I got a slow leak in my back tire which required pumping it up every mile.

Tubeless tires are great when they work, but when they don't work they can be pretty finicky.

Nancy hosted the Truckee Garden Club Tour at the house we landscape on Donner Lake.

The temperatures have picked up, so we both jumped in the creek to cool off and are now about to hike back up the hill.

Ryder likes to roll around in the long grass after he goes for a swim down in Martis Creek.

We grabbed an early morning ride on the Tahoe Rim Trail from Hwy 267 to Watson Lake. The trail is very technical, with a lot of rocky sections.

It’s about 6.6 miles to Watson Lake. We rode part-way back on the Fiberboard Freeway to avoid a nasty 1.5 mile climb up through the rocks.

Northstar offered a baseball night to all its fulltime employees, so we re-arranged our schedules to get a night off at the ballpark to see the Reno Aces play the Las Vegas 51s.

It was a fun game: Reno got three walks and a grand slam in the first inning to get it going. We got a foul ball, Bill from Building Maintenance (in the Nevada shirt) caught another foul ball, and a Northstar bus driver got hit in the head with yet another foul ball.

Good times.

Northstar is building a new chairlift and lodge up on the mountain, so we are now patrolling the mountain roads and gates that access the construction areas. It’s always nice to get out and go roaming through the woods.

One of our graveyard guys called in sick, so Nick picked up his shift from 2330-0330, and I worked from 0330-0730. Here I am grabbing an extra hotel room above our office to get a few hours sleep before clocking back in at 3:30 a.m.

Nancy was out in the bike park at Northstar and took this picture of the view from Northstar down to Martis Valley.

Yeah! A day off and a dinner at home.

Beware the evil re-entry guard.

We had a concert by Blues Traveler, which mostly meant a lot of overtime for me. I worked landscaping at Donner Lake yesterday with Nancy, then a swing shift last night, then a stage watch all night until 9:30 in the morning, then another swing shift (including the concert) today.

Nancy spent the day doing extra landscaping work, then had her bike race at 6:00 and hung out after the race for the concert (she was able to sneak past the guard somehow).

She’s been doing a lot of extra work at Donner Lake because our client’s (the Nelsons) yard is being featured in the annual Truckee Garden Tour. If you click to read the article, the photo and comment about a “stunning perennial lakefront garden” in the article pertain to the Nelsons’ yard.

Taking a nap in the back yard.

I could’ve posted a picture of us playing golf this morning, but we both played so badly that it would be like posting a picture of two drowning kittens.

I had to go up to the summit to make sure it was locked and armed. Normally we drive up some back roads to get to the summit, but since the bike park was open I took my bike up the chairlifts and then rode (and pushed) the rest of the way up.

Here I am taking the scenic route back down on a trail that connects East Ridge with the top of Vista.

Giant Bikes had a demo day for women at Northstar, so Nancy tried out a 5” travel model on Flame Out, one of the black diamond runs at Northstar.

I rode the Santa Cruz VP-Free that I bought from a friend last fall. It’s a DH bike with 2.5” tires and 8” of travel. It’s so much more stable on the downhills.

Usually Nancy rides the VP-Free (a/k/a “The Big Red Pig”) when we go to Northstar because it’s safer than riding her little Kona, and takes a lot more abuse.

We spent half the day sleeping, catching up from a long week. I took the dog for a walk at dusk along the bluff above Martis Valley.

Below is the Teichert Aggregates gravel pit, TTSA (where Nancy works), and beyond that downtown Truckee.

It was a long day for Nancy—she worked a graveyard shift, rode her bike home from work, did landscaping at Donner Lake until 4:00, and still managed to come in first in the second bike race of the year.

I’ve gone back from working graveyards to my normal swing shift. I’m trying to ride my bike to work and back a couple times a week. It’s only six and a quarter miles each way, but it takes 45-50 minutes to ride because the trail is twisty, very rocky in places, and concludes with a 20-minute uphill whether you’re coming or going.

The ride is a little nerve-wracking; I have a good light, but a helmet light has the same line of sight as your eyes, which means you don’t see any shadows, which means you have no depth perception. It’s like riding with one eye closed.

I wore shorts riding home last night, even though the nights have gotten cold lately. That was fine until I cut through the golf course and got hit by seven (I counted them) sprinklers. After that I was freezing. I was a little smarter tonight and put on a pair of tights.

My legs are getting in shape, but not Tour de France shape. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Ryder engaging in one of his favorite activities—ripping apart old tree stumps to look for chipmunks that aren’t there.

End of a long two days: worked swing and graveyard yesterday, 9 holes of golf and some riding in the bike park this morning, and another swing shift today.

Time to go home.

Nancy got out the planters and put some petunias on the deck last week. Here we are putting in drip lines so we don’t have to hand-water them.

When I have time to take Ryder for an extended walk, I’ll loop around from the creek to the dam trail.

Nancy is participating in the Thursday Night XC Mountain Bike Race Series at Northstar for the third year in a row. We came early for a couple of runs in the mountain bike park, and made the mistake of checking out one of the double black diamond runs, Boondocks.

The run is extremely burly—I had to walk through my bike through approximately ten sections, most of which feature 6 to 10-foot drops through rocky mazes.

Nancy went over the bars when her front tire bit in some soft stuff, and she got a bunch of scrapes and bruises, just in time for her first race.

Here, the racers gather in nervous anticipation as they await the course instructions.

Nancy thought she was going to puke on the initial climb, but managed to make it up without soiling herself.

There were a bunch of women in the race, some whom may or may not have ridden the entire course. Nancy got 4th, but won a $250 gift certificate in the post-race raffle. Score!

As soon as we get off work we can jump on the back nine at Northstar and hack away without any innocent bystanders suffering collateral damage.

Nancy got it going for several holes, hitting a number of perfect drives. I’m still playing Army golf: LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT, YER LEFT! YER LEFT!

Squaw Valley wasn’t as crowded today as yesterday, but the lift lines were still annoying, so after a couple of runs on Siberia and Shirley we took off hiking.

We made the Reverse Traverse off of Siberia and dropped down Headwall Face.

From there, it’s an easy traverse to the Saddle, and a short hike up to Chute 75 and West Face.

Chute 75 had a line skied out down the middle with perfect spring snow.

It was a terrific way to make our last run of the year.

Now, we just had a half-mile walk down a completely dry Mountain Run.

Squaw opened its vaunted extreme terrain for one last weekend, and the place was packed.

We waited a couple of times in ten minute lines, and then hiked up from Gold Coast to the top of Emigrant.

From the top of Emigrant, we skied the Upper Attic to Break-it-Out. This is a permanently closed area, due to cliff exposure to the right.

The snow was better than we thought it would be, grabby but not mushy, which was surprising considering it was 88° in the parking lot.

It’s always interesting to go skiing when you haven’t made any turns in over a month.

After skiing, we hung out for the annual Lake Cushing Classic, a pond-crossing contest at the base of Squaw. The event had been postponed a couple of times due to weather and excessive snow. Because it was being held on the 4th weekend for the first time ever, the crowd was the largest ever.

We had to hike up the hill under KT-22 to watch. A couple hundred more people arrived after I took the picture.

The highlight (lowlight?) of the contest was a snowboarder in a Borat man-thong who fell at full speed on the salted snow and tore all—and I mean all—of the skin off his ass.

Riding home from work at 10:30. I just spent 10 hours working the Bluegrass & Beerfest Festival, or dealing with about 2000 drunk people. Not a bad night—a couple of fights, a fire extinguisher set off, some pushing and yelling, and a girl arrested for stealing a $4200 mountain bike.

Yee-haw!

Nancy had a long day—graveyard shift, followed by landscape work in Tahoe City, followed by getting a flat and having to get it fixed.

Time to eat and pass out.