Madsen Cycles - Win One!

Check out this cool bike!! Big cargo area in the back. Too cool. I'd love to ride one of these to a Farmer's Market and cart home my produce the eco-friendly way.

Click on the image to see how you can WIN ONE in July.

Suisun City Waterfront - A Walk with Friends

Mike, with our friends, Linda and Allen, from Roseville.

The four of us met in Suisun City for lunch and a stroll around this charming little town; none of us had ever been here before. It was terribly windy, but not too cold and the sun was out in full force so it was actually a pretty nice day. The old building they are standing in front of caught my eye, of course, due to my recent fascination with old buildings, especially falling-down ones. And this one is falling down; check out this next photo:
Funniest part is, the building is for sale! (I had Mike stand directly in front of the For Sale sign so that it wouldn't ruin my picture, ha!) We peeked in the windows and could see that this building used to house a mexican restaurant. My guess is whoever buys it will have to bulldoze it down completely and start over, which is actually kind of a shame.

Here are several photos of the Suisun City waterfront, a nice little area with restaurants, shops, offices and, of course, boats.


That lighthouse is not a real one; we walked over there and found it is more a piece of art, built in the late 1990's and was dedicated on July 4th. I did find a reference on the internet to Suisun City's huge fireworks show each Independence Day; it is supposed to be the biggest in the area. We may have to check that out this summer.

We had lunch at Bab's Delta Diner:
It is 50's style and had a really friendly crew. Our waitress told us Babs is her grandmother, and that several generations of the family still own and work at the restaurant including her mother, Debbie, and her son, who works on weekends. The food was good and the service friendly. I'd definitely eat there again and next time I won't pass up the home-made bluberry cobbler!

While walking around the very interesting residential area we came across this old Dodge that Linda said was just like a car she'd had when she was a lot younger, except hers had been red.

I wish I'd taken more photos of the houses; they all had so much personality. One looked like it used to be a schoolhouse, and it was on School Street, too. I did get this one photo but I was actually more interested in that amazing purple wisteria.
I know we only saw a small part of this little town, since we were on foot. I'd like to go back with our bicycles and really explore the entire area. I read that the It's-It ice cream sandwiches are made here, somewhere, and that the company has recently opened a small retail store next to their factory, where you can buy the sandwiches.

That alone is worth a trip back! Who's up for meeting us there???

American Canyon Bike Ride

Mike didn't work today and he developed cabin-fever very quickly, so we loaded up the bikes and headed out to a small farming community in American Canyon. I'd driven through here briefly last week when I went to the new super-Wal-Mart on Hwy 29 (for you non-northern Californians, Hwy 29 heads north, from where we live, into Napa, and along the way is the small city of American Canyon). The above building was one of the features I'd wanted to photograph last week but didn't have the nerve to get out of the truck by myself. Honestly, I think I never should have seen (or read) "Deliverance!"
After all, these houses (above) were nearby and clearly they are all (except the white one in the very back) old, falling down, and unoccupied! In fact, the day I was out there by myself I'd swear I could see a man sitting in front of the only occupied building, tipped back against the wall in a straight-backed chair, arms folded, and a baseball cap low over his eyes. Yeah, I drove right on out of there.

Luckily, though, I made a mental note to remember this area next time we wanted to go for a bike ride somewhere new. I figured a couple people on bikes wouldn't draw as much attention as a strange vehicle in the area, and even if we did surely no one would suspect we were up to anything more than just a nice bike ride out in the country.

We were only a few minutes drive off busy Hwy 29, but this area is so quiet that it's easy to imagine you are miles out in the country. Here are a couple photos of what some of the "roads" we were riding on look like:
Yep, sometimes it was just a track in the grass. Other times paved, sometimes just dirt or gravel, and once an old road, barely used anymore, of broken up concrete, rocks and other rubble. Hooray for mountain bikes with fat tires! Don't even THINK of bringing your skinny-wheeles touring bikes out here.

Don't you love the street sign in this next pic?
Zorro Road?? It appears to head out to pretty much nowhere but into the middle of the vineyard, but we found there were houses hidden among these hills, presumably people growing grapes for the wineries in nearby Napa Valley. Here's one:
Another photo of the early-spring grapevines, and there's the farmer on his tractor between the rows:
Later we saw him again, near the road we were bicycling on, and got this photo as he was heading back up the hillside. Dang, I'd hoped for a ride on that tractor.
Below: the two tall silos in the distance were what I'd seen last week, and what I was trying to get to. Unfortunately, every road that seems to go their way is blocked by a gate or dead end or a new housing subdivision. Even on bikes we weren't able to find our way out there. Well, one of these days we may just have to hike across the fields and climb a couple of barbed-wire fences! There are a number of old buildings out there and I'd love to explore them.
Oh, and that's a train on the right side of the same photo. We were standing next to three tracks, the middle one had an idling train on it. I wanted to look into all the boxcars for hobos, but Mike said no. Bad enough, I guess, that we'd walked on by several "No Trespassing" signs, heh heh.
A little later we got to see that idling train on its way north (above). Reminded me of when I was young and my family lived in Redondo Beach, CA. There were train tracks fairly nearby and we kids loved to go over there and watch the trains go by and wave to the engineers. The engineer of this today train waved at us, too. Awesome.
Hm, farmers must be rolling in money if they can afford to leave perfectly good farm equipment standing out in the fields long enough to get this covered with weeds and bushes!
Wow, they don't bother taking care of their cars either! Two old Ford Fairlanes, the one in back is a convertible.
One last photo of another barn. What can I say, I just have a thing for old barns. Maybe I was born in one?

Mom?

Head 'Em Up, Move 'Em Out

It's me, ha ha , taking a photo of a cow. Yeah, I'm enough of a city girl to think bovines are pretty cool when you can get this close to them. We were on a bike ride in the Wildcat Canyon Regional Park (northern Cali) when we ran across these lovelies.

We've been riding our bikes quite a bit lately, and I'm getting a little bit more in shape. The long winter took its toll on my fitness level. I have more photos to post but no time today, so I will try to do that after the 21st, when my schedule eases up just a bit.

Tomorrow Mike and I leave for Florida to visit his dad and step-mom. We'll be back on Friday. My cousin, Laurel, will look in on the cats while we are gone. I hope they don't have too many parties and wreck the house. (The cats, I mean, not Laurel, LOL!)

My Precious (my laptop) is not going with us and there's no internet at Art & Betty's house so I'll be totally off-line until late Friday. If you need me, call my cell phone!

Back soon!!!

Just Couldn't Stay In . . .

. . . on a day like this.

Mike got an unexpected day off so we loaded up the bikes in the back of the truck and went to the Benicia State Recreation Area. Just look at that sky.

This guy was browsing for lunch in the marshy grass. We're never sure if these are herons or egrets. Either way we enjoy watching them walk ever so slowly, or standing completely still, eyes sharp and on the lookout for the tiniest movement of a tiny fish or frog.

Blossoms are everywhere this time of the year and I decided to practice my skills with a macro shot. This is the best one I got. Mike is better at flower photography than I am. This next one is his shot:

Awww, he found a different pretty flower to photograph, ha ha!

This photo is for my friend, Linda, who always tells me to be sure to wear a helmet when I ride my bike, and she's right because I am notorious for falling off it at least twice every summer. It's also for my son, Michael, because that's Michael's helmet that he left in our garage for "safe-keeping." Sorry, Michael, but I'm getting very attached to your helmet. I love that it's pre-scratched and dented and I think it makes me look cool!

This shot is from 9th street, looking toward Glen Cove. There's a boat launch here and also a nice little park here with play equipment for kids and a huge lawn that attracts migrating Canada geese like this pair:

Benicia is probably their favorite stop on their route.

By the time we got back to the truck the clouds were beginning to get darker and the temperature was dropping. We were lucky to get out during the nicest part of the afternoon. It may be Winter again tomorrow . . .

. . . but today it was Spring.

Monterey Bay and Pacific Grove

The scene just five minutes walk from our Asilomar Conference Center workroom last weekend. Totally worth breaking away from the marathon sessions of digital scrapbooking, don't you think?

I managed to squeeze in two bike rides during the 4-day stay. Here are some of the photos I took:

The Point Pinos Lighthouse

Near the lighthouse, a mama deer and her fawn

A majestic buck in someone's front yard, just across Sunset Drive from the beach.

The bike path heading toward Monterey Bay (from Pacific Grove)

The beach at Lover's Point in Monterey Bay

Check out that crystal clear water!

Surrey cycles for Rent

I ran across these guys on Cannery Row. Right out of a John Steinbeck novel!

The weather, as you can see, was exquisite, especially for January which is normally a rainy month. Of course, we may pay for that nice weather, and very soon. Having had the tiniest fraction of the normal rainfall so far this year, we here in Cali are facing a serious water shortage. This may be the year we let our back lawn die. I hope not, but things don't look too good.

So, if you know one, could you please do a rain dance for us?

Bicycling and Scrapbooking in Northern California

(yes, Linda, I'm wearing a helmet!)

Just a short little note to let you all know I'm home from Pacific Grove where I spent the better part of 4 days bonding with my laptop and creating over 50 pages of digital scrapbook layouts. It was fun, intense, rewarding, and fattening (we got fed a lot), and it was a great change of scenery for me as well as a chance to spend time with my scrapbooking buddies.

Speaking of the scenery, I took time out to enjoy it by getting out on my bike. From the Asilomar conference grounds it's an easy along-the-coast bike ride north to Monterey Bay, Fisherman's Wharf, the Aquarium, and Cannery Row (more photos tomorrow). I wore shorts and a t-shirt and I got sunburned so that tells you what the weather was like! Super-gorgeous for January in northern Cali! Amazing, really.

I will post more tomorrow; today I'm taking a bit of a break from my keyboard to do some sewing, reading, and, ok, I'll admit it, some napping!

A relaxed and lazy Sunday - NOT!

Past time for an update and a confession. Actually, the confession will be the update! I have not been able to stick with my goal of 25 Jazzercise classes in 25 Days. Argh!!! Well, Life got in the way a time or two. First, there was the Saturday that we went sailing with Leo on the Chat de Mer. Then Wed'day and Thursday of last week I was not feeling well. I had some mild flu-like symptoms, and some rather dramatic fluid build-up in my lungs that made it hard to breathe. I don't know whether I was having an allergic reaction to something new or different blooming outside, or if it's adult-onset asthma (is there such a thing?), but when I was up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep because I could barely breathe, I was sure wishing for a rescue inhaler! My mom, several siblings, and at least two nieces have asthma and use inhalers regularly, so it does run in my family. I've really never heard of it coming on in an adult who never had a problem before, though, but boy, I surely have first-hand knowledge now of how asthmatics suffer. This is not my first episode either, they started about 6 months ago, and occur sporadically and with no rhyme or reason.

Long story short, I missed Jazzercise on Wed'day and Thursday. The "asthma" is my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Then, this past Saturday I went to San Jose with my friend, Susan, for a digital scrapbooking laptop crop sponsored by DigitalScrapbookingPlace.com so, again, I was not able to attend my Saturday step class. That's 4 missed days. We had a blast at the crop, by the way! Met lots of nice people, learned some new digital scrapbooking techniques, ate way more chocolate than is good for a human being, and got lots of layouts done (including Ryan's bathtime layouts, Heather, so expect those in the mail soon along with your 4th of July page)! I worked mainly on my own personal pages, and pages for my family, which was really fun because I usually spend most of my time on layouts for my Webajeb customers. [You can see some samples of my Webajeb work at http://www.webajeb.com/ and http://www.webajeb.blogspot.com/).]

Ok, so we're up to 4 days missed in my quest for 25 Jazzercise classes in 25 Days. Then, yesterday, I slept in due to getting home very late from the laptop crop, and I missed the only two Sunday classes. I was ready to chalk up another lost day when Mike suggested a bike ride as an alternate form of exercise. I was having an "I-can't-seem-to-make-any-decisions" day so Mike chose our route. That won't happen again. He decided we would ride from our house, up the hill on our street to Rose Drive, up Rose Drive to Hastings, and then dooooowwwwwnnnnnn Hastings to Southampton Road, down Southampton and over to the Benicia State Recreation Area. Once there we first stopped to eat some ripe blackberries near the ranger's kiosk, then we cycled the approximately 5 mile round trip (mostly flat but there was a hefty headwind part of the way) to the end of the park and back, with a sidetrip up a gravel path to some fig trees we know about to see if there was anything ripe. (There wasn't; in fact, the figs were all teensy and hard-as-rocks, probably due to the drought we are having this year). Next we rode through town to the library (this part was my idea - I had a book on hold I wanted to pick up). We took a short break to drink some water, then started the torturous trek back.

Yeah, I said torturous.

Remember all that downhill riding we did? Well, there's no way to ride back to our house without tackling some pretty hefty hills; either the steep but relatively short climb up Panorama or Hastings, or the long and steady rise of 2nd Street. We chose 2nd Street and managed to ride all the way, slowly but surely. Even that, though, was nothing compared to Rose Drive! Once we turned onto Rose the headwind was horrible. Most of the time we even had to pedal on the downhill portions of this hilly road else the wind would bring us to a stop. Finally, the last uphill block did me in and my bicycle and I toppled onto the shady grass in front of Matthew Turner Elementary school. Once I'd caught my breath, I walked my bike the rest of the way to the top of our street, about 2 blocks, and only then did I climb back on to coast down the hill to our house (in order not to be embarrassed in front of our neighbors).

We arrived back home about 4 p.m. I'm pretty sure I didn't get up off the couch for the rest of the day OR evening.

Mike seemed to do fine on our ride and, wisely, he pretty much held his tongue about the rough conditions though at one point he did ask, "Are you going to count this as a Jazzercise class?"

Oh, yes. Yes, I am.

Happy (Belated) Father's Day, Dad !

Last month I posted a photo of my mom from the 70's, for Mother's Day. So here (a little late) is a picture of my Dad from the same general time period. Happy Father's Day, Dad! (I don't feel too bad about this post being late because I was actually with my Dad on Father's Day.)

I think this photo is about 1977 or so (dontcha love those plaid pants). During that time he was president of a little company called Automecca which produced the vehicle shown in the photo, the Roamer SportsVan. My dad has always been seriously afflicted with the Entrepreneur Bug and has owned a number of businesses over the years. As anyone who owns a small business knows, its rare to make more money than just enough to live on! I think my mom would have preferred my dad to have always had a "regular" job, but what would our lives be if we didn't take a few risks and go after our dreams?

My siblings and I certainly picked up on that lesson. Out of seven kids three of us run (or have run) our own businesses, and most, if not all, of my other sibs have expressed the desire to do the same. I guess we've inherited that mix of dreamer, optimism, and creativity that makes calling our own shots so irresistible. I'll never get rich with my little biz, but I'm sure having a good time.This photo is from about 1960. I'm on the left of my dad and my brother, Mike, is on the right. My dad taught all of us kids to ride two-wheelers as soon as we were old enough. He was very much involved in Boy Scouts for many years with both my brothers, and I got to go along on many hikes and campouts. He body-surfed and built sandcastles at the beach. He was my first dance partner, and he taught me to drive a car. Of course, he did once leave me behind at a hardware store when I was about 3 (he forgot he had me with him)!

Nobody's perfect but, as a dad, mine comes pretty darn close. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you!

If you don't get hurt you aren't playing hard enough!

On Tuesday we decided to ride bikes into town and make a few small purchases; the university is on the outskirts of Louyang so it's a few miles. We started out with Xiao Rui on the back of Michael's bike, but soon decided that wasn't going to cut it for the distance we were going to go.
It's very typical to see girls riding this way on the back of a bicycle!
It looks decidedly uncomfortable to me!
So we went to a nearby bike rental shack and rented Xiao Rui a bicycle. The rental fee is 1 yuan per hour, which is less than 20 cents.
We met this little boy there who was helping mind the store. He was very friendly and gave Michael a high-five.
The bike rental place was right next to a pool hall where some of the university students were avoiding homework by shooting a little pool. (Seems this pool hall doesn't have a minimum age limit.)
And right across the dirt road from bike rental shop was the bike repair shop where, for a yuan, Michael used the storekeeper's tools to tighten some screws and top off the air in the tires. That's the storekeeper in the background, sitting on the little chair.
At the repair shop we also met this little guy who was having his lunch of rice and vegetables at a small wooden table.
I was riding the blue bicycle pictured above, first in the row. It's a typical Chinese bicycle; half (or more) of the population of Louyang has one just like it. It's old, rusty, loose-jointed, and wobbly, but it gets you where you want to go and is not at all tempting to thieves.

Well, we were cycling merrily along when I got distracted by something, rode up too close behind Michael, and somehow tangled his back tire with my front tire. My front wheel spun to the left and the bike tossed me over handlebars and on to the hard concrete sidewalk. I did a bit of skidding along the right side of my body with my right wrist, ankle and knee taking most of the beating.
We went to a small neighborhood medical clinic to get my knee looked at and hopefully bandaged. The fall took pretty much all the skin off. The man in the blue is the doctor.
I got to endure the swabbing application of several solutions, not one of which I recognized. I THINK one may have been a betadine solution, but I wouldn't swear to it. Hopefully, there was some antiseptic in the mix!
I'd swear that what he's pouring out of this little packet is none other than granulated white sugar! Guess I'll never know for sure. After this he placed a large square gauze on my knee and taped it on with 4 or 5 short strips of adhesive tape. I should have asked him to wrap the tape all the way around my leg because 5 minutes after we got back on our bikes and started riding again the bandage flew off and landed in the gutter! I decided to just do without a bandage and spent the rest of the day swabbing up streams of blood whenever the newly forming scab broke - which was often!

Michael rented another bike for me, so I was a lot more stable, which turned out to be a very good move once we got into town with all the traffic; busses, taxis, cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, and pedestrians going every which way, obeying or ignoring traffic signals as they pleased. Believe me, it's every man for himself on the roads here! I've seen taxi drivers just about mow down old women and babies in strollers. Their blaring horn means "get OUT of the WAY!"

Well, as my title says, if you don't get hurt you aren't playing hard enough. I haven't wanted to miss a thing on this trip and if that means a skinned knee and ankle, and a sprained wrist, so be it!