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Friday April 28 -- Ely, NV
I show up at Precision Auto at 8am to fix whatever the heck my warning light was warning me about. Nobody home. At 8:23 a guy wanders into the station on foot from down the highway looking like roadkill. He clearly has had a very bad night. Talking seems to take a lot of effort, but he tells me I have to leave the truck and that the light means something in the emission system is broken. I get ready for the long walk back to the Hotel Nevada for the... wait..., but it finally, what he said sunk in, namely that only an emission sensor is broken, the engine is still running fine. So I get my keys back and resume my previously scheduled vacationing - yippee! The guy seemed relieved to have one less thing to deal with on his Bad Day (he looked like he had many bad days) - a win/win for both of us!

Ely is an interesting town. The old town follows the bottom of a narrow canyon so it's only about 10 blocks wide, but many miles long. The Hotel Nevada is very cool, the public park with the old City Hall and the Library is delightful, and they've put a nice sculpture garden in a vacant lot. It's a mining town, so it's gone boom-bust-boom-bust quite a few times. Now it's a semi-bust but they are trying to cash in on the great nature in the neighborhood. A rise in the price of copper and they will start the giant trucks in the giant hole north of town and it will be boom again.

It's a beautiful drive to Great Basin National Park, through yet more wide and green-ish valleys, on 50/6/93 East (technically, I guess it's 93 North, since odd-numbers roads go up-down :) with snow on all sides, through Connors Pass and Majors Junction, across Spring Valley and around the northern tip of the huge Spring mountains (Nevada has over 200 distinct mountain ranges!). Thence to Baker NV, gateway to the park.

I'm jacked up to be doing what I left the house for, namely spending quiet time in a beautiful place. Once I got there I couldn't make myself sit still and enjoy the quiet. Frenetic day: Visitors Center, up the hill (2500 ft in 4.9 miles), get a campsite, set up tent, almost fall asleep, goof around, all the way back down the hill for coffee, both coffee places are closed for the afternoon. Back up the hill to the Pole Creek Trail. Embark on the trail, have a wonderful time, pretty birches, vibrant stream, snow banks, meadows just liberated from the snow 3 days ago. Back up the hill to watch sunset from overlook, grab a beer, back down the hill for dinner at the only restaurant in town, which was really very good. Back up the hill to campsite, hike up the hill for the view and to digest and warm up. If only it were a fuller moon.

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Saturday April 29 -- Great Basin National Park
Slept well, not too cold. Did a little bit of a morning hike up the mountain. Oddly sad today, it's like - I'm just where I want to be, doing just what I want to do, why aren't I happier??" - dontcha hate it when that happens???

Drove as far up the peak road as I could and soaked up the warmth for a while. Breakfast at the same little Baker restaurant.

Drive back to Ely, eschew the Hotel Nevada in favor of a little motel with wifi, start posting this blog, eat, blog, sleep, plan next stop, fix the formatting of cloudyhands (text still not floating at the top as it used to :( ), blog some more.

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Sunday April 30 - Ely again
Breakfast special at the Hotel Nevada again, drive the straight shot down the wide and beautiful XX Valley. Camp at Cathedral Gorge State Park, a kind of mini-badlands that makes all the "visit Nevada" photo sets on account of its photogenic beauty.

Desert campgrounds are funny because you have very little visual privacy. Your neighbors are maybe 30 feet away, and there's no underbrush or trees to shield you from each other. This is a relatively nice desert campground, they've planted some little trees and they built up a little central mound so at least you have privacy from that direction.

The park map says there's a nice little 4-6 mile hike that leaves from the campground, winds around the perimeter of the basin and up to an overlook. I plan it so that I finish up the hike after dark. There is a tiny sliver of a waxing moon, and out in the wide open spaces of the desert that provides plenty of light so see the path, I love those after dark hikes.

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Mayday! -- Cathedral Gorge State Park
The morning was very pleasant - drive over to the Panaca Market (Panaca is a little straight-laced Mormon community that kind of gives me the creeps) for fresh baked donuts, back to the Shell mini-mart for a large coffee, then back to the campground to enjoy them. All my near neighbors have left, so I have my visual vista all to myself for a quiet morning of reading and writing and even a little yoga!

It was good to bank up that relaxation, because the rest of the day turned out to be drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, 7.5 hours to Hawthorne. I started out with the thought of staying at the Hot Springs Motel in Caliente, but I got there about 1PM, the town itself is pretty shabby and was doing nothing to lift my mood, so I bailed on that. The motel itself looked pretty pleasant and inviting, if you're in the mood. Rainbow Canyon, south of town was hyped as being quite scenic, so I tried a few miles. It was indeed pretty - the whole area is kind of a preview of the stunning geological beauty of southern Utah - , but I Just Wasn't In The Mood....

I felt no impact of the Day without Immigrants, because I was travelling in a land without immigrants - we're all immigrants, but you know what I mean. Southeastern Nevada is pretty much all poor white folk, mostly scary looking desert rats or even scarier Mormoms. If you are a modern immigrant crossing the border for the Land of Opportunity, you sure the heck ain't coming here 'cuz there ain't much opportunity to be had.

Scored a nice room with WiFi in Hawthorne. My first Indian-managed motel of the trip. The Holiday Model, good bargain.

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Tuesday May 2 -- Hawthorne
Hawthorne to Reno is an e.z. drive, and quite pretty today. I spend some time along both the Walker River and the Carson. The Carson River Valley near Fort Churchill was especially nice, as the cottonwoods are just starting to leaf out. Good to get home. Getting home early in the day is unusual and was kinda cool - got myself unloaded and back into the home rut before dark!

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epilogue
So, did I have a good time? Was it worth it? How do I grade my trip?

Ask me again next week, but I would give it about a B-. When I left Reno, it was still acting like winter, and mid-trip it turned into summer, and the middle of the state gets f---ing hot f---ing quick. I think the weather change kicked my butt a little bit. Six weeks from now I could deal with the heat, but now I just wanted the clouds and the 50 degrees to come back.

The driving-to-fun ratio wasn't so great either. I drove about 1,400 miles in a week, that's 200 mile/day with just little ole me doing all the driving. Nevada is a big, empty state. The two actual camping nights were wonderful, Ely was fun, Mono Lake/395 is always fun. The endless wide empty spaces and long vistas and the general feeling of solitude are always good for my soul.... up to a point. Staying in Eastern Nevada longer would have amortized that driving over more days, but with the heat, it seemed more like work than fun to remain.

I was in a shitty, unsettled mood when I left, and I am in a less shitty but more unsettled mood now that I'm back. Good trade-off, I think! Shitty is shitty, but unsettled has the promise of positive change to it. I sure had a lot of time to chew on my issues out there, and as near as I can tell I didn't very far with them, but change done right is a slow and subtle process, so we'll just see.

...is what I need on this trip... If I had two left feet I would be able to hike in the two left boots I brought with me.

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prologue:
No matter how organized I try to be, there's always some little moment of attention deficit where I f--- something up. This time it was when I reached into the closet to grab my hiking boots. I keep my old boots around because they are still just fine for knocking around Reno in dry weather. So you can see where this is going, I failed to notice that I was not getting the desired set of left and right new boots, rather I got my left new boot and my left old boot. I do this all the time, but since I am actually putting the boots on it is but a momentary fuck-up. But today, I was throwing them on the pile of stuff for the trip - lesson?? wear my boots to start a trip... yeah, that will do the trick! Or perhaps organize my shoes better....

Boy did that not make my day when I stopped in Walker Canyon for a little hike. My good old checkered Vans are going to be pretty weatherbeaten by the time I get home, because they are taking me everywhere. Sean, this is how I end up in the coffee line without my wallet more often than a normal person should.

In case you're wondering, I actually did try to wear them, and a right foot in a left boot just does not get it done.

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Tuesday April 25
Breakfast at Josef's on the way out of town - damn that place is good. First destination of the day is Grover Hot Springs. I escape South Reno (oh look, it's the new Dillards), join the parade of giant trucks creeping past the state capitol, and eventually I am on Calif 88 heading up the Carson River Canyon.

The sign tells me that Monitor Pass is still closed, my plan for getting off the mountain and back on 395 ain't gonna happen. If I go to Grover I will be coming back this way also - arrgh. I did go and was glad I did. Grover opens at noon and I got there about 12.35 so I had the pools almost to myself. The only other soaker was a cool old guy (old? he was probably my age) who is a volunteer docent and who was a veritable fountain of information. Did you know that there were never grizzly bears in the Sierras, but they were plentiful in the Central Valley and Coastal Ranges? He predicts that this will be a ragingly good year for spring wildflowers, since it is the second year of plentiful rain. The inevitable large Ukrainian family showed up a little later and it was time to go.

Backtrack down Carson Valley to a right at the burned-out tavern which is the cut-off to 395 south - nasty black storm clouds are hanging around the mountains to the east. When I get back on 395 it's partly cloudy on the right, and a booming thunderstorm on my left. Soon I'm in the middle of it, my second hail storm in three days (I got pounded on that long, open walk along the river coming home from Earth Day on Sunday). The water was running in sheets off the road, and for about three minutes the world was white with hailstones.

Lunch at the Topaz Lodge, great view down the lake - quality ambience with casino food.

The approach to Mono Lake is beautiful in any season. Last time I did it was in the fall, when the aspen trees were crankin yellow. This time the aspens are spectral white naked branches, but the creeks and ditches are flowing and the world is as green as it gets around here. The vastness of the scene at the Conway Summit overlook is always a shock, no matter how many times I see it.

I get a room at a place I've ended up at many times before, the Yosemite Gateway Motel. Got a dowstairs room, cranked up the laptop and started typing. I was on a roll, but tore myself away before sunset to walk the Lee Vining Creek Trail, which is just a perfect little nugget of an evening walk. Great on full-ish moon nights also!

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Wednesday Apr 26 -- Lee Vining, CA
Coffee at the little shop across the street, very cozy and with a very well attended bird feeder outside the window - goldfinches are pretty birds.

It's starting to feel like a vacation, and it's about time. The plan today was to end up at Benton Hot Springs, but shows what I know. Benton isn't very far away, so I am taking the long way, therefore...

I took the June Lake loop, because I could. It's a lovely alpine setting, especially beautiful in the fall, but the aspens are even pretty without leaves.

Followed that up by taking the Mammoth Loop. There are still mammoth amounts of snow up there. I had breakfast at the Store(?), and I paid a mammoth $3.45/gallon for my gas before I head off into the interior.

Hot Springs book in hand, I headed off on Benton Crossing Road. ?? Springs is the closest to the road, and it had only one truck in the parking area, so I went for that one. It worked out delightfully well. It's a pretty big pool, it was holding seven hardy outdoors-persons when I left. But when I arrived it held just two Pabst-swilling rock climbers from Utah. Real nice guys, they were alternating rock climbing days with Pabst and soaking days - nice vacation. The pool was a good temp (I would say 101-102-ish), and the scenery was unbeatable - in the middle of Long Valley, the very snow-capped Sierras to the west and the still-snowy White Mountains to the east.

Two trucks worth of skiers showed up after 45 minutes, and I gave 'em a break and relinquished my spot.

Did NOT stay at Benton. It was still early in the day, I had already had a nice long soak, and I just wasn't feeling it. At Benton you rent a private tub, and I could hear the party sounds from the back. Since I've spent this trip wallowing in self-pity about my lonely old bachelorhood, enjoying my private tub by myself in not-so-splendid isolation just didn't sound like the right plan, so on to Tonopah.

Drove past the exit for Fish Lake(?) hot springs, which the Grover docent dude highly recommended. I still have my winter pallor, and the sun at the other spring beat me up pretty bad, so I take a pass on that one also.

Tonopah, what a godforsaken town.

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Thursday April 27 -- Tonopah, NV
A less than average breakfast at the Ramada casino, then get the heck out of Tonopah, which place I find quite desolate and depressing.

Any east-west trip here in the basin and range region falls into the same rhythm
- up the mountain pass,
- cross the summit, see the next 20-mile vista with the next pass in the distance.
- Cross the wide empty valley, up the next mountain pass and do it all again.

For some reason this got me to thinking of the signal fires in Lord of the Rings, where Gondor calls on Rohan to ride to battle. You could signal the 170 mile distance from Tonopah to Ely in 7 or 8 fires. I'm picturing the fires light up as I drive, cool.

I took an off-road loop to see the Lunar Craters. It was a fun if dusty adventure. The craters are not impact craters from asteroids, rather they are volcanic craters. There was a little mini-playa out there also. It was a windy day (isn't always out there?) and there were dust devils big and small everywhere. As I was approaching the playa there was a pretty substantial one coming right down the road at me. It rocked my truck to quite a shocking degree, and to my shame I did not get my camera ready in time. I did get one pic (see waaay above), but I tried for a little movie and in my excitement I didn't press the buttons in the right order.

On to Ely, grab a room at the Hotel Nevada, which is the old-school casino downtown. It is chocked full of goofy western memorabilia and is an all around trip.

I am at an internet cafe in Ely (who knew there was such a thing!) and I'm concerned because my truck's "take me to the dealer" light came on 10 miles out of town (my best guess is that the dust and bumps from the Lunar Craters side trip broke something). Car repair in Ely, doesn't have a good ring to it. Hotel lady recommends Precision Auto, so I call them and arrange to come by and get the bad news tomorrow.

The cafe is one of those funky multi-purpose stores you find in small towns. In addition to an espresso machine, it is a gift shop and a florist, and as luck would have it, it is also the place to rent formal wear. Well, the Ely High prom is this weekend! a mere three days from now, so there was a constant parade of high school kids coming in and getting fitted for their tuxes.

Back to the casino. There are lots of cute older couples having their big weekend in the biggest town around. I think lots of them have come over from Utah for a little sinnin'. I wish I was a cute older couple. Wait a minute! What's wrong with me? I have gone completely maudlin.

It's been warm enough for a couple of nice walks the last few days, and the common mergansers down on the river are just killing me they are so cool

both sexes have this shark collar thing. the boy has a velvety green-black head, pure white body with black wings. the girl has a lovely reddish-brown head with mullet or topknot if you prefer, her body is mottled red-brown. In spring they are always to be found as couples, and they are so darn stylish!

They are much more athletic and techical than the mallards... shooting the rapids, floating about 200 yards then flying back up and doing it again. And they swim so well, the look like pengiuns when they are fishing.

Tues 3/26 - I had mentally pencilled in a walk for this afternoon, but the sky has been getting progressively gloomier all day. Around 3 a soft rain started. Now, at 4:30 it is getting crazy - a really heavy rain, turning to snow before my eyes - giant fat raindrop/flakes just hammering down. a good day to not take a walk.

I get it that I am supposed to wear green today, but do I get beat up if I wear orange?

Spring has sprung a little bit. On the same day last week, I saw our red-tailed hawk couple acting domestic around the nest, and oh joy, I also got a great close-up of our local mink. I was over at the NW corner of Arlingtom & the river admiring the snow-capped Sierras, and I noticed a squirmy-looking log floating down the kayak rapids, and it was Mr Mink! (or perhaps Ms, I am showing my gender bias). He, I mean it, swam over to the rocks right below me, got out, shook itself, looked around, and hopped up to the drain pipe in the wall, crawled in, the stuck its head out to stare right up at me about 10' away before disappearing - major cute attack.

Danielle at the JV agreed that we do have minks rather than otters, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I've also been seeing a lot of the Northern Gilded Flicker outside my windows - beautiful bird, makes me happy.

This reminds me that this is Peace March weekend and our country is f---ed up. I hope you all are making yourself heard whereever you are. It is our duty as citizens to call the government out on their shizzle when it gets too out of hand, and I think we are on a very bad road with all this empire-building stuff. Oh yeah, saw Why We Fight with John G on Tuesday, really good movie. Policy junkie that I am I knew most of it, but the Cheney timeline was stunning:

1. Bush I - In his capacity as Defense Secretary, Cheney commissions a study of contracting military services to the private sector. A subsidiary of Halliburton does the study, and surprise, the study says it is a great idea. (All that Beetle Bailey stuff doesn't happen anymore, GIs don't peel potatoes, they just open happy meals.)
2. Clinton - Cheney leaves government to join... Halliburton, who surprise, gets HUGE contracts from the military. His personal net worth goes from 2-4 million to at least 60-70 million in these eight years.
3. Bush II - Cheney returns to goveernment to start a war or two (so far). Dollar amount of contracts to Halliburton skyrockets.

pretty neat and tidy, eh?? sounds like the way they run things in Paraguay, not America. We really need to clean house and throw out the trash, if you get my drift.

Reasons to be cheerful part 2

The view from my condo:
Like any good condo, mine has sliding glass doors that let out onto my symbolic "yard", an 8' wide deck which runs the length of the rectangular box I call home. The deck itself is unremarkable, but the view beyond it is pretty cool - I look out on Barbara Bennett Park, the Arlington Street Bridge, Wingfield Park and beyond to the river itself, the Sierra Street Bridge and more. In the winter I see all this, but in the summer all I see is a bunch of leaves, which is believe me, a big feature, considering all the retards that populate my park in the summer. But on a cold January night like tonight, it gives me a great feeling of space and connectedness and it's just beautiful. A nice dusting of leftover snow to the right (south, next to the north side of the hill of course), the lights of the Harrah's Tower and the Century 12-plex in the distance, the pristine clarity of the streetlights and the passing cars on Arlington. And of course my beloved blinking christmas lights that I've hung somewhere in my environment for the last, gosh, I guess six winters or so, out on the balcony cheering me up. And conversely when I am out and about I can see my lights from the other side of the river all the way down by the movie theaters 1/4 mile away.

The closness of nature:
There's the hawks nest in the cottonwood tree high above the basketball courts. Red-tails I think, but I really have no idea. I do know that it's a nesting pair, I see them taxiing in for a landing after a day of cruising the river for tasty morsels. I was very happy to see one landing with a good sized branch in its mouth one morning, a little nest maintenance I assume. This another reason that the homies at the basketball court think I'm a little strange (aside from being 30 years older than most of them), I'm always stopping to look up and stare at the nest.

There's the covey of quail that have appeared this winter. I don't know where they nest (in the small amount of underbrush on the hill?), but I've seen them pretty regularly lately, and heard them making their cute little nattering noises. The coolest thing was when they somehow got on the roof of our three story building. From the hill it would be a doable hop up there if you were a quail, I guess. Anyway one afternoon I noticed a pretty large something dropping past my deck outside, then another and another, and it turned out to be the whole quail posse dropping one by one off the roof down to the park.

There's the otter or mink that occasionally appears in the river. I would say otter, but the nature exhibit at Oxbox Park mentions minks and it doesn't mention otters, so I'm gonna go with mink! Gosh it's exciting to see out there, it's head sticking out like a little Loch Ness monster.

There's the river birds. Year-round we have lots of mallards and common mergansers and in winter we have canada geese standing around and crapping all over the park. Ducks in a city pond are pretty f---ing boring, but ducks in a swift-moving river can be very entertaining. They're like little miniature kayakers except better. If they want to go upriver they of course flap their wings and fly. But if they want to be somewhere downriver they tend to save energy and just float on down, shooting the rapids and paddling over to the next little quiet area where they do their mucking around thing.

And that's just the usually boring mallards. The common mergansers are to me, infinitely cooler, certainly far from common! First of all they look cool - they have this mohawk/topnot thing going on their heads, and a more pointed, even hooked beak as befits their niche of being actual fishermen rather than just muckrakers like the mallards. They get out into the middle of the river and really work it! As with the mallards, the boys and the girls look totally different, and they usually hang out in heterosexual pairs. So when I see the striking white body, dark greenhead and bright orange bill of a boy, I love to stop and look around till I find his woman - the female merganser is cooler looking than the male - lovely russet-brown head with a very stylish, swept-back crest on a subtly off-white body.

I find geese pretty useless except when they are flying, then they are magnificent. At the river it's very common to be surprised by a group of 3-10 of them following the river up or down, maybe a foot off the surface of the water, just bookin'. Or high up in the sky in their classic V, heading between the river and Virginia Lake.

My new favorite bird is our one-and-only black-crowned night heron, which I see quite often, coming home from a long night at the bars. I actually saw it first last winter in my first few days of living here and I couldn't quite believe my eyes. Its thing is to find a nice rock or log to perch on, right above the surface of teh water, usually at the foot of a rapids. It just stands there, all hunched over motionless, just staring at the water, waiting presumably for a likely little fish to swim by. It's solitary, only comes out at night, and it is completely still unless you spook it, and is to me both strange and immensley reassuring when I see it at 2 in the morning. I often shout out a greeting/blessing to it and it of course ignores me.

My neighbor's bird feeders attract mostly the usual assortment of starlings (yuk), little brown sparrows and chickadees (very cute) and doves (yuk also, but I've come to respect that they are very acrobatic fliers). But he also puts out those little suet balls (boxes really) and they attract the local flickers and woodpeckers. I do so love woodpeckers, I could watch them all day. My best guess is that we have the red-shafted northern flicker and the downy woodpecker.

Then we have the river itself and its ever-changing moods. As its level recedes to more normal levels, I am ever more impressed with how the flood rearranged things, the new channels and gravel bars. I will be interested to see how the south side of the kayak park will function this summer. It's looking to me like it might be dry - all the water will be shunted to the north side of the island a couple of hundred yards upriver - we shal see...

gee, do you think it's possible that we have really f--ed up the world climate???

Reno had a 100 year flood on New Year's Day 1997, and then surprise! we had a 40 year flood a mere 9 years later (8 years and 364 days actually) on New Year's Eve, January 30 2005. At this great link is a 3-4 day snapshot of the Truckee's flow. If you scroll down to the paragraphs for 12.5-12 feet you'll see what we got two weeks ago.

My Mill Valley homies Vinyl played at the Green Room on that Friday night, Jan 30. They had a helluva time getting home the next day, see below. Before the show I coaxed the boys to walk down West Street to show them how high the river was. The show was excellent, and wired as I was when it was over I made my usual bad decision to have One More Beer at Tonic... (why? because I could...) So I get home about 3 AM, and I'm puttering around eating peanut butter when it sinks into my damaged consciousness that there are emergency vehicles outside, driving slowly up and down the riverside streets with their lights flashing, honking their horns, in an end-of-the-world kind of way.

hmmm.... guess it's time to move the truck to high ground. Since I'm the only one up, I am the first in my block to move my vehicle, so I get the primo parking spot around the corner! By the time I walk back, the neighbors are waking up and their moving cars and all their garage crap and getting the basement area shipshape for possible inundation. I went to bed about 6AM and even at that I managed to miss the filling of the little sandbag wall that was in the driveway the next day.

I get up noon-ish on Saturday and wow! we have a situation! Water covers the road by the river, it covers Wingfield Park and is flowing over Arlington Street! but not I am happy to say, flooding our building. I'm feeling pretty haggard from last night, but this is so special! I go out to explore the new soggy contours of my neighborhood.

All of the downtown bridges except Virginia Street are closed. On that bridge is a big ole steam shovel trying to catch logs as they get caught under the bridge - quite fun to watch. It was quite cold and too windy and wet to risk pictures with my delicate little Canon, and I felt like sh-t anyway so I repaired to my warm and dry home for a few hours.

Towards sunset the sun came out and I did do a picture-taking foray and got some great shots - the world was a reflecting pool - the reflection of the buildings and walls and trees in the water covering the basketball courts was particularly excellent.

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Antediluvian observations - that's after the flood for you kiddies that missed Bible School.
The river has been high so long it seems normal. Now, two weeks after the flood, the water level has come down to about the level it was last spring when I thought it was raging. For reference, "normal" spring/summer levels is about 300 CFS (cubic feet/second), it's about 1,300 CFS now, and the peak of the flood was 13,000 CFS, going on 14,000!

This all gives me a much better feel for the whole flash flood thing. When our river is big, it is not just higher water, it is just plain scary. that water is big and fast! At the height of the flood, full-sized, foot-thick trees were rolling down the river at 30-40 miles an hour, I mean really moving. I've been reading a lot of Nevada history, and a pretty constant theme is little settlements along the little rivers that prosper for a few years until the next big storm and boom, you got a bunch of gravesites and ruins until the next bunch of settlers comes and takes another crack at it, no doubt wondering why such a pleasant place wasn't settled before.

The flood gave the Kayak Park quite a workout. The main channels survived nicely, but the side areas that were previously shallow sand flats are pretty substantial mounds of rocks now. Momma Nature has taken the basic idea of the kayak park and said that's cool, but let's make it more like a real river! There are a couple of really interesting new channels now, that will probably disappear as the water level goes back to normal. I look forward to sitting on those rock piles this summer and imagining the water that made them.

I think I understand the effects of catastrophic flooding on geology much better now!

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from Geoff of Vinyl:
To answer your question, yes we made it back to MV ........ after a 10.5 hour drive.
Picture this:

395 south toward Carson City but detoured onto 341 east due to flooding.

341 to Virginia City then down to 50 west.

50 into Carson City whose main street was more like a river. Snail paced traffic jam.

As 50 started rising, snow started falling and within minutes we were sliding all over the place. Chains.

Got to the lake and went north along the lake for fear of staying south on 50 and having it get closed. The lake looked like the pacific off Ocean Beach.

Along lake through Incline, Kings Beach.

Over Brockway Summit (chains back on) to Truckee and onto 80.

Chains over Donner Summit. Few cars on 80 west due to the big slide.

Cruising down toward Auburn, weather was actually nice, then we get a f---ing speeding ticket. Can you believe it??

Then we hear that we can't stay on 80 because it is closed in Fairfield due to massive flooding. Radio says they are diverting everyone south on 5 to 580. We figure that 580 would become a traffic nightmare so we opt for a northern route.

We depart 80 at Davis and get over to 128 heading for St. Helena. 121 is closed due to Napa flooding so we can't dip down so we dodge about 20 mudslides and downed trees spilling into the road and go all the way up to Calistoga.

Cut across Mark West Springs Rd. to 101 at Santa Rosa.

101 south to MV where we drive straight to the club to find that all of downtown MV is pitch black with no power and not a sole on the streets and no restaurants open.

For some freaky reason, power is on at Sweetwater and we roll in the door at 9:15 much to the relief of the staff.

We actually started on time just after 10:00 and had a rocking night.

Today (Sunday January 15), is the one year anniversary of my moving in Reno. It was a Saturday last year when Austen came over and rolled me out of bed at 5AM to put my last few effects into the truck and head out through the Mill Valley - Sacto Valley fog, through the 7 foot snowbanks along I-80 to the very strange ice fog (freezing fog, they call it) of the Truckee Meadows.

I must say I'm pretty happy with the whole thing right this instant, for three reasons I think:

1. I love the winter weather.
2. I'm making friends.
3. Nothing bad has happened lately.
   

1. The weather has simply rocked this winter - very exciting! We got a couple of storms in November-December that made the river rise to what seemed at the time to be pretty high levels. I was carefully cataloging little benchmarks for the height of the water so I could show Martha and family next summer how high it was, then came the last day of the year, and that flood just blew everything away. It rained and rained and rained some more, and the river just kept rising.

In my decade of perfect San Diego weather (the 80's), I know I was missing real weather. In particular I missed water. Actually San Diego gets some pretty serious winter rain, somewhere around January's full moon there usually seemed to come a gnarly Pacific storm that combined with the high tide to create the dreaded storm surge, flood the beachside restaurants, turn the sand beach into a rock beach, etc. What I really hated about San Diego was the human's attempt to act like we weren't in an f---ing desert! God just didn't intend for there to be so many people with so many green lawns and golf courses there and that's that!

but I digress...

In the 90's I got my wet weather, I moved to a climate where the use of water was a little more in tune with the local ecosystem. A little-known fact is that Marin gets almost all of its water from Marin - quite unusual for urban California. And of course that is the key to why Marin is the outdoor wonderland it is - the core of southern Marin is MMWD (Marin Municipal Water District) - hikeable and rideable public watershed land! see, good land management actually works!

Now, here in the 00's I am realizing how much I love (a small bite-sized dose of) real winter weather. The usual western rhythm of winter storms stacked up in the Pacific, stomping through California every three or four days all January turns out to work here in Reno also! The boring ones die in the Sierras, but even they make for a mighty scenic westward view, amazing renticular cloud formations, snow-capped peaks, often snow-capped foothills.

We've gotten just plain rain, rain then snow, snow then rain, just plain snow, extra fluffy, stick to the trees snow, and of course a 40-year flood (which will get its own story). I wake up every day excited to go out and see what the river and the hills are doing.

2. Making friends seemed like a mighty slow, painful process, but looking back, it's been just a year and there is a small but select group of folks who value me and who I value, and that ain't bad!

The issue was my usual demographic conundrum -- I see those hippin' happenin' 20-30 year-olds and think hmmm... my people. They look back at me and think hmmm... old guy - a quirky looking, perhaps interesting old guy but old guy nonetheless. But we're all past that :)

3. gee, my truck hasn't been looted and ransacked for almost a month now.

In case you lost count, it has been four times since August. August, September, and twice in December, in that awkward time while our old, largely symbolic fence and gates were torn down and before our new, seriously secure fence were put up. the last one was the most expensive and physically brutal, stole my garage door opener, winter coat, leatherman, some tapes, busted up my interior in ways that I am sure will be expensive to fix.

This aspect of random property crime, and the random appearance of truly sketchy, scary people around here is the one and only truly serious downer of Life in Reno for me. Everybody is seems, has a "ripped off" story or three. Everybody, even the most hippie-love child of the locals locks up their bike with a big strong lock even if they are leaving it for just a moment. My new bike has a nice seat, so I was advised to convert the height adjuster gizmo to an allen wrench thingie so it won't disappear.

It sucks, but for now, the external and internal joys of items 1 and 2 are outweighing the bad karma of item 3!

I made my first autumn escape last week, a three-day jaunt to the Ruby Mountains - Switzerland of the West, they say, and rightly so! The most-visited part, the Lamoille Valley, is a classic alpine scene, heavily glaciated side valleys that look to me a lot like the Rockies in Glacier National Park. Sadly, I have not seen the actual Alps.

Day 1 was the I-80 grind from here to Elko. Actually, it wasn't a grind at all for me - I haven't done that road for eight years, and with my newly acquired knowledge of Nevada history, geology, and geography, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I was amazed at how differently I see it now. Before, it was a wasteland, just blasted piles of rocks with no interest, and the Humboldt River was somebody's idea of a joke. Now it looks lively and interesting to me, and I know that the Humboldt River is a Big Deal - it drains thousands of square miles of Nevada, it is the reason I-80 and the California Trail before it are where they are, and it is the lifeline of the whole area.

I like Elko, always have. I like the Basque restaurants, I like the downtown park and museum, and the Western feel of the place. And I love going over the hill to Spring Valley, which sadly is looking more and more like a California suburb.

Amazement #2: how much more "wired" the world is than it was even a year ago. Most of even the cheesy motels now offer internet hookup. My choice, the Budget Motel (4 out of 5 stars in my personal rating scale of price/convenience/features/pleasantness) had wired rather than wireless internet. They gave me a piece of Cat5 cable for the night. I feared an evening with the Windows Connection Wizard, but I plugged myself in an boom - it just worked!

Day 2 started with a forgettable breakfast then a visit to the Ranger Station, where I learned that this time of year dispersed camping is allowed almost everywhere, including the deluxe Powerstation Picnic Area - woohoo!

The meat of the day was an excellent hike from the top of the canyon trailhead, past the Dollar Lakes and Lamoille Lake to Liberty Pass - about 7 miles and 1,600' elevation change - from 8'000-something to 10,000-something. a goodly hike for my out of shape self!

Got back a little after sunset, with just enough daylight to enjoy the lovely fall colors down the canyon and to find a nice parking place for my dispersed camping. Annoyingly a stiff, cold wind came up so I slept (poorly) in the truck. Although the upside of poor sleeping was that I watched the little sliver of a moon disappear as daylight came to the eastern ridge of the valley in the morning - very pretty!

Day 3, I returned to Spring Valley for caffienation and breakfast at a very nice Sports Bar. In the convenience mart getting ice I saw the headline Tom DeLay Indicted, which put me in a good mood for the next two days! Listened to a little talk radio as the right wing noise machine worked itself into a frothing frenzy about it - how very, very nice!

The day was spent in a drive down the west side of the Rubies through Jiggs, through the Harrison Cutoff, to the east side of the Rubies and Ruby "Lake" and the Ruby Lake Wildlife Refuge, my destination. I invested in the Forest Service campground and I'm glad I did, although some nice looking dispersed camping was available further south. Set up the tent, then spent the last two hours of the day in the Refuge, looking at birds - nothing special, a lot of these cute black duckie-type birds with white bills - and looking at the reflection of the clouds and the mountains and the marsh grasses in the ponds and canals that comprise Ruby "Lake".

It was a perfectly beautiful warm, windless night and there was some sweet-smelling firewood left at my site so I had a great night!

Day 4 turned out to be a long day of blasting down US 50 all the way home. I thought I was going to camp near Austin and do the Spence Hot Springs, but I jsut ran out of energy for it.

Fall is my time of year. Winter is OK, spring is springy, and summer is for me just a period of too much heat and too many people that is endured rather than particularly enjoyed.

Fall is when things turn: the air turns crisp, the landscape turns from tired brown-greens to reds and yellows, and the sun turns lower to the horizon, giving the light a quality that it entirely lacks during the hard, bright summer. Not to mention that the crowds re-turn to work and school and rates turn lower at the places I like to which I go.

I like to think there's some macro-micro correspondence in the fact that sunset is the best time of day and fall is the best time of year, but I doubt that thought will stand much close scrutiny, or... maybe it will:
- is the effing-hot middle of the afternoon the favorite part of the day for you summer lovers and sun addicts?
- are you spring flower fans also morning people who actually see the sunrise even if you don't have to? (note: I do like the sunrise, it's just something that I rarely ever actually see).