Hard Work = A Miracle

Bull Run Regional Park — Centreville, Virginia
Temps: Lo 30F / Hi 48F (-1C / 9C)

After picking up the motorhome from storage yesterday afternoon, we drove the short distance to Bull Run Regional Park (BRRP) and got settled in site 109 (FHU for the jurisdiction rate of $41.50/night + tax). That done, we went out to celebrate our retirement with dinner at Copper Canyon Grill, located not far from the park.

Mui ordered the wood-fired rotisserie chicken, which is CCG’s specialty — roasted throughout the day, the meat was literally falling off the bone. I opted for the pan-seared crabcake sandwich, served with a rémoulade that had just enough zing to make it interesting. Overhearing us toasting our newly-minted status as retirees, the manager comped us one of the two desserts we ordered. We enjoyed half of the huge slice of key lime pie at the restaurant; the other half will be dessert tonight. As for the second dessert; well that’s a treat for tomorrow morning and the subject of a post of its own ;-)

When we returned home, we decided to overlook the mess around us. Instead, we watched the latest episode of Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century), a Turkish TV program that can best be described as a soap opera based on the life and times of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. With our recent switch from Millenicom’s aircard to its 4G/3G mi-fi, we had great signal strength to stream the show with no hiccups and use up at least some of our 20GB data allowance for November.

After a good night’s rest, we spent today tackling the mess of boxes and bags that were haphazardly piled on every available surface. The task seemed quite daunting … until we took out the trikes, which we were temporarily storing under the dining table, and loaded the car with all the stuff designated for the storage unit. That done, the job became more manageable.

It took a lot of hard work, but we went from this last night …

… to this by 4:30p today. It’s a miracle what can be accomplished when one sets one’s mind to the task at hand. A miracle indeed!

There’s still plenty of fine tuning to be done, but it feels good to know that we’ve been able to put everything we want to take on the road with us in the many nooks and crannies of the Phaeton. And we still have room to spare ;-)

We’ll be at BRRP through Monday night. Probably won’t have much of interest going on during the day; we’ll be busy working around the motorhome. However, we plan to go out one night to enjoy the park’s annual Festival of Lights. Those staying at the campground — and there is a surprising number of us — get a small taste of the holiday cheer for free as we come and go from the park after nightfall. If I can unearth my tripod, I’ll take some photos to share. (For those who are local, there’s a $3 off coupon here; it’s good for weeknight admission.)

[Banner image from the BRRP website]

The first day of fulltiming was a good one!

Positive thinking

This is not turning into one of my better weeks. As of yesterday I am simultaneously nursing a head cold and a swollen ankle after rolling it while running on the headland at North Burleigh. Effectively it means I won't be bothering with the weekend at Minyon Falls I was planning this weekend -- although I do plan to rack up some serious kilometres as soon as my ankle decides to co-operate (I can ride off the head cold).
Since I'm effectively forced to "rest" (which basically means limiting my riding to commuting only) I've decided to put a positive spin on this situation and consider it "multi-tasking". If I'm going to be off the bike with the ankle, I might as well deal with the illness at the same time. Perhaps clearing both of them up now might prevent a repeat of the miserable run I had last year when I was trying to ride a super series (Audax riders will know what that means).
Now if I can just find a way to legitimately take credit for it.

Authors You Love

I found the coolest thing! If you click on this link, http://www.literature-map.com/, you can list your favorite author and ones similar to him/her will come up on a list. It's a way to find new authors that write in a style you already love.
I typed in Diana Gabaldon and got back this list: Jude Deveraux, Nora Roberts, Linda Howard, Amanda Quick, Janet Evanovich, Lori Foster, Maeve Binchy, Phillipa Gregory, Catherine Cookson, Elizabeth Peters, Jack Whyte, Mary Stewart, and more. Some of these authors I've read, some I haven't.
On Diana Gabaldon's website she lists her favorite authors. Jack Whyte is one of them. I've never read anything by him, but if Diana recommends him, that's good enough for me!
If you could pick one favorite author, who would it be?
*Photos taken at the Appalachian Museum in Norris, Tennessee, I think. I'm drawn to old books like a moth to a flame. I've seen so many of them that's it's hard to look at a photo and remember where I was at the time!

The Beauty Experiment

While I admire the premise of this book, I wasn't too impressed with it. Maybe I'm just getting impatient in my old age, but it seems like she took a lot of pages not to say very much. I do admire her for finding her own way with regard to her hair, makeup, and clothing. I, too, am tired of seeing ultra-made up faces everywhere you turn and photoshopped bodies in magazines. And don't get me started on plastic surgery! Our culture is obsessed with an unattainable perfection. At least she's willing to look natural and real. I've shared her angst with trying to find the perfect dress for a party only to be frustrated in those 3-way dressing room mirrors with how many bumps and lumps can be seen.

My 14-year-old daughter and I have been doing a lot of shopping lately to find her something to wear to a school masquerade dance. We found it fairly quickly, but just walking into a store and being confronted by all the choices almost makes me hyperventilate! I HATE shopping. Add in the stress of trying to agree with a teenager on dress length and top coverage and it's a wonder I don't break out into hives!

We did agree on one thing. We've both noticed how before you walk into the store you feel pretty good about yourself, but as soon as you walk through those big glass doors, you feel dowdy and inadequate. The clothes are so perfect and the salespeople are the same. And then to add insult to injury, you have to confront the dreaded 3-way mirror in the dressing room. Shopping online eliminates all the negative aspects of shopping for me. I can look at the garments one at a time and not have my senses assailed by too many selections. And I can shop in my pajamas and no makeup. Shopping bliss, I tell you!

Wabash Line

With 2 days off the bike, I just HAD to get out and ride. About 80 deg with a breeze from the NW. Drove down to Silver City.
Zach said he might be riding the Trace this afternoon. When I did not see his vehicle, I figured he was riding later. Stopped in Malvern for drink of juice and eating a granola bar. Rode through downtown to see if the coffee shop had changed its name - not yet.
Right there downtown Malvern - there's Zach and his friend Drew. I decided to ride with them to the next cross road. Heading to the Trace, Zach took a wrong turn, looked back what we were hollering about. Splat - Zach did a sider, dumping the bike. Me, did not think to grab the camera (Damn!). At least he wasn't hurt.
Drew took this photo of Zack and me. Thanks, Drew.
Good ride back to Silver City - little slower with into the wind. The 4300 rode like a champ.

Petals and Parody

Spring has been eluding so many of you, but it's already arrived in my Austin garden. White Mockorange and purple Iris filled the last post – here’s another purple flower for April Garden Bloggers Bloom Day –
In March .., a Clematis labeled “Comtesse de Bouchaud” came with two vines in one container. Both vines lived - one is the white clematis at the base of the Lady Banks Rose. The other one is this reddish-purple clematis near the back door. Neither of them look one bit like the lilac-pink “Comtesse de Bouchaud”! Now on to some coral colors -

In spring .. I planted my motley collection of Christmas amaryllis in the ground. Some lived, and three amaryllis flowers are opening in this partially shaded raised bed. A previous owner planted the unnamed, day-glow rose.

Two tall, once-blooming roses were already here, too. The roses are pretty, but the foliage is usually a mess. I occasionally feed and water them, pull off the worst leaves a couple of times a year and otherwise ignore them.
Another legacy! This big pink climbing rose also blooms once a year, with huge fragrant flowers that lean down to make me notice them whenever I go out the gate. They have an old-fashioned, real rose smell.

This spring a few of the dropped seeds from last year's plant of Nemophila menziesii AKA Baby Blue Eyes sprouted, and four of them bloomed. The flowers are small, barely visible from 3-feet away. Maybe one day I’ll have them established like the colony growing at Zanthan Gardens, or in the wooded areas of Zilker Park.

Mazus reptans, a low, spring-blooming groundcover plant, grows next to the Baby Blue Eyes.
Another reseeder is Salvia ‘Coral Nymph’, which hitched a ride from the last house, and has established itself in several beds. My Cape Cod weeder makes swift work of unwanted seedlings, but I leave a lot of them in place.

More coral from Stachys coccinea, Texas Betony – nicknamed ‘Stinky Sage’ by some Hill Country residents. It looks nothing like its fuzzy gray Stachys cousin Lambs Ears.
I didn’t take any photos of plants like the pansies, violas and various containers of ‘Telstar’ dianthus, since they’ve been blooming most of the winter. Summer heat will kill the pansies, and the dianthus will stop blooming and rest before starting another bloom cycle.
Posting this photo may not be too different from buying a bakery cake, sliding it onto a pan and passing it off as homemade. I just planted this golden yellow rose on Thursday! It's reputed to be heat resistant, disease resistant, scented, and was personally chosen by Julia Child herself before she died, perhaps because the flower color is close to her beloved butter.

Yellow roses have always been our special flower. When I graduated from high school, Philo gave me a dozen yellow roses. They appeared at our wedding, at anniversaries and the David Austin rose ‘Graham Thomas’ flourished in our Illinois garden. I hope ‘Julia Child’ will thrive to become 'our' yellow rose at this house.
And for the last flower - here is the tiny blossom that most of you yearn to see, wanting them even more than roses!

That concludes the PETALS portion of this post – now on to the PARODY.
As station KAEFKA, we're working on an original song for our YouTube collection right now, [the ones we've already made are in the side links] but we paused to have some fun with an old tune. Nick played the ancient folk song “Greensleeves” on resonator, I wrote some new words, and Philo added photos.
Have any of you seen articles and shows about the 'new green'? I respect people who aspire to green living - many of them have been plugging along for decades. Their valid concepts were ridiculed & ignored at first, before becoming mainstream with time. But lately, green living seems to have been co-opted by the wealthy and the fashionistas. The home-fashion press is splashed with pages of green renovations for mansions rather than normal homes. When I read that the cost of redoing a 1000 square-foot attic rec room to make it 'green', was three times the price of my house, I could weep or gnash my teeth, or I could make it into a musical joke.

You can use this link to our YouTube site - GREENED HOUSE VIDEO .

Or, if the YouTube screen shows up below you can click on the screen.

GREENED HOUSE

Still MORE to do in Tehachapi...

Hiya y'all! Yeah... we're still in Tehachapi, but we've found so many outstanding things to do here, that we could stay at least another month - well... if we didn't have a plan we were tryin' to stick to! So here we are at what they call "the Tehachapi Loop." Because it's so hard for us to explain the magnetic appeal of this place to anyone but the diehard choo choo train buffs, who come from all over the world to see this thang, we're gonna jes' set down a link... here! We are definitely not train buffs in any way, but we gotta woof this: it was pawsitively mesmerizing to watch the show, when three loud, whistling diesel engines came 'round the bend, towing 108 cars behind. Seeing the spectacle of that snaking train winding around the LOOP - OVER itself, was incredible. We made a little movie of it all, but it only gets one star compared to other vids of it on youtube! Enjoy!


Mesmerizing. Like a giant Lionel train set or sumpin'!
We had hiked a bit up a trail, then a hill where there were all sorts of rocky hiding places for us. We sniffed out bunches of lizards, rodents and other assordid animals that we couldn't catch, while Ma and Pa set up their flashy beasts.
We always smile on account of three.
Sammie playin' hidey hoo - peekaboo!
Sad to see the train leave for up country, but there'll always be a ton more comin' round the mountain heheh! THEN. We got to visit Tehachapi Mountain Park, which you can check out HERE. Did we ever LOVE this place!
There was still lots of snow (and treeloads of squirrels), so we had our paws loaded with things to do! Plus, we had the whole park to ourselves and took full advantage of all that property up there!
There was some good roaching to be had for Sammie...
...and plenty of snow, as we woofed, so there was no lack of things to do, places to sniff, and fun to be had. We plum wore each other out as well as Mom and Dad, who needed to do some meditations. So, we headed in the opposite direction to...
...a most peaceful and beautiful place called Mountain Spirit Center. (You can go HERE to check out this serene spot)
When we arrived, there was a monk circumnavigating the peace bell pagoda-like structure, all hand painted. He bowed to Mom as she approached quietly - as if to invite her and Dad. We all wondered if the monks at this temple take a vow of silence for certain periods of time occasionally.
And we thought this might be the dojo? Such a beautiful setting... We all felt very much of an inner peace at this lovely place.
We've been having wonderful days during our "enforced" stay here in Tehachapi. If you ever get stuck somewhere, we hope that it will be here - there's loads to do. We still have one more post to do about our travels in and around this area!
Peace out

Three things: Ozzie! Thanks! Tracking!

Mom here: first our apologies for not visiting - again - it's been silly bizzy around here, although today (yay!) it's pretty mellow! Second, we wanted to show you a couple of photos of the super-rapidly-getting-better-OZZIE!!! She's playing and dancing energetically once more and will get her outer stitches removed at the beginning of next week. We are stunned by her amazing recovery and thank all of you so much for sending such powerfully wonderful well wishes - they helped hugely! Thirdly, this post is also about something I tried with Sam a couple of years ago - tracking. We just introduced Avalon (and Sierra Rose) to it yesterday and all doggies loved it! We actually traveled with Sierra Rose and her mom, meeting our good friend and experienced tracking person, Elizabeth Waldspurter, who set the courses for the dogs and instructed us. I want to thank her immensely for helping us get such a great start! I also want to thank Sierra's mom for taking the pictures of Sammie and Avalon trying out this super canine/human "sport"! (There are photos of Sierra as well, but we'll let Sierra post her version!) Okay... our turn!

Isn't she lookin' great???

You look like a zillion "treats" Oz! That's our Sis!!!*** So... tracking! To make a long story short, we dogs (as we surely know well) have better scentacles (our word) than hoomans have. In fact, the area of our doggie brains devoted to analyzing the things we smell is 40 times bigger than what a person has - how about that? We know a completely different world than humans, and for this reason, it is furry cool to do tracking. Yesterday, Mom set us loose to do something she had little control over! In our friend, Elizabeth's words, "You can't really correct for tracking. They know what they are doing." Love it! So the object of the game is to sniff our way down the course that Elizabeth makes and get the glove... or... foodables on the glove!
We were urged to watch our teacher as she "set" the course for us. We started small - on a plot of grass in front of a house. Some wind came up and the grass was damp. It's supposedly good to set up a track somewhere that is fresh - as in no humans or animals crossed it to mess up our snooters. Sometimes it will look like we're not following the path correctly, but wind can make us veer up to 3 or even 6 feet off supposedly. (Anyone out there who might be able to correct us on any of this info, let us know...)
In Avalon's words: Finally Mom said, "Avalon, Track!"
And off I went. I sniffed here...
I sniffed there...
And I backtracked and sniffed thereabouts!
Until I saw the prize, but still kept my sniffer to the ground...
And oooooooh... what sweetness to reach the prize! What fun that was!!! I hoped I could do it again and again! Back to you, Sammie.
Okay... so it was my turn. I wasn't spose to look at the camera, but I'm a flashy beast hound. Okay... I'll get serious!
Here I am in earnest... watching Elizabeth set my course. We are now in a less "contaminated" meadow!
Elizabeth returns from dropping the "dime" hot dog foodables along the track. She has stomped on the grass, while dropping a hot dog every few feet, and has placed the glove at the end of the trail. I'm supposed to follow HER scent along the course, leading to her glove, see? (the hot dogs help...). She indicated to Mom that I can go!
And we're off! How I love this activity! And there really is no correcting. Mom's read that she could "help" me a bit more - you can read here - or here for further info, but basically, she has to trust my snooter - hah! Isn't that pawesome?
Meanwhile, Avalon really, really, really wanted to do it again and again without a break and made her wishes loudly known throughout the neighborhood. We will be doing this again soon and we are definitely excited! Huge woofs to Elizabeth - thank you so much! Here are a couple of movies of us tracking!

Grasshopper

I was all set to do these. They sound like my kinda races.
Sorta like the Billy Cross races. I didn't do any of the Billy Cross races last year, but we went and supported Morgan when he did one of the 6 hour races and I immediately fell in love. This year I'll do some Billy Cross.
Anyway, Morgan was yapping about the Grasshopper series and how much fun they'd be and the groovy environment and I thought, excellent! Another cool mtn bike race series.
And then I read the fine print, that the first race is "50 miles or so" and the 2nd race is "70 miles or so" and the 3rd race is "85 miles or so".
Uh, these are mountain bike races, right? I asked Morgan. Of course silly, he said. You should do them all with me, he said. It'll be the first time we'll race in the same race together. We'll get grandma to come and watch the kids. It'll be so much fun!
Not that my mom doesn't support our hobby, but even I have to think about whether or not I want to hang around entertaining my kids under a hot tent in 90 degree weather for 5 hours, waiting for Morgan to finish a race. I can't imagine my 65 year old mom really enjoying that. She's into stuff like sipping white wine in a napa vineyard and talking about Italy and food and real estate and shopping.
But then, thank god I saw that the 4th race is "25 miles or so".
"...these events are organized not for profit, but for fun. The less fun you have, the more you will pay. Do your homework... bring plenty of food, water, tools, clothing, catnip and blankey..."
Maybe I'll go to support Morgan for the first few, but I think I'll only be doing the last race.

Lessons For A Good Life

1.  Do not complain about your life.2.  Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself.3.  Be content with who you are and where you are.4.  Do whatever you can to bring to others such contentment, joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.