This Makes No Sense At All

Strange things going on in our house. As self publishers, we have piles of boxes with books, stacked in various places in the house, one being directly behind Susan's desk. This image is from Feb 08, when there used to be a double row of boxes. Each pile is six boxes high, and weighs about 170 lbs. Now fast forward to May 09, and we notice big gaps between the stacks of boxes. We are not touching these boxes, and now they have gaps between of an inch to two inches: We have a reasonably stable house. There's no big slope from one side to the other, our windows all open and close just fine. There aren't weird gaps appearing at the top and bottoms of our doors. The area is known for unknown forces. Nearby we have the labyrinths where supposedly gather peaceful witches and druids. The whole state has strangeness galore, from Sasquatch in the north, to the Death Valley rock movers in the south. Do you suppose that we are in the grip of some mysterious power? My rational ...

We have this budget, and put a fair amount of effort into keeping within budget, contrary to our city, state and federal government. Didn't intend to say that last part. My fingers did it. Anyway, it has a couple of major expense classifications, mandatory expenses and discretionary expenses. Within discretionary is entertainment. For a long time this was broken down further, into Cultural and Other. My interests are firmly in the Other category, but Susan sometimes steers us into Cultural. We've now abolished those subcategories in the interest of less record keeping required, but the classification remains in our minds. Sunday's event was Man from La Mancha at the outdoor Mountain Theater on Mt. Tam. In my mind, a Cultural event with a capital C. Well, we arrive in Mill Valley, and are bussed up to the theater, getting there around noon. Seats on the rocks are first come first served, and we have a nice central location in the sun. Temperature is perfect, fog just burne...

I mostly go from Pinehurst, Huckleberry or Sibley north. (this is in the east bay hills of the San Francisco Bay Area). After talking about this in my prior post, I decided to go south from Pinehurst, to extend the training yoyo a little. My plan was to go thirty minutes south, then return (this was a minimal hiking day). It ended up a little longer than that, and I came to a new starting point for the yoyo to the Tilden train station and back. First you take this quiet single track trail much like Huckleberry Preserve. Shaded, lots of poison oak, but avoidable. The poison oak image is on the Sibley - Tilden trail, but you get the idea. After about twenty minutes you get to Skyline Gate - trail central for Redwood Regional Park. It's the takeoff point for two broad trails, the West Ridge and the East Ridge. Each is wide enough so 4 or 5 people can walk abreast, and they do during the busy hours, along with bikes and dogs. The broad trail creates a trailside microclimate with thri...

From our house in the Oakland East bay hills, we walk up past Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, where we join the Bay Area Ridge Trail/East Bay Skyline Trail and walk to the Train Station in Tilden Regional Park. The round trip is about 10 miles for us, about 7 miles if you start from Sibley. You are walking through the Caldecott Wildlife Corridor for most of the way, and a relatively untraveled, pristine trail for much of its length. The trail elevation profile is quite similar to what you find on the PCT. Do this with a 25 lb backpack from Sibley and you will feel it. Start at the Pinehurst Road - Skyline intersection, just a mile or so south on the Ridge Trail, and it will kick your butt if you do it round trip. I saw a mountain lion on this section south of Sibley when I did it earlier this year. Over the course of a year, we do on the order of 200 miles on this trail. I've made some attempts at trail maintenance with varying success. There is a fair amount of poison oak, ...

Early this morning, as I was returning to bed after a bathroom visit (I do this more now than when I was younger), the clock showed 4:30, and through the bedroom window, there was just the slightest hint of dawn. The light and the hour gave me a sudden déjà vu. I realized that this was the first time in five years I was not crawling out of a tent somewhere on this date and time. I searched through our photos to see just what we had been doing around this time on prior years. PCT Section B 2005 May 10 PCT Section C 2006 May 10 PCT Section D 2007 - May 2 Hiker Heaven PCT 2008 - May 13 Butterbredt Canyon Road 2009 - May 10 Squirrel on our feeder, new solar fan installation We've been working our way through the southern California desert on the Pacific Crest Trail since 2005. My routine for this date and time for the prior four years has been: get out of the sleeping bag, stuff it, throw all my gear outside the tent and crawl out, all without getting on Susan's side ...