Getting back to normal

December 13, 2007
Peoria, AZ

Today was a good day on several fronts. As I mentioned yesterday, we’re pretty much done with wrapping, packing, and shipping holiday gifts. On the other hand, we’ve also received most of the stuff we ordered for ourselves!

The most satisfying arrival was our allocation of Sea Smoke Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara County in California. Sea Smoke is a cult wine from the area featured in the movie “Sideways” a few years ago. We were lucky enough to get a vineyard and winery tour early this year, and we’re on their allocation list (the wine is pretty hard to come by). This year, we were only allotted two bottles, but that may have been due to an email mix-up, so next year we’re hoping for more. We have a few bottles in the “wine box”, so we’ll add to the cache over time.

I also received my “birthday present”: the 25th anniversary re-release of U2’s The Joshua Tree album. I bought a couple of import “singles” at the same time, so the DVD/CD player will get a workout over the next few days. We rarely play CDs anymore, and all this new music will end up transferred to Windows Media and iTunes pretty quickly. I have a Bose iPod system that we use quite a bit; I usually just put the 4,000+ songs on shuffle and let it go.

The final new “toy” is a bike rack for the Range Rover. I have a rack system for our recumbents that I fabricated last year, but I needed something for my more traditional mountain bike. I like to take the mountain bike when we go to rallies, since it’s easier to maneuver and a whole lot better than walking around these large venues. We usually try to get to the rallies as early as we can to get a good parking spot, but sites that can handle 1,000-5,000 RVs are generally pretty spread out no matter what. I put the rack together today, and it’ll work quite well. Its design allows the bike to swing to the side so we can get into the back of the Range Rover while it’s still attached. This will be very helpful while we’re traveling. At some point, I’ll try to find (or make or have made) a shorter “hitch extender”. The hitch on the Range Rover is recessed quite a way under the rear bumper, so we’ve needed an extender for everything we’ve attached to it. It’s 18” long, and we generally only need 8-10”. On the other hand, the one we have works, so there’s no pressure to change it.

Today was also sunny, and we were able to get out for a bike ride, which has been long overdue. We decided to ride down to the local mail box to drop off the remaining holiday cards (we’re leery of putting outgoing mail in our box this time of year, since thieves drive around and steal mail right off the street), about a mile round trip. Geri was having technical difficulty (I’d not made sure her tires were fully aired up) and cut her ride short. I continued on for a little over 10 miles. 10 miles at around 10 mph is nothing compared to what my friend Dave does (he routinely rides 80-100+ miles for fun, and rode in a group across the US last summer in about 30 days), but it’s not bad for me. I need to work up to about 20 miles a few times a week.

Other than washing the kitchen floor, that’s about it for today. For dinner, Geri made a roasted chicken dish with potatoes, onions, olives, peppers, and capers. It paired nicely with more of the Root:1 Cabernet we picked up recently at Costco.

Tomorrow, I’ll get back to working on the DirecTV HDTV dish, and we’ve got an outing planned for tomorrow night; details on Saturday…