On The Way

This morning, we went over to the "airport" (Gunn High School), to fly our RC planes. There were a bunch of dogs with owners on the soccer fields, our usual spot,so we went over to the footfall stadium to fly. It's a bit tighter but the goal posts give us something to aim at. Lou and I did a little gardening but mostly took it easy today. 

Tomorrow, we're making another attempt to take the train to Reno. 

This afternoon, when I tried to check email on my laptop, it was dead. The power supply seems to be dead. It's a good thing the 3 year warrantee is still good until the 29th of this month. I'll have to get it into the shop when I return. Good thing is, Comp-USA has opened their store in East Palo Alto which is a lot closer than Burlingame or San Jose, the other locations. 

Friday will be a geek day. I'm headed off to a seminar at Adobe in San Francisco on their new Apollo software, a product that allows a web application to work without a web connection. It sounds interesting, and I certainly have the time. 

What a time to have daylight savings time swing into gear. We have a train to catch early so the clocks are already set for tomorrows time. I hope the train crew gets it straight as well. Is it true the only real reason for the change, especially the recent change to being three weeks earlier, is for commercial reasons, so they can sell more candy, etc. There has never been any benefit for the supposed reason of saving energy. Many people do like a little more sunlight in the afternoon when they get home from work. I just wish they'd quit playing with the clocks and just change the work and store hours as desired.

Movie Night In Redwood City

We went to a new mega-Plex theater in downtown Redwood City. It's a 20 screen complex the Century 20. So many choices. Interesting thing is, Redwood City has a total of 32 screens, That's a lot for a little town. Actually, it's usually easy to eliminate 80-90 percent off the top as junk, then hope some of the rest are worth seeing. We chose a winner, The Bridge to Terabithia. It was a great move, well acted, an excellent production. While it's distributed by Disney, it was at least partially a New Zealand film but the story was based somewhere in the states. There was a lot of imagination in this film along with a good story. It was fun.

Maps Working!

The new look here at Travel By Desine (TBD) was necessary in order to get the maps working on this site. Now if there is a map link associated with the posting, then there will be a "Google Map >>" button at the bottom of the posting. You can also use the "Google Map" to see a map with all the Geo Coded map pins for associated posts. Just click on a map pin and then you can click on the link and go to the blog post related to it.

The blog theme has the layout I like but the colors and banner image will need to be changed when I get a chance. I can live with the island look for a while.

I've also updated the Campground Reviews (CR) site as well. Now you can select the campground of interest using a map. In order to do so, I had to upgrade the blog software on the CR website because it was necessary to allow the map to appear on the home page. Eventually, I'll have to upgrade the TBD and the other Wordpress sites I'm running.

The CR site will also allow you to click on one of the random images shown on the home page and go to the review for the campsite. I haven't enabled that yet because I have to make a new related image for each campsite or do some other trickery to display the images at the appropriate size. My head was hurting after doing the upgrade last night so the images will have to wait for another time.

If you like or dislike the maps or the new look, let me know. Use the Contact Form.

Two Down, One To Go

I've been slogging away at the plumbing projects. The leaking pipe has been fixed. The main shut-off valve replaced. And a little progress on reworking the arbor plumbing as well.

The water main shut-off was fun. Couldn't turn off the water at the meter so had to install another valve after the existing shut-off valve. The original was underground level and had no handle any more. I wanted the new valve above ground so leaving the old valve in place was no problem. Getting the old pipes to cooperate was, but all ended up well in the end.

Lou's been continuing the spring cleanup and installing fake flowers everywhere. She picks up really nice fake flowers at the garage and rummage sales. She's also tweaking the fountain. For some reason water keeps disappearing from it but we can't see where it goes and it doesn't do anything when watched, just suddenly not there. Must be a giant flock of thirsty birds visiting occasionally.

The weather has been great, blossoms appearing on all the trees.

Sunny Day

Today was rummage sale day for Lou and Dawn. I was lounging around when I got an urgent call from Lou. They had some tools that looked good to her and I should come down to see them. I went but anything of interest was gone by then. Thank goodness. We don't need more stuff really.

I was now awake and alert when I got home, not what I intended for my morning. I had been up last night upgrading a website and intended to relax this morning. Not to be.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. I got my morning tea and was in the backyard looking around and enjoying the sun. There are several projects calling, loudly. A water line broke several weeks ago and all the faucets in the back yard have been turned off. I've been waiting for the ground to dry out. It has, so I started digging along the pipe path near what was the wet spot. A PVC "tee" broke and, after the water in the trench drys, I'll fix that. Along with that, I'll relocate the sprinklers valves that, due to some plant changes are now more exposed than needed.

As long as I had the shovel in hand, I went over to the arbor. I dug out and exposed the pipes and conduits that went to the old arbor. they need to be relocated a bit for the new arbor. I'm also going to move the sprinkler valves that are there as well and reconfigure the conduits. All this in preparation to place the deck under the arbor.

Just before this most recent storm, I exposed the water main valve at the front of the house. The handle is broken and can't be replaced. It needs to be relocated above ground level so it won't fail again. This will involve a lot of repiping to get the valve up.

Lou and Dawn also went to a big flea market at De Anza College in Cupertino. They were there all afternoon and came back complaining that it was too commercial and few day sellers.

The final thing was a trip to the hardware store to get all the "stuff" to do these projects.

So, my day was never what I intended but I did get started on these projects. Now to stay in gear tomorrow.

Every Day’s A Saturday

An observation.

Since we retired we notice that every day seems like  a Saturday. We don't wear watches and both have difficulty remembering what day it is. A common question we ask each other is "Which Saturday is this?". A typical reply is "This is the Wednesday Saturday."

Maybe we do need the retired persons clock that shows the day, not the hour.

Derailed!

Our trip to Reno got derailed. As it turns out, they had the heaviest snow storm of the season last night and when we arrived at the station to get our tickets the agent said the snow plow train had derailed and they were seeing if they could get buses. We had arrived a couple of hours early in order to avoid any traffic problems.The commute from the house in Palo Alto to Emeryville going up Highway 280, through San Francisco and across the Bay bridge on Highway 80 was easy. We were on the road at 6am. We arrived in Emeryville in about 50 minutes. If we had started out at 6:30 am, it could have taken an hour longer due to the commute traffic.

We enjoyed a breakfast at Denny's nearby after getting our tickets. While there the railroad agent called and said there wouldn't be any buses. A couple of minutes later we received another call from Amtrak somewhere else advising the same. After an unexpectedly good breakfast, we went back to the station and got our refund for the tickets and then called the hotel and canceled. All went well with the cancellations and refunds.

Amtrak does provide a telephone number to check on the status of the train but it wouldn't have helped. It the train were to go, we'd need to be there as we were, anyway. It does seem like our train trips to Reno are doomed to failure. Last time, many years ago, a similar storm and cancellation. We were younger and more determined then and caught a flight to Reno and then the train back. Since I don't fly anymore, that's out this time.

One of the nice things about not living life to a schedule is that there is no real schedule. We tend to do things on the spur of the moment most often. So, since we were in Emeryville, we looked around Emeryville around the station. There is a lot of shopping, all closed this early. There is the nice Public Market food court, all closed this early. We looked around until about 9am and then headed across the bay bridge and to the Coit Tower in San Francisco. Lou has been complaining that she has been to the base of the tower but never to the top so up we went. Great views there.

We then went over to Golden Gate Park to the Strybing Arboretum. We stopped for lunch of Gyros at a place across the street from the park at Lincoln and 9th then went through the arboretum. We explored many out of the way areas of the gardens we have either passed by or missed before. Very nice.
View fro top of Coit Tower in San Francisco.


More views from the top of Coit Tower.


Here we are at the top of Coit Tower.


Nice views of Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.


A nice pond at Strybing Arboretum and a friendly squirrel.

A little shopping on the way home and then we stopped in San Mateo at Heidi's Pies, El Cmino Real near Highway 92 for a piece of the best pecan pie we've had. A final stop at one of Lou's favorite thrift stores and we finally arrived home about 5:30.

We had fun even though we missed the train. We may try to reschedule later but may just hit the road soon instead.

We are still having a lot of rain here. The backyard is saturated. It will be nice when the sun starts drying things out, hopefully soon.