First came Avery’s basketball practice. Warming up with jumping jacks:
Dinner at home afterwards.
Dessert at Leah & Jeff’s:
Apple pie from Freeport Bakery and Salty Caramel Cupcake Entremet from Ginger Elizabeth. 
Monthly Archives: February 2017
Bike Hikers ride
I joined Bike Hikers last September, then came my bike crash and recovery. Today I did my first ride with the club. The Tuesday “easy rider” ride had quite a few participants. About half of the easy riders are also quite fast, they left the turn-around point before the slower riders got there. Such a friendly group of people. I will do this again.
Miles=20
Goodbye G Street
Field Trip: high water on Feather River
On Sunday afternoon, Justin asked me if I wanted to drive along the levee to look at the water. This turned out to be about two hours before the evacuation of 188,000 people from upriver as the Oroville Dam emergency spillway continued to erode.
On the other side of the levee, water was seeping under the levee into the farmland or …
This pump is ordinarily used to pump water out of the river to irrigate farmland, but this is not the growing season so the pumps are turned off. However, the river is so high, it’s creating back pressure on the pumps causing water from the river to flow backwards through the pumps (thank you Justin for this explanation).
We counted at least 12 markers like this one along the levee. They note trouble spots that inspectors need to repeatedly check – and there are a lot of inspectors keeping watch.

Boils are spots where the water has soaked through the levee and comes bubbling up on the other side. When discovered, the boil is ringed with sand bags in an effort to stabilize it.
The confluence of the Feather and Sacramento Rivers is at Verona, but there is serious leakage going on with the water now halfway across the road.
Days ago, farmers started moving their equipment to higher ground.
An overpass (with no on/off ramps) near Justin’s house:
There are some beautiful homes on the river side of the levee – a risky location in times like this.
There were big U-Haul trucks at the ready everywhere.
A neighbor of Justin’s asked for help to move some equipment. The first stop was the local gas station; Justin wanted me to fill up also. We got there just before it became clogged with customers.
The exodus was agonizingly slow along Hwy 70 as the evacuation continued. What should have been a 45 minute drive from Marysville to Sacramento took 5 hours on Sunday night.
The mandated evacuation did not apply to E Nicolaus. Wheatland, 12 miles north, was recommended evacuation. So we sat tight and hoped for the best.
Hearts on Fire
The 4th annual Chili, Chocolate, and Cornbread Cook-Off at the Rio Linda Grange.
Getting the chili ready to serve.
Cornbread ready to go – mine is in front.
Desserts – decadent and delicious.
Susan Hanks explained how the voting process worked.
Every cup was numbered, a corresponding jar for collecting poker-chip votes sat by each dish in the kitchen.
The dessert winners:
The cornbread winners – my Civilized Cornbread won 1st place!
The chili winners. Cecil McCracken (red shirt) won first place.
Most appearances in the winner’s circle was Deb Crowe (patterned apron).
Saturday basketball
Valentine’s Dinner Dance
Basketball and ukelele
Tuesday, basketball practice for Avery.
He made almost every basket he shot!
After ukelele on Thursday, Sophia showed me how she’s been reading a book about taking care of cats. She preparing for the day when her parents let her have a pet-sometime before Carson’s 2nd birthday. Which means Thais and Lenin only have 11 months and 2 weeks to figure out how to dissuade her. Good luck.
About to wake up after getting home from daycare.
Wrestling with Mom while Carter keeps on eye on things.
Super Bowl babies
I watched the Super Bowl with Justin at his house and made terrific pulled pork nachos – a good blog post but superseded by even better news. Maria’s daughter Leslie had her third child today – a boy named Liam. Congratulations!
Not to be outdone, Justin also had a baby today!
Maria and I had the SAME due dates for our first-borns, August 10 1975. Leslie was born one week early, Justin was born four weeks late.
LCI spring training
A group of local LCIs (League Cycling Instructors) were invited to discuss and review the best practices for teaching Project Ride Smart in North Natomas or the bike education classes in San Juan Unified School District.


L-R: Mellissa Meng/NNTMA, Dan Allison/San Juan USD, Elle Steele/San Juan USD & 50 Corridor.







