Mammoth Mountain

Just before the first descent of the day...

I first visited the Mammoth Mountain Bike Park back in 1995. Up until then all my mountain biking had been done in Chino Hills State Park, and other local Southern California locations. I had heard about the bike park built on the ski slopes of Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort a short time before my visit in 1995.

Previously my family had spent many winters dating back to the early 70's skiing at this resort, and occasional summer trips to relax and play tennis. In 1989 I took up the sport of mountain biking, then in its infancy. All bikes being made had NO suspension. In the succeeding 21 years the technological side of this sport has exploded. High end mountain bikes can cost upwards of $6,000.


Over the years since 1995 I have returned to the bike park with friends several times each summer to ride the 70 miles of single track trails. On a typical day we log almost 30 miles of riding downhill in the park.


This past Friday, August 20th, I left home around 11am to drive up to Mammoth Mountain to meet friends and ride. Last summer (2009) was the first summer in years I didn't ride at Mammoth. We spent most of the summer getting to know our Newell, and took a number of trips. In addition I injured my left achilles tendon backpacking in the Eastern Sierras in late July. Ultimately I was not able to ride my mountain bike due to this injury for over 10 months. Finally, this past June it had healed and I began training on my stairmaster to start riding again. Two weeks ago I rode in Claremont Wilderness Park and was pleased with my progress, and no pain, so I decided to join my friends this weekend at Mammoth. We started riding Saturday, August 21st, around 9:30am, and finished around 4pm having logged 29 miles. The weather was great.....low 70's and partly cloudy.

Lunch at the Yodler Restaurant

Our annual picture by Red's Lake

The end of the day.......

Next adventure......off to Ventura, CA for the Labor Day weekend in the Newell.....story and pictures to follow! Thanks for reading!

The Near Future......

The next 60 days will be very, very busy for us:

-On August 20th we head up to Mammoth Lakes to play in the Mammoth Mountain Bike Park for a couple of days. They have built (many years ago) a 70 mile network of what mountain bikers call "single track" trails all over the mountain. The two highest trails start at the 11,000 foot mark.

-On September 3rd we head to Ventura, CA to spend Labor Day weekend on the beach. This is a continuation of a family/friends tradition of gathering together on the 3 major holidays during the summer. You will recall we met at Rancho Jurupa over Memorial Day, then at Yucaipa Regional Park over 4th of July, and now Ventura.

-On September 15th we fly to Seattle, WA to visit our long time college friends who have lived on Whidbey Island for the past 11 years. They have a beautiful home on the side of a hill near Coupeville overlooking Saratoga Passage on Puget Sound.

-Finally on October 8th we head to Santa Fe, NM for 8 days of exploring this historically rich area of the Southwest. Amazingly we have never been to Santa Fe before.....not even through it on our way to some other destination. We'll be meeting some of our Newell friends there.

I'll post more details about each adventure complete with pictures as we move through our travel checklist over the next 60 days.

Thanks for reading!

Summer?

Today's date is August 5th. Normally, by the end of June Southern California inland valleys start to heat up into the high 90's, and hits low 100's periodically for a few days at a time, here and there. Not this summer! Typically we have what we call in Southern California "May/June gloom", or, if you will, a heavy marine layer caused by what local meteorologists technically call the "Catalina Eddy" effect. Simply put each evening the marine layer which sits off the coast in the daytime, pushes way inland, yes even to Ontario, California, resulting in heavy overcast each morning until about 10, or 11am. As of today we are still getting that marine layer most days. The pleasant result is a daily high of around 88-90 degrees, and down into the 60's at night....sometimes high 50's. So far this summer we have had maybe 4-5 days of temperatures over 100. Most days it hasn't gotten out of the 70's. This past 10 days it has been steady in the mid to high 80's, occasionally hitting 90 for a couple of hours.

I would still expect that we will get our "hot weather" at some point in the next few weeks, however, I was talking with a friend who works at the AQMD (air quality management district) in San Dimas. Their meteorologist told him yesterday that the long range forecast is for the same weather we have now into the Fall. If that happens that would be a first. I have lived in Southern California since I was born in 1949. I don't remember a summer like this, ever! At any rate, we'll see what develops.

Our next scheduled outing in the Newell will be over the Labor Day weekend (September 3rd to 6th) when we travel up to Ventura, CA. Just exactly 4 weeks from now! Stay tuned!

This past weekend Elaine and I rode our bicycles up to the storage facility where we park the Newell when not in use, and drove it home to do some work on it. The microwave that came from the factory in our Newell was a 28 year old Amana that I am sure would stop someone's pacemaker if they got too close while it was on.....LOL! Elaine wanted to replace it with a microwave/convection unit. They are pretty expensive (about $450 at Best Buy), but I found a "new in the box" GE Profile one on Ebay for $250. It has been sitting in our garage for about 3 weeks, but this past weekend was the weekend to install it. Usually a simple project such as this takes just an hour or so, but knowing how well I am acquainted with Mr. Murphy I allowed for 2 days to switch out the units. Remarkably we had the old unit out, and the new one installed in less than an hour! That left time to fix a couple of other electrical issues, which included a new LED reading light I had installed a few months ago that wasn't putting out the kind of light I was expecting. I finally found a good 12 volt electrical source to tap into that wasn't dedicated to something else already, and got that light working at full capacity.

Anyway, that's what's happening in our corner of the world.......13 months 4 days until we retire and "hit the road"....yeah for us!

234th Birthday!!

Space #29

Just another way of saying "4th of July". We celebrated America's 234th birthday at Yucaipa Regional Park. All together we had 7 RV's including family, extended family and friends of family members meet at this great San Bernardino County Park. It is difficult to get reservations for Holiday weekends at this park, but we were successful by making them 6 months ago in early January. I have written briefly about this park in my January 6th "Another Country Park".

Elaine and I arrived on Thursday, July 1st. My dad always used to say..."if we can leave on Friday, why not on Thursday?". That's my philosophy, and my wife bought into it "this time"...haha! My grandson, Christopher, asked if he could come with us since his parents were not leaving until the next day. Of course, we said yes. After setting up Christopher and I walked down to the water park, bought our passes, and got in line to use the water slides. There are two of them....an aqua tube that is 290 feet long, and an open slume style slide that is 350 feet long. I didn't like the tube too much as it was totally pitch black inside, and it completely disoriented me. The open flume type on was faster and much more enjoyable. After about an hour and a half we headed back to the campsite.

The rest of our entourage arrived the next day, Friday. The one thing we learned is the northern part of the park is more conducive to satellite reception (fewer trees), and is further away from the road, resulting in NO road noise. If you are concerned about satellite reception then be sure to request site #21 to #32. I was expecting it to be warm to hot this past weekend, but the hotest it got was on Thursday (the day we arrived). The rest of the days it didn't get much over 82, and there was a nice cool breeze blowing most of the time. One thing I didn't realize until we drove the Newell up there is that the elevation is close to 3,000 feet, or so says the altimeter in the Newell. The air was crystal clear all 5 days we were there. Everyone in our group loved the park, and we plan to return again.

My view most days......

What I did most days......

What we did most nights.....

Put up the awning lights this time!

Catching up....

Since my last blog post about our garage sale, and our continuing efforts to rid our lives of a lot of "stuff" we do not need in preparation for fulltiming in (now less than) 15 months, we have covered a lot of ground! Now, that was one LONG run on sentence!

In mid May I flew up to Spokane, WA to visit my sister and her family while Elaine went on a women's retreat near Canon Beach, OR. I spent about 6 days there bicycling around the Spokane area with my sister, Hilary, and her family. Spokane is really a very beautiful place, and there are so many things to see, and every kind of outdoor activity you can imagine. I spent one day playing 18 holes with Hilary's husband, Bob....haven't played in 10 years, and I still have all those bad habits! During my stay there my Blackberry gave up the ghost, so I was "forced" to by a Droid....oh my goodness.....it is like 100 times faster than the Blackberry. All of the pictures in this installment of our blog were taken with the camera option on the Droid. I like the quality of both the still camera, and video camera options. In addition, I loaded all the music from my Ipod to the Droid, so I have eliminated two separate items I need when travelling...the Ipod, and my camera. I only need the Droid now.

My sister Hilary and her daughter Caroline

Bike riding on the Centennial Trail (Hilary's husband Bob in the background)

Spokane River and Falls in downtown Spokane....note the 3 gondolas visible in the lower left of the picture.

Rocket Bakery....a local institution, and a reputation well earned!

Shorly after our return from our "trips" to the Pacific Northwest we headed out for a long Memorial Day weekend with family and friends in our respective RV's. In all we had 6 RV's at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park for the long weekend (5 motorhomes, and one travel trailer). We watched Boston trample Orlando in game 6 to advance to the NBA finals, and the next night watched the Lakes do the same to Phoenix in their game six.

Set up by 11am on Friday!

I called the RV park Friday morning around 9:30am and found out we could check in anytime we wished, so I headed over the ARCO station and put $400 worth of diesel in the near empty tank of the Newell...that got us almost to full! Then we headed over to the RV park and got setup by 11am. My brother Philip and his wife arrived around 2:30pm. Philip is in the picture below with Elaine cooking breakfast the next morning.

Cooking pancakes

Part of our extended family - Rex and Joyce. They have a Fleetwood Bounder with a couple of slides.

Our long weekend ended on Monday and we headed home to unpack and prepare for our flight to Austin, TX the next afternoon. The purpose of our trip was to attend the high school graduation of our niece, Sarah Katharine Parker from the Griffin School, a small private arts school. There were 16 kids in Kate's graduating class, and the cool thing was as each graduate was given their diploma someone, chosen by the student, from their family, or faculty, got up and spoke for 5 minutes about the graduating student. Very, very touching, as well as very humorous at times.

My lovely wife Elaine (left) and her sister, Laureen Parker at Precision Camera

Laureen took us out to do a little site seeing, and while out we paid a visit to the well known local camera experts at Precision Camera in downtown Austin. She is heading to Taiwan on business the day we leave to fly home, and needed a new camera for the trip. As is turned out they did not have the camera in stock that Laureen wanted so she paid a visit to the local Best Buy and they did. Precision Camera will match anyone's price, however. Later that evening we returned to downtown Austin on South Congress street to listen to some blues music at The Continental Club, a local institution since 1952. If you are ever in town be sure to check out this funky club. Afterward we walked around South Congress enjoying the atmosphere and the humidity (hahaha!), ultimately stopping in Guero's Taco Bar for a late dinner. They have an outdoor garden with a bandstand, and on this evening a group was playing 50's music....a lot of Chuck Berry....an who doesn't love Chuck Berry?

My brother-in-law, Glen Parker, in front of The Continental Club in downtown Austin on South Congress Ave. Listened to some great blues music.

Small narrow gauge railroad along side Town Lake in downtown Austin

Town Lake

On Saturday we headed over to Town Lake in downtown Austin to take a 3 mile hike around a portion of the lake. This is a great local asset, and the citizens really use it.....there were runners, bicyclists, kayakers, canoers, as well as many just walking. I think the humidty was in the 70's, and the temps at 7pm were in the 90's....very, very muggy! After the walk we were ready for something cold so we headed over to Sandy's for some dipped ice cream cones.

The famous Sandy's....great dipped icecream cones!

A few months after we bought our Newell we met Michael and Georgia who own a 1992 42' Newell. They fulltime in their Newell, and we met them in Newport Beach, CA where they were for the winter of 2008. They are now in Austin, TX at the same RV park we had our min-rally in April 0f 2009. We couldn't come to Austin without spending a few hours visiting with them and catching up on their adventures.

Our good friends Michael and Georgia Day, the first Newell owners we met after buying ours.

And, of course, the main reason for our visit....Katie's graduation.....from left to right, Laureen (Mom), Katie, Jeffrey (Son), and Glen....very proud father! Katie graduated from the Griffin School in Austin, TX.

Waxing eloquent....

8am

Has it really been six months since the boys from Integrity Mobile Detail put a winter coat of wax on our baby? Seems like we were just embarking on our trip into the frozen tundra, and here it is late May (even though it feels more like February) and time for another coat of wax......Tom and Carmello Montoya will be here on Thursday at 8:30am to wash and wax our Newell, and detail Elaine's Thunderbird.

On Friday we will head back to Rancho Jurupa Regional Park where Elaine and I spent President's Day weekend in February. This time 5 other family members, and their respective RV's will be joining us for 3 days of relaxation at this great local park!

After my last trip to Temecula for the soccer tournament I noticed I was getting an error message on the Prodigy brake controller.....the flashing initials "SH" kept taunting me all the way home. I pulled out the Prodigy owners manual and discovered that "SH" was short for, well, SHORT! I put on the right blinker and had no blinking light. I turned on the lights, and had NO tail lights.....ugghhh! This has been the winter for electrical problems. I took the coach into Joel's Automotive Repair (http://www.allmar-tech.com/joels/Joels_New/new_contact.html) in Upland (he has been my trusted mechanic for about 12 years). They discovered a short in the wiring between the brake controller and the rear of the coach which had blown the rear fuse. So, they rewired the controller, reset the fuse, and all is well once again. I go in today to pay my bill (gladly) and bring the coach home to get detailed on Thursday, and prepare for our long weekend.

This past weekend marked the end of the spring soccer season, and the summer tournament season will start this weekend (I won't be wearing my soccer official hat this weekend!). Before we know it we will be starting the fall season again, and Elaine and I will be less than 12 months from retirement and hitting the road in the Newell....yeah!!!

9:15pm

Picked up the Newell this afternoon. They completely rewired the brake controller using existing conduit to run the new wire so there won't be a "shorting" problem again. I decided to check the turn signals, etc. before leaving and they worked, however, the trailer jack was not putting out any turn signals, so they had to rerun those wires....took about 15 minutes, but now it all works.

Great to have the coach home again....we'll be cleaning up the inside in preparation for our long weekend, and getting the outside washed and waxed in a couple of days.

I'm still in mourning as the Lakers lost for the second time in Phoenix, so now they return to L.A. all tied up at 2 games a piece. Hope Orlando can extend Boston a couple of more games, but now am not sure the Lakers will be their opponent the way we have played the last two games.

Simplifying...

We sold 2 trundle beds, dressers, etc.

Part of our strategy for starting our "fulltime" adventure (now just 16 months away) is to divest ourselves of "stuff". A few weeks ago we spent parts of two days removing stored "stuff" from the attic over our 3 car garage. That exercise was in preparation for a garage sale. Garage sales are really cool.......people pay us for the priviledge of hauling away our "stuff". What a great concept!! The City of Ontario requires that you obtain a "garage sale" permit. You are only allowed to hold two of these per year. Failure to obtain the permit is punishable with a $30 fine. We chose the "two consecutive weekend" option. Over the 2 consecutive Saturdays (April 24th and May 1st) we sold a lot of "stuff" we hadn't used in years, and received around $700 from eager buyers.

Our fair city also provides a free pickup of "LARGE" items once per year, so the couple of remaining large items (old entertainment center, 4 poster bed) will be picked up in the next few days. Our garage attic is now emtpy, and we now have the use of our 3 car garage again for garaging cars! What a novel concept.....haha!!

The pieces are slowly falling into place. Our next big task will be getting rid of stuff inside the house as we get closer to our "exit" date. No doubt some of the "stuff" will end up in storage. In the mean time we will be doing a lot of long weekends, and maybe one long trip this year. It really depends on Elaine's schedule. We have two "flying trips" planned over the next 30 days. Elaine is flying up to Oregon next week for a getaway with girl friends from her company, and I am flying to Spokane to visit my sister and her family for a few days. Next month we will fly down to Austin, TX for our niece's graduation and to visit with the Texas contingent of our extended family. Additionally, we wil get out in the Newell over Memorial Day weekend, and the July 4th weekend visiting local county parks (Rancho Jurupa and Yucaipa Regional Park respectively).

Thanks for following along!!!