Author: turtle

Day 3: King City to Paso Robles

Today’s challenge for us San Francisco fog dwellers was the heat. The day starts out cold and foggy but very soon the fog burns off and it’s in the mid to upper 90s for most of the ride.

The most talked about part of today is “quadbuster”. It’s not a particularly big hill by San Francisco Bay area standards. But at the beginning of the third day of riding, and after riding 110 miles yesterday, it feels like quite a challenge. It has become a tradition for some people to ride repeats on that hill usually in honor of somebody. I rode it three times, once for me, once for an HIV+ friend who rode it once many years ago but will never be able to ride it again, and once for a friend who was planning to ride this year but died after being hit by a car in December.

Today I wore the cycling kit Janeen designed for the positive pedalers. This photo is with Evan who rode almost the entire ride with Janeen the year I was roadie.

Riding gives me time to think. Today I was thinking about why it is that I’m constantly drawn back to this ride. There are lots of other bike rides and there are probably lots of other more challenging ones. So that’s not the reason. I think what this ride does is it puts everyone out of their comfort zone. For different people it does it in different ways: non-campers camping, non-fundraisers fundraising, non-cyclists cycling, non-cross dressers cross dressing… By doing that I think it helps to give me more compassion for other people who may be out of their comfort zone in society as a whole. It’s a brief glimpse into how we can all be outcasts in some way and we all need to be compassionate to one another.

Since the 90s Bradley school has been a strong supporter of AIDS/Lifecycle. The Bradley school is in a tiny farming town, and it throws a party to welcome us. They accept donations to support the arts at that school and every year cyclists donate for lunch there and generate tens of thousands of dollars for their programs.

We also rode through Camp Roberts and I couldn’t resist comparing my bike to the tank.

I managed to catch a quick photo with Deyon who has ridden over twenty times.

Day 2: Santa Cruz to King City

I think this is my favorite day. We travel from the relatively affluent coastal town of Santa Cruz, inland through Salinas and through farm country down to King city. The views are so wide and open and dramatically different from what I usually ride through.

Last night I managed to get some dinner (actually a third dinner!) with my Dad.

On our way out of Capitola we were greeted with free coffee on the side of the road! Stef was there again, this time much more recognizable.

As cyclists we are incredibly vulnerable on the side of the road. Riding through Santa Cruz I just felt like drivers thought I was in the way. Cars were constantly doing dangerous things around us.

As soon as we got inland to farm country the trucks and cars were almost unbelievably courteous to us. They would pull all the way across to the other side of the road giving us the full lane; This happened every time. On multiple occasions a semi truck loaded sky high with boxes just drove behind the cyclists until it was safe to pass. The contrast from a car recklessly almost driving into the woman in front of me to save a few seconds in Santa Cruz and the way everyone behaved as soon as we got out near Salinas was enormous.

On a lighter note: I bumped into some cycling friends at the rest stops.

I love the contrasts of the ride today: From coastal towns to wide-open farmlands to an old beautiful bridge.

For a while we even rode on the side of the freeway. Then it’s an incredibly bumpy back road for about half a mile to a dirt trail into camp.

Day 1: $16.7 Million

I’m safely in Santa Cruz after a windy ride down Highway 1.

At the opening ceremony they announced that this year’s ride has raised $16.7 million. Thank you for being a part of that. That money is the single largest source of funding for the SFAF and LALGBT in their work to support people with HIV/AIDS as well as advocacy and prevention of future infections.

Before the ride out my friend Mike was there at 4am volunteering handing out route sheets to all 2000+ riders

The ride out was an unusually sunny Daly city morning. The sun lasted until we got to the top of Devils Slide to head down into Pacifica. Almost instantly the sky opened up with rain and wind.

But Stef was there with a group dressed up as lumberjacks – well, Santa lumberjacks (?) to cheer us on.

The ride down the coast was hard because we had headwinds the whole way. Usually the wind blows from the north, but today we had special treatment.

The lunch stop was absolutely gorgeous.

Here are a couple of photos to show the level of coordination that a camp for 2300 riders +600 roadies takes

Day Zero: This is what 2000 bikes looks like

I just finished dropping my bike off at bike parking. This is what 2000 bikes parked and ready for tomorrow morning’s ride-out looks like.

I got my tent assignment and they gave me my own tent! After the orientation meeting and finishing registration we have multiple wristbands that we have to keep on all week. The green one is so that I can go in the vegetarian food line:

We also get a tag with our tent grid number which is the same as the number that goes on our gear bag. We wear it around our neck all week. One less thing to keep track of. It’s become a tradition to keep your tags from previous years on that chain necklace. I have four on mine. Some people have over 20.

So now I just need to finish packing. I’ve got most of it done. Because things become so overwhelming as the week goes on, one has to be very organized about packing. I put a separate kit for each day into a separate plastic bag with a number on it. The less thinking I have to do at 4 o’clock in the morning the better.

Here is the first leg of the journey: Home to cow Palace with a slight detour along the way!

Less than a week to go!

It’s Monday evening just over five days before aids lifecycle 2019. As of this evening we have raised almost $7500. I plan to post daily updates here during the ride.

ALC 2019 Road Ahead

Here are the photos from my emails this year:

Ride photos of 2018 (and 2017!)

I wrote a bit about why I’m obsessed with cycling in a post during our 2017 Festive 500, but here are some photos from last year to show a bit of what I enjoy.

Allrides

Brother Visit

I had a beard for a month or so around the time I turned 40. It’s been almost a decade, so I decided to grow one again: This time, it’s grey.

Misha came to visit for the week around my birthday, so I took time off work. We took a trip to Santa Cruz:

Went on bike rides:

Went to visit our niece, sister and brother-in-law in Concord:

But mostly we went on lots of runs.

Happy birthday to me!

Oh, and we all dressed up as princesses for Halloween. “Costume” made from rope and hot glue:

I’ll Just Quickly Fix The Fence

Haha. Nothing goes quickly. So what’s happened since May? Mark moved out of downstairs, my mum came to visit, we went to visit my brother, I rode my bike a lot, my brother came to visit here, and… I finished the railings on the stairs and deck, and started replacing some of the fence between the deck and the neighbor.

It’s Arwen–wearing her medal: 1st place cuteness.

But before I got to the fence, Mum came to visit. And we went to Taos, NM.

Misha and I managed to get some running in: My knee seems to have healed itself with all the cycling I’ve been doing over the past few years. Before I started cycling, even running to the bus would make my knee swell up the next day.

In Taos, we stayed at an ‘earthship.’ The one we stayed at was beautifully decorated with some intricate tile work, and bright, colorful paint. Mum loved it.

We also spent some time in Santa Fe. It was really hot while we were there. I can’t resist taking photos when I see bright colors – this is outside the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

And back near home, I went for a walk in Santa Cruz on the beach with both my parents. Haven’t done that in 40+ years!

Oh, and before I get to the house work, I did do a couple of Santa Cruz rides this summer, too. One of them round trip, the second I stayed overnight in Santa Cruz before riding back the next day.

Two sisters and nieces for a Dad’s pre-birthday while my sister was in town.

Oh, and I love this sign:

Lots of bike rides with friends…

Alrighty then: This post was about the railings on the back stairs. We built the stairs years ago, and I never got around to finishing the guard railings. So they were quite dangerous, but we got used to it.

So this summer I finally got around to making the balusters to fill in the railings.

Quite a production effort because there are so many of them. And of course, I’d started making them with a routed detail on the bottom, so that had to continue. On the side of the stairs, the balusters have to be spaced away from the side of the stair stringer. Whenever wood is held tightly together, it stays wet in the joint, so that’s where the rot starts. So I figured I’d fill the gap with waterproof glue: I glued and clamped spacers on all of the balusters.

Here are about half of them when I was staining them:

Mole and Arwen: The railing and balusters at the top landing are all white, because I made those balusters back when we built the stair. At the time I’d planned to paint all of them white.

Here I’ve got balusters on one side of the stair:

Both sides done:

The finishing touch is I added an Ipe plank on top of the railing. It strengthens the rail, but it also looks better I think.

The next project is the fence. It’s very rotten, plus my neighbor doesn’t walk their dog: He just goes out back to do his business. Sad and stinky.

When I took down the old fence, this is what their deck looked like: Utterly insect infested and rotten through. I added some temporary shoring under there so it doesn’t collapse while I’m working, and warned him.

I had to take down my stairs at the bottom to replace the fence. Arwen figured out how to climb up and down the ladder quite quickly. Also, I decided to change the stairs so that they are slightly steeper: This will make it so that there will be more head room at the bottom of the stairs.

Even though I was just changing the stairs slightly and then re-painting, it took a really long time. Stairs are painstaking work because they have to be very accurate. Any unevenness can be a trip/fall hazard.

Oh, and to add another wrinkle, the drain pipe was in the way of the old fence. Rather than build the fence around it, I decided to move the pipe over. Which which meant I had to break out out more concrete: The ever expanding project.

While I had the jackhammer, I decided to expand the bed for the rose bush. This was waaay more work than I’d bargained for, because there was an old concrete footing there, full of rebar. Really hard to break up. Before on the left, six hours later on the right.

At the deck level, I built the wall up tall enough that we can’t see over to the neighbor’s side. If the stink still comes wafting over, I’ll put windows up at the top. Still need to add the finishes to make it look more like a fence, but the wall part is done:

I think mole snapped this photo of Arwen while mole was riding zwift in the garden room. It’s a bit worrying riding on the trainer with the cats in the room: There’s a fast spinning back wheel that could really hurt them. We don’t usually let them in, but sometimes they insist.

Oh, we had a party: Mark, who’s lived downstairs for about five years, is going to Lithuania. So we had a big leaving party/birthday party for him. We strung lights up in the back yard, and it was a great time.

We put a Lithuanian flag out front, too!


On hot days, Arwen and Bella stretch out to try not to over heat. Looks like they are flying:

Mole and I stopped in at Davenport on the way down to Santa Cruz for dad’s birthday; wandered around a little. I guess you can have great views even when not riding a bike:

Bella says: “why are all your photos of Arwen?”

Ooops, one more Arwen photo.

Garden room: Finished!

Wow, another project that started out as a “quick” project is finished (two years later.) But it came out quite nicely.

A checklist all checked off: satisfying.

More recycled wood used on the window trim.

The only problem I had was I bought some different polyurethane by Minwax for the counter top and it’s garbage: It didn’t stick – and I only discovered it when I used tape to mask off the edges while I caulked the joint at the wall. The tape pulled the top layers of polyurethane off the wood! I had sanded between coats, even (and on the can it said that’s not required). Had to sand all the way down to the wood again to get rid of it. I’ll stick with Bona Mega from now on.

Arwen decided she needed to do some inspection when I was plumbing the sink faucet.


Here’s the faucet installed: I offset it to the right slightly, so it’s not in front of the window, and hopefully it makes the sink more convenient for cleaning the large 6.5 gallon carboys. It’s still the brewery room, right?

I also sanded, resized, and stained the old front door (that I’ve had leaning around in our garage for years) to close off the space from the garage. Had to also replace the acrylic glass windows because they were scratched and had been painted over.

Popo left behind a daybed/couch and it has also been sitting in our garage for years. We bought a cheap mattress at Ikea and I put it into the garden room. That’s mole’s bike on the trainer.

… and mole testing it out while I made the living room upstairs stinky (more on that later).

When I first started working on this space, I was thinking of it as potentially a cat-free space for visitors. Little did I realize, but when you live with cats, there’s no such thing as a “cat-free” space: They own the whole house.

Here’s Arwen checking under the day-bed: She’s not happy until she’s checked every square inch.

While mole was riding on the bike trainer, Arwen brought down her favorite wand toy for her.

And Bella just waits patiently on the stairs.

Oh, and here’s the sink in the toilet room, with the tile grouted and finished. Looks neat.

When we moved in (ten years ago!), our plan was to take out the carpets. But we’ve lived with them ever since. I recently decided to take them out: I’m convinced that all that wall-to-wall carpet is not good for air quality. As we took it out, we found that the underlayment had started to decompose, and left sticky red pieces all over the old floor surface, dropping them everywhere as I carried it out: Looked like dried cranberries, but definitely not as good. Lots of work scraping and scrubbing them off.

While tearing out the carpet, Arwen enjoyed the new furniture layout.

This is the old floor tile after we had removed all the old carpet and underlayment, pulled out the staples, scrubbed and cleaned it up and polished the tile. I damaged a lot of it back when I was working on the wiring for the lights downstairs.

So we covered it up with a rug.

This bit was still exposed, though. And Bella did not like it: She started picking at it and broke off part of a tile.

So I decided to replace the broken tiles with some cheap self-adhesive vinyl tile. It was a total pain getting the old tile off (had to use a heat gun). Yes, I’m certain this tile is “hot” (asbestos). Didn’t use protective gear: Hope I don’t regret it. Sometimes I’m just plain stupid lazy. Mole and the cats were downstairs hiding in the garden room.

Done (using the stool my godfather made for me as a weight to glue the corner of an old tile down).

“FEED US! (We are only going to look cute for 30 seconds, then we’re going to melt down and start fighting)”

We got a new rug for the bedroom.

Arwen!

“Helping” with my calculations at the office.

“I’m going to take a nap here, OK?”

Prrrrr…..

Bella loves this box. We stuck eyes on the box – it comes alive when Bella gets inside it. One lesson I learned the hard way: Don’t stand near it – claws will fly out of the corners and grab toes. The robot has lightning-fast reflexes even through its eyes usually get pulled off or rearranged.

The box robot lives!

Nap time.

We volunteered for the AIDS/Lifecycle “day on the ride” in April: It’s a one day test ride for the people planning to do the week-long ride to LA in June. We’re not riding, so it was fun to dress up and help to staff rest stop one.

Trim and tile

I’m adding the finishing touches to the garden room. There was still some trim around doors, and baseboards to finish.

I really like the curved piece I came up with for the transition from tall baseboards around the foundation wall, to lower ones around the garden room (above).

Now all the trim in the back room is also finished.

I also put some shelves into that space to store things like bottles (this is going to be my brewery room, right?) I added removable fronts on the shelves so I don’t have a disaster of broken glass after the next earthquake, hopefully.

 

Arwen came down to inspect the garden room while I was working on the cabinet and counter top.

I sanded the old cabinet (from the kitchen on the ‘downstairs’ floor), and painted it.

Arwen likes tools, except power tools.

I’ve had trouble with the compression fit piping that’s commonly used under sinks. The plumbing book I have recommends the above alternative. It’s certainly easier to install, and seems quite a bit more sturdy, too.

Here are the cabinets after paint, and new handles. Also, I’ve installed the sink I got from building resources (the local recycler of building materials — construction is responsible for about half of all landfill). I’m going to put the faucet in after the tiling, and a few more coats of polyurethane on the counter.

My godfather sent me a cycling map of San Francisco, and I’ve finally found a good place for it. The garden/brewery room serves mainly as a workout room these days.

Getting started on the tile, I wanted to make it similar to the kitchen in Downton Abbey (white tile with small black squares). The photo above left was the more labor intensive option (I had to cut down the black tiles to about 1.5cm squares). Guess which one we went with.

Here’s the tile after it’s grouted. Not quite as extensive as Downton Abbey, but neither is the brewery room!

I also added a tile backsplash at the little sink in the toilet room.

I had to do some plumbing in the shower upstairs (hair clog!) and the girls both joined in to help:

The Freesia seem to love our back yard: They increase every year (whereas there are only a couple of daffodils left).

This back yard needs some inspiration: Big pile of rocks still there–volunteer Nasturtiums have covered them. Arwen is trying to figure out what to do about it all:

It was a rainy Friday, so Mole’s friday ride group got together to celebrate her birthday. And there was a trip to get vegan donuts, too.

And yesterday Mole’s mum made vegan apple pie for her birthday. It was a triumphant success. Everyone had seconds.

Here are Arwen and Bella pretending to be constellations.