Attending Synagogue....

Friday evening I went to a Jewish Synagogue for the first time. It was to celebrate my friend Greg's conversion to Judaism, the religion of his wife Julia.

I remember when he announced his intention to "convert" to Judaism a couple of years ago how surprised I was that it was so much work. You don't just show up at synagogue and you are in, you have to work for it. It is a long period of study, essay writing, interviews, and of course the dreaded cicumcision. There's even a ritual drawing of blood for the already circumcised - so even they don't get away that easy. All in all, a very significant effort, enough to put anyone off.

Anyway, Friday night, was the culmination of Greg's labours and his acceptance into the Jewish community and it was my first time attending a Jewish ceremony. Thankfully there were a few other gentiles there so I didn't feel too much of an outsider. And really they were all quite welcoming even though I had no idea what was going on. The ceremony was, I believe, a normal Friday night Shabat, and was quite informal really (it was a reform jewish community), lots of singing, lots of clapping of hands, standing up, sitting down, and then these cute little half bows - half curtsies at certain points of the ceremony. However the majority of the service was conducted in Hebrew, and so was meaningless to me.

It's easy for an atheist like me to get all cynical about this stuff, but I did like the really strong sense of community and family among the congregation and I did like and was pleasantly surprised by the informality of it all. So, all in all, it was very interesting to observe. I don't think I will be signing up for the conversion myself but I have respect for Greg and what he undertook.

The oldest living things....

The White Mountain area, where we hiked and camped this last weekend, is also the home of the oldest living organisms on the planet – the Bristlecone Pines. These gnarly old trees grow just below the tree line where they don’t have much competition from other species and where, over their 3,000, 4,000 year plus lives, they have developed some very interesting shapes.


The oldest one, known as Methuselah, is around 4,800 years old. It used to be identified as the oldest tree but now the Forest Service have removed all identification since people were apt to want to take home a bit of Methuselah as a trophy.

After our ordeal on White Mountain on Saturday, we hiked around the forest on Sunday. A nice gentle stroll to stretch out our tired legs. At the end of the hike, that Park Ranger showed us a National Geographic Magazine from the 1950's with a picture of the oldest tree, Methuselah. It might be the one shown here with my friend Dave preparing to carve his name in it.



More photos here.

The White Mountains

This past weekend I took a couple of days off and had a long weekend hiking and camping down in the White Mountains on the Eastern edge of California, near to the town of Bishop. I rode the motorbike - the first ride of any distance this year. It was good to blow the cobwebs off the bike and off me.

The Easter Sierras are my favorite part of California, particularly down by Bishop where the Sierras get really high and really impressive. This is where Mt. Whitney is, at 14505 ft, the highest point in the lower 48, and a group of peaks called the Palisades that look so beautifully rugged and dramatic.

We camped on the eastern side of the valley at around 8,000 ft. and we had beautiful views across the valley to the Sierras. It was also a full moon so it was just perfect. Admittedly the photo below of White Mountain itself is not very inspiring - it isn't a pretty mountain - but trust me the views in the other direction were awesome - I just don't have any good photos.

On the Saturday we climbed White Mountain - at 14252 feet - quite a high altitude slog for us lowlanders. I must admit, I was not feeling very comfortable at all when I got to the top, and although our summit photograph shows us all smiling, I think it doesn't quite reflect our actual condition. I had quite the headache from the altitude and the thought of the 7 or 8 miles back to the trailhead did not make me feel any better at all.


White Mountain is the third highest peak in California, and it is known as the easiest of the Fourteeners (peaks over 14,000 ft). I think when I heard it was the easiest fourteener, I somehow translated that to it being easy. Well it was nothing of the sort and we all were pretty exhausted at the end of the day. There was not much light conversation going on on the way down, just a lot of gritting of teeth and putting one foot in front of the other. Why do we do this?

Of course later that night at the campsite, with food and wine inside us, we were all a bit more positive about the whole affair. Strange how you forget the bad bits and only remember the good bits. While I am not ready to tackle something like that for a while, give me a couple of months and I will be ready to do it all over again.

More photos here.

Balloon Ride

I took a ride in a balloon this past weekend - a commercial trip down in the Sonoma Valley. It was quite a nice experience - nothing wild or scary, just a very calm and peaceful ascent, a float along with the wind for a few miles and an equally calm and peaceful descent.

I am not at my most comfortable when exposed to great heights and it was kind of weird being in a basket so far above the ground (I think we went up to around 1500ft). I do recall thinking I should have checked out the floor of the basket more carefully before take off, because that is all there is between you and a very nasty surprise. But I suppose that doesn't happen very often and the real risk is power lines or high winds and the like, not basket floor failures.


The only controls you have in a balloon are up (more heat) and down (allowing the balloon to cool, or in more extreme cases, opening a flap on the top of the balloon) and rotation (by opening flaps on the side of the balloon). Of course there is a lot of lag built into all these controls so it is a case of making small adjustments, and waiting to see the result before making the next adjustment. The pilot of the balloon (yes, that's what they call them) likened the process to 3-dimensional sailing. You are always looking for subtle changes in wind at different heights in order to guide you where you want to go.


All in all it was a lot of fun. It was great to help out in the rigging up of the balloon and the repackaging when we were done. It is actually quite a lot of work - almost an hour to rig up and an hour to rig down, and the flight was only about 1 1/2 hours. So that's a lot of work for a relatively short trip, and with a support vehicle following you along on the ground you need a lot of help to make it all work. Anyway, I highly recommend it, at least once anyway.

12 Hours at Cool

For want of a better thing to do on a Saturday night, I ran in something called the "12 Hours at Cool" this weekend. It is a 12 hour race in Cool California that starts at 7:00 pm Saturday and finishes at 7:00 am on Sunday with the idea being that you run as many laps as you can of the 9.5 mile Olmstead Loop Trail - in the dark.


I had been sort of interested in running the trails at night just to see what it is like. Normally you don't get to do that unless you are in some extreme 100 mile race and I know I am not that crazy so this seemed to be a good idea.

The race was pretty small - less than a 100 folks - so there was plenty of solitude - for my last 2 (of 3) laps I was entirely by myself so there was plenty of time to ponder the weirdness and the wonder of it all. It was a dark and moonless night and I found you really had to pay attention to where you are going. You couldn't relax and appreciate the stars or the silhouttes of the trees, you had to keep focused on that little patch of light from your headlamp or else you were in trouble. And then there was every little rustle in the undergrowth that was probably only a field mouse or something but you couldn't prevent your mind straying to mountain lions and whether they were out hunting that night. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a couple of dear bounded across the trail in front of me.

Anyway, I did manage 3 laps, albeit with a long nap in the back of my car between laps 2 and 3, so that was almost 29 miles. Not bad for someone who hasn't run more than 5 miles in the last couple of months.

Just to put it my measly performance in perspective - the winner did 8 laps - that's 76 miles - pretty amazing.

A Drive By Doughnutting

So I was out this morning for an early morning run with my friends Dianne and Cyndy. We were over in rural West Sacramento a place where we hardly ever see any traffic at that time of morning (06:00 am).

This morning, however, a car came by us and the back seat window rolls down and this young kid threw this doughnut at me. I took it full on the chest and was, I must admit, a little surprised. It's not every day someone throws food at you when you are running through the fields. I was so flabbergasted, I turned and angrily gesticulated, but as, I expect, with all expat Brits - I was confused as to whether I should give the two fingered British gesture or the single fingered American gesture and I ended up giving a half-hearted wave as the car sped away.

I am glad to say no harm was done - it was one of those maple sugar rolls with considerable heft to it, but a bit spongy so I wasn't harmed - thank goodness it wasn't a currant scone or a bagel - that could have been nasty.

Lyon's Lake with the best of intentions

Some weeks ago we planned what was going to be a fairly significant back-packing trip into the Desolation Wilderness up by Lake Tahoe. The initial plans were to camp two nights at Lyon's Lake and do some hiking to the nearby peaks. One of the purposes of the trip was to scatter the ashes of our friend Mike on top of Mt. Price, a mountain we had climbed with him just last summer.

We got the required permits and everything was looking good, but as we got closer to the time our resolve got weaker. We dropped back to a single overnight trip, and then our departure time from Sacramento slipped back through the day and we didn't get on the trail until 3:00 pm, a little late by any standards. We did however get to Lyon's Lake which is just a beautiful little mountain lake nestling below the granite peaks of Desolation Wilderness with just a hard enough climb up to it to deter many of the casual hikers.

We arrived in camp about 7:00 pm with just enough time to pitch the tents and cook a meal before it got dark. It was quite the tribute to Mike, since we all had inherited pieces of his camping gear - I had one of his tents, Paul had another tent, Brian had his backpack. Alas the one thing we didn't have was Mike - we had forgotten his ashes and they were back in Sacramento.



Still Lyon's Lake is really an idyllic camping spot so it was all well worthwhile. Unfortunately, however, while we went to sleep under a clear sky full of stars, at about 3:00 am smoke started drifting into the area and when the sun came up everything was hazy. Not the pristine clear wilderness experience we wanted and our throats and lungs knew that something wasn't quite right. So it didn't take much discussion for us to bail on our plans of hiking to Mt. Price and retreat back down the valley to the car and the road back to Sacramento.

The epic weekend of activity was a mere 6 miles hike in, a night's sleep (if that's what you can call it when you toss and turn every 30 mins wondering why you are doing this), and a 6 mile retreat in time for lunch in Placerville on the way home. I am sure we will do better next time.

How to tell when the air is really bad in Sacramento...

As you may or may not know, California has been suffering from glut of forest fires over the last few weeks. The end result for us here in Sacramento is that the air quality is quite bad and we are constantly being warned to stay indoors and avoid any form of exercise outside.

That's all well and good - it's good to take precautions, but this afternoon I noticed the following sign outside the local Episcopalean Church.

I suppose it's good that the Episcopaleans are flexible enough to modify their worship, but isn't it strange that they have to advertise it on a billboard outside the church - like that might swell the congregation on Sunday now their's no nasty incense around.

Checking on the bees

In the continuing saga of the bees - all is going well this year. As I previously mentioned, I now have three hives, way more than I need, and unlike the previous couple of years, they seem to be thriving.

So this week it was time to check on them and see about putting another box on top of the new hives. The way it works is that you need a couple of boxes for the hive to raise their brood in and to maintain adequate food supplies to last them through the winter and then you can add a third of fourth box (honey supers as they are called) which the bees fill with honey that is what you harves at the end of the nectar flow (around September in these parts).

So I suited up and opened up the hives to investigate. All was indeed well, and the boxes were almost full - so it was just the time to add the honey supers.

What is more, I now have a new toy - a Flip Mino - which is a small, cheap and ultra simple video recorder, so I was able to record my escapades for posterity (see below). I am quite impressed with the Flip Video camera - nothing of any high quality but very very simple indeed and ideal for internet posts. I thought it would be a good camera to run with and document some of our runs - we will see how that works.

A short absence...

Well I have been quiet for a while – half of May, all of June and now we are into July. Mainly I have been taking care of Mum during her 6 week visit and then since then I have been sick with some terrible thing I picked up on the return flight to the U.S.

Mum’s visit went well and we had a good time together. The only hitch was a small tumble she had just before her return (and at 89 years of age there are no small tumbles). She slipped and fell at the house and bruised, but thankfully did not break, her ribs. She was in a lot of pain, and she is still not quite better but she managed to handle the flight home ok and now she is back in her normal routine at home in Derbyshire.

There are some photos of mum’s visit here on my Smugmug page.