Just a few recent shots of some fall colors and a minnow we caught in the ditch (and later released). Alden and I also went to Hartman's for some trail work but ended up just hiking around onthe new Free Fall reroute and riding Hogsback afterward.

2008-10-15 Update: a few from our after dinner ride to the creek in tonight's nice light. 

After going for a ride up the Dyke Trail from the Horse Ranch Park side yesterday, Mary called to tell me she had just come face to face with a big (150 Lbs estimated) mountain lion! She had stopped to take some photos of the great fall scenery and while taking photos heard this strange and haunting sound. She looked up and made eye contact with the big cat which was about 30 Feet away.  

Thankfully she was able to just turn around and ride away without being chased, eaten or have any other horrible interaction. I figured she must have surprised it, because they are efficient and powerful enough predators that if it had been after Mary things would have probably ended differently. I can't say how relived I am this was the outcome!

Here's the really wild part: Moments before this she had turned off her mp3 player and accidentally started the voice recorder.  The recording had a bunch of background noise on it (the sound of the camera, a plane passing overhead, and noise inherent to the recorder) but the "scream" of the mountain lion was audible. I trimmed and cleaned up the audio a bit to reduce the background noise and enhance the lion sound. 

Click the link below to listen for yourself. It's not what I would have expected to hear from a mountain lion.

mt Lion enhanced.mp3 (69.52 kb)

I had the pleasure of being on two of the three rides my boy insisted we do at Hartman's over the holiday weekend. It was really great to be out there with him sharing this thing I love to do and now he loves it as well.

He's really coming along and riding well. He can really climb! I couldn't get many action shots because he'd be gone if I stopped to take pictures.

After a little bike ride around the neighborhood, Alden and I watched the cats play in the yard and took some photos. Naboo is quite the character and seems to have a taste for flowers. Originally we thought he was a she but a recent (expensive and in the end unnecessary) vet visit revealed Naboo was a boy. Good thing we didn't settle on the name Princess Leia, which actually almost happened! Butterscotch pretends to be too mature to play these kitten games but can't resist getting into the action from time to time.

I finally broke down and traded my trusty old '95 Kia for a newer Toyota truck ('07 Tacoma Double cab). So far the truck is great. I've never owned a truck before so just being able to toss things in the back is still quite a novelty. The Kia was becoming less and less trusty, and although it still started and ran well neither of the rear doors would open anymore and it needed new tires. Rather than putting money into it I decided to pass it along.

We tried out our "new" pop-up camper which some neighbors gave to us when they moved away. Again, this is a new thing to me so there was the novelty of being able to sleep in the camper, but this particular camper may not last for us. It's really old (from the 60's) and I'm afraid the canvas will soon disintegrate enough to make it more of an open air type of experience. So we may go back to tent camping for now, but it will still be nice to do from a truck instead of a car.

Anyway, we stayed two nights in two different spots. Mary and I each got a solo ride in, Alden and I did a quick evening ride, and then we all took one together before heading back home on Sunday. We only saw two other vehicles pass by all weekend which was nice and peaceful. The carnival was in town (across the street from our house) so we definitely had to get away from that!