Mountain bikers are not evil!!!

Here's an interesting article challenging the perceived damage that mountain
bikers cause the environment.
Basically the study says that hikers cause the same amount of damage to the
environment as mountain bikers and horses are the worst offenders.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/sports_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_83_5560106,00.html

Reading the article, I was reminded of the statement "In the absence of
truth, we make up stories."
That sure seems to be the case in this emotionally charged issue.

Witness to a random act of kindness...

Who says polite people do not exist?

Tonight my younger son and I were riding the BART home from the Oakland A's game, (they beat the Giants), and at one of the stops, a young father got on carrying his little girl.

My son and I were standing so we had nothing to offer in the way of seating but some young man (an A's fan with his banner and related crud), got off his duff, got the attention of the father by calling him "sir" and offered his seat.

A great opportunity to teach my son a "life lesson" for sure.

Who says politeness is dead?

Las Trampas MTB ride - cold, windy and foggy

Tuesday night after work I got in a quick ride up Las Trampas - a bit over 22 miles.  Cold, windy and foggy were the words of the day.

 

Here's a few seconds of video I snapped where the wind had died down a bit:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jdonohoe/LasTrampasMTBRideVideo

 

And my route via GPS:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/email/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=71388&unitSystemPkValue=2&episodePk.pkValue=2743015

 

The wind was blowing so hard that on the way up it was pushing me over a foot or two and I was leaning over 30 degrees or so just to keep on the trail. The fog was so thick that 20-30 feet was about all the visibility I had.  Good times!

 

I managed to follow the ridgeline and down a trail I had not been on before.  I saw a few others worth looking at for next time as well.

More riding this weekend!

 

Zoe the snake killer

We live next to a creek and a trail system so snakes seem to find their way into our back yard quite often and my dog, Zoe, hunts them down and then plays with them.

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/jdonohoe/20070513ZoeTheSnakeKiller

 

This snake came into our yard this Sunday morning while reading the paper.

To be clear. the snake was not reading the paper, Zoe was reading, I was rolling around in the grass sunning myself.

 

Zoe's ears perked up and she headed for the fence sniffing the ground with great enthusiasm.  When I heard her turning over the river rocks on the edge of our yard, I signaled to my wife inside to bring me my camera so I could catch the "SnakeKiller" in action.

 

Zoe does not quite understand that the snakes do not enjoy her playing as much as she does as she tosses them up into the air and tries to catch them.  She carried this snake around the yard, playing with it in different places.  After a short while, the snake played "possum" and Zoe started to prod it with her paw to get it to play more.  The snake was done with the play date and Zoe lost interest, heading off to explore her domain for other intruders.