The Music In My Head

The Godson has posted his top albums of 2007 post on ManyHighways. I happen to own only one of those albums - Rilo Kiley's "Under The Blacklight". As I get old it feels like it's getting harder to keep up with the new music. One source is the Wife - she teaches High School so she hears things from the kids - and the Godson has been another a good source (he's almost 20 years younger then me). I don't always agree with his taste in music but he still listens to some pretty good stuff.

He recommended the Decemberists awhile back. (Decemberist's "The Crane Wife" was his number one pick for 2006) I bought one of their albums ("Picaresque") and really didn't like it but I have discovered that it often takes me several listenings to really hear the music. Sure enough over the last year or so I have listened to it more and more and it has moved up near the top of my list of good music (I was listening to the Crane Wife while I was blogging my latest hiking entry).

I like to listen to music. It calms me. It helps me write. I've had an MP3 player for the last 5 years that I take to work with me everyday. I have over 2,500 tracks on it. I plug it into a set of speakers in my cube and I play music (very low so I don't bother the neighbors). It helps the time go by a little quicker. I figure I can go two weeks without hearing the same song twice.

I have an eclectic taste in music. Just look back at the last few albums that I've purchased: The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife", Joan Osborne's "Pretty Little Stranger", Dolores O'Riordan's "Are You Listening", Alison Krauss' "A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection", The Eagles' "Long Road Out Of Eden", and the already mentioned Rilo Kiley's "Under the Blacklight". Add onto that two singles: Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" and Sparks' "Cool Places". I seem to prefer female lead singers. Evanescence, Liz Phair, Rilo Kiley, Cranberries, Joan Osborn, Alison Krause, Go Gos, Kelly Clarkson (Yep, I admit it, I like her), Annie Lennox, and the list goes on.

The only times I don't want to hear music is when I'm reading and when I'm hiking. That is when silence reigns for me. I love to hear the sounds of nature.

When I was single I always had the radio on in the apartment as background noise. The Wife also needs background noise but she prefers the television. I suppose I will fall back into the radio routine once I quit work. I'm on a big NPR kick right now so it will be Morning Becomes Eclectic for me. That will let me get into some new music.

I received an Amazon gift card for Christmas and I think I'll broaden my music experience and play around with some of the Godson's recommendations. If anyone reading Homer's Travels has any suggestions for music I should try, let me know in the comments.

Santa Was Good

[Update: I have fixed the video issues. It should work now. Enjoy!]

This turned out to be another weird Christmas for us. The dinner we had Saturday with the "J" and family felt like the real Christmas Dinner. When we got back from seeing "Juno", we decided to skip the "real" Christmas Dinner. The Wife cooked the Ham and we made some very satisfying ham sandwiches. Christmas is a holiday that should be shared with family and we haven't done that for the past three Christmases. No More! Next year we will be with family and we will celebrate it the right way.

The only thing that felt normal this year was the opening of the presents. This year we opened them on Christmas Eve. The Wife got me a Tilley LT6B Breathable Nylon Hat, a Petzl Tikka XP Headlamp, a cool In-And-Out T-Shirt, a Dilbert calendar, and a gift card from Amazon.

From those chuckleheads, the Matron Of Honor and Best Man, I received a reindeer that poops candy and a butt bank that breaks wind when you put a coin in the butt's ... slot. What is their fixation with behinds? HA! Homer just barked at the noise and sniffed the slot.

**Warning**
Video has sound that may cause giggles, chortles, and perhaps a guffaw.

The parentals supplied both of us with cash which we will enjoy immensely (the list is forming in my head as I type).

Thank you to everyone for their gifts. We can't wait to do it in person next year.

Movies: "Into The Wild" And "Juno"

On Christmas Eve we decided to get out of the house and go to a movie. Since we started using Blockbuster online we haven't been to very many movies. The convenience of watching a movie in the comfort of you own family room beats the theater most of the time but you don't always want to wait the four to six months for the DVD to come out and some movies really look better on the big screen.

{Major Spoilers Ahead for those who may want to go see either of these movies}

That's why on Christmas Eve we went to see "Into The Wild", a movie based on the non-fiction book of the same name. The movie follows the journey and eventual death of Christopher McCandless. McCandless, after graduating college, donated all his money to charity and left his old life, family, and friends all behind to seek out truth and to eschew all material needs. He hikes up and down the west coast, works on a wheat farm in South Dakota, rides the rails until he is found and severely beaten. Along his two year journey he meets good people along the way who care for him, help him, and are helped by him, but he never returns the caring really. The search for his elusive truth, and the happiness he believes goes with it, consumes him.

Someplace during those two years he decides that his destination is Alaska. He puts all his effort in reaching this destination and, leaving all the people who really care about him behind, he heads to the Alaskan wilderness.

He spends the months there alone, hunting and gathering for food and when he decides to return to civilization, he discovers his route home cut off by a roaring river swollen with the summer melt. Isolated, cold, alone, too late he discovers the truth about happiness - that happiness is only real when you can share it with someone - and dies of starvation in the old school bus he was using as a shelter.

I liked this movie because it made me think. Before I was married, when I was depressed, feeling blah, or just in a rut, I would fantasize about selling everything and living off the land in Alaska. My fantasy was very similar to McCandless'. It's a little scary. One bad decision and that could have been me. I liked the movie and I highly recommend it. GeekHiker has another view of the movie on his Blog, check it out.

"Juno" is a totally different movie. We went to see it on Christmas Day when it turned out to be too windy for our planned beach walk. Juno follows Juno MacGuff a 16 year old girl, wiser then her years, who finds herself pregnant. She decides to carry the baby to term and give it away to a deserving couple. She finds a couple in the pennysaver and the movie follows her through the birth of the child. Ellen Page, who plays Juno, is totally awesome in the role.

It was a very well written story. The sense of humor was spot on at times but I thought it ebbed and flowed too much. Some of the best lines are delivered by Rollo (Rainn Wilson from The Office) and his scene is way to short. More of him would have been welcome. I wish the humor and pace of the movie had been a little more consistent. I was also bothered a little bit by just how perfect the characters were. I have known each of these perfect people - the wise for her age girl, the supportive parents, the perfect friend - but I rarely have seen all these people in one place at the same time. Even with these minor faults, the movie is a very satisfying story and I was entertained - highly recommended.

One of the strange coincidences with these two movies is that the Wife and I have been to some of the locations filmed or mentioned in both movies. "Into The Wild" takes you to southern California around the Salton Sea. It was fun to see the parts when McCandless was at Slab City and Salvation Mountain because we visited those places earlier this year. In "Juno" Stillwater, MN and St. Cloud are mentioned. The Wife has been to St. Cloud and both of us have been to Stillwater. Made us both smile and shake our heads.

Hiking Ventura County #40: The Fishbowls

I got up early on Sunday to do this hike. I mean early. 4:30 am early. I wanted to get to the trailhead around sunrise (7:00 am) and it was a two hour plus drive to get there. I got up, ate breakfast and managed to leave around 5:05 am.

The night sky was clear and the almost full moon was there to guide me to the trailhead. On the way something ran across the road. In my headlights it looked like a bobcat.

The first rays of dawn were starting to shine over the mountains when I turned onto road 7N03 that winds up into the Los Padres National Forest from Lockwood Canyon Road. The asphalt soon turned to dirt and I slowed down a bit. I could see that there was a lot of burned out landscape - a result of the September 2006 Day fire.

I came up on a sign that said "Fishbowls Trailhead". This wasn't the trailhead that I wanted. There were two trails that take you to the Fishbowls. I wanted the other so I continued on the road until ... the road forded a river and it looked a little too deep for the ol' Honda. I was out in the middle of nowhere and I hadn't seen a soul on the road so I figured if I got stuck I would be there for a while so I turned around and went back to the other trailhead.

It was going to be a chilly morning. On the drive I saw a bank thermometer in Ojai that read 39°F. On the way to the trailhead I saw patches of ice and snow along the side of the road. Well, in places it was half way between frost and snow but it's my blog and I'll call it snow. I got out of the car and turned on my GPS. It took a while to sync up. I set a waypoint for where the car was. Since I was not that familiar with this trail (I had planned for the other trail) I wanted a way to get back to the car if I got lost.

I started on the trail at 7:30 am. The trail goes up briefly before heading down the other side of small pine covered ridge. The trail joins another trail that was probably a road some time in the past. Now it is just a single trail. I turned right and followed the trail. The part I was walking on was on the edge of where the Day fire had reached. There was very little underbrush as it had all burned and the trunks of the trees were blackened. In places it looked like a moonscape. I was surprised that there wasn't more regrowth. I guess the drought has slowed the return. There were some signs of growth though. California Holly seems to be the first plant that is springing up at the base of burned out trees - the roots must have survived the fire and re-sprouted very soon after. Despite the fire damage I really liked the towering pine trees. This hike felt different from others I'd done recently. It felt so remote and wild.

The trail was overgrown in spots but still easy to follow. The trail wonders through what looks like a floodplain and crosses a creek in several places. The creek was icy. This was very cool. I was curious how thick the ice was so I whacked it with my hiking pole. It took several whacks to get through the ice. The ice was an inch thick. In other places the ice was paper thin. This made crossing the creeks a little tough as some of the stepping stones which looked like they were just under the surface of the creek were actually under a quarter inch of wet ice. I managed to cross without falling but there were a few slippery moments. It was weird trying to plant my hiking pole on the creek bottom only to be stopped by an almost transparent ice sheet. The only place I had difficulty following the trail was at creek crossings. The rains that we had a few days ago had widened the creek a bit and it was sometimes hard to cross. I am thankful for my boots as they are waterproof. I often had to move up or down stream to find a place to cross safely and then it took some effort to find the trail. I'd look around for a few minutes until I had an "Oh there it is" moment.

The soil on the trail was very sandy in spots and as I walked it gave a satisfying frozen sandy crunch that reminded me of Iowa in the winter. The trail was dimpled where the raindrops had punched craters into the sand before freezing. Later in the day as the sun warmed things up the crunchy sand would give way to slippery mud.

I eventually made it out of the burn area and the pine forest thickened. I came up to an old sign. It looked like it was torn from its pole. Another smaller sign was on the ground in splinters. I noticed the three gash marks in the pole and wondered it it was a bear sharpening it's claws. This was supposed to be bear country.

The trail wondered along the creek through pine forests. There were still some burned trees but they were fewer and fewer as I went on. Every now and then I would hear strange noises. One sounded like a cap gun or small caliber gun going off. Later I heard a big crack and turned around in time to see a large limb of a dead pine a few hundred feet away break off and fall a good 50 - 70 feet to the ground. It sounded like a cross between a gun shot and thunder. I am glad I wasn't under that limb and I was a little wary of the trees as I continued along the trail.

I sat down on a wet log in the sun and ate my sandwich and orange. I usually eat my lunch at the half way point but since I got up so early this morning I was hungry early as well. Early on it had been very quiet on the trail but a cool breeze was picking up and rustled the needles. I thought about where I was. The hike description had said that the other trail - the one that I was on - was seven miles long. If this was true that I had another two miles to go. I had packed a brownie from our Saturday desert in my bag and I decided I would indulge in its savory yumminess when I finally reached the fishbowls.

I continued on and after one particularly difficult creek crossing I arrived at a camp. The broken sign said "Fishbowls Campground". I read my hike description again and realized that I had passed right by the fishbowls and hadn't even noticed them. I sat on a log near an old campfire pit and ate my brownie (It was very good). My GPS showed only 5.23 miles. The description, as had many of the descriptions from the Ventura County Star, was wrong again. Oh well. I briefly thought about making this hike into a loop by walking to the other trailhead and then following the road back to the car but I decided against it. I wasn't sure how deep the water was at the ford and I did feel like wading in ice cold water.

I started back to the car. This time I watched for the fishbowls. It turns out the fishbowls were another victim of the drought. You could see where, if the water level was higher, there would be several large pools - some deep and big enough to swim in. I'm sure they would fill up with fish as well.

The walk back to the car went well. I didn't lose the trail nearly as much. The trail was turning muddy and slippery. My boots got heavy with mud and sand sticking to the bottom. I slogged my way back to the small ridge that seemed a lot higher now. I huff and puffed my way up and over to the car.

I think I will try to come back next spring to see if I can reach the other trailhead. Since the other trailhead is on the opposite side of the fishbowls it would not have experienced any damage from the Day fire. It should be a totally different hike then the one I did. There is also a geocache in the area passed the flooded ford that I want to go after. Hopefully after some more rain and some time for the ford to dry I will be able to go back.

I took some pictures including a lot of the ice on the creek. The ice and meager snow really made this hike feel different. The sugar pine forest was almost magical. I really enjoyed the hike though the fishbowls themselves was a little let down. The hike was 10.26 miles with about 636 feet of vertical from trough to peak.

Christmas Eve Musing

Today is Christmas Eve and I hope everyone has finished their shopping and are ready for a Christmas Paper Massacre tomorrow morning. I am definitely in the mood today.

This was helped by our dinner we had on Saturday. The "J" and her visiting parents came over and we had a great evening. I can see where the "J" gets her sense of humor and conversational skills. Great people. We enjoyed some New York Strip Steaks on the grill, German Potato Salad, the Wife's Homemade Dinner Rolls, and, as the wife refers to it, the Cliché Green Bean Casserole. We topped the meal off with a Triple Chocolate Brownie with a dollop of Vanilla Ice Cream and Hot Caramel Sauce - yum. All the food hit the spot.

The wife did a real bang up job this year decorating the house. We had the gas fireplace lit and candles were burning and we were complimented about how homey it felt. Christmas music was playing in the background (Johnny Mathis IS Christmas, ya know). We talked about work, retirement, travel, geocaching, and a bunch of other stuff. We all had a great time. The Wife was surprised at my hosting skills as I am usually a little shy and anti-social at times - not that night.

The Wife had put some scratchers under each plate and after dinner we tried our luck. The Wife is the only one that won anything - a free ticket.

The "J" brought out some presents and said she needed to see our faces so we opened them. She gave us each a "Poor Coco" T-Shirt! How funny! She also gave me some Sponge Bob Square Pants band-aids. She thought I should carry them when I hike - Heh!
We topped it off with a drive down to the historic district of Oxnard to see the Christmas lights. This street traditionally decorates every year. Some of the displays are pretty cool. One house has three life size fiberglass camels. Another had a huge train set that covered the entire front yard. I imagine the electric company sends them all Christmas card every year. I took my camera and was surprised that most of the pictures turned out OK ... sort off ... if you are generous in you criticism. You can check them out along with my other 2007 Christmas pictures right here.

After walking the lights we said goodbye to the "J"'s parents who were heading south to more family. The "J" road back to our place to pick up her car. Before she left, the "J" noticed my camlebak and that brought up a short discussion on the Pilgrimage of Saint James. I am planning to walk the Pilgrimage in 2010 and the Godson has told me, through the Matron Of Honor, that he is interested in doing it with me. The "J" is also interested but we thought she wanted to do it alone. It appears that she may have changed her mind and wondered if she could join me and the Godson. YES! It's kind of weird - when I hike I tend to want to be alone but as I envision doing this Pilgrimage I always see myself with someone. I think this is so big that you need someone to experience it with. I welcome the Godson, and now the "J", to join me. I would really enjoy doing this walk with them. I can't wait! It's going to be fun!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Omaha ... Everywhere!

Well, it's starting.

After we decided to go to Peru last year I started to see references to Peru everywhere. I'm sure they were there before but I just didn't notice them.

Today I was at the grocery store buying food for the dinner we're sharing with the "J" and her visiting parents tomorrow night and I saw this Birthday card. I guess now I'll be seeing Omaha references everywhere I go.

Addendum: The scanned card is a © Hallmark Fresh Ink card. The inside text says "Birthday or not, don't go with Paco."

Dogged by Dreams

OK, the Wife's off for Christmas break and she took the time yesterday to sleep in. When she woke up she remembered having a dream.

A little background. The Wife rarely remembers her dreams. Since we decided to move back to the Midwest, the Wife has had dreams showing us in a nice little house and being happy. Along with the Wife and I, there are usually a couple dogs. Awhile back she had a dream where we had two dogs. One was Homer. In her dream we were naming the second dog and, if I recall correctly, it went something like this:

Wife: What do you want to name it?

me: Astroburger.

Wife: Do you mean Astro?

me: No, AstroBURGER.

Now, yesterday she has another dream. In this dream we have three dogs. The new one is not named but the other two are Homer and Astroburger . Now, I am not one of those people who believe that dreams are mystical or that they foretell the future but, you know, this time these dreams may just have to be self-fulfilling prophecies. If we ever decide to get a second dog we may just have to name it Astroburger.

P.S. No, I will not change the name of the Blog to Astroburger's Travels.

O Tannenbaum

On Sunday we finally got around to decorating the tree. Now it feels like Christmas.

Hiking Ventura County #39: Old Boney Trail

Another weekend, another day on the trails. This Saturday I headed out to hike the Old Boney trail. This hike turned out to be a Down-Up-Down-Up trail that really gave me a workout.

I reached the parking lot of the Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center where I would start the hike. It was a chilly morning which suited me just fine. Along the road there were hints of frost on the plants. I left the parking lot and walked the quarter mile to the Culture Center. From there I turned down the paved Big Sycamore Canyon Trail.

Big Sycamore Canyon Trail heads down pretty quickly. When on this trail watch out for bicycles. This is a popular trail for bicycles and horses. The views the surrounding hills, ridges, bluffs, and mountains are pretty amazing. The trail bottoms out at a bridge and continues on until you reach the Danielson Multi-Use area at the 4 - 4.25 mile point. On this stretch I managed to find 10 geocaches. My GPS was really off on most of the caches and I had to do some extra searching to locate most of them. This slowed me down a bit. One interesting cache is "Belly of the Beast" that was a small container hidden in a rubber lizard. The lizard was just sitting on a rock under a bush. I think I jumped when I first saw it. A clever hide.

At the Danielson Multi-use area you have the choice of continuing straight for another 3 miles or so to the ocean. On Saturday I made a left here and headed up Blue Canyon Trail. The trail goes through a forested area where I ran into several deer. I missed a good picture when I startled a deer on the trail. I was so busy looking at my GPS that I didn't realize there was a deer no more then twenty feet away from me. It ran into the brush before I could get my camera out. Fortunately just a few yards down I came across a couple more near the trail and a got a picture or two. Very cool.

The trail starts going up at this point. In just under a mile you reach a junction where the Blue Canyon, Backbone, and Old Boney trails intersect. At this point I found a cache ("Dinosaur Egg!") and sat on a large boulder in the shade to eat some lunch. I was becoming a little concerned about time. I had quite a ways to go, and several caches to go, and I doubted I would have time to finish the hike before sundown.

At this junction I turned left and headed up Old Boney Trail. The trail was overgrown but easy to follow. Near the top of a ridge (Huff - Puff!) I took a side trail thinking there was a cache there. The side trail climb sharply up a hill but didn't get me close to the cache. At the top of the hill I was rewarded with a beautiful view of the Oxnard plain, Boney Mountain, and the surrounding hills. I could see the trail that I was on led across a saddle up a steep trail up to the tri-peaks area. I may have to do this trail someday - looks like a challenge (and there are four geocaches up there).

I went back to the main trail and followed it to the Danielson Fire road. The trails meet where the Old Cabin Trail starts. I followed the Danielson's fire road down the hill. I was tired but I was hauling butt as I needed to make up some time. I reached the bottom and took a spur trail to a waterfall area to look for a cache. I had tried to find "Fern Gully 2" once before without success. This time wasn't any better. I gave up in frustration and went back to the main trail.

At this point I had a choice to make. I could follow the more direct route up the Danielson Fire Road to the car or I could take the Upper Sycamore Canyon Trail back to Big Sycamore Canyon road. I looked at my watch, threw caution to the wind and headed down Upper Sycamore Trail. This way would end up adding some distance and several more geocaches. Since I was short on time I decided to limit my cache searches to only 5 minutes. I managed to find two more bringing the total to 16 caches which tied my previous record.

Upper Sycamore Canyon is a beautiful forested canyon. Many of the trees had changed into their fall colors which added to the appeal of the trail.

The trail connects up with big Sycamore Canyon Trail near the bridge. I turned right and started up the paved trail up the last hill. I was pooped but I managed to make it back to the car around 4:30. I'd been on the trail for nine and a half hours. I'm guessing the the caching added two to three hours on to the hike.

Now I like hiking and I like geocaching and these two activities often mesh together pretty well. On this hike though I discovered that too many geocaches can spoil the hike. In this case I had 34 geocaches loaded into my GPS (34!). I would say about 12 were not actually on the trails that I was taking so I will probably do them some other day. I was so preoccupied by finding the remaining 22 caches that I think I missed the relaxation that I usually get from hiking. I have learned a lesson on this hike. The Hike is priority one and geocaching is secondary. All the caches made me feel rushed and, while I enjoyed the hike quite a bit, I would have enjoyed it more if I had done it at a more leisurely pace.

The total distance hiked was around 13 miles with about 1,700 feet of vertical from trough to peak. Pictures are here. My next hike, if the weather cooperates, will be the Fishbowls deep in the Los Padres national Forest.

Book: Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation

I have also listened to her many times on NPR's This American Life (TAL). I have always found her stories funny and her delivery spot-on. After seeing her at the live TAL taping I decided to try one of her books and purchased "Assassination Vacation". The book is about Sarah Vowell's investigations, during vacations, of the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. I expected her book would have the same deadpan style that I'd heard, and loved, before and I was not disappointed. After reading this book, I have come to realize that Sarah Vowell's idea of a vacation destination is very strange, almost as strange as our roadtrips.

I really enjoyed this book which, considering the subject, was a surprise. I think if anyone else wrote this book I would have been bored to tears and most like I would not have read it in the first place. Vowell fills the pages with humor and anecdotes that maintain the reader's interest. I even found myself learning something about American history. Some of the anecdotes do stray a little from the main theme but they were in most cases funny so the meandering was excusable. I find my reaction to the side stories odd since similar side stories just irritated me while I read Bill Bryson's "A Walk In The Woods".

The one thing missing from this book is Kennedy. Vowell stays away from our most recent, and controversial, presidential assassination. I would be interested in her point of view.

One thing to mention. There are parts in the book where Vowell lets her political views shine through. It turns out that I tend to agree with most of her views, especially her view of the current President, but I know some people who may be turned off by this. Even agreeing with her, I would have preferred that she had kept those political feeling to herself. This is only a minor criticism of a very engaging and fun read.

I enjoyed this book enough that I am planning to check out her other books sometime.

If you're interested in a second opinion on "Assassination Vacation", you can read the Godson's review at ManyHighways.