Redwood Asylum

California's Two Seasons

Early this morning, I welcomed the arrival of winter in the Santa Cruz Mountains, though your Hallmark calendar shows Fall only started a few weeks ago. Simple explanation. California only has two seasons: Summer and Winter. In the past, I lived in both New York and Michigan; states which actually have four seasons. How do you mark the passage from season to season in California? Rain. The end of winter is declared and back-dated when you realize it hasn't rained for 30 days. The start of winter is marked by the first rain. Pretty simple.

Welcome To Winter, Bitches!

No rain since March. First light showers of the new season started about 11:00 PM. Power failed at 11:15 PM. Waited patiently, just in case it was a short outage. Jump-started generator from the car due to dead generator battery. Finally started the generator at midnight.

Welcome to winter in the Santa Cruz Mountains, bitches!

Body Worlds 2 and The Brain

We went to see the last day of the Body Worlds 2 and The Brain exhibit at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. Amazing. If you get the chance to see this in your area ... do it.

Pour It On

Five inches of rain today in the Santa Cruz mountains. Gulp.

Turkey Parade

Driving home, had to stop on the road to let 11 turkeys cross single-file. Long parade of the little buggers in a slow, well-behaved, single-file line. Why did the turkeys cross the road? In this case ... to get to the other side.

Power Outage Quickie

Started ye old trusty generator at 6:00 p.m. but grid power was restored by 8:45 p.m. Just a quickie power outage, for once.

Power Outage, Day Four

Although the PG&E outage status line said power could be restored tonight between 8:00 and 10:00, it actually came back on around 11:15 a.m. Our Honda 6500 generator finally gets a well-deserved rest. Once again, peace and quiet blankets the forest mountain as neighbors also shut down their generators.

Power Outage, Day Three

Now PG&E doesn't expect to have outage status information until Tuesday evening. Here in the redwood forest, our Honda 6500 generator just keeps humming along.

Power Outage, Day Two

The power grid remained down all night, so I kept our generator humming along. According to PG&E, they won't have any status information available until Sunday night. So, we ran the generator all day. It will usually run about 6.5 hours before I have to refuel.

Power Outage, Day One

The power in the forest failed after 11:00 a.m. when nobody was home. The kids started the generator around 4:30 p.m. It took me 3 hours to get home from work because of multiple road closures due to mud slides. The slides blocked both my normal route and my backup route. The trip normally takes about 45 minutes. Ran the generator all night.