Plans sometimes get changed. Radically. My October Sierra plans were to fish Rock Creek until late Friday, then to head home and miss the Friday traffic. The snow in the pic above forced a revision. Waking to 2" of snow in my campground made outdoor cooking problematic, so I threw all my wet gear loosely into the back of the truck and headed home. Early. Not much later I walked into a Mickey D's in Lone Pine for coffee, only to meet a middle aged guy in shorts and a hoodie who asked…
Read MorePlan...But Flex
Three Sierra trips make up my plans for each year: May, mid-summer, and mid-fall. But the2018 spring trip gave way to hosting our granddaughter’s rehearsal dinner and getting ready for family. Summer got eliminated by a 6,700 mile motorcycle ride, including an Iron Butt ride of 1,080 miles in 16 hours. As fall drew close, I desperately needed a mountain fix, so I planned a six-day trip, leaving Sunday morning and getting home Friday evening, for five fishing days. That avoids the crowded weekends and eliminates some traffic. But around the time I left, our son-in-law’s brother Bob passed. One of the good guys, we’d shared a lot of time at family gatherings. His service was set for Friday, so I still took…
Read MoreStrange Goals, Strange Steps
Hyder, Alaska is a strange town: a United States town that uses Canadian money and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for law enforcement. Even though you can only enter Hyder from Stewart, British Columbia, Canada, you need no passport to get in this sovereign US territory. Just to get out. And yes, it looked like a ghost town as Rich and I rode our bikes there on a foggy and drizzly morning. We saw none of the fourteen people who supposedly live there. But if you look carefully and…
Read MoreIn Need of Repair?
Not long after we moved to Temecula in 1988, the neighbor above us installed a cedar fence at the top of our slope on the property line. A pretty nice job too! As it aged over the years, we did some minor repairs—putting in supports for some posts, laying new 2X4s above some broken rails, and replacing some pickets. But about a year ago I realized it needed more major repairs. Three of the seven posts had rotted out, more rails needed replacing, and 40 of the 120 pickets had to be replaced. A fairly normal job, until…
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