Wonderful Lake Washington Bike Ride

 All Categories, Bicycling  2 Responses »
Jul 052011
 

Scott and I went on a spec­tac­u­lar 48 mile 5th of July bike ride today, most­ly skirt­ing around the shore of Lake Wash­ing­ton but also through UDUB, very fun. Temps in the 80’s, just like SoCal 🙂

I start gen­er­al­ly south tomor­row for Sat­ur­day in Sacra­men­to to see and cheer on Ralph at his foot race there. But first a north­ern jag up to North Cas­cades Nation­al Park (get­ting with­in about 15 miles of Cana­da) then maybe over to the Grand Coulee Dam before actu­al­ly start­ing the move SOUTH.

We rode by an inter­est­ing amphibi­ous plane lot/launching area.

The bike trail had a cou­ple of detours along the route. Here’s Scott com­ing down one with the very nice bike trough beside the stairs.

Scott and I with a very inter­est­ing sculp­ture along the way.

And at the point of need­ing to turn around after we had pressed our luck head­ing a cou­ple of miles down the signed as closed path.

 Posted by at 7:32 pm

Bike ride around the Washington State Capital

 All Categories, Bicycling  2 Responses »
Jul 022011
 

I awoke in Olympia, Wash­ing­ton and after the motel’s break­fast rode down to explore the area around the state cap­i­tal build­ing that I had noticed when arriv­ing last night. The upper left image is the view over to the Olympic Peninsula.

Sev­er­al shots of parts of the Cap­i­tal and some near­by sculptures.

 Posted by at 10:25 pm

A fun day of jury service in the city of my birth

 All Categories, Food  2 Responses »
Mar 292011
 

I was sum­moned for jury duty at the Fed­er­al Dis­trict Court in Los Ange­les for two weeks of ser­vice com­menc­ing on March 22nd. As direct­ed I called the court hot­line on the 21st and found I was off the hook for that week. Call­ing again on the 28th I was told to report to the jury room at 7:45 the fol­low­ing morning.

So I left home at 5:00 a.m. and zoomed to the court park­ing lot in down­town Los Ange­les arriv­ing at 6:30, per­fect. It was a nice 1/2 mile walk in the awak­en­ing city to my favorite break­fast spot in that area, Phillipe’s (upper left pho­to, 7:05 on the clock there­in) to eat and read all the inter­est­ing his­to­ry on the walls about steam trains and oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics. After­ward it was back to the car to grab some stuff I want­ed to have with me then over to the cour­t­house (left build­ing in the upper right pho­to — that’s me in the third floor window).

By 11:30 half of us had found out that “our tri­al” had been con­tin­ued but that we need­ed to stay until the jury selec­tion process com­plet­ed for the oth­er half. So back to the car to switch into more com­fort­able clothes and back to Phillipe’s for a lamb sand­wich, baked apple, and glass of lemon­ade. After lunch it was a great walk through Chi­na­town (very nice ban­ner above), Oliv­era Street, the beau­ti­ful Union Sta­tion (image 4), and the Pueblo de Los Ange­les before the return to the cour­t­house where at 1:20 p.m. we were told that the oth­er jury had com­plet­ed selec­tion and our jury ser­vice was fin­ished, finis. By then I was feel­ing pret­ty tired so I hopped in the Vol­vo and bee lined for home, arriv­ing just eight hours after I’d left.

For ver­i­fi­ca­tion, reim­burse­ment, and/or cred­i­bil­i­ty here is my juror badge.

 

 Posted by at 3:00 pm

The Hole in the Wall Gang in Santa Barbara

 All Categories, Food  6 Responses »
Mar 112011
 

Car­ol sug­gest­ed an out­ing to the Vedan­ta Tem­ple and Bocal­li’s (that got my buy in) so we first head­ed over toward Vedan­ta to enjoy the grounds when, along the way, I spied Butch and Sun­dance comin’ right through the wall of the Sheffield Reser­voir, too fun! Well I just had to yell whoa to all those ponies under the hood and pull over to say howdy and ask, busy as they were, if I could have my pic­ture tak­en with them.

Then it was back on task and on to the Vedan­ta where we see Ms. P pos­ing by bell and boul­der along with a nice, split panora­ma of the tem­ple itself.

I just don’t under­stand these uptight med­i­ta­tive types, chill it’s only a brief call.

So, after we were asked to leave we sailed on over the dual Casitas Pass­es enjoy­ing the fan­tas­tic day with lots of ear­ly bird wild­flow­ers and end­ing up at Bocal­li’s in Ojai for lunch and cer­tain­ly not for­get­ting their sig­na­ture dessert.

 Posted by at 12:00 pm

My 2011 Mexico Motorcycle Adventure

 All Categories, Mexico - 2011, Motorcycle Riding  Comments Off on My 2011 Mexico Motorcycle Adventure
Jan 252011
 

I rode my Suzu­ki V‑Strom from San­ta Bar­bara to Las Cruces, New Mex­i­co to meet six oth­er men for a 3,778 Mile, 6,981 KM, adven­ture into Mex­i­co. This mon­tage has a shot from six­teen of our days. I have cre­at­ed a sep­a­rate blog con­tain­ing lots of images and details. Click any­where on this mon­tage to be tak­en there.

 Posted by at 8:00 am

Fun at the burning of Christmas trees in Solvang

 All Categories, Food  3 Responses »
Jan 072011
 

Two weeks ago Jesse men­tioned an annu­al com­mu­ni­ty mass burn­ing of Christ­mas trees in Solvang. Well I just perked right up at the image that brought to my mind and men­tioned it to sev­er­al oth­ers. Car­ol and Vir­ginia were imme­di­ate­ly on board with Lib­by soon after.

Three of us drove over Hwy. 154 dur­ing a beau­ti­ful pink cloud­ed sun­set and met Lib­by at the new “The Cow­boy Way” bar-b-que restau­rant in Solvang for din­ner and a fun chat. Then it was on to the big event, held in the huge open field that adjoins Hwy. 246 and the San­ta Ynez Mis­sion. Hun­dreds of oth­er folks and fam­i­lies had arrived to watch.

After a fire depart­ment demon­stra­tion show­ing us all how quick­ly a dry tree ignites as com­pared to a tree that has been watered the big pile of trees was set aflame. The effect was def­i­nite­ly worth the dri­ve and dur­ing the entire show there was a con­tin­u­ous cycle of pop songs hav­ing lyrics con­tain­ing fire, burn, light, etc. blar­ing out into the night.

To see and hear some of our fire­side fun click on the mon­tage above.

 Posted by at 7:00 pm

Ashe picks up his Suzuki by himself, Yeah!

 All Categories, Motorcycle Riding  9 Responses »
Jan 042011
 

I was almost set to ride off this morn­ing, I just need­ed to push the Suzu­ki out of the garage and down onto the dri­ve­way (a total of 15 feet) so I could close the garage door. So I thought I’d  just leave the bike in neu­tral while I put down the stand, not some­thing I had yet done on the slop­ing dri­ve­way. How did that idea play out you ask? Pret­ty much as depict­ed in the left image above.

But ANON! I was able to com­pose the right image by myself with­in 5 min­utes  (cam­era shots and out­takes includ­ed therein).

This morn­ing’s pro­duc­tive new tech­nique was to lift the bike using the han­dle­bars. This allowed some sort of ful­crum action that made right­ing the bike a man­age­able lift by me alone. All pri­or times I’ve attempt­ed the lift cen­tered between the wheels as my mind some­how cal­cu­lat­ed that as the most bal­anced way to right it. Bal­anced or not it makes the lift greater than one I can per­form alone. So much for mind over matter.

Today’s insight was nur­tured by Ian’s help­ing me to right the bike after I fell in the mid­dle of the San­ta Ynez Riv­er on our Decem­ber 10, 2010 out­ing. I was doing my part using my stan­dard cen­tered lift while Ian just grabbed onto the rear most part of the bike and seem­ing­ly pulled the bike up by him­self. I was very impressed at the time. So this morn­ing after again try­ing my futile cen­ter tech­nique I recalled Ian’s effort and tried to right the bike from the back cor­ner.  This was more than I could man­age but when I shift­ed to the front of the bike using the han­dle­bars I was able, with rel­a­tive ease, to pull the bike up.

After my delayed start I had a won­der­ful ride down to and through Cal State Chan­nel Islands, some pok­ing around in the San­ta Mon­i­ca Moun­tains, through Thou­sand Oaks then north to High­way 126 and along 150 and 101 home. An inter­est­ing day see­ing ter­ri­to­ry I have not seen since bicy­cling through it in the 70’s along with some alto­geth­er new.

I am very relieved to know I can right the bike alone as this has been an ongo­ing anx­i­ety when I’ve been off explor­ing by myself.

 Posted by at 2:10 pm

Tom & Ashe poke around three local beaches

 All Categories, Bicycling  3 Responses »
Dec 232010
 

2010-12-23 Tom and Ashe ride to the local beaches
Tom and Ashe went for an inter­est­ing and fun ride this after­noon. First leav­ing Ashe’s house we rode down to the har­bor, where Ashe real­ized that the bag con­tain­ing his wal­let, cell phone, house key, etc. was miss­ing (staged pho­to on left of the hor­ri­fied dis­cov­er­er). We back­tracked to Ashe’s look­ing all along the way for the miss­ing bag, find­ing at arrival that Ashe had left it on the kitchen counter, whew!

On the sec­ond leav­ing of Ashe’s we rode down to Hendry’s (actu­al loca­tion of the left pho­to) for a nice vis­it and enjoy­ing of the day, through Hope Ranch, and on out the bike way for our third con­tact with the coast at Gole­ta Beach. There it was pho­to ops and more fun and vis­it­ing on the pier before return­ing home (a nice pho­to of the two of us above, an inter­est­ing one for Tom’s Dream­work’s audi­tion below).

It being the sec­ond day of Win­ter here’s a chilly mon­tage for the sea­son, burrr!

 Posted by at 4:22 pm

Rain wanes, Sun shines, Rainbow manifests

 All Categories, Bicycling  4 Responses »
Dec 222010
 

[slide­press gallery=‘2010–12-22-beautiful-afternoon-bike-ride-with-a-rainbow’]

With the after­noon clear­ing of the storm I jumped on my bicy­cle and rode down and around the har­bor, bird refuge, Bilt­more, and Mon­tecito envi­rons to enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty presented.

I arrived at the har­bor to notice a spec­tac­u­lar rain­bow off to the east. Rid­ing along the beach bike­way one won­der­ful view after anoth­er lured me to stop and pull out my cell phone for a pic­ture while the rain­bow sus­tained and con­stant­ly broad­ened its arc dur­ing my ride toward Sum­mer­land Hill.

Return­ing I was stopped by a freight train near the Bilt­more, always a treat for a train fanat­ic. Back along the beach bike­way I took the shots of the two beached sail­boats, blown off their moor­ings by the just com­plet­ed storm.

While I was rid­ing thru the back lanes of  Mon­tecito I rode over four creeks. Nor­mal­ly dry, they were all  flow­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly today so when I was close to home and cross­ing over Mis­sion Creek I took the last video in my lit­tle show above.
(For a larg­er show in your brows­er or on your iDe­vice click any­where with­in this sen­tence).

 Posted by at 5:00 pm

Fallen tree in Oak Park

 All Categories  1 Response »
Dec 202010
 

I was dri­ving home, pass­ing Oak Park when I noticed a tree just fall­en into the park­ing lot. Alas, many cars were in the lot parked there by employ­ees of the retire­ment home just across the street, e.g. the woman in the left pho­to stand­ing in front of her pickup.

Most of the vehi­cles seemed to have not received much dam­age, the one in the right image being the most dra­mat­ic excep­tion. Too bad for the prop­er­ty but also for the tree. There are only so many of these huge, beau­ti­ful trees and now its (x — 1).

[slide­press gallery=‘2010–12-20-fallen-tree-in-oak-park’]

 Posted by at 3:15 pm
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