Happy New Year and Catching Up

Well it is 2006 and time to play catch up after a hectic holiday season. The past 4 weeks have seen the following:

• 4 Christmas celebrations for Jake (my parents, Cari's parents (2 sets), and our own)
• 5 days in Michigan
• My first emergency landing on a commercial airliner
• Flooding in Napa
• A whopping 2 bike rides!

Christmas
With 3 sets of grandparents, there is no way Jake will ever go without. The theme for this Christmas was trains-either Thomas the Train, Geo Trax or trains in general. Mix in some monster trucks and construction vehicles and you have a happy 3 year old. On top of that, we have the legend of Santa Claus. Cari and I have come to rely upon our friend from the north pole as a worthy threat, as in: " You know santa is watching, don't you?", "Better be good-you don't want coal in your stocking". In our world, Santa also has cell phone access, and I ( I mean SANTA) took advantage of this to call ol' Jake and see if he was indeed listening to his parents (he said he was). The top of his Christmas wish list? Gordon and the Big City engine. Actual haul? Gordon, Emily, Big City engine, Molly, Wilbert and a cast of Geo Trax that fills a room. Oh and did I mention his own stereo AND portable DVD player? Funny how things change! We originally said no to this, but add a 3 year old and a 3 hour car trip and plugging him into one of the numerous DVD's he got for christmas and you have some relatively peaceful drives!

Gordon! Santa REALLY does listen to me!

Jake and cousin Josh enjoy Chuck E. Cheese

Playing monster trucks with cousin Lillian from North Carolina

Michigan

Flat, grey, cold...what more could you ask for?

Christmas time means Michigan time for the Prosser-Roughley clan. It is a great time to spend a week or so with Cari's families in her home state. I perpetually tease abou tthe experience-primarily the geography and weather. You see it is ALWAYS gray. I have pretty much never seen the sun in MIchigan during the winter and this plays hell with my mood. On top of that is the lack of any identifying geographic features. The tallest thing around is usually a deer stand and hills are non-existent. So this leads to confusion, I never know which way we are going, how to get somewhere, or where I am. Cari's parent's (both sets) live pretty far out in the country as well-essentially 45 minutes from anywhere, so time is spent inside chatting and visiting.

Jake was pretty excited to see the snow and build a snowman so we were looking forward to the tons of snow we heard were afoot in the land of the lake. Unfortunately for our 3 year old explorer, most of it had melted and what was left was essentially brown ice. As a matter of fact, a tear came to my eye when poor Jake dropped onto his back in an attempt to make a snow angel-only the scraping sound of jacket on ice was to be heard.

With the snow angel a bust, we turned to stomping in the snow and throwing ice balls at each other. Good guy stuff! Then Jake wanted a snowman so I set about somehow packing the ice into snowman shape and form. Tough work, but we did get a whopping 10" tall Frosty™ to observe. Sure his face fell off when Cari brought amini-carrot for his nose, but I was able to get it back together to enjoy for pretty much the remainder of our trip.

Frosty™-California style, and Jake

We were able to head into "town" a few times with Jake. We visited the Grand Rapids Childrens Museum and went to an IMAX movie to see Polar Express 3D! Really cool, even though I have seen Polar Express about 15 times in a week. After Polar express we went to LateBucks and got coffees and hot chocolate...

"Make that a half caff, double shot, mocha,soy, hot chocolate, steamed to 132 degrees"-Jake knows his Starbucks lingo already

The Flight
Flying home is always a chore and this year was no different. We had a 5AM departure flight so we had to get up at 2AM and leave for the airport at 3AM. This took place on New Years Eve/Day so that celebration was limited to missing the ball drop in Times square as I was watching the Bobby Brown Show on Bravo---but hey "That's MY Perogative!"

We flew into Dallas and awaited our connector flight to SFO. Cari of course got mad that I wouldn't given up our seats for the vouchers, but I didn't want to wait another 3 hours for the next flight-we were going to be home by noon on Sunday and that sounded nice! I did say WERE.

So there we are about 1 hour into the flight from Dallas to SFO, Cari and Jake are sleeping, I am watching Donnie Darko on my computer when all of a sudden the captain comes onto the speaker tell us to put all electronics away, put the seats in the upright position and listen carefully to ALL instructions from the crew-we were going to make an emergency landing in Amarillo Texas as the plane's rudder (a VERY important piece of the plane) was doing things the pilot had not told it to do!

OK, so I tried to look calm, but let me tell you, I was scared. The pilot made it clear we would be landing in 10-15 minutes, this was actually like 8 minutes! The plane took a hard left turn and I was sure we were going into the deck. Cari looked at me weird and I just tried to remain calm. We completed that turn and did another equally steep one-damn, please make it quick.

In my head I was saying prayers I thought I had forgotten! I could see the ground getting closer (Thank God) and finally realized we might actually live! Our cabin pressure dropped twice resulting in severely popped ears and as we were landing I looked out the window to see huge fire trucks racing alongside! DAMN! Once down, the cabin erupted into applause and the captain came out to answer questions while we waitied to get off the plane.

He explained that the rudder was activating without his input, causing the plane to "Skid" (YAW) sideways in the air and he found it essential to land the plane anywhere ASAFP. Amarillo was the place.

When asked if we would be taking the same planeonto SFO, his answer was "NO". As a matter of fact, he said there was NO WAY he was getting back on the plane-but we were more than welcome to try and fly it ourselves!

So we got to spend a lovely 4 hours in Amarillo Texas (guess I should have taken the vouchers-sorry Cari). Overall we started the day at 2AM Central time, landied in SFO at 6:30PM PST and went to bed around 11PM PST! Did I mention it was pouring rain and flooding in parts of Napa-no ride for me before heading back to work.

"Look Jake-It's the plane we were on. You slept throught the whole ordeal"


For sale:plane—flies most of the time"

Riding
Like I said-the holidays didn't amount to much riding, but I did get a road ride in on Christmas Eve and sweet mountian bike ride in yesterday.
On the road ride I took a slightly different turn and went out Dry Creek and climbed to the top of Oakville Grade. Now I have yet to actually complete this ride from the valley side-it is incredibly steep, but the back side was easy so I thought I would try a different route. On the way down I was going slower than usual, taking pictures and worrying about the slick road. Almost all the way down, I was doing about 30mph and I felt something along side. I braked and some idiot on his road bike almost went right up my ass-thanks for letting me know you were back there! He flew by all jerkily and was trying to hammer and shift at the same time, thereby dropping his chain. right behind him was Lance Jr-another unannounced draft/pass and off they went. I won't even get started on bitching about bike etiquette and manners (especially the "too cool" folks that can not even wave or say hello---note to riders: You are not going to win the Tour De France, you can be cool and say hello)... Oh well I stopped to take some more pics and continue on a great ride.

Banana Slugs were all over the road today

Heed the sign, those with balls could easily do 60mph on the grade

Tried to get an idea of the grade-it was showing 16% on my computer. That is the valley floor I was heading toward

A little overview of were I was and ride

Just yesterday I went on a ride in Marin of all places with my co-worker Otto. There is a place in Fairfax, maintained by the boyscouts called Tamarancho-that is LEGAL singletrack in the heart of Marin. Knowing only fire road rides in Marin, I had to see this and took Otto up on his invitation. You buy a $5 day pass and head out on a great ride. My fat ass was lagging on the uphills as it was really muddy and draining. But once we got onto downhill singletrack I was able to open it up a bit. We traded positions, Otto doing better on climbs and me leading the downhill charge. I was reminded of so many places on the ride-at times Whiskeytown, sometimes SLO, a little bit of Pisgah/Tsali. Overall really great and will only be better when it is drier. Overall a 4+ hour epic that had me near bonk phase (I was planning for a 2 hour tour).

Believe it! The only legal single track in the birthplace of Mountain biking. Oh and disregard my gut.

Otto in action

Well that about wraps it up for now. We are headed to our first Monster Truck event next weekend at SBC park, should have some interesting pics of that one!