Twenty-ten

We went with 1/2 a tree this year...lol!

Wow....it seems like it was just 1999. Then we were entering a new century, so a new decade does not seem as dramatic, however, the passing of another decade renews the realization that time keeps going faster. I'm pretty sure the last decade was really only 6 years long....have I done some inadvertant thing to interrupt the "space time continuim"?

One of our family traditions has been to see a movie Christmas afternoon. For the first time I took advantage of a "senior discount" yesterday to see the new Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie.....I saved 50 cents on each of our tickets! Yes, it was as good as I expected, but very intense. I can recommend it very highly.

On the other hand, a new decade means my wife and I are much closer to our goal of retiring, and fulltiming in our Newell....20 months to go!!


We had a very pleasant Christmas day.....all of the kids, and grandkids came for breakfast, and gift opening ceremonies. My oldest son gave me a set of wrenches to keep in the motorhome. These wrenches feature the ratcheting closed end....very cool!

One of my grandaughters

Chris and Elaine

The kids

Today, December 26th, Elaine and I decided we needed some exercise, so we loaded up the Cannondale tandem and headed down to the SART (Santa Ana River Trail). There is an entrance at about 12.5 miles north of Newport Beach near Angel Stadium (the baseball Angels). We arrived at the starting point around 12:30pm. Normally on individual bikes it takes us about an hour and fifteen minutes to ride the 12.5 miles down to Newport Beach, but on the tandem we can average around 17 mph, so it takes us around 45-50 minutes to do the same distance. The return trip is uphill and our miles per hour average suffers a little.

Repleat with our wired headsets...makes communication much easier!

Giving our posteriors a break..about 24 miles into the ride.

Total round trip ride time was 1 hour, 49 minutes....not bad for a couple of 60 year olds.

The Cannondale Tandem.....like our Newell, we found this beauty on Craigslist!

A short video for your enjoyment!