El Corte de Madera Revisited

On Saturday, June 6, we had our final long team training hike of this season before our Yosemite event. Next Saturday will be a shorter YOYO (You're On You Own) hike, tapering off to build plenty of energy for Yosemite. This was my last chance to gauge how well my knee is now doing on longer hikes with lots of up and down. This hike was our second team practice in the El Corte de Madera Open Space Preserve. This is on the west side of Skyline Blvd near Woodside and Kings Mountain, just north of Purisima where we hiked the prior weekend.

This second hike was much longer than our earlier hike in the preserve, travelling around the entire perimeter of the preserve and reaching its lowest points. Our goal was to hike eight hours if planning for the Dewey Point or Panorama Trail Yosemite hikes, or ten hours if planning for the Half Dome or Yosemite Falls hikes. Somehow Coach Nathalie thought we were still eager to accompany the fastest hikers on the ten hour version, under some pretense that we were still candidates for getting accepted onto the Half Dome Trail. Yeah, right.

We also wanted very much to see some of our son's final T-Ball game of the season -- we had missed so much of them! Fortunately, our friends and his coach haved helped us out immensely in escorting him to nearly all of his Saturday games.

This hike had a familiar pattern. Lots of down and down and down, through unbroken trees with no views. Then a little bit of level, and no views. Then a lot of up and up and up, with no views. The weather was very accomodating. No drizzle this time, and the local marine layer overhead kept us cool enough that we needed little water. But I much prefer those other parks that lead to awesome vistas.

The long downhill was no problem for my knee. I started having some warning pains a third of the way back uphill. I was glad when our coach decided to make up some time by taking a shorter route than first planned. Then we did an interesting very steep section named 'Steam Donkey Trail', where the old-growth loggers required steam power to move logs around. This was a bit of a huff but no problem when not in a hurry. There were no mountain bikers around this particular afternoon, but they obviously love tearing down this path.

After reaching the top, we followed the Skyline ridge northwards along the Sierra Morena trail, back towards the cars. My knee had again felt okay on the latter part of the uphill. But now, when beginning an absolutely trivial slight downhill, my knee began having sharp stabbing pains. Weird. No problems during the early hike when the downhill was very steep and long. Some problems a few hours later during uphill. Then major pain on a trivial slight downslope. So the problem comes with total time on the trail, not simply from dropping major elevation. My therapist thought my problem this day may have been because my knee taping was 3 days old and stretched out.

I got permission to end my hike early without any further trail extensions, and did so. Everyone else in our group did the same. 7.25 hours total. It is so so hard to return back to the outward trails, once you know you are near your car.

The Fast & Furious Half Dome hopefuls did their own thing on this hike, and we never saw them again after the morning departure. Mentor Deb led them on a full ten hour hike.

I iced up back at the car, and felt fairly well the rest of the day. These hikes used to leave us very stiff, very exhausted, and hardly able to walk at all. Now, it was no problem. If it weren't for the knee, I could keep this up a very long time now.

This week, my knee would definitely not yet be ready to do Half Dome. So maybe it doesn't matter, that there is no room for us on the elite 36 person team. Yeah, right.

Throughout this day's hike, I was sure that I was going to need to take a dump, out there off the trail in the middle of the forest. No outhouses anywhere. I haven't yet done that and hope to avoid it. So this was on my mind nearly constantly during the hike, adding to my desire to be done with this hike and go home. (It appears that California's budget crisis will be closing every non-city hike venue that has flush toilets.)

On our way home, we stopped in Portola Valley to help a team-mate shrink her fundraiser mailer from 16 megabytes down to 310 kbytes. And a bathroom! But I found that I had nothing to poop. All that worrying, for nothing.

We then saw our son's final at-bats for this season. That was great!

Bowling and TBall

Today was crazy busy! I went from one errand to another after dropping our son off to school. He had an early dismissal day and, after rushing to drop another student off at his house, I took my son to a bowling party. He had a great time and I bowled an incredibly lousy game, not even breaking 100. It's totally embarrasing when my son beats me, even if he's using the bumpers.

After bowling, I went to our son's TBall game. He had a great game! I then ran home, grabbed my stuff and went to my monthly amateur radio meeting. By the time I got home, I was thoroughly exhausted!

Tuesday Night Workout

Today was a work filled day. I spent a lot of time catching up this blog and doing household chores. Our son had a T-ball game at 4:30 pm and after it was over, I raced off to get him to the babysitter and then to the Foothill track. I was about 20 minutes late, but apparently didn't miss too much of the workout.

We did several laps around the track as well as stretching exercises and a core workout. We also did about 20 or so repetitions of the dreaded bleachers. This was, however, a more relaxed workout then we've had in weeks past.

After collecting our son, we met at a local restaurant and I had a spinach salad with salmon for dinner. Healthy and yummy!

Coaching T-Ball

I didn't have time to get much conditioning in today, although I did spend time with our son helping coach his T-Ball team.

Better something, than nothing!

Louise, Jennifer, Coach Steve & Sophie

Today is a rest day and... we rested!

Neither Duane nor I would be able to tackle such a large project if we weren't getting the support of many friends. While some of that support is financial, some of it is not. Juggling three different schedules has been challenging, but we "get by with a little help from our friends". Actually, a lot of help!

Today, I would like to thank all of those people who are giving us non-financial support and who are helping us to tackle Half Dome:

• Louise and Jennifer, both with children of their own, have pitched in like champions, taking our son for "sleepovers" and playdates so that Duane and I could attend the conditioning hikes. They've even taken our son to/picked him up from his TBall games when there was a scheduling conflict.


• Coach Steve (of my son's TBall team) and his wife Kim have allowed us to drop our son off at their house in the early morning hours just prior to our hike's and Daniel's games. When I was thinking of pulling our son out of TBall this season because trying to juggle that too was more than I thought I could manage, Coach Steve offered his support. He's an awesome coach too and our son is really enjoying baseball this year!


• Sophie is our babysitter extraordinaire for those Tuesday night workouts at Foothill College. The balloon ball game is our son's favorite!

Here's to all of you! We couldn't do it without you!

Antenna and More TBall

I wonder how many calories one burns putting up a high frequency (HF) antenna? Over the last couple of months, an amateur radio friend of mine helped me to put up my first HF antenna. We designed and built a multi-band fan dipole (pictured at left with the exception that my antenna does not have an 80 meter wire), which in my case is set up as an inverted-V (not like the picture at left).

First we put up the mast. That took an entire day, during which we pounded a stake into the ground, put a plumber's plastic "donut" over it, and then fitted a telescoping mast over the stake. We attached some metal L-bars (with pre-drilled holes) to the eaves, as well as an L-bar cross piece. We then attached the mast to the L-Bars via a U-bolt. Then it started raining and the entire project got put on hold for over a month.

Last week, we drilled a hole through the outside wall and ran approximately 50 feet of RG-8 coaxial cable, about 15 feet of it into the house. The cable was put into the room where my "ham shack" desk is located - the play room that I will be sharing with my son.

Today, at last, we started to build the antenna. First we measured out three sets of wires for different HF bands:

• 10 meters (approximately 17 feet long, cut in half);
• 20 meters (approximately 35 feet long, cut in half);
• 40 meters (approximately 70 feet long, cut in half);

Next, we attached the wires to a center insulator, added some separators to keep each wire from interacting the others, and raised it up the mast. We attached some "eyes" to the eaves of the house at either end, in order to tie down the tail ends of the antenna.

The next step involved "tuning" the antenna, which involves making the wires shorter or longer to put it in the right band (a set of frequencies). This involved lowering and raising the antenna multiple times, carrying a ladder from one end of the house to the other to do that, and then raising and lowering the center at the mast. I'm sure I burned up several calories and also gained some upper body strength carrying that ladder around!

We had enough time to tune the 40 meter wire today, but the rest will have to wait until tomorrow. I had to pick the little on up from taekwondo practice and take him to his TBall game. More calories spent here, as I helped the coach in the outfield.

So, I didn't get much walking in today, but I did exercise! And then after I came home and cooked dinner, I sat down at my radio and made my first HF QSO on 40 meters, lower side band, to a station in North Carolina. How cool is that!? All the way across the country on my wire!

Coaching T-Ball

I didn't get my easy walk in today. I ran around all day. The phrase "stay at home mom" is an oxymoron if ever I've heard one. I rarely get to stay at home. My days usually consist of ferrying our son back and forth from school, soccer or T-Ball practice. In between those times, I'm doing the grocery shopping, and running all of the other errands that one does to keep things running smoothly. If I'm lucky, I get to stay home about once a week.

Today was a T-Ball day, and I wound up helping the coach with the children. Many years ago, I used to play in the San Francisco Bars Association softball league. That was an informal gathering of various law firms in the City who wanted to field softball teams. (The name was a parody of the local bar association and our league logo was a graphic of a martini glass.) Fortunately, I still had my Louisville Slugger mitt! The children had a lot of fun and I got some exercise walking around the field, pitching balls, and helping the children work out how to swing the bat.