Author: Chris

Mud and Poppies in Wilder Ranch

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Here’s some pictures from another Saturday ride with MBoSC (Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz) in Wilder Ranch.  It was just a couple of us since most everyone else was at the Santa Cruz Bike Festival this weekend.  Lots of poppies in bloom above the Zane Grey Cutoff trail.  Even with the recent and welcome rain, most of Wilder Ranch tends to dry up pretty quickly but I was still able to find a few leftover mud puddles here and there! ;-)

Click through for the full gallery:

 

Tahoe Skiing

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Here’s a handful of pictures and a video montage from a couple of Tahoe ski trips in March with Darlene and the Outdoor Adventure Club.  Unfortunately, I didn’t catch everyone on camera on these trips.  One weekend was with Greg and Erin but we never caught up with Bruce and Jane on the slopes and the other was with Stéphane, Evan, Richard and Jennifer but you can’t tell that from the photos.  We also met up with Resi and Troy (and baby Aiden!) one day and foolishly I didn’t get a single shot of Aiden ripping up the slopes!  At least I did get a shot of our massive Carcassonne game where we played with four of the major expansions at once.

Click on through for the gallery and video:

  

Another Bobcat in the Yard

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I should know better than to just ignore Pan when I see he’s staring out the window.  The second time I walked by I stopped to look and… oh, hey!  There’s another bobcat – and it’s in the front yard this time!  Or maybe it’s the same one I keep seeing in the open space behind my house.  Anyway, by the time I ran upstairs to get the camera, he was following the driveway out of the front yard, but not before stopping to mark his territory.  It was dusk and getting dark, but I boosted the video a bit:

 

I went outside to say hi but he wasn’t interested in chatting.  Presumably he’s looking for the rabbits I sometimes see – or maybe the field mice that escape Pan’s fenced off domain.  I followed him down the driveway a bit, scaring off the deer, before he disappeared into the brush.

 

Costa Rica – Coast to Coast

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I just returned from a fun and challenging little adventure (arranged through BikeHike.com) where a group of eight of us made our way across Costa Rica from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean entirely under our own human power… and a fair amount of gravity assist!

We started in Quepos, on the western coast, and we proceeded to bike, hike, raft and kayak our way entirely across the country until we reached the eastern coast and the Caribbean.  We mostly camped at sites along the way and a support vehicle carried our gear but we otherwise made our way from one coast to the other.  Along the way, we encountered (or sometimes befriended) caiman, monkeys, sloths, toucans, turkey vultures, frogs, bats, snakes and some biting fish, as well as numerous insects including various spiders, ants, butterflies and a particularly aggrieved, giant grasshopper.

Click on through for my gallery of photos and videos from the trip: