To England and back...

My mother has been deliberating as to whether she should come out to California for a holiday for some time now. After finding a lot of excuses why not to do it, she finally decided a couple of weeks ago to give it a try. So, at the grand old age of 89, she has made another trip to California.

Since she needed assistance in traveling that far (and who wouldn't at 89) I flew back to the UK to pick her up. In trying to find the most painless way of doing this I decided that flying in and out without spending much time there would be the easiest. That way I wouldn't suffer the disruption of the time change and be jet lagged too much. For the most part that was true, though it was a lot of sitting in airplane seats - and, of course, all of them were in coach class.

So I left San Francisco on Wednesday night, arrived in London on Thursday afternoon, my step-brother brought mum down to Heathrow and we then flew back to San Francisco on Friday morning. We arrived back home in Sacramento on Friday afternoon - all told a 48 hour round trip for me. It wasn't too bad at all, though I don't think I will make a habit of it. Of course, my mum took it all in her stride and didn't have any problems at all. Here we are waiting in Heathrow for our flight...


I flew out to the UK on United and I flew back on Virgin Atlantic. That coupled with my earlier trip in the year on British Airways means I have sampled all the carriers serving that direct San Francisco to London route recently (sorry about my rather large carbon footprint). In these troubled times for the airlines, it was interesting to see how they are coping and what services they are trimming to save money. The best flight, by far, was Virgin. They seem to have maintained a reasonable level of service with an OK meal, a continuous series of snacks and drinks (at no extra charge), and a very good entertainment system. Poor old United on the other hand were by far the worst - an atrociously basic meal, an extra charge for wine and beer, a miserable entertainment system, and no extras (like a glass of water) between dinner and breakfast. The saddest thing was the puny ear-bud style headphones that United give you now, which rendered the entertainment system just about unintelligible so close to the engines as I was.

Bee Progress

We have gone from famine to feast on the bee front lately. As I already mentioned, I inherited a swarm of bees in one of my empty hives. Furthermore, I had already purchased two packages of bees (a package is a queen plus 2 lbs of bees in a box – all ready for installation in a hive). Well, the packages were delivered last weekend and I installed them in two more hives. So now I have 3 hives of bees in the backyard – that’s a lot of activity, and it might even be illegal (I think you are only allowed 2 hives in the city of Sacramento – but who’s counting).

With all the nice weather this last week and plenty of flowers in the local gardens all is well with the bees and it was a veritable hive of activity in the backyard. They are all surprisingly mild mannered too. So far no aggressive behavior and no stings.


To cap the week off, I went to a bee keeping class last weekend. Dr Eric Mussen from U.C. Davis gave a one day class on Intermediate Beekeeping on Saturday. It was quite the information packed day, he covered a lot of ground and I certainly learned a lot. I only wish I liked honey more - that would make it the perfect hobby.

American River 50 mile Run

This last weekend was the American River 50 mile run and again I didn't run it, at least not all the way, I just paced my friend Dianne over the last 10 miles. I ran the race back in 2006 but I am not sure I have it in me to do it again. These days 10 miles is really enjoyable for me but I must admit I was really inspired by all those runners making it all the way through the entire 50 miles.

What a beautiful day it was on Saturday though - California at its finest - a nice sunny day with a cool breeze. The California poppies and lupins were blooming - it was just a delightful day. The picture below is Dianne, still moving quite well, around mile 47 - just 3 miles to go. Unfortunately the most difficult 3 miles of the run - all uphill.

Snowshoeing in the Sierras

A few weeks ago I bought a new pair of snowshoes on sale at REI and on Sunday I finally got to try them out. It is a bit late in the season, and the snow was not at its best, but, nevertheless, it was a nice hike in the snow and the shoes worked very well indeed. My friend Sheilah and I went up to Matrimony Ridge, a ridgeline to the west near Donner Summit with a great view across the Sierra’s towards the Summit and the Desolation Wilderness to the South.


The location, Matrimony Ridge, is so called because the great view and the wonderful old weather-beaten Jeffrey Pine trees on the top make it an ideal place for those more adventurous couples to get married . Well today, the view was great but the wind was howling and it was not a place to hang around for too long. No one getting married today either.

Bees take up residence again...

As you might know, it has been a terrible time for bees here in the U.S. of late. I have been unable to keep a healthy hive going this past couple of years despite my best intentions. Nevertheless, I am determined to keep trying.

I had an empty hive in the back of my yard, just a couple of empty boxes, ready for my bees which I ordered recently and which should be arriving in April. Well this week I noticed some activity around the hive and at first I thought it was just the odd wandering bee that was looking around inside for perhaps some old honey. But the activity was sustained and today I took the lid off to find a more than just a few bees. Although I didn't see the queen, it looks like a swarm has taken up residence. How nice is that. Of course I just ordered two packages of bees (a package is a queen and 3 pounds of bees) that will be arriving in April, so now I might have 3 hives in the back yard - feast or famine.

Incidentlally, a truck carrying bees hives up the Sacramento Valley overturned just south of here last weekend and caused quite a stir. As you can imagine some 400+ hives tipped over on the side of the road would be quite a big deal - not your usual clean up job. I wonder if my bees are refugees from the overturned truck - who knows.

A pair of bridges

This week I made a couple of bridges for Nancy and Jeff's back yard. Not anything elaborate, just backyard landscape bridges but they turned out pretty good in the end so I thought I might show off the fruits of my labour.


It has been ages since I did any woodworking projects and I really enjoyed it. I ended up using some tropical hardwood - something called Ipe (I had never heard of it before) but it was beatiful wood and not much more expensive than the more typical local Redwood. According to the sales website, Ipe is sustainably grown so no Amazon rainforest was destroyed in the making of these bridges.

A pair of Steve White's

This weekend I ran in the Shamrock Half Marathon in Sacramento. It was a chance to meet up with my running namesake, Steve White – a much younger and much faster runner than I. The other Steve started running seriously a while ago and keeps getting confused with me and me with him. Since I am slower, I was always getting credit for his much faster times (I will take the credit any way I can get it), while he was always receiving the dubious attributes of my slower pace. Of course, anyone who looked at the ages could tell the difference but people don’t always do that.

So at the weekend, the other White Steve, was running as the 2hr pacer for the race (that means he runs with a sign saying 2:00 hours and he is supposed to keep to an even pace that will cross the finish line in exactly 2 hrs). This made him easily identifiable and I was able to meet him and thank him for improving my performance. Also, since he was slowing down to 2 hours in his role as pacer, I was able to run with him, and we crossed the finish line together – me a fraction of a second ahead of him, for the first and likely only time.

There is also a Steve White who was District Attorney in Sacramento and is now a judge. This lead to some confusion and misguided estimations of my position in the community. There’s also, what looks like a cheesy author called Steve White, even a black actor, and a British musician, a drummer. It’s apparently a very common name. A Google vanity search does nothing to uncover anything about me – thank goodness.

A long farewell to Mike

These last couple of months my friends and I have been saying a long goodbye to our friend Mike Reid. Mike was diagnosed with a brain tumor the week before Christmas and he passed away this morning, 27 February.

The prognosis was not at all good, the cancer was inoperable and within a month Mike was in a wheelchair, having difficulty in finding certain words and struggling to follow trains of thought. Radiation treatment at the best only offered a temporary stay. So Mike decided, some 13 days ago, to take things into his own hands and he stopped radiation treatment and stopped taking any further nourishment – a very brave step indeed.

I can only imagine what thoughts went through Mike’s mind when he was wrestling with what was now his very limited future, and I cannot really know what kind of resolve it takes to stop eating and drinking until you die. All I do know is that, if you are otherwise healthy and strong, which Mike was, then this route is not particularly rapid - it took Mike 13 days. (Alas we are not as enlightened as our neighbors to the north in Oregon who passed a “Death with Dignity Act” to assist the terminally ill depart this world. It’s time we had something similar.).

I am not sure that I would advocate for the other extreme of too quick and easy an exit (everyone needs time to come to terms with the decision), but 13 days was a long struggle and, while I do not believe he was in any discomfort at any time, the latter stages were drawn out.

He will be dearly missed by all of us here.

The photograph below was taken in September of last year on the way up Half-Dome in Yosemite. I do believe at this point he was as fit as he had ever been, at least in this stage of his life.


Here is a link to some other photos of Mike - mainly taken on hiking trips over the last few years.

Skiing in Tahoe

This weekend I finally made it up into the mountains to go skiing. While I enjoy skiing tremendously, and while we have some great ski areas close by Sacramento, I have been a very infrequent skier in recent years. I just don't seem to have the enthusiasm to get organized and get up the mountain and fight with the crowds in the lift lines and on the slopes. Over the last 5 or 6 years the only time I have skied is when my friend Dave comes over from Austin for his annual week of skiing, and then I usually only manage one day. Must be getting old.

So anyway, this week Dave was over and a few of us Sacramentans (the usual suspects from the Ex-Exlog crowd) went up to Tahoe to ski with him.


We skied at Homewood, a ski area that I had never even considered before – it is a little further away from Sacramento than most resorts, and I had always considered it a pretty lightweight ski area – small, not particularly challenging, etc. Well, I was wrong – it provided us with a magnificent days skiing. Yes, it is smaller than the Squaws and the Northstars, but that has some benefits – we could park the car 30 ft away from where we put our skis on, it is much cheaper ($51 per weekend day versus $75 or so for the big resorts), and relatively speaking it wasn’t at all crowded. The slopes were very well groomed, and it certainly has some challenging slopes (but at my age I don't need to be challenged too much on the ski slopes – that can lead to broken bones). To top things off, Homewood has unsurpassed views of Lake Tahoe - it sits right by the side of the lake and once you get up the hill a little there are these jaw-dropping panoramas of the lake below.


So all in all a good days skiing. I should really do more of it, I know.

The Death Valley Marathon

This last weekend a few of us went down to Death Valley to run the Death Valley Trail marathon. Nine of us rented a large van and drove from Sacramento, others drove themselves or flew down to Las Vegas, and my friends John and Gabrielle came over from Houston for our annual marathon weekend. It was a great time with some great friends (about 16 of us in total). A lot of driving however - 1180 miles to be exact but it was well worth it and a great time was had by all.


We were very lucky with the weather. California has been a little wet of late and there were concerns that the race would not run on its intended course, which was through Titus Canyon - a spectacular canyon running from near Rhyolite in the east to the floor of Death Valley in the west. The canyon was closed for most of the week, but on Friday, the powers that be in the Park Service decided that the conditions were right and the race could go ahead as planned.


It just happens that Titus Canyon was purpose built for a marathon. It is almost exactly 26.2 miles from it's entrance on the main road near Rhyolite to it's exit in the valley floor and it is truly spectacular. I carried a camera and there were lots of photo opportunities - here's a link to my album. Alas the real grandeur of the canyon does not come across in my photos.

This was the first (and probably last) marathon that I have ever run with negative splits (to those non-runners that is running the last half faster than the first - this is what you are supposed to do but I have never done it before). However, the negative splits were not at all due to my fitness level, they owed everything to the course - a climb of 2,300 ft in the first 12 miles and a drop of 5,000 ft in the next 14 miles. As you can imagine, it is a lot easier to run down hill than uphill -hence the negative splits.

We bumoed into a group of runners who were shooting video out on the course (albeit a very low resolution and very low quality) but they posted it on YouTube here we are (Dianne, Lisa, Ed and myself) in our (or at least my) very first YouTube video.