WEDDING = COOL CAMPING LOOT!!!!!

Mrs. Libby and I decided to take a quick jaunt up to the Lachs again to do an overnight camping trip. We have all this great camping loot from our wedding we wanted to try out in the the real world and figured this was a good trip to try it on. As a lot of you know, most of California is on fire and our little corner is no different. The American River complex fire was burning to the south and east of the Lachs, but there was a huge firefighter presence there as there is a large network of forest roads in the area. At first we thought we'd be turned away, but Ranger Stranger let us through and we parked my car, with some thoughts that we might see it next as a burned out metal hunk. (its paid for and insured....) With a quick goodbye to the Subaru and a packs on our back, on the trail we went!



We quickly hiked in the 2 miles to Middle Lach Leven, and spotted a GREAT camp site right on the waters edge. This place is littered with picture perfect camping spots, and we've never seen more than a few overnighters up there at any one point. Its truly a well kept secret! I think if more people knew our super stealth route into this area that bypasses the 1700 foot vertical gain the main trail makes you achieve it would be more popular! HA!!


The next pictures feature some of the wicked cool loot we got from our friends and family for our wedding. We had enough titanium gear to build a suit of armor! The French presss is titanium. Our dishes are titanium! The Steri-Pen appears to work exactly as advertised, otherwise after all the litres of lake water we drank, we'd have pooped our brains out right then and there. (Another neat toy not picture is the iPood--> a little packable shovel) The stove TOTALLY rules. My friend Aaron and his wife got that for us. It burns diesel, white gas, car gas, kerosene, alcohol, propane, you name it. BRING IT ON APOCOLYPSE!




Finally, here are a few general shots. I really dig the ones Sarah took from the tent looking out onto the lake. We only had one night, but it was worth the hike in! We enjoyed swimming, playing with our new toys, and even nailed our FTF (first to find) cache! WOHOO!!!!! As Paul Morgan sagely observered.... "WOW! Weddings = TOTALLY AWESOME CAMPING LOOT" Speak on brother Morgan, speak on. EAST SIIIIDDDDEEE.............. OUT.

Lachs, Geocaching and Bears, OH MY!!!!

While the coast burns and Arnie declares a drought, Ms. Sarah and I hopped into the ever trusty and fuel efficient Toyota Corolla and drove into the back country of the Sierra into Tahoe National Forest to go on a Geocaching adventure up at the Lach Leven lakes. After driving about 10 miles of forest roads, I have to give mad props to the 'Rolla.... given big props to the West Side for my sis-n-law.

What is geocaching you might ask? Well it is hands down the most fun you can have with a GPS unit! Scattered across this crazy world are hundreds of thousands of little ammo boxes, mint tins with magnets glued to them, and bar code stamped items traveling the globe... all right under our noses! Geocaching is fun, its free, and takes you to all kinds of fun places! Check out the link to the website and learn more!

Our first Geocache stop was at Lake Huysink. I thought for sure we'd get a FTF (first to find, highly coveted) but someone had been there first! *sigh* It was still great to bag our first find of the day! Here I am showing you how intrepid explorers work.

After a quick detour BACK down the road a bit to grab some industrial strength bug spray, we set off across the ridge bound for Salmon Lake and our second cache of the day. It was a relatively short hike at 2 miles or so, but the acrid air was pretty rough on our lungs. Still, even in the haze, the early summer in the Sierra's is beautiful!

Our second find of the day was a bit off of the trail at the far end of Salmon Lake from where the trail splits off. We thought we had been scooped yet again that day on the find by some people we saw, but it turns out they were only muggles (non-cachers) looking for a good place to camp. After walking right over the thing a couple of times we managed to find the cache, and in the process a beautiful view! We also picked out our first TravelBug, "the RAMbler"!!!


The third cache of the day was a THREE PARTER!!! This means that you get the coordinates for the first caches, which gives your the second which gives you the third! What a hoot! The first one was pretty easy. The second one taugth us a valuable lesson in GPS use... mainly, give it a second to catch up. After scrabbling up and down some good size hills, the second site turned out the be in a spot that we should have cut over to about a half mile back on the trail!! Never fear, we found it and went on to track down the third and final cache! Our GPS brought us to the edge of a lake, indicatig the cache to be about 150 feet from shore. WHAT?????!!!! We were prepared for this and jumped right in! SUCCESS!!!! We signed the log, left some Costa Rican money and swam back to the shore to enjoy a tasty lunch of salami, cheese and bread.

Last week my sister-in-law posted on her blog LoveYourMotherEarth an entry regarding the vicious and wild world of suburban California. Namely, squirrels. I guess when you live in So-Cal (as the cool kids call it) squirrels in your backyard is about all you can expect, apart from and occasional mountain lion who has so much mercury in his brain from pollution that he wanders into a retirement community, causing mass hysteria from the walking dead and eliciting a hunting party to kill off one of three wild animals left down there..... but I digress. As we were coming down the mountain, and incidentally as I was thinking bringing a bear box wasn't really necessary when hiking around there, what should bound across the road, but a bear! He stopped not too far into the woods to take a good look at us, and we stopped to check him out. Talk about cool. Take that Mistress of the Squirrels!



All in all, another wonderful day to be alive! We're planning some overnight trips with all the great gear our family and friends got us for the wedding and will be sure to document that whole circus too!

The Best Bike Ever

Well its official, I own the coolest bike ever made. I picked up this beauty from a Craigslist posting after missing out on three others by minutes! With gas prices what they are, people are starting to learn the value of a good bike.


With my new job down the street this makes my commute about 5 minutes and about 3/4 of a mile, as opposed to the 125 miles away that my prior job site was! The new job is great, but it starts at 0600 hrs! EEP! Well I CAN ride the bike and drink coffee at the same time, but I thought I'd see if I couldn't do a little better than that. I'm no philistine after all....

I had an old bottle cage hanging around my garage that seemed to fit my mug perfectly. I drilled out the holes into the handlebars, which stay nearly upright in all but the most aggressive turns, secured it with a few loose parts I found at the bottom of my tool box and PRESTO! It doesn't look too secure in this picture, but I've road tested it and will stand-by the passing grade I've given it.

The sweetest thing about this bike is the way cool paint job. I have no idea when this thing was actually made, but I am guessing late 80's??? Further deduction places its previous and intended home at a Florida trailer park, given the name. My nana and grandpa had one of these things when they lived in Florida, and I remember riding it like a maniac, jumping the speed bumps and doing power slides on the shuffle board courts.


For my purposes and more grown up sensibilities, I've added a few other modifications. It came with this wimpy little wire basket, that just would not do. I had an extra plastic bin kicking around and mounted that on the back instead. It holds my big boat bag from Beans full of groceries with room to spare for a few other items. I originally just mounted it right to the frame, but I added a couple of pieces of wood to create a more solid mounting surface today, and it seems more stable now. As you can see, I put the reflector back there too, in a nod to safety concerns. In that vein I have a orange flag to warn people I am on the road.

Future modifications I am hoping to make are:
1) Adding a three speed hub--> as it is now, you max out your speed pretty quickly.
2) Lighting, possibly recharged from a mounted solar panel like the one I have that lights the flag in the front yard.

Stay tuned for future updates on the bike, stories of our Geocaching adventures and Sarah's new bike!

WEDDED BLISS!!!!

Well FINALLY we have some of our professional wedding pictures in! Here's a sample of the awesomeness. We have right around 5,000 (WTF???) pictures, so going through all of them to pick out the best is going to be time consuming, but here's a few I dig. You can see more pictures at the photobucket website we have set up at www.photobucket.com Username: JasonandSarah_2008 Password: wedding. Enjoy!

ps. Wanna see the best wedding dance ever? click here!











Sarah is at a scrapping retreat this weekend, so I have been left with the task of going through all of these! I thought I had plowed through them all until I posted this and realized that I missed two whole DVD's worth of pictures! On the upside, I've been riding my new three wheel bike all over the place this weekend and am planning on settling into a great East vs. West NBA finals game this evening with my team the Celtics on cusp of greatness! Adios! GO CELTS! BEAT LA!!!!!

Introducing Miss Silvia

One of the best presents we got for our wedding was from my buddy Roger, the People's Gourmand, who made note of my drooling over his very nice espresso machine a month or so ago. So he purchased us Miss Silvia! A fine piece of Swiss engineering sold by Italians!

The learning curve on this thing is pretty steep, but with practice we're finally starting to get it!

It seems that there are all sorts of variables, including how hard you pack the grounds in the strainer, how much coffee you use, time of the pour and the fineness of the grind. Apparently the recommended grinder is like 260 bucks!!! Of course Roger has it. It is pretty bad ass, but since he lives very close by, I'll just bring my beans to him! Here's a few successful pulls!



Probably not very interesting to you all, but its been great for us!! With this and the other great gift of the coffee maker, we've cut out Starbucks! TAKE THAT!!

VROOM VROOM!!!

This is PROBABLY the guy who passed me yesterday on 80 East bound. He'd be the bonehead in the Chevy 2500 Extra Cab with an 8 inch lift kit and giant tires who blew by me at about 80 miles and hour. I can't imagine that guy was getting any better than 10-12 miles per gallon, while I was smugly driving Sarah's Corolla getting a nice 37 mpg. Behind me was a nice little line of Hondas and Toyotas, all with cruise control at 70, enjoying the sunny day and light traffic. Now this MORAN really gets under my skin.

This guy is probably the first one to complain about high gas prices, and how the "government should be doing something" about it. He's probably also convinced Barack Obama is a Muslim. The point being is mental midgets like the dude blowing down the highway at 80 mph in a vehicle getting 10 miles per gallon are either RICH or STUPID (not that they are mutually exclusive....). Lets set the record straight though, I am not an eco-nazi, tree hugging, level 4 vegan (only eating things that don't cast shadows) but I recognize that when a tank of gas costs 50 bucks, its time THINK ABOUT DRIVING LESS and SLOWING THE HELL DOWN when I do.

I, for one, think gas prices soaring is the ONLY thing that will make us stand up and take notice of the huge costs to our environment, health, and economic and political survival in the world that our voracious appetite for gasoline has created. I am not advocating returning to the stone age (HEY EZEKIAL, WANNA RAISE A BARN ON TUESDAY???), but I do think that we can do a lot to improve life on the planet for ALL of us just by doing what the Europeans have been doing for the past 30 years... driving smaller cars, driving them slower, and not expecting gas to be free. Okay... enough already!

WEDDING BELLS!

Well after many months of planning and organizing and fretting, Sarah and I were finally married on May 10th!

This picture here is of my beautiful bride and myself with Sarah's sister Mara and brother-in-law Craig.

We don't have any of our professional shots back yet, and when we do its going to be an act of Congress to get them sorted out. We were fortunate enough to have two photographers for the whole day, as the company we went with assigned us a second one gratis (he needed to have an event under his belt in order to sign on with Bella). At the end of the night as one of them was bidding us adieu, he intimated that he had shot "probably around 3000 picutres." THREE THOUSAND. And thats just ONE of them... If you'd like to see the pictures uploaded by our guests so far, just go to www.photobucket.com and username: JasonandSarah_2008 password: wedding.

After the ceremony we jetted off to beautiful FIJI! The name of the resort is Wananavu and it was GORGEOUS. The staff, the bure (pronounced bur-rey), the food and the area were PERFECT. Here is the view from bed! The sliding doors opened the entire wall out onto the deck with the sea below (lost in the sun washout in this picture).



Here are a few more shots of our accommodations....




The food was fantastic! Of course when you have a view like we did, its hard to imagine how it could be bad! Sarah and I managed to make happy hour all but one night of our trip! I am not a huge froo-froo drink fan, but they did make this fantastic drink called a Sota Tale which was vodka, ice cream, cocunut milk and banana. Also they serve this quick fried coconut concoction that was like crack.




Sarah was lucky enough to dive not once but TWICE whilst we were there! She said that it was simply amazing and I only wish she had been able to take some pictures! We also went snorkeling a few times, once off the jetty at the resort and twice at various reefs around the area that we got to by boat. This first shot is of one of the staff Eboluni, who arranged our boat tours.




When we have wedding pictures, we'll post them! Following hot on the heels of this entry, you'll find our adventures with our new espresso maker! HI-LARITY!