January - Sister, Babs and I hiked the E-ticket ride, Rollercoaster and utterly failed to capture on "film" how steep and thrilling this trail is on a mountain bike.

February - An afternoon jog past the airport prompted this photo of snowcapped Mt. Baldy (who names these?!).

March - Local mountain biking at its best.  Mike and Guy shred the trails.

April - California poppies pop up in the most inauspicious places, like the driveway.

May - The China Berry trees are in full blossom; their fragrance says spring is in full tilt boogie.

June - A welcome break in the shade on a warm June afternoon.  There are bikes lying around there somewhere.

July - The tomatoes are ripening so fast I need a helper to umm ... hold down the harvest box?

August - Summertime barbecues were made simple with the purchase of a new grill.  With its chrome handles and espresso brown finish, it looks like patio jewelry.

September - The Station Fire, some sixty miles to the Northwest, (and other closer ones) brought surreal sunsets and asthma inducing smoke to our valley.

October - Our semiannual trip to Gooseberry Mesa in Utah continues to be the highlight of the year.  We always meet great people out there and this year exceeded our expectations.  Tom's gang of bike aficionados, riding the mesa for the first time, allowed us to see its spectacular beauty through their eyes with renewed wonder and appreciation. 

November - The garden is winding down for the winter.  Only broccoli, lettuce and strawberries remain productive though a few peppers and tomatoes stubbornly refuse to give up entirely.

December remains to be posted.  I think it should somehow show the people in my life who make my life so rich, but how to get them all into one photo is a problem.

Why do they call someone who is injured a patient?  It's been my experience that he is anything but.  He's impatient with the pain, impatient with the forced inactivity, impatient with his clumsy use of his left hand while his dextrous right hangs sulkily at his side.

As you may have guessed, Mike injured himself on his bike Sunday.  Well, not really ON the bike; the injury occurred when he exited the bike head first.  In an attempt to jump from one dirt ramp to another, he wrecked spectacularly, separating his shoulder and giving himself a concussion.  Instant senility. 

After getting his abrasions cleaned out and setting him up in front of the TV, with instructions not to fall asleep, I went to get some groceries.  I was gone at most 45 minutes and when I walked in he asked where I had been.  Several other memory lapses over the next day or two led me to believe that he was a little scrambled, so this morning, when he got a little frisky, I told him we had just done it last night.  He actually fell for it but the little guy was unconvinced.

The orthopedic surgeon, who happens to be a mountain biker himself, didn't see any reason to rush into surgery, suggesting instead that we give it a chance to heal on its own.  This is a common injury for cyclists.  In fact, this isn't the first time Mike has sustained this injury.  It's painful and a little deforming, leaving a lump in the smooth slope of the shoulder where the bone sticks up, but usually it will heal slowly and eventually regain some strength. 

Patience is the word for the day.  May I have the patience with the patient so I do not to try to ease his suffering with a pillow.  I suppose the coroner would be able to differentiate death by suffocation from a cranial hematoma.

I was awakened by the sound of a gentle rain dripping from the eaves.  What bliss to snuggle deeper into the warm, down comforter and drowse away the gloomy morning hours.  Butchie, noticed that I was awake and came up from the foot of the bed to flop down in the crook of my arm, purring her happy, morning greeting.

Ah, but it was not to last, Big Bob began lobbying for breakfast with his plaintive little mew, which so does not match his big bruiser body.  We have long suspected that he's gay and not just because of his soprano voice and kitty lisp.  He also has beautiful hair and really likes the other male cats.

I grudgingly gave up my warm nest and rustled up kitty breakfast for eight.  Everybody wanted to eat inside because it was raining and their muddy little paws made a nice mess of my clean white tile floor.  What was I thinking when I insisted on a white floor?!? 

Yesterday I squeezed a bunch of pomegranates to mix with orange juice and carelessly forgot to protect my favorite Tommy Hilfiger tee shirt.  It got all splattered with dark red spots that turned even darker when I tried to rinse them out.  So today I put the shirt in a bowl and poured half of the juice over the shirt.  It started out tomato red with purple spots and now it looks like this.

It's not perfect, but it's better than spotted.

I spent the afternoon cleaning Mom's house while she played the piano.  She doesn't play much anymore because her short term memory isn't up to the task of reading music as fluidly as it once could.  That, coupled with the fact that her old body grows weary from the exertion of holding herself erect on a hard bench, makes a once endlessly entertaining pastime a difficult endeavor.  I still love to hear the old melodies I grew up with, Rustle of Spring, Robin's Return, Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, and it doesn't matter that she can't get all the way through the pieces without stalling because my memory fills in the missing notes.

Music, like smell, dredges up snippets of childhood, long buried under years of life.  A sharp recollection springs to my minds eye of Mom at the piano; Dad sleeping on the davenport (that's what they called it in Michigan; in California it became a couch); sister Babs was probably working at A&W or out ice skating with her boyfriend, Bob Clausen; and me playing on the floor beneath the piano bench, fascinated by Mom's feet deftly prodding the pedals.  The vision expands to include Junior, one of our two Siamese cats cuddled up with Dad, and Katie, the more timid female, watching from the kitchen with its ivy on white brick wall paper.  What idyllic times those were.  We had no TV, it was wicked and worldly, so we entertained ourselves with books and music and each other.  And you wonder why I'm so odd.

There's not much going on in the garden this time of year.  The few things I have are growing so slowly they can barely stay ahead of the bugs.  I diligently peruse the broccoli every day, looking for the little green worms that chew holes in the leaves.

The salad greens are unappealing to the bugs, except for the spinach which they routinely eat almost as soon as it puts on leaves.  I don't know why I bother to plant spinach.

The poor pepper plants are putting all of their energy into peppers while the foliage shrivels.

 Other inspects the anaheim chiles and decides he will wait to spray them until I'm not watching.

One lone tomato plant remains from my summer garden.  It has ten tomatoes on and is still blossoming!

In this photo my scarecrow glowers over the society garlic.

My strawberries are already producing tasty little winter berries.

And last, my first crop of Satsuma Mandarin oranges.  Four of them!

Reading MooncatBlue's latest post was, as always, an inspiration.  She writes the way I would if I could write that well.  Her blog today was about things she's grateful for and one of the odder things was her matched sock collection. 

Now, I'm not much of a collector.  I tend to throw away, or donate to the thrift store, anything I haven't used or worn in two years.  My one weaknesses is DeFeet socks.  I still have my very first pair, a gift from a woman Mike and I used to ride with nearly fifteen years ago.  These socks simply don't wear out!  They get dirty and grungy and even fade a little, but they retain their elasticity and their sense of whimsy forever.

My first and second pair, a bit the worse for wear.

The three down arrows are the symbol for extreme downhill on a mountain bike race course so, of course, these are one of my favorites.

These are my girly socks, Petal Power, Pinky and Daisy Dukes.  Sadly mountain biking is a dirty sport for socks.

The Peaceful Glow socks actually glow in the dark.  Way too cool!

The Survival of the Fittest socks are probably an odd selection for a woman, but I thought the little sperm cells were too cute to pass up.

Violets and Amour - more girly socks.

I bought two pairs of these just because they were pretty and matched my bike.

$...that's what I want and New Mexico were just some kind of fashion statement because they matched a jersey.

The one with the coral snake says "red and yellow kills a fellow, red and black is safe for Jack" .  We don't have coral snakes around here so I probably won't ever need to know this.

These are two of my favorites.

Biker CHICK isn't a DeFeet sock but Shark*A*Tac is.

The Eskimo socks have wool in them so they say Wool*e*ator on the other side.  All the others say Air*e*ator by DeFeet.

Rubbadukky is one of my favorites & Kokopelli is good for riding in Utah where the sand is almost the same color as the Kokopelli.

And last, the Christmas socks.

The only person I know with a sock collection that rivals mine is my sister, Babs430.

Today I wore the Eskimo socks because it was barely 50 degrees when I headed out the door.  Gloria, Sally and I climbed Elder Gulch again just to gain some fitness.  After my day of manual labor yesterday, the old legs were in no condition to climb but the girls wanted a work out so... 

I've been taking care of my neighbor's puppy, while she works two afternoons a week, for several weeks now.  Grace is a small, mixed breed, probably some type of terrier mix.  She's maybe four or five months old.

She's getting stronger and more bold by the day so today I decided to see how she would do on a walk/jog with me.  We started walking my regular jogging route but there are so many dogs in Mentone that she grew quite alarmed at the cacophony of barking from all sides.  At one point she became so panicked that I carried her for a short distance until we came to a stretch where there were barking dogs only on one side of the street. 

We were overtaken by a couple of disreputable looking young men who were trying hard to look like gang bangers.  I chatted them up, jokingly advising them to beware of the little renegade chihuahua mix that was menacing us, oblivious to the oncoming traffic.  They were too intent upon looking formidable to respond to my banter.  At the end of the block they met up with two more of their tattooed homies and they went through their tough guy greetings before moving on down the street.  It was a reminder that Mentone's citizenry isn't all of my ilk.

When I reached the orange grove at the end of the street I debated whether to proceed into the grove "... long I stood and looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth".  The long cool shadows of the quiet grove beckoned.  Knowing it was foolish to take this path alone, I hesitated momentarily, before trotting into its dark, welcoming solitude.  The track sloped ever so gently downhill and Grace loped easily at my side as the rows of trees brooded at our passing.

We came to the end of the grove where the wild foliage of the Mill Creek flood plain takes over the landscape

 and we turned west, into the angled sun.  Still running slightly downhill we glided along the edge of the grove headed for a track that bisects the grove and would allow us to turn back towards home.  Half way to the intersection I realized there were three or four people walking in our direction about a hundred and fifty yards away.  Because I was facing the sun, I couldn't make out much about them but they were clearly not grove workers.

There is a boarding "school" for troubled "youts" (if you have seen My Cousin Vinny you recall that means "youths") at the end of the track on which we were running, about a half a mile away, so I wasn't eager to make their acquaintance.  I suppose the sensible thing to do would have been to turn around and retrace our steps but that would have been uphill and we had done all the climbing we wanted to do.  So, I decided to continue on my path, figuring that there would still be fifty yards between us when I reached the intersection. 

Once we had made the turn the young men were out of sight but not out of mind.  I calculated that most youngsters nowadays don't have much stamina and that I had a pretty good chance of discouraging pursuit if I kept up a steady pace long enough.  As my mind was churning along these lines, Grace started looking anxiously back and to the right as if she detected someone on a course parallel to ours a few rows over. 

Orange trees provide excellent cover because their branches usually go almost to the ground.  If a person stood still under a tree, one could run right past and never see them.  I still had a good quarter of a mile to go before I would reach the southern end of the grove so I decided it might be wise to call Mike, who was at home, to let him know where to look for my body if I didn't show up. 

Mike and I have jogged this route together several times so it was possible to explain exactly where I was, after he got over his incredulity that I would have been so foolhardy as to have taken this path alone.  As I was assuring him that I was in no immediate danger the phone dropped the call.  By this time Grace was no longer showing anxiety but she was visibly tiring.  I resumed running but at a more moderate pace that she could sustain.

When we reached the fence at the southern perimeter I found that the fence had been repaired where I normally climb over.  Still highly motivated, I climbed the chain link webbing and straddled the barbed wire at the top.  At that moment my cell phone rang.  Knowing it was Mike, I balanced precariously on top of the fence to answer.  Thankfully there's a berm on the other side that I could step onto sparing my girl parts any damage.  Grace obligingly crawled under to join me on the other side and we scrambled up the rocky bank onto the road to civilization.

We still had a quarter of a mile to go before we reached the first house but at least we were out in the open where we couldn't be ambushed.  We slowed our pace to a walk and swore we would stick to populated areas henceforth.

Queenie inspired me to write about my wonderful day with her post about an overnight trip, over the river and through the woods, to visit a friend.  Lately I've been lax about posting because my life seems so routine and unremarkable.

Sunday morning I was sitting at the computer in my jammies when I heard the sweet voice of my favorite great niece, Ricky, outside.  She was visiting from Michigan for an extended weekend and had stopped by to visit Greatgrams and me.  Always a beauty, she took my breath away when I saw she had lost ten pounds.  She's blessed with her mom's luminous skin and I have no idea where in the gene pool her exotic eyes came from, but in my completely unbiased opinion, she's the most adorable, charming, beautiful, sensible (did I mention she quit smoking?), brilliant young woman ever to walk the earth.

We went back to Mom's flat in the backyard and got caught up for an hour or so.  Then we loaded my bike and gear into the car (for a later ride) and went to Niels' and Marissa's house for brunch.  Niels is actually my cousin's son but he lived with Ricky's family for years so they are like siblings (only they like each other).

Niels was busy making multigrain waffles when we got there so we settled in around the breakfast bar taking turns playing with baby Raine.  Raine is one of those charming babies who actually seems to like me.  Most babies cry the minute they see me but she willingly comes into my arms.  Babs arrived a little later and Tara (Barb's youngest daughter) with her son Bradley surprised us with a visit too.  There was another young couple with a baby, friends of Marissa's, so we had a house full of happy babbling people.  We ate and talked, had some more coffee, and blabbed some more in the easy, companionable way that families do. 

Cousin Dan came in with a fist full of money.  He had just sold another of Uncle Ted's motorcycles, a 1978 Ducati.  Uncle Ted has been gone nine months now and Dan is still disposing of his extensive collection of wheeled vehicles.  Many of them are collector's items and haven't been started in years, so Dan painstakingly restores them to running condition and markets them one by one.  He's a mechanical genius so it's not a difficult task other than the fact that he's often loathe to part with them. 

Dan and Uncle Ted were kindred spirits; both loved collecting, restoring, driving, riding, and spent many hours together puttering in Ted's many workshops.  Some of the motorcycles represent the hours of camaraderie and fun he enjoyed with his favorite uncle.  He confided that he was most ambivalent about selling this particular bike because he had hoped to buy it himself, primarily because of it's nostalgic value.  Unfortunately, it's intrinsic value was greater than his sentimental wallet could afford.

I eventually had to tear myself away from the party to go for a bike ride with Gloria, who lives nearby.  I rarely ride Gloria's trails because loading my bike into the back seat of the Lexus is hard on the leather upholstery.  Even though the car is a 1997 model, I still think of it as my new car.

It was one of those brilliant fall days when the air is so clear and dry you can see every wrinkle in the mountains.  We climbed the Elder Gulch fire road which is normally a granny gear, miserable climb. 

These are archive photos; it was actually a clearer day than shown.

It was steep but not miserable, mainly because we were distracted by the spectacular views and lively conversation.  I'm still all wound up about Jon Krakauer's latest book so I prattled on about that and Gloria listened politely. 

This is my beautiful friend, Gloria, also the world's best listener.

It was starting to get cool when we turned around to head back down.  The beauty of a hideously steep climb is the proportionally exhilarating descent.  The sun was at an angle that rendered the road nearly invisible when we rounded west facing curves, but Gloria rides this road twice a week and didn't need to see to whiz downhill.  I had to overcome good sense and follow her breakneck pace, trusting that she knew the line to take to avoid the ruts and rocks.  When we reached the bottom she confessed that she didn't normally ride it that fast but was riding on the edge so she didn't slow me down.  Wouldn't it have been ironic if we would have both gone sailing over the edge trying to keep up with each other?

Near the bottom of the hill there is a nice tame trail that meanders just above the housing tracts that have been built on the San Andreas fault line (one of the most active in the area).  One can look down into the beautifully landscaped yards with lavish pools and imagine what kind of courage it takes to raise a family in such a precarious environment, surrounded by tinder-dry, brush-covered hills that turn to liquid (when it rains) after raging fires, with nothing more than a shallow concrete culvert above to divert runoff.  Nice view though.

Recent rains had made the traction nice and sticky.  Gloria scampered down her familiar trail with me in dogged pursuit, until we connected with the manicured trails maintained by the homeowner's associations of East Highland.  The sun was settling into it's Southern arc as we coasted into her driveway, completely satiated.

Since none of my bicycling cronies were available to ride on Sunday, I decided to tag along with Mike as far as the top of Yikes! where he would continue climbing and I would turn downhill to return home on my own.

Looking back down the Conservancy's North Trail

Who needs a buddy when there's delayed shutter release?

Looking up Mill Creek

I rode down Yikes! and had such a good time I decided to climb back up the conservancy trail and ride it again.  When I got to the top I opted to have a look at Judy's Jump Off which descends more directly down the same ridge.  I haven't ridden Judy's in probably ten years, ostensibly because Yikes! is more fun; but actually it's because Judy's is too scary to be fun unless the traction is really good.

The !@#$ reservoir that destroyed the bottom part of Yikes!.

I approached the crest of the hill tentatively, remembering that the first section drops so steeply that there is no stopping once you commit to the plunge.  This is the driest time of year so I expected the traction to be nonexistent and had no intention of actually riding down the trail.  I figured Id just scope it out and then ride back up to the Yikes! turnoff.  When I came to the place where you have to commit I was surprised to see that there was good purchase along one side of the rut and if one could refrain from grabbing too much brake it would be possible to keep from falling into it.  I started my controlled slide down the track, feathering the brakes enough to stay under control.  A few yards down I saw that the rut intersected my path but it looked like if I kept the weight off the front wheel and let off the brakes for a split second, I would be able to cross it at enough of an angle to continue down on the opposite side of the rut. 

I picked up some momentum during the rut maneuver but by this time the steepest part was behind me so I could shift some weight to the front wheel to add some stopping power to the front brake.  I managed to bleed off enough speed to have time to look ahead for another opportunity to cross the meandering rut which was now crowding me off the left side of the trail.  When I reached the bottom I was surprised at how easy the descent had been.  I wondered if the trail was in better shape or if my bike was just that much better than the one I was riding when I last thrilled myself on this trail.   

Looking back up Judy's Jump Off (it looks amazingly unimpressive in photos)

Looking down The Windmill Trail

I felt pretty confident as I made my way home down the wash singletracks.

Today I rode with Rita.  This was the first we've ridden together since her mastectomy so I felt obligated to take it easy on her.  We rode at a comfortable pace up the wash and since I hadn't bothered to take my leg guards, I rode quite moderately on the way down as well.  The trail is a bit sandy this time of year and the sun was low in the sky making it difficult to see the pitfalls in the trail which is my way of making excuses for crashing where no man has crashed before. 

One minute I was tooling down the trail and the next I was sprawled in the rocks and the dusty weeds.  Rita rode up and said, "Why did you crash there?  Dang, with no leg and arm protection, that hurts!  So much for feeling smug about my riding skills.  With my confidence shaken, I proceeded down the trail at an even more sedate pace than before.  Rolling through another rocky section with insufficient speed, I found myself again nearly dumped off.  Completely discombobulated, I got off and walked for about fifty yards.  Rita kindly made no comment.

Anyway, the day got better.  I was trying out a new recipe and my sister came by on her way home from yoga.  I thought she would join us for dinner so I doubled the recipe but it turned out she had to get home to feed her kittens.  Luckily Guy called to tell us that he had finally broken free of the Witchy Woman's spell so he was free to serve as guinea pig. 

Guy is so easy to cook for, like my sister, he will eat anything.  The new dish was nothing to write about but Guy ate two helpings just to be polite.  I love that man!

Statutory rape or moosedemeanor, you decide.

October in Southern California is spectacularly hot and dry.  Today was typical with air so clear the mountains seemed to crowd the valley.  I heard Mike, on the phone, make plans to ride with Rory.  I inferred that Rory was going to drive over here to ride the wash singletracks so I asked Mike if he would mind if I tagged along. 

Rory showed up mid morning and the thermometer already read over eighty degrees, but since my limit is ninety, I added some ice to my hydration pack and got ready to go.  Somehow it was suggested that we ride out at Hulda Crooks Park and both Mike and Rory agreed that was what they wanted to do. 

There is a reason why you have never read about Hulda Crooks Park in my previous blogs.  The trails there are absolutely miserable.  Where they are not steep, they're sandy; where they are steep, they're hot and dusty; and where they are wickedly steep, they are treacherous, hot, rutted and unrideable for anyone with any sense of self preservation.  Knowing this, I still went along.

We set off up the first hot, dusty, dirt road with me valiantly determined to hang with the boys.  The road prudently skirts an empty flood control water retention basin but the boys immediately plunged over the edge onto a narrow trail that plummets to the bottom of the basin, then scales the opposite side just as steeply.  If I stayed on the road, I'd be a hundred yards behind before we even get warmed up so I quickly assessed the penalty for failing to attain sufficient momentum to make it up the other side.  I determined that I stood a good chance of making it and if I had to abort, I would have at least a fraction of a second to make other plans.  Without further debate, I pointed the Intense down the chute and held on for dear life.  Just feet from the top of the opposite bank I realized my rate of ascent was diminishing faster than the top was approaching.  I leaned out over the bars and pedaled with everything I had and barely cleared the rim.  Mike, who had been watching with some trepidation, commented dryly, "For a minute there I didn't think you were going to make it". 

We continued up the sandy road (did I mention it was hot and dusty too?) until the boys pointed out a narrow side canyon on the left with a skinny trail penetrating its opening.  It looked punishingly steep but it wasn't sandy AND it was shady.  With firm resolve I shifted down to my lowest gear and tried to keep from wobbling from side to side.  Not more than 200 yards up the canyon the trail left the shady cleft and began an ascent that had me pushing the bike.  Between switchbacks I managed to ride a bit which gave my hiking muscles a chance to recover but didn't do much for my gasping lungs.

By the time we reached the summit I was red faced and ready to throw up on Mike's shoes.  He wisely kept his distance while he described the downhill payoff for my suffering.  "After you drop off this precipice, you will come to a place where you have to walk", he started to tell me.  But after that section it was totally rideable he insisted. 

I had the camera so I rode down with Rory to the spot where I had to get off and stopped to film Mike riding the unrideable.  Unrideable?!  Heck, it was so steep and loose that I couldn't have walked it without my bike to maintain my balance!

The trail below this section would indeed be fun on subsequent rides but for me, the first time down was just okay.  To enjoy this trail you need to be comfortable with a lot of speed because the thrill is in ricocheting up the sides of the narrow canyon and swooping down to the bottom where there are whoop dee does, where with enough speed, you can catch some serious air.

I parted company with the boys when we reached the main side canyon, sending them to scale another hike-a-bike hill, while I headed back to the park and shade.  Later I mused aloud, "I was just trying to remember if I had any fun today...nope."  Mike laughed, he thought I was joking.