'Summertime and the Living is Easy'

September welcomes Autumn with temperatures flipping from 90 degree days in August to 60 degree days. This is my first free/retired Summer since the early 90's. We decide each morning what activities we will partake-in during the daylight hours that follow. We are daytime operators...evenings find us safe in our house either playing Scrabble or watching Netflix, often both. Nori, our Labrador gets the first exercise option after we finish our early morning coffee. This means either a dog walk on the trails behind our house or a bicycle-assisted trot to Last Chance Creek (a six mile run that includes twenty minutes of swimming and stick chasing down-current toward Lake Almanor). Afternoons find us in our bicycle saddles, usually headed uphill toward Lassen Volcanic National Park. Six, eight or thirteen mile climbs that are often traffic-free and wind-assisted. Since the Dixie Fire consumed all of the shade offered foliage we are exposed to the lava bones that hold up the Lassen uplift.

Chuck and Nori’s Orchestra

We were a fourteen-piece orchestra on our mountain bike ride this morning. Nori is a fine-tuned Labrador who will always jump at the chance to run with bicyclists toward a water experience....Water music to her ears. I said let's go to Last Chance Creek and she got very excited as I was tuning up my mountain bike. We got off to a slow start through the trees behind our house but the tempo increased energetically when hit the old dirt road. Four miles to the year-round output of Last Chance Creek. My two legs, two lungs, big heart and navigating brain followed her synchronized four legs, hammering lung lobes, willing heart and working tongue to produce a one hour cycling concert deserving of the one minute of applause we received from Lisa when we arrived home.

Still Cranking To The Higher Elevations

It's Monday...third Monday of August. Lisa says, "let's go ride to the NP summit." We start at the visitor's center, 6.700ft. and pedal up the switchbacks to the summit at 8,511ft. Which bikes? I'm thinking skinny-tire road bikes...just because that's always what we have ridden in the National Park and...offroad riding is not allowed in the NPs. She invited Cindy R. on the early morning climb and Cindy has converted over to E-bikes on every ride. Well, I was thinking roadbikes, I tell her. She says, "Great!" So, here we are at 8:30am pulling our bikes off the back of our Honda...eighteen pound bicycles with no electronic shifting, no batteries, rim brakes, front derailleurs, skinny tires, clip-in pedals...so last century! Muscle memory, route memory and effort memory all clicking-in at the same time. Traffic was minimal, it's Monday and the road surface was the best it's been in years...We Love this ride!

Surfing With Maeve

Maeve is our first grandchild. She just invested one of her first ten weeks with Lolly and Pops. She executed her first lake swim, her first hike in her dad's front pack to 9,300ft. which is the remnant of Mt. Tehama called Brokeoff, her visit visit to a U.S. National Park...Lasssen Volcanic. Her attitude is up and down, big wave, small wave...she lets you know when she's not happy, adjustments need to be made. Her mother and father are appropriately responsive...my diapers are full, my stomach is empty. Burping, farting and pooping, "I am taking care of business here and I need your attention here." Lolly and Pops are enjoying the wave action, not primary caregivers but, we get to hold her when her toes are hanging five.

Space Junk

Over two million pounds of manmade garbage is currently in orbit around planet Earth. Eventually and inevitably all of this debris will land on planet Earth. For the most part none of this junk is kept track of...cannot be kept track of...and every year we add thousands of additional large units to this spiraling train of waste. As if we didn't have enough to worry about when we are looking up, we are vulnerable during every moment of our short lives. As if Cancer, car mishaps, falling down stairs or being targeted by violence or negligence, is not enough to be concerned with, I find it amazing that we can survive the assaults dropping out of orbit each and every day. Every time I hear of devastating misfortune affecting my friends and neighbors here on planet Earth, I say, "Space Junk." We just couldn't see it coming.

Spontaneous Camping

For the last fifty years we have practiced adventuring with a general idea of where it is we want to explore however, the day by day details are often left to serendipity...letting the day unfold as it will in front of us. I have never been a fan of making reservations. If a park, restaurant or campground is that much in demand we are in the wrong region or traveling at the wrong time of year. We developed this approach early in our relationship through bicycle touring...long self-propelled expeditions through remote regions of North America, Europe and New Zealand. Decades later this approach has been much easier by using our camper vehicles. We are 'boondockers'...we find what we need by paying close attention to the terrain unfolding in front of us. Some call it 'creative homelessness'.