My Mountain Trail

Winter Rains

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Last weather-year was a semi-dry year for us. It wasn’t so bad in Marin County that we needed a formal rationing program, but people were encouraged to conserve. I’m all for that, even if it isn’t a dry year. You just never know how things are going to go. A ‘normal’ year can quickly become ‘the good ol’ days’ if you don’t conserve. Sometimes even if you do conserve — just look at central Australia right now.

This year is starting out much better for us. We have had two big storms so far, and are going through a small one the end of this week. The big storms dumped about 8″ of rain up here on the mountain. Those types of storms don’t water things very efficiently, but they do fill the reservoirs up here. That makes it possible for us to water efficiently enough. And take showers (very important), make coffee (also very important), etc.

I was able to take today off, and it is raining. I’m not complaining as you can see. I was going to do some computer stuff, but decided instead to do a little self-portrait project. I hadn’t put much effort in a SP in a while, so I figured it was time to document the aging process again. So, there you go, a couple of SPs in celebration of the rain.

Now it’s time to tidy up for the weekend. The weather is supposed to clear, and I’ve been warned that I will be spending some time on Eddy this weekend. A lot of time (at least for me these days). Ah yes, Ironman training is cranking up…

Autumn

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The last few days on Mt. Tam have seemed a lot like Autumn, and even a bit like Winter. On Monday we had a “gully warsher” as my OKFree friends might say. Oh, okay, I might say it too. Anyway, we had about 3″ of rain in no time flat, and all the trails turned into rushing streams — not to mention the small pond in the basement. Then things cleared up some and we had the crystal clear atmosphere that you only get after a good storm.

Even better (at least around here) is when you get a good storm and there is residual cloud and fog cover. This picture of San Francisco shows some of that going on as I ran on Mt. Tamalpais on Friday. It was beautiful, which is normal but always enjoyable. This picture was taken last Friday after the big storm (5″) on Wednesday.

This next picture was taken along Rock Springs trail, just below the Mountain Theater. The red leaves are on poison oak, which just flames all over the place this time of year. If someone didn’t know what poison oak looks like, all they have to do is come visit the mountain in late October and look for red leaves. THAT is what a poison oak leaf looks like.

Next up is some more fog as the sun set on Monday evening. It was glorious indeed.

Now I am in Pennsylvania, and it is Autumn here too. And the weather is warm. I doubt that will last much longer. Here is a picture of a playground and trees from across the street from the company I am working with.

A New Blog Launch

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

We are in the process of rebuilding our work website in WordPress.  The goal is to modernize our look while keeping the same information.  Of course, we also want it to be easily manageable, so that is why we are using WordPress.

Worpress uses themes to create the look and feel of the site.  We will use a canned theme to start, and then customize it a little to set it up the way we want it.  In the interest of understanding how things work, I have downloaded some themes and I am setting up my blog and website using WordPress. 

It’s been slow going, but I am making progress.  Expect to see this site changing it’s look for a while until I get it dialed in…