Hello from Oakridge, Oregon! My new home for at least the next few months, and then… who knows. I fell in love with Oakridge when I visited here the summer of 2017 and then topped that summer off by riding the Oregon Timber Trail which also comes through Oakridge. At that time I met a…
Recalcitrant Rattlesnake
There was in fact a recalcitrant rattlesnake on our ride, and I had *plenty* of time and opportunity to take a picture of it, but was so focused on convincing it to get off the trail that I completely forgot to take a picture of it! The police are not legitimate agents of safety in…
Almost Time to Get On The Road Again…
It’s been over a year since I returned from New Zealand and Australia to hunker down for what turned out to be only the first big Covid wave in the United States. For most of this time Jesse and I only left the county once, that was for a camping trip to Yosemite when Covid…
Honey, Get the Duct Tape!
A few weeks ago Jesse and I did a big clockwise loop from home over the back way to Ojai, exploring a long ridge and new trails, before descending to the bike path and home via Ventura. Honestly, we were pretty exhausted after that ride. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I said Hey!,…
Bikes Are Freedom
Bikes really tie it all together: fun, friendships, relationship, mental health, transportation, and work. The day after I last wrote, Jesse and I took a good hard look at the pandemic situation locally and made the very difficult decision to go back on complete isolation from others. Even the local hospital was getting very full…
Three Hundred and Two Days
Three hundred and two days ago I boarded a plane in Australia, routed through New Zealand, where I secretly rather hoped to get stuck, and finally landed in LAX. In New Zealand they were already handing every single passenger an information card about Covid and entering quarantine if you were staying on the island, but…
And Then It Was Autumn
We chugged, chugged, chugged up the hill as we tried to make our way from Payahuunadu, the indigenous Paiute name for Owens Valley, to Whitney Portal in the Sierra Nevada range. Second gear…first gear… a pause in pullout to let the engine cool a bit. Can Caracol, Jesse’s recently resuscitated 1972 VW bus, make it…
Bikepacking Presentation (New Zealand and Australia), Yosemite, and Cooking
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: Heather’s Presentation You’ll need to jump ahead to almost the 5 minute mark for the start,…
This Strange Life Does Not Feel So Strange to Me
I wake in the morning to the sound of birds and Jesse brings me a hot cup of tea. Why tea? I have lived with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) for maybe eight years now. I have the diarrheal form (it presents as constipation for some people) and mornings are hell. It takes five to eight…
Will You Consider This?
Hello, this is a letter to my loved ones. While I believe that everyone who reads my blog would be kind to a black person in a face to face situation, I also believe that I have family members and acquaintances who don’t believe systemic racism is a severe problem in this country, our country….