Merry Xmas

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates.

Interesting, this mornings Marin IJ had this comics section.

Sorry the photo is so bad but it actually says Sunday, December 26th, 2010??? Did we miss Christmas?

Dylan's "favorite gifty" is a Woody doll from Toy Story that Popo and YehYeh got for him, though I had to track it down, pretty hard to find the week of Christmas.

Anyway, I got to ride the last 2 days. One with my Dad out Lucas Valley Rd, really nice through some big redwoods and then along the Nicasio reservoir. Then yesterday up to the top of Mount Tamilpias which is one of my favorite rides, lots of climbing, a lake, big redwoods and big view of the bay and SanFrancisco.

You can see east bay (Oakland), Bay Bridge, San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean.

Golden Gate and Sports Car

Today we headed into San Francisco to check out a restaurant that our fried Doug recommended called House of Nanking. The online reviews basically said that at one time the place was great but now it had gotten worse and the service was bad. Our experience was that the service was reasonable, the place is small so it is loud and they are trying to move people through quickly. The food was fine as far as I could tell. All in all an OK place to go.

We stopped for Dylan to check out the Golden Gate Bridge. It was pretty foggy but Dylan had a good time walking out n the bridge and looking over the edge.

While driving out of the city we were behind a car driving pretty aggressively, weaving in and out of traffic but not getting anywhere.
Here are Linda and Dylan standing in front of a cut section of the cable that supports the bridge.

The High Life

Living the high life. Breakfast in the room

Fancy pants organic local oatmeal for Linda and huevos rancheros for me. Fresh squeezed OJ and grapefruit juice to go with tea. Linda said her fruit bowl was really good, I stayed away from that.

My parents had a gift certificate for the Fairmont Sonoma Mission which they had not used in several years, not sure how long, but they did not think that they were going to use it. We had been thinking of going to Lake Tahoe to ski/board for a couple of days but gave up on that idea and so now we are living the "High Life" even just for a day and a half while "Popo" watched the little guy. I think my parents took Dylan to the "Miwok" village yesterday and today he is hanging out with my mom.

Jingle Bells and Cycling Accident in the News

Dylan getting into the Christmas spirit.

Mom, don't think that this means that we will be enrolling Dylan in lessons anytime soon.

On a completely different note, THIS seems sad. It's almost like how the star athletes in high school and college get special treatment, in this case it just has to do with cash money.

Dylan's New Bed

Just finished building Dylan's new bed frame and getting it set up with a new mattress. He is now in a big boy bed.

He opted for the Thomas the Train sheets over Cars and Toy Story which was kind of a surprise. Hopefully all goes well and we are done with the crib and his Pack-and-Play.

Yesterday I finally started working on a coffee table that I've had the wood for the top for about 9 years. The wood is from a shelf in a house in Colorado Springs that we did a remodel on when I was working for Charlie Patterson Construction. The shelf had probably been built before 1900 since it was a built in and the house was from the 1880's? It is a nice piece of 4/4 oak and I could not bear to let it end up in the dumpster. Even though I sanded it pretty thoroughly it still retains some of the original coloring from the stain and the pin holes from where the backing was nailed on will be visible along one of the edges. My friend Pat Barr who runs a metal fabricating shop is building the base and I need to go by and get measurements for mounting the top tomorrow.

Jaxon's birthday party, distress and a frozen river

This weekend Dylan's friend, Jaxon West turned 3. His parents went over the top in making the invitations and setting up a pirate party. Here is a shot of a pirate ship that Jason made for the kids to play in.

Jason also got to drink a bunch of beer (tough assignment) to generate bottles to stuff the invitations into, think treasure map stuffed in a bottle. Will post a photo of this later.

Dylan was quite upset this evening over really nothing. Here is one of the things that got him worked up. We give him sections of the newspaper as a placemat for eating and tonight he did not want to eat so he pretended that there was a snake in his placemat and was rolling it up. Next the snake escaped and so he got more aggressive about trying to keep it contained. He crumpled the paper up after rolling it, but being a whole section of the paper it would not stay crumpled which lead to a fit. Eventually we were able to get him to calm down by letting him put rubber bands around the paper to keep it crumpled and the snake from escaping.

Last, here is a video of Dylan playing with Aiden, the son of one of Linda's co-workers, at Upper East Fork when we were up there last weekend.

Complaining, EYES and Knee

Well, I had been looking forward to this Monday for a few weeks now. I was going to have Lasik this evening, but got a call last night and the doctor is sick, so now I have to wait till next month before I can get in again. I was really looking forward to not having to deal with glasses anymore. Kind of frustrating but I guess you don't want the guy making mistake of sneezing at the wrong time.

In addition, Dylan and I made it out o Ponderosa to climb on Friday and Saturday which means carrying Dylan up and down hillsides in the baby backpack. After 2 day of that it is very obvious that my right knee is pretty much never going to be the same as it was before I ripped it up 3.5 years ago. By the end of the second day it felt like someone was kind enough to stick a needle in it every time I would step down on it.

New FA? at Upper East Fork

On Friday Dylan and I headed up to Upper East Fork in the Jemez Mountains to climb with Chris E, his doggies and Matt Moore. I'd been putting some effort into a project on Monster Wall as had a couple other guys from Los Alamos. There are 2 ways to climb through the crux section and the first time I got on the route i was trying the holds to the right of the bolts which are nasty and thin. The second time I got on it about a month ago the right line of holds had chalk on them and it seemed way more doable. Nice moves compressing on an arete.

It took a month before I was able to make it back up to the wall and we were hiking in through snow which I was happy about because it had been too hot just 1 month ago and the wall bakes in the sun. I hung the draws after warming up and re-learned the moves. There is a long sideways move at the top that had me a bit worried and on the send I barely caught the hold but managed to bear down on it and fight through to the top. Here is a shot that Mat Moore took on his iPhone, the only camera we had, of the send when I was just above the crux. While there are several people that were hoping this route would be 5.14- since it is a relatively appealing line and would be one of the longer routes of the grade in the state making it easier on the body it is likely 5.13c or d, I'm not really sure which, others can decide when they do it.

Matt did the 5.12c, Godzilla Meets Bambie with ease on his second try, only one move kept him from doing it on his first attempt. Chris managed to do all the individual moves on the new route even though he has not really been climbing. Dylan had a blast playing with the dogs and making apple sauce (snow and dirt) and even got to swing a bit.

Now I don't know if either of the other two guys working this had climbed it clean or not. Since there were still quickdraws on it through the hardest section it is safe to assume that one of them was still working on it. So I think that the name of Mike Wazowski (the little one eyes guy from Monsters Inc) is a good name since it is on Monster Wall, for now anyway. Thanks to Josh Smith for bolting and cleaning the line several years ago even though he could not do it himself at the time.

Pictures, no Words