Beautiful Memorial Day in Northern NM

Hiked up Cerro Grande today. Must have seen at least 30 other hikers
but it was less crowded than any other place in Jemez Mountains would
be on Memorial Day. Bandelier National Monument Ranger's radio was
squawking that lower parking lot (at Bandelier Headquarters) was
full. Glad we didn't go there!

Spouse went as far as high pass and WRSC hiking friend went to top -
his first time! Spouse ate lunch at high pass while watching a
ginger-colored, dandelion-browsing black bear that other hikers had
pointed out. After lunch, spouse wrested himself from the high pass
and met us half way up the first false summit as we were coming down.

Bear was still there when we got back to the high pass. We all
watched it for a while. It seemed totally nonplussed by us. Friend
had binoculars and said he'd see the bear go up to a dandelion and
then the dandelion wouldn't be there any more. Imagine a lunch of
raw dandelion flowers! Spouse had earlier asked ranger is it was OK
for him to eat his lunch with the bear on the opposite slope and
ranger said it would be all right. I guess spouse was wondering if
perhaps hiker was on the bear's lunch menu!

Yesterday was another run to the county debris pile to dump the
chamisa bush, some ash leaves and spruce twigs. Still have more in
the back yard to dump this week. Maybe tomorrow?

Tomorrow morning, I get fasting blood tests for annual physical and
then have morning appointment with contractor to look at damaged
board and batten siding. Will call roofer to see when they will
come out. Would like to get the re-roof done before the monsoon
begins because even though the weather is beautiful now,
thunderstorms and hail are in store in July!

Thank you for this beautiful day!

More Pruning - I Need to Get a Life

Worked about 4 hours today, not counting time it took to haul another trunk full and two full garbage bags to the dump. Still lots more to haul away! Unfortunately, I can't fit a lot in the trunk of my measly family sedan.

Boy, the wind really blasted me at the dump. I parked on the pavement and had a little walk over to the brush pile, arms overloaded with trimmings. The wind was really whipping!!

Now all that remains to do is weed the rocks so I don't have tons of brush to haul away in the fall and prune some branches from the ash and spruce. Spouse will hold the ladder next weekend so I can do the branch trimming.

When the sun goes down, I'll take my walk. Never quite made it onto the trail today.

To me, all this pruning is a tremendous waste of my time but I did accomplish a lot. I see now why people hire someone to do yard work. It takes a lot of time and unless you have a pick up truck, you're kind of stuck when it comes to hauling away the debris!

Did 3 loads of laundry today. Briefly stopped at library.

Tomorrow is the trip to Albuquerque for spouse's dentist appointment.

Is this all there is to life? Feeling sorry for self. There will be some good times this week - the high point being the LL hike in Cañada Bonita on Wednesday.

Warm and Breezy Saturday at Home

Morning was - checked out flea market at Immaculate Heart of Mary church but bought nothing, looked at pole pruners at Metzger's in White Rock but bought none for now, went to Jemez House Thrift shop and bought full, flat sheet and hiking pants, went to Smith's uptown and loaded up on produce, brought home groceries, including treats ailing spouse requested, put sheet in trunk and loaded juniper branches in trunk and 4 plastic bags full of leaves, pine needles and chopped up cholla into car, took all to dump, then walked up Quemazon Trail for 4 mile round trip. The sheet kept my trunk clean! I'll try to take some more to the dump tomorrow.

Still have more pruning to do but took today off. Quemazon Trail is a good workout. Tick fell out of hair - how in the world did I get a tick on the bone dry Quemazon Trail - picked up at the dump maybe? Flushed it down the toilet.

Tomorrow spouse, if he feels good enough, takes grandson to Shrek II. Me - I'll do the usual - hit the library and take a walk. I hope to do some more yard work after my walk.

I'm chickening out of having Paul Davis Restoration mess with our closet and bathroom. I have a really bad feeling about them - especially after Googling Paul Davis Restoration complaints. This after I told adjuster that we'd go through with the repairs with PDR. Oh, well - I'll un-tell him next week.

The Route

Walked on the Route today, starting around 2:30pm. On uphill, rolled up shirt sleeves and pants to make vitamin D. Have done this my last 3 walks, including yesterday's LL hike. Not sure if rash on forearms is from sun or from pruning evergreens yesterday. Yard work that remains to be done is daunting. Will try to tackle some more this weekend.

At FR2998, followed portion of Jemez Mountain Trail Run (JMTR) route. Turned around where JMTR route cuts into old ski hill road going over to Townsight Lift. Must park at FR2998 one day and take JMTR route up to Camp May! Was a beautiful walk!

May very well get water-damaged closet restored. Have "restored" contact with original restoration company. They may start June 7.

Spouse says phone interview went well but he may be just as happy teaching in Los Alamos.

Tomorrow we hike with WRSC and BESC groups. DH will come along. Word is that she will take us up Scooter Peak. Hope her knees are up to it.

Pruning

Yesterday I hiked with LL group into White Rock Canyon to Ancho Rapids on the Rio Grande. At one point, a small boulder rolled off the side of the trail into my leg. I was able to hold it from smashing my foot - far better to have a bruised leg. On the hike up - not a trivial ascent - one hiker wore the backpack of another hiker because she couldn't have made it otherwise. I went for elevated heart rate training and waited on top for the group.

At home, I decided that it was imperative - right then - to do the pruning to prepare the house for repainting. Earlier in the week I had tried with no success to reach the people who had done it last. Now I have numerous piles of evergreen branches that need to be disposed of and I'm not done yet. Wow - what a job that was! I'm still sore and tired today. It wasn't just pruning - afterwards, the branches had to be cut up into smaller lengths - all this with a bow saw and lopper! I cut a huge section of the mugo pine that was draping over my neighbor's yard and then had to drag it over the fence and out of their yard. Lots of the lilacs are dead (a result of my past pruning efforts) but there is much new undergrowth which has the potential to bush out. The mugo pines and common junipers were growing up against the house but not any more! I'm also going to chop down our cholla. It's leggy and really doesn't go with the rest of the yard. It's a holdover from the prior owner's landscaping. The problem will be disposing of it without getting stickered.

I'm waiting this morning to fork over $3500 to a roofer and find out when we'll be on the schedule. That's only half the amount we owe. I hope by the next time we need a roof, I'm happily living in a condo with someone else watching out for the roof.

Spouse has a phone interview this afternoon with Western State University in Gunnison, CO.

I'm proceeding with the June plan to have the painter sand, caulk and paint the damaged board and batten siding at the driveway. I hope that will satisfy our homeowner's insurer. Only catch is that I'll have to ask him to specifically mention the work done to that area on a receipt.

Amazing

How could there be so much difference in my performance walking uphill between today and yesterday? So many variables that I don't know but don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I was faster and not starving at the 2 miles turnaround. I was even faster going downhill!

I got the idea for the Knife-edge snowshoe yesterday when I stepped off Camp May Road to pee in the bushes and found myself post holing in knee deep snow (maybe I hit a drift but still...) Seems to me that the burnt stuff littering the Knife-edge would be well buried.

Good news - the Valles Caldera National Preserve will have hiking shuttles this spring and summer that drop you off at a location (Alamo and North Rim) and you get to do freelance hikes in an 8 hour time window. I don't know how the shuttle pick up works but I suppose you're at a certain place at a certain time or spend the night!

Been a While

A lot of water under the bridge, um, er..., crawl space. Couple of plumbing leaks due to not realizing we had a main drain clog took some time.

Reading Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas (her father is Lewis Thomas, author of Lives of a Cell). Makes me think I shouldn't try so hard on this online journal. I wouldn't in a real pencil and paper journal and Abigail advises to let it all hang out in a journal (actually, she thinks that term too ponderous and prefers diary!) She says put in lists and whatever and don't worry about any of it. Her book is a sweet and simple read and she has no pretensions.

Somehow I've got myself in the predicament of writing a letter to the county councilors and Congress about changing the management at the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service. I'll bang out something tonight and let it settle overnight or maybe for a few days before I send it off in cyberspace.

Today I developed a dream of snowshoeing the Knife-edge by breaking trail a little every day. I've been horribly lazy about snowshoeing. I started with an initial flurry and then my right posterior tibial tendon started hurting and that made me back off and give it up entirely even though conditions are excellent this El Niño winter we're having. If I could make it up to Pajarito Mountain, it's possible that I could take off the snowshoes and walk down the snowpacked jeep roads.

OK, I'm going to hit Publish Post and not reread this and not change anything. (Oh, I couldn't resist rereading it but I didn't change anything!)

Busy Saturday - More Relaxing Sunday

Saturday: Listened to spouse's ear wrenching coughs (antibiotics are kicking in as the coughs are more modulated today), went to Smith's several times, stopped at library, did 3 loads of laundry (made aerobic by sprinting into laundry room 6 separate times to observe that drain standpipe didn't overflow!), filled big Tupperware bowl with washed and cut up veggies (if you wash and cut it, they will eat it, even veggies), made whole wheat pizza loaded with vegetables, black beans and canned salmon. I walked downtown in the evening.

Sunday: Went to Smith's and library. Walked 4 miles on sewer plant road. Saw two bicyclists "walking" their dog. The dog would have enjoyed checking me out but couldn't because it had to run fast to keep up with its owners. Across the Pueblo Canyon sewer effluent wetland, saw a dead ponderosa's top branches laden with birds. At times, the birds would plummet from the tree like autumn leaves.

Winter Walk Up Bayo Canyon

I went all the way up Bayo Canyon today, starting at the bottom of the Main Hill Road, walking 2 miles in on the sewer treatment plant dirt road and than 4 miles up snowy Bayo Canyon. It's a pretty canyon in the winter. The trunks of the tall ponderosas look so red against the white snow. The sky was a brilliant blue.

About 2 1/2 miles in from the Main Hill Road, the road I was following continued on but my passage was blocked by a locked gate and a fenced-in area. I obediently detoured around it on the Bayo Canyon Trail as a few other hikers had before me but the snow was deeper than on the road; so, I gave up and stepped over the top of the barbed wire fence to continue walking on the old road.

Bayo Canyon is fenced off here because there is an area of buried contaminants from radiolanthanum (RaLa) experiments during (?) and after WWII. It's been cleaned up several times in the past.

In my wisdom, I didn't wear my SnoSeal-ed hiking boots because I truly didn't believe I would go all the way up to the roundabout between North Mesa and Barranca Mesa. I was sure I would probably give up due to deep snow but it wasn't that deep on the road and there were footprints from other hikers that I could step in. My shoes and socks got wet but the day was warm and I kept moving. Other than two joggers and a dog that I saw when I started out, no one else was on the trail.

When I got up out of Bayo Canyon and onto the Bayo Bench Trail, it was well-trodden and even icy in spots. My two ski poles were invaluable!

The vampire movie Let Me In is being filmed in Los Alamos. They were supposed to be filming at the roundabout and pedestrian underpass this week (definitely not why I walked up Bayo Canyon!). I was afraid the filming would force me to detour around it but I didn't see any film personnel. However, as I walked into the pedestrian underpass, there was a cameraman at the other end shooting footage and I said "Oh, oh," because I was afraid I was messing up a movie scene but he said it was fine to walk through. I told him I had walked 6 miles and he seemed impressed!

I started walking around 11:45am and called spouse around 3pm so it didn't take that long. Obviously, snow conditions were decent for walking because I made fairly good time.

I called spouse to pick me up but he was busy at work so I walked to an Atomic City bus stop on Diamond Drive across from the golf course and waited. Two big buses passed me by but finally a tiny bus chock-full of middle school students picked me up. There were no seats and I guess I don't look frail enough to be offered one so I stood and braced myself during all the various stops and ingress and egress of passengers until we got to the transit center at the lab where I got off. I called spouse again and he was ready to leave to pick me and take my back to my car. I ate a snack while waiting for him.

I enjoyed today's adventure. Tomorrow, though, I will take a tame road walk.

Never-Ending Holiday Break

Spouse is sick so didn't make it into the first day of work after the involuntary, unpaid Christmas break that the lab enforces every year when it closes between Christmas and New Year. When he gets sick, he develops a thunderously loud cough. He doesn't have a fever - just some sniffles and the dreaded cough.

I did various chores today - library, dropping off records at the Medical Center, shredding receipts and statements from 1999. (It was a hard fought battle but I won the right to shred records every year from 10 years ago!)

The bank's shredder has a defective door. I had to push my foot against it to keep it running but other than that, it worked smoothly and it was easy to find someone to give me permission to use it. That's always the hardest part - finding someone in the basement to ask if I can use it. They would like me to just put it in their locked bins they send out for shredding but I had to promise spouse I'd do it myself as part of the negotiations leading up to the deal.

Two more comments about grandson: I complimented him on his taste in music. I overheard him telling spouse not to touch the CD except by the edges. Grandson really loves his first music CD! I was looking for a cassette tape I thought he might want to hear by Crash Test Dummies but couldn't find it anywhere. Not sure what happened to it.

Sundry comments on recent walks: When I walked on Camp May Road Christmas Day, someone screamed Merry Christmas at me as they drove by. This was a variation on the puerile trick car occupants indulge in of screaming at walkers to watch them jump out of their skin but at least I could appreciate the message. In contrast, walking on Trinity Drive last night, someone screamed at me as they drove by but the intent wasn't quite as nice.

When I walked downtown on the evening of New Year's Day, vehicular traffic was wondrously absent and the moon was wondrously big and bright. I appreciated the quiet and felt like I owned the world. Last night, even though it was a Sunday night around 8pm, there was the usual parade of cars going who knows where in Los Alamos on a Sunday night.

Today, after chores were finally done about 3:15pm, I walked the road to the sewer treatment plant. Right after passing the old sewer treatment plant, I took the right turn toward Bayo Canyon. The dirt road is snow-covered but people and dogs have walked on it. I only walked about .2 mile on it before turning around but would one day like to walk further to see how far I could up Bayo Canyon before it gets too snowy or icy. It would be far pleasanter to walk it this time of year than when the canyon is steaming hot.