooded with memes and posts and comments expressing joy that the crappy year would soon end with 2021. That may explain why I so liked the above meme put up by Jeff Boyer. 2021 won’t fully flush out 2020, and some of the crap will continue to need wiping away. The vaccine rollout has started, but slowly; the cases and hospitalizations have reached all time highs. Yes, we’ll likely beat it, but…
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The Fine Art of Doing Nothing
Back in May of 2020, COVID provided an unexpected opportunity. I had a week carved out to ride my bike to Estes Park CO and teach at a writing conference, then COVID cancelled it. So I subbed in a trip to my beloved Sierras to pull out some trout. I rediscovered why we call it fishing, not catching, because the catching was below mediocre. Maybe pathetic. And from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, it almost totally died. I grew sad…
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image from bearbox.org
Safe from Bears
Mom claimed I had been conceived in the Sierras, so I came by my love for them honestly. And in several decades of hiking and camping and fishing and driving through them, I never had any issues with bears. Until I did. Guys from our church camped in Gray’s Meadow outside Independence in 1990, and after chasing trout on other streams we came back to a campsite in chaos with missing items. The campground host came over, explaining that a bear had strolled in and…
Read MoreDo It Right...The First Time
Sometimes, some people (OK, this is mostly about me), overlook somethings we’ve done that qualify as small mistakes. OK, I knew these were mistakes when I made them, and thought they were minor. They were, and they weren’t. If you don’t see yourself there, then you might want to move on. But most who follow “Unconventional” or me on Facebook know…
Read MoreWounded in Tombstone: Got Some Tweezers?
Almost 140 years after the infamous shoot out at the OK Corral, Tombstone AZ continues to cause damage. Yep, I got wounded in Tombstone just this fall. Sheila and I spent a week at a Tempe timeshare, and I’d recently discovered Luke Short, a part owner of the Oriental Saloon there and fellow gambler with Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, was my great uncle. So I headed southeast for some family research, leaving Sheila to relax at the pool and…
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Our Vast and Varied World
Pulling out of Temecula onto I-15 at 4 AM 2 years ago, I had one primary goal. To test myself, to push my limits, to see if at 70 I could repeat the feat done at 28: riding over 1,000 miles on 2 wheels in under 24 hours. Oh yeah, I had other goals, to meet Jerry in Butte as we hit 3 of the states I had not ridden in, and then to meet Mick and Brad and head to Banff. Dawn had not yet…Then serendipity struck…
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The debris and tools from removing pathetic plants
Cut Our Losses
When we moved to Newbury Park back in 2009, we bought a fixer upper. Maybe the last two words should be in bold and all caps. After a year remodeling the interior, we then crafted a backyard sanctuary. A water feature became the focal point in a corner, with a stream and waterfall and small pond. Some greenery flanked it to soften the look: a purple lilac vine on the left and a jasmine on the right grew abundantly. So when we returned to Temecula in 2015, we wanted to duplicate our Shangri La. A slightly different water feature, and the same plants. But…
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Of Mountains and Miniatures
Two years back, our Gray Hogs group crossed the Canadian border to snag Mick’s goal of seeing why Banff is such a big deal. We took a circuitous route to Radium Hot Springs just because a biker at a MT hotel told us off a rustic but inexpensive motel there,.The next morning’s ride to Banff thrilled us despite the cold, and the city was nice. A bit overdeveloped, and we struggled to find a breakfast place, but with marvelous views in all directions. That satisfied Mick, and we headed north to Lake Louise. Quite pretty but overcrowded, so…
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