Chistmas 2010

Had everyone over but Elder Ford and He called and talked for one hour.

The grandsons got to open a bag full of little cars.
This was to hold them off from opening the big boxes.
So there was about 25 + cars in each bag and they still had a little trouble on who's car went into what bag.





We had just about everyone here, but Elder Ford and we sent him a box full of stuff.

He got a 12 inch tree.

and some candy stuff as will.










The video is just show who was here, this just before the big opening started.

Merry Christmas to all.

The MTC, Look OUT

Elder Ford, has left for the MTC in Utah.
He will be there for three weeks, and then move on to California for only 101 weeks in the mission field.
Daniel is the most ready Elder I have ever seen go out, but, me being his Dad, shouldn't have anything to do with my thinking. LOL.
We are really proud of Daniel, He is going because he wants to go, not because the bishop or parents say he should go.
He truly has the spirit of missionary work.
He left on Wednesday November 17.
We mist Him at Thanksgiving, but He will be back, in 2 Thanksgiving from now.
I'll get my letter writing skill tune-up and share in his experience by hearing from him all the time.
And Alex was there, so we hope He doesn't think Daniel is on a plane for 2 years.
I can see it now, every time a plane flys over, Alex will wave at Daniel. :)

Bear in the Neighborhood

The bears are coming out for dinner.
A friend from work, send these to me.
She live down the road about 3 miles from are house.
The bears, three bears come down off the hill be behind the house.
The images are not very good when enlarged.
I had been planning a hike in the area were the bear are coming out of, to look for a old grave marker of a child, from around the 1900's.
Not sure if I do it now.
Very brave bears, most stay away from humans.
The owner of the night camera has a dog, the bears may be eating the dog food?

Book Report " Faces in the Fire"

Faces in the Fire
By T. L. Hines

Really good story.
Starts out with Kurt waking up and not knowing who he is.
The only way he, finds out what his name is, is by check his only piece of ID he had was his driver's license. He had a application for truck drivers school and 10 thousand dollars in cash in a money belt.
He buys cloths at estate sales, and the dead people who owned the cloth before, talk to Kurt.
And he does art work from what they say to him.
At some point this list of ten numbers show up one the scene, and the number play a big part in each stanza of the story.
The story is written will and the story flows will with out any slow spots in the story line.
It one of those books that, once you get in about 5 charters, you can't but it down.
A good 5 stars.

Jack LaLanne, 1000 lbs. ?

The first TV exercise man.

How Jack lifts a 1000 pounds

You can tell this is an really old TV program, by the round screen.

The Jumping jack was name after him.

Book Report "Wheel of Time"

Authur Robert Jordan
Book one: The Eye of the World

Book two: The Great Hunt.

Book three: The Dragon Reborn.

All good books.
Rand the main character and two other friends Mat and Perry are from the same little town and grew up together and each one seems to have there own special power and job to do in there world or in saving the world.
The stories seem to drag a little and then about the last 3 charter they have the big battle.
But the stories seem to improve in the later books, but I have only read 3 of the 13 books at this point.
Time will tell.

Another 50 Miler

Saturday the November 2 I rode from the house, out Evans creek road to Sam Valley back into Gold Hill then to Rogue River, then back to the house.
Was going to start at 7 AM but I did not wake up till 8 AM so that is just as will.
It was colder then I thought it was going to be, I stopped about 12 miles out and found a sunny spot to seat in the sun and warm up, before going on.
The time were good.
Started : 8:30 AM
Back : 12:45 PM
Ride time: 3 hours, 41 minutes.
Distance : 50 miles
Average speed : 13.7 mph
Done on road bike.
I going to try and do this one more time before winter starts on the mountain bike.
Maybe in two weeks.
Up date 10/24/10
Winter is here, the next ride is off for now.

Daniel's Got The Call

Daniel is going on a mission.
To Sam Fernando, California.
And Dad is so happy the can't believer it really happened :)
The mission covers from Mammoth, Bishop, Lone Pine, Ridgecrest, Rosamond, Lancaster, Palmdale, Quartz Hill, Santa Clarita, and finely the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles.

Daniel will be leaving in mid November.

We will let everyone know when we do the farewell party.

Austin Daniel Is Here

Austin Daniel Sutherland

September 26, 2010

12:45 A.M.

6 lbs. 5 oz

18 and 3/4 inches long

13 inch head

Ride the Rogue 2010

Last time I rode the Ride the Rogue, was in 2007.
Molly was my partner on that ride and she was 2 month pregnant.
This year I couldn't get anyone to go, so I rode it with 600 other people.




At about 7:30AM I was looking out the front window at lots of rain coming down.
I waited till 8 and check the weather for the hour by hour and it was at 60% now and would be up to 90% by 9, so drove down to the Park and the video was taken behind the car.
It was raining hard enough I thought I needed my goggles and snorkel to made the ride.

So.
I rolled across the starting line at 8:30AM and down W. Evans creek road for 65 miles.
In about 2 mile I was just getting wet, and by the time I rode by Minthorn road I was soaked .
So I thought I would stop at the Covered Bridge.
Will I felt so good being wet and warm, I forgot that I was tired.
But but my last for 60 miles.


When I was about 3 mile from Mission Bell ranch, (one of the rest stop) and ride in front of me had rear tire go flat.
I later heard that some one had spread thumb taps alone the road in the 9 mile area.
I did talk to a bike shop owner, who drove alone the route fixing tires for free and He said that He had take 4 taps out of one tire, used up all the tubes He had brought for the day.
A guy riding the 100 miler had 7 flat, be for He had completed ride.
I did not have one problem the hole day, with my bike, road perfect.
So I'm peddling up this hill in my lowest gear (i only have 12 gears) and I'm catching up to this lady and I said " I think I can pass, but I only have 12 gears, and there all gone on this 1981 bike". And the lady said " my 1979 has 21 gears, so my bike is older".
We passed each other back and forth the rest of the day. We had lots of time to talk move as slow as we were.
Had lunch at Touville park,(40 miles) the rain stopped for about 10 minutes, and at about 50 miles I started to get hot and had to unzip my jacket down about 6 inch to cool off.
Then the rain came back worsted then ever. but there was only 15 miles left.
As I was about 4 miles from the starting park, 3 guys passed by and I suck up behind them and draft the last 3 miles in, with 3 wheel rooster tails flying up at me, watch really couldn't make me any wetter then I was all ready.
States
Left 8:30 back 1:15
Total time out 4 hour and 45 minutes.
Total ride time 4 hours and 15 minutes.
Average speed 14.3 mph.
65 miles total.
2665 calories.
The video was done in the back of the car under the trunk lid to keep the camera dry.

Railroad Gap cache.

Saturday, I drove up and pike up the cache.

The Bridge Ride 2010

August 7 to the 9.
I drove to the cost for a dive fish fry thing from the dive shop.
Then drove back to RR, drop dive gear and pick up bike for the bridge ride in Portland, with Sam.

Sam and Dad was the only ones this year.
The last time we did this was in 2007.
We road from Sam house down the start of the ride in down town old Portland.
I chose the 24 mile ride because I did not want to be down at the start at 6 AM.
We start at 8 AM, a much better time.

We had a great time.
Oh ya.
The bike sprocket, hit me in the back of my leg at St. John bride, going up a 18 inch curb.
Not to bad.
NO, I did not get any fish at the dive.
(I did shoot at two)
I drove about 900 mile at week end.
Had a great time.

The Sleeping, 007

Alex was sleeping on the coach.

Geocaching Road Trip

Fort Rock.

A nearby tuff ring has a water-formed cave, called Fort Rock Cave, where in 1936 Dr. Luther Cressman from the University of Oregon discovered sagebrush sandals and human artifacts dated approximately 9,000 to 10,000 years ago
More Info.

I made my way by going into K falls and came up hwy, 97 and cut over the hill to Fort Rock and camp about mile away.

It is pretty cool rock formation.
It was getting late when I got there so I did not hike that far into as I would like to have.
I did find about five cache in the area before heading up the road.

Book Report "Lost Symbol"

Lost Symbol.
Authors Dan Brown.
Another new book came out I think in 2009.
Robert Langle is in the story as will, and plays the main caritor
There is the really bad guy, who wait the great screct,
The interesting part is this all takes place in Washington D.C.
So some of the weid stuff he bring up in the story is mostly true stuff, I check into some of the facts and thing and items and building with there odd stuff about them is pretty much on the mark.
I like the book and would give it a 4 out of 5.

The Sky Lake Wilderness Hike

On July 6, Daniel and Dad hike into the Sky Lake Wilderness.
The area we choice to hike to was the Seven Lake basin.
And we found seven lake and visited six of the seven.
We started out from the house about 9 am and arrived at the trail head about noon.
Very nice day not to hot, and the mosquito were as hungery as ever.
I was bite about 4 time just butting the pack on, so it came off and the bug spray was applied.
We start up again and made are way up the trail, through old growth timber that is starting to die, and is very beautiful.
At about 2 mile we came to the great gopher meadows, with huckleberry bushes just starting to bloom out.
The wild flows were just coming on when we passed by.
At about 4 miles, we came to our first snow drift, pretty small, but about 50 feet across.
For the next two and half miles the drifts got bigger till that was all we were walking on was snow.
The trail was gone, so we had to relie on 70 year old trail blaze marks on the trees.
At time we couldn't find these, so we just walked in the general direction till we would find one.
It took about 4 hours to walk in, to lake Alta, I was shock the lake was full of snow.
No place for a bath this time.
We did find a place to set-up are camp on dry ground.
Day two we hiked down to the other 5 lake, and Daniel really wanted to go to Grass lake, because it had lots of grass to lay in, or so it looked like from base camp.
When got to grass lake, the grass was pretty rough and wet looking and He did not lay down on it.
We stay two nights, and looked like it was going rain pretty hard on uses but the wind blow the clouds out, so we stay pretty dry.
Now our shoes stay pretty wet, and drying them over the fire, almost melted them, maybe just a little.
Had now camera at the time so I got now pictures, but there is all ways next time.
It took about 2 1/2 house to hike out and it was sure hot when we got back to the car.
Glade we had A/C this time.

Book Report "Strnager In A Strange Land"

Title: STANGER IN A STANGE LAND.
Aurther: Robert A. Helinlein
Date writen: 1961
Story is about a young man name Michael who's parents travel to Mars, and just as they land He is born and the crew of 20 all die.
This trip took 3 years to get there, and was the first humans to go to Mars.
Valentine Michael Smith, was raised by the Martian.
By the time the next trip to Mars arrived, 20 years had past and little Mike was grown to a man.
And of course Mike grew up learning Mars language and custom.
Mike being born on Mars first, by the laws of earth made Him King and Ruler of Mars.
His parents being very smart, had made some cool thing and patent them, before going to Mars and after 20 years on the market, Mike was a very rich man, so rich, that Mike had to be protected, from those that had control of the moneys.
Mike had to learn how to be human, the language, and the custom.
Mike was taken to a hospital when first can to earth because the gravity here is much stronger and Mike was very weak.
Took all his strength to walk 10 feet.
He had never seen female, so He had no female contact while in the hospital.
The government, did not let the new media or anyone talk to the Man from Mars.
A nurse heard of the man from mars and so, as nurses do, she went to made sure that all his needs were being taken care of.
Mike just learning to talk, asked for something that sounded like water, so the nurse gave Him a glass of water.
On Mars, there is a water shortage, and so water is very sacred on Mars, and so when anyone offers you water to drink, you become a Water Brother.
Or it like getting married, you pledge you self to each other.

Any was, this was a good book till about half way through and then is go weird.
Mike had powers, mind powers, to do many thing, make thing float, and vanish.
Mike even started his own church.
So its okay, I would gave it a 5 out of 5 for the first half and 2 out 5 for the last half.

Bike Tyres

These are really cool yellow tires for the road bike.
Had a hard time putting this thing on.
Very tight, the rear tire I pitch the tube installing it.
I didn't know it for about a week.
So I got to practice on the rear tire again.
I love the color, maybe it will make me go faster. LOLOL
Its been to rainy to ride the road bike.
And I get out about once a week on the MTB.
Maybe next week.

The Slippers

These slipper Rochelle made.
There really cool, will maybe not
cool as there nice and warm.
There the Felted type.
She was testing out a new way to
but them together.
It works will.
Thanks Rochelle, you can make slippers for me any time.

Rub Goldberg machine

The Rub Goldberg machine.
I saw this and thought is was pretty cool.
If you run it coup of time you'll see the mults of stuff laying around, just getting things dialed in.
Like the bunch of TV's.
Or the paint on there cloths.
And there running to be in the right place as the camera follows the machine.
Enjoy.

Peak Cache Series

I started a cache series about a month ago.
In my MTB-ing, I come across a peak or two, so I'm thinking I should place caches on these cool places.
The fist one is about about 2.5 mile hike, and then a .25 mile up a steep hill to the top.
Mule Mountain Cache
But the digital camera is died after its rough life, so now pictures of my own.
And the past week I got out and place a cache up Birdseye creek, that had a great view of the Rogue Valley look into Grants Pass and Rogue River area.
Tail Hold Cache (peak cache #2)The name I gave it because of the tail hold on the top that the Yarder equipment hook there cables to, so they don't turn over when pulling log up the hill.
There logging in the area right now but, there be gone in 3 or 4 months.
I did place another cache that is a none peak, but is on a point of a hill over looking Birdseye valley.
It's called the Big Bald Spot Cache, over look this 50 acres of grass, going down a very steep hill side.
Again no pictures, but I'm looking at a digital camera that I can use on the MTB and for diving, called the Hero Camera.

Book Report, "The Mote in Gods Eye"

Book: The Mote in God's Eye.
Authors: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Printer in October of 1974.
This is a science fiction, space thing, were they meet some aliens.
The star cluster is called god's eye and a spot in it is the mote's plant system.
The aliens are called Moteis.
Very interesting story, with some battles and even a love story part were the captain and a beautiful scientist fall in love, not to bad, only about 3rd or 4th sub story.
Gets real interesting in the last quart of the book were the humans have to decide weather to let the Moties leave there system and to start anew, and the lies that must be uncovered.

A Ride On The Green Way

Thursday nice warm day.
Talked Rochelle into riding the Green way in Medford, going south.
There is a nice parking lot a long were the rock gym is, that you can pick-up the Green way trail with out having to deal with the cars. Only have to cross over one road and its pretty quite.
We took the MTB and Rochelle rode the old Wahoo and I rode the Cake.
We rode out about five mile and stopped and we traded bikes and Rochelle fell in love with the Cake. I may not be able to get it back.
The sun was shinning and just a little cool but a very nice day.
We got 10 miles in and went by Costco for slice of pizza and Rochelle and wrap.

First Ride of Year

Tuesday, I really took the road bike outside.
This is the first time the road bike has been outside for 2010, I have been doing the bike trainer thing in the dinning room after work for, about 3 to 4 days a week, for about 30 minutes.
Rochelle will be glade that is over. LOL
Doing anything to try a keep what I had last summer.
So it was pretty cold, so I had to wait till about 11:30AM.
And even then, I had to put on 2 pairs of gloves and 3 lays of shirt to stay harm.
I rode from the house up to West Evans road, then over to Queens Branch then down the hill to East Evans, then all the way to Rogue River, and back over to West Evans, to Menthorne then to the house.
This took about 1:05 to do 17.25 miles, so that is not bad for the first ride of 2010.
Training for Duathlon in June and John and Molly won't me to do the Green way century in September.
The time of1:05 is about what I did my part of the Duathlon with Molly, on a MTB.

Cool J Ville Trails

Monday I hike on the Jacksonville trail.
I had a motivation to hike there was 5 geocaches in the area.
If you look at the map to the left, the parking right at the trail head.
If you can find it (TH) right behind the Britt concert bowl.
It all one way roads in that area, so good luck.
I did find the five cache and see the old mining areas.
Not to steep and nice and open, lots of trails to follow.
The area I was in is the blue area.

Book Report "Ender's Game"

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
Very good story.
Ender is boy who is 6 years old and his job is to learn how to save the world.
So the Army come to his home and takes Him on a space flight to space station, and He starts playing these war game.
Will written and good flow to the story.
Look forward to the other books Card writes.

A Day On Mule Mountain Trail

A couple weeks ago I tested out a new trail.
Its called Mule Mountain trail.
Its really a loop trail, going up one way and coming down another.
In this case Mule Mountain goes up 3.5 mile and the return trail is Mule creek trail.
Its in the Applegate lake area, about 2 or 3 miles from the lake.
Its and bit of a clime for about the first half mile, then it gets better.
So I pushed the bike for most of the first half mile, and then started riding up the rest, stopping every so often to rest and go as far as I can and stop again.
I got up about 3 miles and look around behind me and there was this big snow and rain storm coming at me, down the valley from the lake.
I had been riding about 2 hours and 15 minutes to get there, and it was about 3 PM.
So it was time to get down the hill.
Now for the reward, for the last 2 hours of work.
That what's so fun about MTB-ing there is almost always a big fast ride down the hill.
I loved, it took me a hole 22 minutes to get to the car.
I did take some pictures but the stubbed camera wouldn't not let down load the stuff.
I'll be back to finish this trail, SOON.

Book Report. INK WORLD

By Cornelia Funke
The first book is good and it holds your interest as the story grows and develop into a real story. The other two just draw out and take forever to get to
the point. So do read the fist one.

The Pudding Guy

I found this interesting story, you will get a good laugh out of it.

And by the way, this is a true story.

Snopes.com
This is a site that a couple (husband/wife) who do research on whats is true and what is an urban legend.

Davi Phillips,a civil engineer at UC-Davis, has become a cult hero in the obsessive subculture of people who collect frequent-flier miles by converting $3,150 worth of pudding into 1.2 million miles. Oh, yeah-he's also going to claim an $815 tax write-off.
Last May, Phillips was pushing his shopping cart down the frozen-food aisle of his local supermarket when a promotion on a Healthy Choice frozen entrée caught his eye: He could earn 500 miles for every 10 Universal Product Codes (bar codes) from Healthy Choice products he sent to the company by Dec 31. Even better: Any Healthy Choice bar codes mailed by the end of the month would rack up double the mileage, or 1,000 miles for every 10 labels.

"I started doing the math, and I realized that this was a great deal," he said. "I wanted to take my family to Europe this summer, and this could be the way."

Frozen entrées were about $2 apiece, but a few aisles away Phillips found cans of Healthy Choice soups at 90 cents each. He filled his cart with them, and then headed to his local Grocery Outlet, a warehouse-style discount store. And there he hit the mother lode.

"They had individual servings of chocolate pudding for 25 cents apiece," he said. "And each serving had its own bar code on it. I did some more math and decided to escalate my plans."

Phillips cleaned the store out - bought every last cup of pudding in the warehouse. He then asked the manager for the addresses of all the other Grocery Outlet in the Central Valley and, with his mother-in-law riding shotgun in his van, spent a weekend scouring the shelves of every store from Davis to Fresno.

"There were 10 stores in all," he said. "Luckily, most of them were right off the freeway."

He filled his garage to the rafters with chocolate pudding and stacked additional cases in his living room. But Phillips wasn't finished yet - he had the manager of his local Grocery Outlet order him 60 more cases.

"A few days later I went out behind the store," he said, "and there were two whole pallets of chocolate pudding with my name on them."

All in all, he'd purchased 12,150 individual servings of pudding. Around this time, Phillips began to reveal his scheme to fellow of the Webflyer Web site where he posted an account under the name "Pudding Guy." Phillips' tale was met with skepticism, if not outright disbelief, until he uploaded photos of his haul.

But then Pudding Guy discovered he had a problem on his hands: The deadline for earning double miles was quickly approaching, and there was simply no way Phillips and his wife could tear off all those bar codes in time. "I had to come up with something to do with all that pudding, fast" he said. Phillips trucked the pudding to two local food banks and the Salvation Army, which agreed to tear off the bar codes in exchange for the food donation. "We'd never seen anything like it," said Larry Hostetler, community relations director for the Sacramento Salvation Army. "We've gotten some big donations, but always from companies and institutions, not individual people."

Phillips got his bar codes in the mail in time to beat the deadline, and then held his breath. The promotion specifically said I could get the miles for any Healthy Choice product," he said. "But still, it seemed like there was a good chance they'd get me on some technicality. "But then packages — large packages — started arriving in the mail from Healthy Choice. In all, they contained 2,506 certificates, each good for 500 miles. That's 1,253,000 miles.

Under the terms of the promotion, Phillips could have the mileage posted in any airline account. He split 216,000 between his United, Delta and Northwest accounts and posted the rest — 1,037,000 miles — to his American Airlines account.

By surpassing the million-mile mark, Pudding Guy now has Aadvantage Gold status for life, entitling him to a special reservations number, priority boarding, upgrades and bonus miles.

While we talked on the phone, Pudding Guy did a little math - as you might have noticed by now, he's very, very good at math - and figured out that scheme netted him enough miles for 31 round-trip coach tickets to Europe, or 42 tickets to Hawaii, or 21 tickets to Australia, or 50 tickets anywhere in the U.S.

"Wow - 31 trips to Europe for a little over $3,000," I said. "That's less than $100 a ticket."

"Oh, it's better than that," Phillips said. "Since I gave the pudding to charity I can take a tax write-off of $815. So that brings the cost of a ticket to Europe down to $75." As it turns out, Pudding Guy didn't donate all his stash to the food banks. He kept about 100 servings for himself, and he's just about finished them. "Actually," he said, "I really like the stuff."