Got a little sticky last night on the commute home:
Yearly photo of Apricot flowers covered in snow:
Safety glasses to keep the snow from sticking to your eyeballs
This is why I usually keep the studded tires on the bike until mid april. Alas, I took them off a few days ago. Fortunately the pugsley is incapable of being rendered useless in snow and will ride me to work this still snowing morning.
10 degrees and snowing lightly on the way into work. 6 degrees and blowing riding from meeting to meeting to lunch at noon. 3 degrees and snowing and blowing hard on the way home. I damn near evaporated, evidence:
update 2/2/11 Ok, it was -4F with shining sun this AM on the way in and -7 and dropping on the way home tonight. I think the -7F is the new Tarik record for cold bike riding. I am pretty sure I have done a couple of really sucky commutes as an undergrad in boston, but I don't think I ever rode that far below 0F. I am pretty sure I have gone for runs much colder than that. Regardless, last nights 3 degrees and snowing and blowing hurt much more than tonight's -7F. I think we are on the way to lower than -10. We will see. Good night for ashly pond riding. If I were not so damn lazy. Maybe tomorrow am.
May your year be filled with really freaking cold riding on ice and sketchy attempts at no hand riding portraits. Or whatever you want it to be. Your choice.
Ah, winter, she is here. A good day starting with snow encrusted riding, ending in really snow encrusted riding.
Got in a 14 miles of wintry goodness culminating in riding home with four inches on the trails sliding around on the big dummy.
In that vein, I announce my attempt to achieve epicness this holiday season. I am a sucker for a good logo so I am in it to try it and fall far short. Go me. Follow along with my meagre milage with the festive 500 tag.
Despite temps in the 50's this week. Monday's commute home was a reminder not to take the studded tires off until april.
That happened in the first two miles of my three mile commute home. There was a lot more coating the front of my jacket completely at mile two. Alas the last mile was unkind to snow coverage.
This is the best early season XC skiing we have had in my time here in los alamos. As always check out more Los Alamos nordic ski action at the southwest nordic ski club blog
On the way to work, late on monday morning, made even later by the appearance of a pretty sweet 5 speed Gitane mixte. Surprisingly light, true twin laterals, white pedals and grips on a baby blue frame. Should polish up OK if I can get the shifty bits working ok.
Had to take it home, adding 20 minutes or so to my already tardy commute, a good morning to be riding the BD. The week before, I had the good luck to score a curbfind red metal tricycle for Aida. Looks to be working fine but for one missing pedal. An easy fix with some wood. It is Curbside pickup week (month as they have not come yet) where all of los alamos cleans their garages and the city eventually picks up the stuff at the curb. I also scored some tomato cages. I resisted various nordic tracks and a few odd garden carts that looked to have somewhat interesting wheels. I am trying to focus my hoarding to bikes only. So far, pretty good.
You may have noticed Snow. That was the second snow ride of the winter on monday. We had the first freeze in town in Los Alamos on 9/23 this year with a pretty good snow up on top of the ski hill, but none in town, but then a nice warm october until last week there was this mess: and this week, well, this
I actually broke out the studded tired twenty last week. This week was a couple inches of rollable soft snow, compared to the icy snowy mess last week. Here is to a good winter.
In other hail news, we got the insurance settlement for the house and it is good. We have some contractors lined up and just hope to get the work done before winter. We shall see. No word if Zach got a new saddle covered under his insurance company.
The good news is that none of the bikes were hurt.
A couple weeks back I was taking the morning off work to hang out with my brother. As we were plotting a bike ride down town to get some lunch, we looked up over the mountains and noted extremely ominous clouds closing in. We thought better of the ride and just as I was explaining to my brother how hard it had hailed the day before, we heard a mighty pthunk as a large hailstone hit the roof. We went out on the porch and watched as really big hailstones fell every few seconds. sleepy brother holding initial hailstone
As the frequency and size of hailstones increased, I noticed a roar coming from the south, I thought it was wind, but I realized I was hearing the core of the hailstorm moving up the street toward the house. Crap. The storm got pretty intense, the videos here don't quite do it justice. initial stages
toward the end
It was sort of amusing until Elena came running to say that the skylights had all broken and there was hail and broken skylight all over the kitchen. The post storm tally was 5 broken skylights, decent water damage in the kitchen floors below the skylight, my brothers rental car was decimated (he had the insurance), both of the vw's had dents on the rear third, cracked tail lights and broken rear wipers ($3000 in damage according to the insurance company), dented gutters.
The roof seems OK, no leaking, but it looks worse for the wear. The insurance adjuster for the house came by, but we are waiting for the results. It could have been a lot worse. We already had a contractor out to asses the roof/skylights and will replace the skylights soon with tempered glass ones as well as possibly replacing the roof. We will also likely get the wood floor redone in the kitchen as it is raised and starting to warp.
The yard was carnage. The whole house smelled like sage because of the shredding that the giant sage plants took out front. The fruit trees were shorn of most fruit and alot of leaves.
Tomatoes, peppers and pumpkin plants were reduced to bare stalks, as were the roses and raspberries.
Pumpkin plant, this had big flowers the day before
I spent some nervous time up on the roof covering the skylights while followup thunderstorms blew in. Thanks to neighbors and friends we were able to get enough tarps and plywood to cover it quickly.
Storms recede
Pretty much every house and RV skylight in the neighborhood had damage, lots of roofs were completely totaled. Many cars were totaled out due to hail damage and many car windshields were broken completely, especially on cars that have low angle windows like prius and other hondas.
The variety of hailstones that fell were pretty interesting, initial morphology Golf balls with baseball size agglomerations
Again, the upshot was that it was way more exciting than it needed to be, but it could have been worse. I guess this is a pretty regular occurrence in places of the country where I have never lived, but hail at this level is pretty new to me. The roof still works and all the bikes are OK. more photos The end.
This year it occurred on March 26-27, 6+ inches of snow accompanied by an overnight low of 15 degrees or so. Last year we got 4 apricots, two years ago we had a billion. Lets see what we have this year. It seems like the blooms are a bit early this year, but we will see, I think, for future reference the first blooms started on 3/22.
Yeah, everyone has snow. We are no portland, but we have had two big storms in the last week, 18 inches last tuesday and then another 12 inches at the house this week.
The commute has been difficult:
The skiing has been sublime, at least on touring skis. The groomers have been overwhelmed for no skating yet:
We are on for another christmas day storm, so bike safe and enjoy the end of the year and the gradual lengthening of the days...
We got something like 18 inches of snow in town in the last 36 hours as well as a bonus day and a half off of work. It was snowing heavily all day today so we hung out at the home most of the day. In between bouts of shoveling and walking the baby to her two month checkup, I set up a little short track XC ski course around the house.
There was a tiny climb, a chicane, a descent that dumped you into a chainlink fence and a million turns. All I needed was three more competitors to make it more fun. I did about 20 laps on the touring skis. more pics of the course
Alas, after the skiing was done, shoveled off the driveway and thus ruined the course. We have a bunch more snow predicted this week, so maybe the course will return! Failing that, there should be groomed skate skiing this weekend up here, unless we get alot more snow. There is already too much for the grooming machines to handle, so if you live in los alamos, get yer back country skis and get up the mountain and pack the trails down a bit...
We have had some minor flooding problems in our basement the last year or so. We have a flat roof with gutters on all sides save the north. However, due to a cruel joke, it seems most of the water that lands on our roof drains on the north side of the house and then soaks up against the house and in special occasions makes it through to the basement. My solution to this problem has been to dig and redig trenches often in the middle of the night to keep the water draining away from the house into the back 40(th of an acre). Trenchy:
December 2007:
August 2008:
This has lost its thrill. When we bought the house the inspector suggested we put some gutters on the north side of the house to keep just this from happening. Everyone's reaction was, what? North side gutters? Are you crazy? they will just freeze up and not work!
With all due respect, everyone is an idiot. We finally put gutters in on friday. More specifically I hired someone to do it. I could have done it myself but I do shoddy work and I had no access to seamless gutters, The two runs of gutter were sixty and thirty feet. The gutter guys had the cool seamless gutter former and happily they were done in a day, did great work and showed up. If you live in rural NM you realize that the combination of "great work" and "showing up" are hard to come by in this state. If you are local and need some gutters ping me at my email I will get you their info.
The gutters might not work in the winter, but the biggest problem I had last winter was when it rained over an inch (twice) in the middle of winter and melted all the snow on the roof and it all drained onto the north side of the house. I figure the gutters will work just fine in this case and I will be able to pipe the water to the edge of the property pretty easily. If this fails I will get passive or active gutter heating tape.
With the gutters in, we had a big problem with where to put the water. Here is what the new gutter output looked like in the middle of a downpour:
The solution was that we decided to throw down and buy the 200 gallon monster bukkit:
It filled up in three hours Sunday night. Maybe half an inch of rain after the barrel was hooked up. It has been a great rainy august with well over 7" of rain at the house, hopefully the barrel will serve well.
The barrel has a built in overflow port that we piped out to the back of the property. It is great. It cost a fair bit, but if I never have to get up in the middle of the night to dig trenches again it was worth every penny. Additionally we can easily use this to water the fruit trees in the back of the property, once we get some more hoses.
It took a fair bit of work to get it in, I pulled up the grass,leveled the ground beneath and put in 9 pavers below it. All in the middle of a big storm. But with some good whomping with the flat-ground-whomper tool and some luck I got it pretty even and filling.
On sunday after the storm broke, I went back and put in a few more pavers and stones so I can walk out there and check on the barrel in the middle of the rainstorm without walking in the liquified soil in the area. Hopefully the soil will no longer turn into a clay-mud bog again, but we will see...
Now I feel like I can take advantage of the free water from the sky and put in a small apple tree to go with the peach and plum I put in earlier in the year with the moronic tax refund.
I have been working early since I got back from vacation trying to get some things done. It had been warm early in the week and I have been enjoying the cool early morning ride in. The weather got a bit chilly last night with some thunderstorms blowing in. I got up early this morning to the patter of rain on the window and distant thunder claps. I got ready to go, put on a rain jacket over shorts and a Tshirt and saddled up the befendered breeze and pedaled on into the cold drizzle. The really cold drizzle. About a half mile into my commute to work I noted the rain was blowing horizontally across my path. As I crossed the bridge over the canyon I noted the rain was falling slowly and was unusually white. As I sat at the interminable light to cross into work I had to admit that it was actually snowing. Dammit. As I pulled into work I the storm broke over the mountains for a bit revealing thin snow cover above 8500 feet. Dammit.
I am fully aware of and, in fact, embrace the vagaries of weather here in the mountains of New Mexico. You can break it down to two precipitation seasons, that which there could be snow and that where you should be careful not to get caught in a hailstorm. I would say October to April are firm snow months, and June through August are definite watch for hail months. May and September are transition periods. But June? June is when you start to get hailed on dammit, not snow. And it was definitely snowing this morning. So screw you June, thanks for nothing.
Just as a year ago, the apricot tree is in full bloom and it snowed a fair bit last weekend. I missed a couple of inches while traveling, but caught this on 4-10-2008:
No appreciable affect on yield last year, so I am hoping for the same...
There was dodging of tumbleweeds, some of them car sized
It was windy click for big video of blasting wind
Tarik, Chad, Ryan, Patrick, Jamie, Tumbleweeds
Goatheads were present and Patrick DOES get flats
It was dusty, Ryan won the dirt mask competition
It was a good ride. Don and his shiny new legolas turned around early on as the "flat easy ride" we had planned was a struggle against the gale wind and dust for the first 15 miles. Sorry Don, maybe next time the ride will be as planned, I hope. Spring in NM is really really windy. The 15 miles back was really fast and fun though. A good time was had by most. I am now exfoliated and my teeth are grit blasted. Good times. The rest of the pictures are here
Just got back from an xc ski race weekend in colorado. It snowed, going there, coming back, while we were there and back at home. Pics and race report soon. In the meantime, enjoy these delicious snacks found in the snow:
Neatly severed grackle head in the back yard. click for big
deer hoof up on the trails in los alamos click for big
Carnivores abound in the snow. I am not sure who would remove a grackle head so neatly, so I suspect hawk or fox or stray cat and then dragged around by kitties to the yard. Probably Mountain lion or natural death for the deer hoof and then scattered about by coyote, fox or bobcat.
Ah, and the helpful plows just plowed in my driveway, so off I go to shovel...
Got up, cleaned an inch of snow/slush off the driveway, rode three miles into work on the MTB in thickening snow. Watched the snow build up as I did work things for a few hours, caught a ride with some co-workers in the work van to a meeting 1 mile closer to home, attended meeting until noon, ran home from meeting (2 miles, 20 minutes), cleared 7 new inches of snow off the driveway. Coworkers apparently stuck in traffic and road closures for 1 hour.
Elena made it home somehow: click for big
Thats a quarter inch of hat snow in 30 minutes. Pretty good. click for big
