Bikin' around the Buttes

We have been training for this for a while and the day finally came.  My other Saturday duties required that I be home by 9 am so we started early and only did the short route. But it was beautiful!  We took our own snacks and water, stopped a few times and didn't go so fast we couldn't do anything else the rest of the day. It took us maybe a little over an hour and a half to go the 16-17 miles out Pass Road, down West Butte and then back on South Butte.  We just had a delightful time.  Here are a few photos.

First stop - John C. Fremont marker.

Next stop - the top of the hill, with South Butte in the background.

And there she goes, leaving me to eat her dust.

Our final stop was here beside the Sutter Bypass.  What a beautiful day.

Disneyland

James, Sabrina and Chelsea invited us to go to Disneyland with them and we were so excited to go.  We stayed in a hotel just across from the park and had a wonderful time.

  We got there on Monday afternoon and after checking into the hotel went over to Disneyland.  The teacups were the first ride.

 James and Sabrina were great helping us to navigate around the parks.  

 Tuesday and Wednesday were spent just having a great time.  We walked back and forth between Disneyland and California Adventure catching all the good rides.  

Our favorite ride was the rafting one.  It was the first ride we went on both Tuesday and Wednesday morning.  On Wednesday, Dad got soaked.  Wednesday night, James and Dad went on the ride twice at the very end of the night.  It was a really fun ride.  

 Grandpa's hat was almost as fun as the rides.  

 The weather was just perfect.

Dad did take off and went to the Abraham Lincoln exhibit and the Tiki Room for a little rest in the middle of the day on Wednesday, but we were there at the opening at 10 a.m. until closing at 8 p.m.  But after that we walked back to the hotel and crashed.  We had a great time and so enjoyed our time with James, Sabrina and Chelsea. 

Beautiful Spring

We continue to plug away on our remodel of the house, but while the engineer is doing his thing we are getting the yard in shape so that we don't have that to do when we get going full speed on the house.  Here is a quick walk around the back yard.

 Here's the overview.  Lawn in front, then the strawberry patch that has been purged of old growth.

Then in the background is a cilantro plant on the left, peas in the middle and on the right we have

onions in front and potatoes in back.

 Our amazing lemon tree that is still alive in spite of my poor attempts at keeping it from freezing when our temperatures were in the low 20's for days at a time last December.  And then I moved it.

But it is a survivor.

 One of the newbies - a lime tree.  If you look closely you can see that it has blossoms coming on.

 The flowers are coming along nicely too.

 And look how happy Heidi is!  We moved her from over under our window to this spot under the Snowball bush.  You may recall that she has been here (or close by) before and was not happy.  

Hope she does better this time.

 And the peonies are happy happy happy too.

 One of our two miniature lilac bushes.  This is their third home since we got them 

so I hope they are happy now.  They do look like it, and they smell fantastic!

 "Little purple pansies touched with yellow gold,

Growing in the corner of our garden old . . . ."

 Happy strawberries - with blossoms!

Another newcomer - my latest venture into the world of composting.  With encouragement and lots of advice and counsel from Andrea, I am making another go of it.  Patterning my attempt after what she has been doing successfully for a couple of years, I will have a couple of these so that when one gets full I can let it cook while I fill the other one.  A challenge I think we will have is that my research indicates that there is an optimal mix of "greens" (organic matter from the kitchen), "browns" (paper and cardboard, etc.), moisture, and air.  Our challenge is to have enough browns to cover all the greens we want to put in.

But help is on the way.  Once we get back from our next trip I intend to get into vermiculture.

Those will be exciting posts.

Bikin' 'Round the Buttes Hype

Bike Around the Buttes is less than a month away. So mom & I are trying to get in shape to make the 17.5 mile trip out Pass Road and back on South Butte. That is about as far I we will have time to go on a Saturday before I have to get ready form my temple shift. As part of our preparation efforts, early this morning Peter O. & I rode up to the new riparian park on the inside of the levee just north of the 10th Street Bridge.  It was great fun and good exercise.  In case you are not familiar with this park, here is some of what we saw:

 A nice mural painted on the side of a bridge/drainage portal.

Can't resist getting our mugs in the scene.

We are happy because we got to watch the sunrise over el Rio de las Plumas.

 A panoramic shot of the "overlook" area with the sun coming up.  It is a pretty nice set up, with picnic tables here in this location, and a pavilion just south of this point.

 There are LOTS of bike trails around the park.  All are either dirt or gravel.  But there is this one paved path from the pavilion (you can see it just barely in the background) to the overlook area.  It is pretty nice concrete made to look like wooden planks.

 We didn't ride all the trails, but the ones we went on were well maintained.
At one point we ran across this structure.  Before divulging the nature of it's function, I will let all of you to venture your guesses, Peter & Leigh-Ann being disqualified, of course.  As a hint, I will tell you that it is found at the far north end of the trail system.
Happy Biking!

Sick Days

Gee, it seems that all of our family have been sick lately, so I thought I'd join the party.  But today I felt a little better and got up for awhile.  Sorry no pictures of the experience - you would have to be there.  Oh that's right . . . you've been there.  So no need for graphic representations.  But I do have a little something to spice up this post.  Not able to do much, I am at least doing a little something productive.  I am scanning in a bunch of paper filling my filing cabinet.  This includes the letters I sent home from my first mission to NYC and Brazil.  In one of the envelopes I found the photo below.  This is of Elder Dalley (Orem, UT), myself, and Elder Bushman (George, WA) with a street meeting board in front of their (Elder Dalley spoke Spanish and his companion spoke English) apartment in Jersey City.  They lived in a basement apartment down some stairs just to the right of Elder Bushman where that wrought iron railing is.  They lived just around the corner from us, so we lived in an apartment on the street you can see in the background, where the Marlow's store is.  Our apartment was on the third floor, over a drug store and next to a firehouse.

And here is a little piece of a letter I wrote about that place on 1 July 1974, just after moving from Jersey City to Greenpoint Brooklyn: "Hermano Collazo . . . was standing out front waiting and whistling for us to go down and let him in.  Elder Bushman went to the window to throw down the keys and as soon as he got to the window this car comes zipping around the corner with 2 cop cars behind it and 2 cops running along side shooting at it.  That was one thing about Jersey, never a dull moment."

Among the other things I remembered as I glanced over the letters as I scanned them was all of the interesting people I got to meet while in the Eastern States Mission, including Elder McConkie, President Kimball, President Benson, Elder Ashton, Allan Cherry, Robert Peterson, Spencer Kinnard, and Kresmir Cosic.  And those are just the ones you may recognize.  Others include Bishop Mabunga, Brother Giani, Hno. Arias, Brother Rose, Bishop Jimenez, Luis Zamora, Tuly and Guido Peñaranda, and a host of great missionaries.  It was a rich experience that I am grateful to have had.