fluttering circles

What a day for trailering. What a day for white (perforated!) leather gloves and smooth, little trafficked back roads. J wanted a Brown Lunch today, and I know nothing, I am merely the motor(er). We headed up the hill a little, slipped through the trails and across the ped. bridge , and came out downtown. There were 3 moms walking their strollers across the street, and I will say for shootin certain that one of them said "Oh, hot!" as she caught sight of us coming at them. And it was not a warm day, if you know what I'm sayin. Then down Pescadero Canyon (hunt and peck to find roads right along it) to crawl up through Pebble Beach's incredibly well maintained twisty climbs. At the top of Huckleberry, J was asleep so I decided to wrap around 17 Mile Dr. above Skyline Forest to come out at the 68/1 interchange and ride up Aguajito instead of dropping through Veteran's. that way we'd have a Brown Lunch in the woods, which we like.


No purse in the lillies today..

Then a lady in a car gave us an enthusiastic thumbs up as we started up Loma Alta to Jack's Peak. I've said it before- Jack's is an effing oasis of kickasseddesertedness. We locked the rig up at the Western gate, and slithered up the trail to find a suitable spot. J spent much time riding my shoulders up the hill.

Here he is under his own power

And again, trickily covering his secret identity

This is how it went

Because life is hard when you are stupid. I forgot to replace the Esbit tabs in the stove bag after using the last of them at the Stairs. At first, I thought it was over before it began, then I rallied and realized I could not only augment the tabs with wood, but replace them with it if need be.


Well, things seemed to be working out very well. The fire took several tries to catch, even with all the easy burning moss, leaves and pine duff available- but it did catch. We'd picked a spot with a view, and I'd cleared all the Poison Oak tendrils away from it by beating them back with a stick. I cleaned a plot of duff and leaves down to the ground to avoid setting the park on fire. Then decided to be safer than sorry and used the pot lid as a fire pan to fully contain the flame. Take another look at that picture above. There's a stove in there. Brown Lunch- today we'd added quinoa to the lentils- was working out swimmingly. Then I decided to use the pot lid for my bowl, instead of the can I'd originally thought to use.
I'd dug a hole, dumped the flaming twigs into the damp earth, and covered them up to smother. And looking at the lid, it seemed pretty clean (titanium cookware, emma effers!) so I wiped it extensively on my pant leg and filled it up. Poured some Tabasco on there, and sampled our work. It was spicy on the lips. As I was remarking to myself about the piquancy, my gaze came to rest on the Poison Oak tendrils while at the same time my brain came to rest on the idea that I'd used leaves from right under there for kindling, and now I was eating out of the fire pan...

Oops. I had swallowed the bite by the time this processed. The rest, and it was 2/3 of the mix because I'm bigger than J, I poured over the trail's edge. J is a good sharer, and helped me out. We had some nice crackers to go along. His was not spicy, and that was fine. If my esophagus swells closed tonight, y'all will know why...

So back down the trail, past this Monterey Pine
Which shows a lot of pluck holding on to the trail cut like it does, but it's a gonna fall one of these storms.


And back at the gate before hauling ass back down the hill to take the other kids to the orthodontist.



Got to get my training in to build up to (shhhh) trailering Cachagua. Which will be my springboard to the birthday celebratory ride in Sequoia, the dreaded yet beatific Mineral King. Letting the faithful know now, June 6th it's on... all the 25 miles of way up the hill. Grades of 18%, and nothing less than 6% (and those sections short enough). But you can see bears (we did last year), and it hurts so good. Come to get down.