Dewey is home and working for us

The first night on the road I stayed at Abilene State Park.  I pulled in after dark and hit the road moderately early, so I didn't see any of the park, but I must say it was rather convenient to plug into the "shore power" and hop back into my cozy-mobile to fall asleep to the sound of rain pitter pattering on the pop-top.  I slept very soundly. Much more so than on the ground in a tent.  And getting up to answer the call of nature in the middle of the night - oh, so convenient when you have a toilet in house!

On my second day of driving I made it from Abilene to Castle Rock, Colorado, where sister Di lives.  I almost didn't want to sleep on the very soft, clean, warm bed because sleeping in Dewey is so much fun.  But the shower - oh yeah!  It was great to visit with Di and Tod and have a civilized glass of wine with them.

Day three was Denver to Dinosaur National Monument on the border of northern Utah and Colorado.  Again, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of rain, but the morning looked moderately promising for my planned hike.  I took off out of the campground,

Camping at Dinosaur National Monument

And motored to the Split Mountain campground.  Wow, the geology!!!

Flatirons (yellow) and tilted strata (red) are exposed on the south flank of an anticline

About a quarter of the way into my 5 mile hike, the rain started again.  I was determined to get some exercise after so many hours driving, so I persevered.  I got pretty wet, and more than a little concerned when thunder and lightening broke out and I had to hike in the drainage, which had obviously flash flooded during the previous week's tremendous storms.

I lived another day to drive the home stretch to SLC.

Max meets Dewey

Dewey did not get much rest.  5 days after coming home Drew and I took him up to Park City to camp out while we coached our team at the 2nd high school mountain bike race. It was around 30 degrees at night.  Dewey has no heat other than the van engine.  It was very chilly.  Will have to work on that.

Bedding down to enjoy a 30 degree night.

Our little van is fun to play house in.  Even more fun is kicking back int he swivel captains chairs to enjoy a cold one from the in-house fridge after a long day of coaching.  Now you know the real reason we bought him!

Still trucking

Just hit the New Mexico state line after 9 hours of driving, and I didn't even start on the other side of this huge state. I don't know about Dewey, but
I think this is new territory for me and Jean Luc.

Dewey and me

We just bought a campervan! I am in the road right now driving it home from Austin, Texas, were it was being sold on consignment at Sportsmobile Texas.  The previous owner was a college professor, Mr. Dewey, thus the name, from Fort Worth. from the looks of it he hardly ever went camping and took very good care of it. the van has just over 37,000 miles and all the cities for Drew and I to go to mountain bike races away from home in comfort!

Here are a few pictures. I was really excited picking it up!

It is not easy on gas though. Good thing gas is cheap in Texas. Still, $93 to fill up.

Drew had to work this weekend, so I only have my faithful companion Jean Luc Piccard to take in the Texas panhandle's many historic sites.

The inside has a sink, microwave, water heater, toilet, and two beds, although one is took short for either Drew our me. 

My first night was at Abilene State Park. It rained a lot and I was cozy and dry with hot water. The luxury! At least compared to a tent.

Taking a little break in Lubbock right now before I push into Colorado. Big day of driving today. Dewey take me home.

High School Mountain Bike Coaching

I have not stopped blogging altogether, I'm just putting all my creative bloginess into the website for a high school mtb racing team.  Follow what Drew and I have been doing this fall by following the team blog.

http://slccomp.blogspot.com/

Little projects - lots of time

Why no posts? I got a new computer and it has taken me 3 months to get it up and running. Windows 8 - I'm not a fan of you!

But I've also been super busy doing house projects this spring and summer and not riding or racing very much.

 Here are a four little projects I have worked on.

Mini-alley between the house and the fence

Whoa! This one was a back breaker!  When we put the new addition on 3 years ago, we pulled the big rocks that were acting as a retaining wall to the uphill neighbor's yard out from underneath the vinyl fence.   

Note red rocks on the right side of photo that used to be under the fence.  The space I will show in the next two photos is between the fence and the deck.

So the very narrow space between our deck and the new addition was just dirt and weeds and the slope was beginning to slough underneath the fence since there had not been a retaining wall there for 3 years. This area is not very visible, but something had to be done.  

First we had to do something about drainage.  A couple of times before the addition and a couple of times after, we have had flooding or water in the east side of the basement after huge rain storms.  We took down the gutters on that side of the house during the addition, and there was no way to properly compact the backfill after the basement was poured for the new addition due to space constraints against the property line. Consequently, water was finding its way in.  We waterproofed the basement inside and out, but we still though we needed a French drain. So earlier this year, we had a laborer dig a 8 to 12 inch deep trench along 30 feet of the east side of the house.  Then we laid perforated rigid pipe in a fabric sock, surrounded by gravel and wrapped in landscape fabric.

Installing the French drain. Flooding had occurred through the basement window to my right.

The end of the French drain is a 2x3 foot well of gravel, but the perf pipe daylights with a pop-up drain.We backfilled over this. That was April-ish. 


Next, we had to dig out under the fence and build up the concrete retaining wall blocks.  I would not advise to do this after the fence is already there. Backwards - Drew and Lucy style! It was really hard work in a very awkward space, working around the two condenser units for our air conditioning. I finished up the job in July, in the heat, in a mostly confined space.  Choice working conditions.

This is what it looked like after the wall rebuild.

Once we got the retaining wall blocks put in, adding multi-colored stone was just icing on the rock-layer cake.

I used up the little bit of river pebbles we had left from the deck skirting project and some larger rock we had left from the front yard project way back.  We bought new crushed flagstone for the majority of the space.  The small green spot in the rocks in the foreground is where the perforated pipe daylights.  We have had two big storms and I have not seen this pop up yet, so it seems the French drain is handling all the water.

So nice to check this one off our list.  

Repurposed tile on a plant stand

Another "quick" project was to re-make two plant stands.  The table surface was nasty and warped, so I tossed them and asked Drew to custom cut thin pieces of plywood to fit into the metal parts of the stands. That was 5 years ago after I salvaged some of the original 1910 tile from our living room fireplace restoration project I wrote about here.  I thought it would be cool to reuse those tiles in the plant stands.  

Well, fast forward to July 2013 and I finally found the inspiration to lay the tile in there: we hired a tile setter to lay the tile around our new addition fireplace (post to follow) and he had extra thin set.  This was my first experience with tile.  I would like to do more!

The tile in these plant stands was original to the house. I found it under some nasty 1980s tile when I re-did the living room fireplace.  I think it is cool to have those tiles on display in the house again.

Plastic baggy drying rack 

I rinse and reuse plastic baggies, as long as they don't have wet gross stuff in them, but placing them all over the counter to dry is messy and ineffective.  I wanted a drying rack.  I have seen contraptions you can buy for this purpose, but a little web search and I saw this idea instead.

Put some succulents in a tray, take wire clothes hangers, cut them up, bend the ends around a piece of pipe by holding the end of one and wrapping the long end around the pipe. That makes a spiral.  Then, I used some leftover spray paint to paint them oil-rubbed bronze.  I usually store the wires under the sink when not in use, although it looks kind of cool with them in the plant too.

This only took a couple of hours, but it was another one of those "I'll get to it someday" projects that feels really good to be done with. And it works like a charm!

Laundy room doors

And finally, one of those projects that took a lot longer than I hoped.  I did this late last winter.

The main floor laundry (LOVE IT!) in our new addition has French pocket doors. A matching door contains the coats in their closet.

Coat closet and laundry.  A bit too visible! Need fabric!

 So Drew and I picked out some fabric and I set up my sewing station in the dining room.

Sewing command central.  One can do this when one's husband is away on a 4-day trip.  The cats don't mind.

All I had to do was cut the panels to fit the back of the doors and hem the edges. Then I attached with Velcro so I can change them "easily" when we get tired of the fabric.  It took a long time though.  AT least 6 episodes of Room Crashers on HGTV.

No more dirty laundry out for guests to see. Literally!

You can't tell, but when the lights are on in the closet a nice warm glow emanates from the closet. 

So those are the little projects I've been working on.  I have some big ones to share too but that will have to wait. 

Chris and Kathleen's wedding: a great party at the end of a great vacation

It's time I finished my series of posts on our California vacation in May. We've been extremely busy this summer with traveling and working on the house.  That's my excuse for not getting this post up earlier.

Remember, this vacation consisted of a race, the redwoods, and motoring down the coast in a rented van, and lots of camping. But the major attraction for the week was near.  Drew's long-time friend, Kathleen, was getting married to a fabulous guy, Chris, and we wanted to share the day with them.  We pointed the van south one more time; destination: the mountains surrounding San Jose.

When we arrived at the ranch, wedding preparations were in full swing.

Can't have a wedding without kegs of beer.

But Olive the dog didn't seem to be thirsty.

 Chris and Kathleen's team of friends and relatives had many things under control, but they found a perfect job for Drew: mow a path to the ceremony site on the hill.  Olive had to come along to help.

My job was simpler - help Kathleen attach pinwheels to fence posts to mark the way up the hill to the ceremony site.

But Drew wanted a piece of that action too. 

 With a lot of extra hands, we pulled together to put meatballs to cooking and transformed the ranch into a festive party site.

After assuring that the kegs were working, we retired to a super friendly neighbor's house, where we got to sleep in a bed for the first time in over a week.   Oh, it felt so good!

The wedding

Wedding day was here, and so were the guests.  Everyone filed up the hill to the designated spot... 

 to await the bride.

Chris zoomed up the back way through the pasture on his motorcycle to join friends and family.

 And finally, here came the bride, walked up the "aisle" by her sons and dog Odie, of course.

 There was music, there was talk of marriage, and then there were the vows.  Kathleen cracked everyone up with a loooooong set of vows rolled out from a scroll. It was awesome.

After they zoomed away on the motorbike, the attendees headed for the shade and the cupcakes. 

Now that's a party!

Can't have a party without dancing.

 And good food.  Lots and lots and lots of food.  Chris had made something like 400 huge Italian meatballs ahead of time.  They were so amazing I ate about five of them.

All that partying had Odie tuckered out.

And us too, so we laid the night to rest with a beautiful sunset and made it back to the neighbor's bed.  Oh so nice again.

Kathleen and Chris' wedding was fabulous; it was filled with love and fun and good energy. We are sure their marriage will be too!

Head for home

The next day we headed east for the first time in 10 days.  I dropped Drew at the Reno airport where he did a superman change in the van.

Drew goes from vagabond van camper dude to Captain Underpants.

 And I continued east, stopping for some historical viewpoints.

A preserved section of the Oregon Trail. (I couldn't see any wagon ruts either.)

 I made it as far as Wells, Nevada before I stopped for the night.

I took advantage of the campground's wi-fi to bring you an updated blog post. Am I a dedicated blogger or what?

I motored back across the salt flats the next day, taking time to do something I have always wanted to do; I stopped along the freeway and walked out onto the salt flats.

There was still enough moisture in the sediment that my feet sunk in just a bit.  A surreal place for sure.

 So that is the end of our California vacation.  A bike race, the biggest trees in the world, miles and miles of rugged coastline, a van, and a wedding.  Fun times  to be sure.

Happy 50th!

I'm totally getting out of my life's events chronological order here, but I wanted to share these photos while it was still anniversary month for my awesome set of in-laws. 


Drew's parents stopped in for a brief visit after vacationing on an Alaskan cruise to celebrate 50 years of marriage. 

Drew, being the thoughtful son he is, saw to it that they were honored with toilet paper and cheap champagne.















The crew on the Southwest flight they were on did the special decorations and presented them with this gift and an P.A. announcement upon landing in SLC.  Now you don't get that kind of service on Delta.

Although they were only visiting for one night on their way back home, we made it special with grilled steaks and a decorated cake. 

Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. J!