The Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition invited me to give an online presentation of my travels to New Zealand and Australia,which I did a couple of weeks ago. If you are interested in watching the video it is linked here:
You’ll need to jump ahead to almost the 5 minute mark for the start, and some of the slide transitions are slow and annoying early on, but that technical glitch gets better!
Otherwise I’ve been up to my usual few hours a week of volunteering, riding bikes, and practicing Spanish (languages have always been a big challenge for me, and with my over 40 brain it’s not getting any faster!). I’ve also been exploring my creative side by training to do be a radio DJ! Jesse has been a DJ on the local student run community station KCSB for years and so I’ve been brainstorming my own show for awhile. Now that most of their shows are being produced remotely and I’m stationary with some time on my hands, this is my big chance! Right now I’m making a training show each week and have to pass an operators exam before I can apply to have an official FM show on KCSB this autumn. It’s time consuming, but super fun! Once I figure out where I’m going to store the files I hope to start sharing it here in case you would like to check it out!
You’ve made sure you are registered to vote and have a plan in place to make sure your ballot is received in a timely manner, right?!?
The other big news here is Jesse finally got his Bus running again!! We have a ton of work to do on the body and getting a few electronics working and such, but it goes and stops! This project will be keeping us plenty busy, perhaps forever?? It is a 1972…older than Jesse and me! And we break down plenty!
We also went to Yosemite! This was our only post-covid onset trip. While I usually avoid Yosemite National Park during the summer due to crowds, they are restricting access this year and thus it sounded like a great destination. We first had a ticket in July and then Jesse’s other car broke down, providing much needed motivation to get the bus up and running, but leaving us without affordable transport, so we actually bailed on that trip. However, our dear friend Ellen had an entry ticket for early August and kindly invited us to join her. So we all did extra quarantine the week before and formed a travel pod where we camped outside the park on the West side for a few nights and then drove through to the Eastside.
Rock Creek is such a beautiful area and you are immediately deep in the alpine. I highly recommend it! Also, this was Jesse’s first time to Yosemite and this entire area of the Sierra Nevada range. I think he liked it!
The other thing of note is that I continue to work with the FODMAP diet for my IBS. It is definitely helping some and I’ve been able to add a lot of foods back in without obvious ill effect. The strictness of the original diet led to creative cooking. I couldn’t have onions and garlic so I was making a lot of delicious homemade salsa, often with cucumber, melon, corn, spicy pepper, and cilantro. I was also making a lot of dishes with cornmeal because I wasn’t eating wheat.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check in! I hope everyone is staying safe out there. I’m sure you’ve seen the California wildfires in the news. So far this year, we only have moderate smoke in Santa Barbara. We need a huge rainstorm pronto! Be well, with love. ~ Maude