My commute home on September 18th, or "All You Need to Know about Biking in Berkeley."

I bike to work and I bike home again every day.  I've been doing so for my 3 years in Berkeley so far.  It's a relatively fast, almost free method of commuting that even provides some exercise!

However, there are some not-so-nice things about biking here:  mainly the other bikers.  But I won't rant.  Instead, I'd tell the story of my commute home a few days ago, September 18th, and you can provide your own analysis (if you're into that sort of thing).

I begin every commute home with some downhill and take back roads to avoid traffic, which is a problem of its own, but today we're focused on non-cars.  After a couple miles I nominally take a bike trail, which is great when half of it isn't under construction.  But the worst part is they don't work on contiguous blocks...they randomly choose non-adjacent stretches to close.  One by one they fall, but none re-open...

Most bikers these days just avoid the mess of construction fences by taking the road (a "bicycle boulevard,"whatever that means) next to the bike trail.

And that brings us to the good part.

I approach a stoplight.  It's red, and there are a total of five bikes (including me).  I'm not European, so five bikes at one stoplight is a lot!  

The light turns green, and we're off.  Pretty soon it's evident that biker #1 (we'll call him "Lance Failstrong") doesn't appreciate the pace of the two bikers in front of him, so he weaves into the pedestrian lane (a fenced-off section of the roadside).  

But alas, he is soon caught by the even-slower biker #4 (let's call him "Justin Timefordinner").  But it's ok, he knows what to do.  At the next break in the fence, he weaves back into the bike lane, unfortunately taking the #3 position he'd previously occupied.  Unsatisfied, after the next car passes, he weaves into the traffic lane, pedaling furiously on his road bike and biker shoes.  

The effort pays off, when he shows up bikers #2 and #3 ("Classic Mike" and "Classic Bob") to take the prized first position.

The victory is short-lived.  A mere hundred feet ahead, a red light looms.  Forced to stop by the perpendicular stream of traffic, he is joined a few seconds later by Justin, still in the pedestrian lane.

After a short wait, we're off again.  Now Lance sees something he doesn't like: parked cars straight ahead!  By now he's got it, though.  A quick weave brings him onto the bike trail, which is actually open on this block.  Disaster soon strikes as a previously unknown biker #6 blocks the way!  Another quick weave into the pedestrian lane brings him swooping by a pedestrian, who seems temporarily flustered by the orange racer that has just passed in front of her face.

Meanwhile, 30 feet behind, Mike, Bob, and I are continuing our bland straight-line trek down the road.

A stop sign looms ahead.

Although the car next to us comes to an approximate stop, such things are troublesome for bikers.  Mike and Bob continue without missing a beat.  

Unfortunately, they had failed to notice the pedestrian simultaneously entering the intersection.  Like all bay area pedestrians, he doesn't trouble himself with things like "looking both ways" or "waiting for large metal objects traveling at high speed to pass before walking onto the street."  He does seem a bit bothered that two such objects are on an immediate collision course, so he does grudgingly halt to let them pass while "thanking" them for the "nice stop."  

Unphased, they continue the trek.

I eventually made it home to my lovely wife and adorable son.

So if you're still reading, you're either supposed to be working on something else or you found my story entertaining.  This particular commute stuck out to me as a story because it represents well the challenges of practical Berkeley life.  The city is known for "branching out" and "breaking norms," to put it mildly, which is sometimes ok.  But different isn't always better!  Sometimes "norms" are in place for a reason, and "branching out" of current traffic laws isn't a great way to experiment.
This is an area I struggle with because I, like everyone else, am tantalized by the thought of going whichever way I want and putting aside the thought of what others are doing and what is right.  This is where the issue of authority comes in:

Romans13:1 Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.

This story was about rebellion against traffic laws and common road courtesy.  But the bigger issue is that all of us sinners are in rebellion against God as long as we live in sin and refuse to acknowledge Him.  There are consequences for rebellion that play out in every part of life (even on the road home), so let us consider wisely where we place our trust!

for the love of hangers...

That's right.  I have an odd obsession for plastic hangers.  Not the cheap ones that will sometimes come free when you buy clothing, but the nice solid ones that have a potential for all matching and making a closet look super coordinated.  However, these hangers usually cost money.  Therefore, for the time being, I had resigned myself to have a closet full of mismatched wire hangers with a few nice plastic ones thrown in.  However, this all changed the other day...

One unique characteristic of Berkeley is that there's always free stuff on the side walks*, most of the time it's junk, but sometimes, you can find something that you want/need, and you just have to pick it up and take it home.  Earlier this week we were running and came across a pile of stuff-- which included two grocery bags full of plastic hangers! (AND, the icing on the cake was that most of them were black.)  I quickly decided they would be worth carrying home, and picked out the ones I wanted while Quinn patiently jogged in place.  Quinn carried the bag of said hangers, and we were off again.  But then it happened, the bag with all the oodles of hangers broke and the hangers spilled all over the side walk.  So now, without a bag, between the two of us we had four fist-fulls of hangers.  It turns out running with hangers gives your arms quite a work out too.  We must have looked odd before running with a paper bag, but now I'm sure we looked even funnier. 

a sink full of hangers

After bringing them home and cleaning and disinfecting them, I replaced all of our old wire hangers.  ahhh.  It's so satisfying to have matching hangers-- our "closet" looks much more organized now.  Oh what I will do for hangers, and what Quinn will do for me. :)


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*as an interesting side note, becuase of this practice of putting free items on the street, people will sometimes be too quick to take items that weren't intended for the taking.  Once, there was a dinning room table on the street, and then it disappeared.  Then we saw a sign that said "please return the table that was here", and then a few days later a large dinning room table re-appeared.  At least the people who took it were considerate!

The adventure of...... School.

I'm usually not too sentimental about keeping objects that represent an era or event in my life, however this adventure of life, which is often called "school", will certainly merit an exception to that rule in my mind.

Starting on Monday, both of us will be taking classes again, which makes the "school-ness" of this stage of life a little more poignant. It's certainly not all bad, but oh, I look forward to the day when we're both finished. Speaking of which... Lord willing I will be mostly done the first week of October, and then truly and finally finished with this degree in December. Quinn will also be done with classes this December! (although he'll still have a while more to finish his degree)

As we finish each degree, I fully intend to put our diplomas in nice frames and display them on our office wall (that is, if we ever have a home office). Not because the piece of paper with signatures on it will be amazing, after all, it's only a piece of paper, but because it will be a very tangible symbol of the Lord's great faithfulness and lovingkindness to us throughout the adventures of school. Yes, school has been and will be challenging, but we have always and will always have what we need when we need it. We have a wonderful Father who knows how to give good gifts (Matthew 7:11), and we have no need to worry, because our Heavenly Father even feeds the birds (Matthew 6:26)!

But, I also look forward to the day when it will be another great testament to God's faithfulness and goodness when this adventure of school is behind us, and our diplomas are in front of us.

... and now back to that paper I've been avoiding.

What are the greatest testaments to God's faithfulness in your life?

Backpacking food

I was a little intimidated by the thought of packing nutritious, calorie rich, yet light weight food for 3 days, knowing that if I didn't pack enough, we would be hungry (not good), but if I over-packed, then we would carry unnecessary weight with us (also not good).  Some people go crazy and calculate the caloric density of each food that they bring on a trip, know exactly how many calories they want for each day, and then optimize what foods to bring so they carry the least amount of food weight as possible.  At first, I thought about doing that, but then realized I neither had the time nor the resources to make it worth figuring out.  So we took educated guesses, and it turned out quite well.

Our meal plan looked something like this:

Tuesday

Breakfast: B&B                       

Lunch: Thai food in Pacific Grove

Dinner: garlic mashed potatoes and dried chicken

Wednesday

Breakfast: oatmeal with dried milk and dried fruit                       

Lunch: salami, cheese, and crackers

Dinner: Mountain House Freeze dried meal: beef Stroganoff

Thursday

Breakfast: pancakes                       

Lunch: tuna, cheddar, and pita

Dinner: Alpine Pasta

Friday

Breakfast: oatmeal with dried milk and dried fruit                       

Lunch: peanut butter and honey pita sandwiches

Dinner: home! Cheeseboard pizza

After planning the meals we'd eat, it was fun to package and prepare the food.  I dried some chicken in our toaster oven for Tuesday's dinner, and that turned out quite well! All other ingredients were purchased and then assembled into meals.  Since we left early, we shopped in Pacific Grove and then assembled everything in the parking lot next to our car.  I rationed everything and packaged each meal together.  Each meal was individually packaged into a quart size zip top bag along with 2 paper towels that were assigned to that meal for us to use and then to be used to clean up that meal.  For example, 1 cup of oatmeal, and 1/4 cup dried milk went in a sandwich size bag for breakfast.  I should have added brown sugar and cinnamon for flavor, but I forgot. We survived despite the tasteless oatmeal though.  All of the dinners were then put in one gallon bag, the lunches in another bag, and the breakfasts  in another.  It almost all fit in 3 gallon size bags!

Our favorite meal, which we'll certainly be making again, was the Alpine Pasta.  I found this recipe on Wild Backpacker when poking around the web for meal inspiration. We modified it a bit, and here it is for your enjoyment.  It could also be easily adapted to make an easy week-night meal.

Alpine Pasta (serves 2 hungry campers)

• 1 Pasta-Roni Butter and Herb Italiano Package (the benefit of using this instead of normal pasta is that this pasta cooks faster, and therefore saves fuel.  You also don't have to discard the water which would be a plus in bear country)
• 1/4 cup dried milk
• 4 ounces pepper-coated salami
• 2 ounces chopped sun-dried tomatoes (the dried kind, not the kind soaked in olive oil)
• 5 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated or finely sliced at home

At home: Put tomatoes into a zip lock plastic bag, prepare cheese, place in different bag. Remove Pasta-Roni from box and place in ziptop bag along with the dried milk.  Write cooking directions on paper towel or bag containing pasta.

On the trail:  Cook pasta according to package instructions. While pasta simmers, chop salami.  After pasta cooks for 5 minutes, add all ingredients and stir until noodles are done.  Enjoy!

Do you have any delicious but super easy meals?  Any memories of yummy (or not so yummy) camping food growing up?

Backpacking! (part 2): The backpacking part of the backpacking trip

When we were looking for places to go backpacking after "plan A" fell through, we picked up Backpacking California from REI, and it proved quite useful.  We've found that when you're unfamiliar with the area, having a book of planed hiking trips is invaluable.  (btw, We've found most of our shorter hikes from 101 Hikes in Northern California).  The trips are arranged by geographical area in these books, so we locate the area we want to visit, read the descriptions of the trips, and then select one!  Since we were staying in Pacific Grove and we wanted something close by, that put us in the Big Sur area.

Hike 15 from Backpacking California, "Black Cone Trail" in the Ventana Wilderness was selected as it met most of our criteria, and the the solitude level was "solitude".  We car camped at China Camp on Tuesday, which proved to be a good call since it rained must of that evening and night so we were able to keep some of our gear in the car so we didn't start the trip of with wet supplies. 

Wednesday morning after eating breakfast and packing our backpacks with all the supplies and food we'd need for the next few days, we headed out on the trail.  We took it pretty easy, and covered about 18 miles in 3 days (we didn't finish the entire "hike 15" which was 30 miles, but it was better that way).  Even though we didn't push ourselves super hard, I still thought it was pretty challenging!  There were certainly times when we looked at each other and wondered why we thought this was fun.  However, at the end of the trip we were super dirty, but we had a good time and will likely go backpacking again sometime in the future (next year?).

Although we had a positive first (for me) backpacking trip, we probably won't go back to Ventana Wilderness.  Overall, the trail is fairly bushy with very few trees, which is due in part to the many forest fires in this area over the last several decades.  It was neat to explore a new and different part of California, but next time, I think we'll try to head into the mountains.

Backpacking! (part 1)

As I had mentioned "our big backpacking trip" a while back, I thought it would be appropriate to follow up and share some about that trip.

Like so often happens in life, this trip morphed about a million times.  Originally, we were planning on hiking across Sequoia National Forest with our friends from New Mexico, Stuart and Laura, aka Staura.  It was actually their trip, and they had invited us to go with them.  This was plan A, and honestly I was a little trepidatious about the ambitiousness of the trip--it was going to be something along the lines of 50 miles in 4 days. yikes.  I had been training for it though!  However, as I had mentioned last time, there was too much SNOW in the Sierra Nevada's to make many forays into them, and this included plan A.  We neither had the inclination, the expertise, nor the equipment to go snow backpacking for a week.  So we tried plan B, go back to the Trinity Alps near Mt. Shasta with Staura.  Rational: it has a lower altitude than Sequoia, and it's been a month since we were there last so surely the snow line must be lower.  However, creek crossings were going to be troublesome, if not impossible, but we thought we'd give it a try, rent snow shoes, and car camp with day hikes if absolutely necessary.  But neither plan A nor plan B worked because of the Las Conches fire near Los Alamos, which caused our friends to remain in New Mexico.  Cue plan C: carry out plan B, but leave out Staura.

As it turns out, we ended up at plan D.  Staura had a B&B reservation in Pacific Grove (near Monterey) for Monday night that was non-cancelable, but it was transferable. If we wanted it, it was all ours.  We found out about this Monday morning, and in the end we decided, why not?  It made for a super hectic Monday as we completely remade our plans to leave 18 hours sooner than expected, and changed the location of our backpacking trip to the Ventana wilderness to be closer to the B&B to eliminate some driving.  Once we made it to the B&B, The Inn and 213 Seventeen Mile Drive, everything settled down wonderfully and the adventures of another trip for Quacky and Quirky were just beginning.
 

A year in review

A year of married life has come and gone, and year two started off with a bang.  Excuse me for postdating this, but I would like to rewind and reflect on our one year mark, even if for no one other than myself.

Mount Shasta Bed and Breakfast

We made it on a wonderful little trip to Mt. Shasta to celebrate our anniversary, which I kept mistakenly calling "our second honeymoon".  I guess that works though-- anniversary trips should be like honeymoons, right?   We decided to be adventuresome and try staying at a B&B.  After scouring Yelp and TripAdvisor, we settled on Mount Shasta Bed and Breakfast, which was simply a delightful experience.

It was lovely having time to spend with each other without many of the distractions of everyday life and musing over what occurred in the last year and what might occur in the coming year(s).  I even discovered the delights of large, fluffy bathrobes for the first time.  I wonder why I hated the thought of them so much as a child... they seem so soft, cozy, and comforting to curl up in after a long day.


One thing we were not entirely prepared for was the amount of snow in the area.  Apparently, the west coast mountain ranges received much more snow than usual this last winter (spoiler alert-- another post to come, Plans vs. Snow).  But David, the host of the B&B, was most hospitable and lent us coats and gloves,  and then even snowshoes the day after we mentioned that there was too much snow to hike in some locations.  We were so incredibly blessed!

A few highlights from the trip in pictures...

Castle Crags
  our new favorite hike.  We hiked up into the crags.

Castle Lake
it's covered in snow, so you can't really see it, but it's below me.  If it were a clear day, we could have seen Mt. Shasta from here. We both fell in love with snowshoeing, and hope to do it again someday!

Sundial Bridge
we spent a day in Redding and Checked out the Turtle Bay Exploration Park and Sundial Bridge, which was neat, but not quite as impressive as I had imagined it.

Lorikeets!
at Turtle Bay.  I think this was one of Quinn's favorite parts about our day in Redding :)

Squawk!