Snowshoeing to Chickadee Ridge

Today about 10 of us from the Sierra Canyon hiking and snow shoeing group went snow shoeing to Chickadee Ridge. The views of Lake Tahoe from the top are stunning. Unfortunately when I took my camera out to start taking pictures I discovered I had left the memory card at home. Damn! So that means no pictures unless you want to look at the pictures I took when we hiked there last September. I had to head back to the car soon after we got to the ridge top because I was scheduled to go to a doctor appointment with my Dad. But the rest of the group went on along the ridge. It is basically the route of the Tahoe Rim Trail but there is so much snow that of course there is no trail.

update 3/12
One of the guys who I was snowshoeing with sent me some great pictures he took on this trip. You can see us feeding the chickadees. Thanks Paul!
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Earthquake and hikes

A sharp jolt woke me up early Saturday morning. I realized immediately that it was an earthquake – a pretty substantial one. If the epicenter was more than a few miles away then I thought it must have been quite a big quake judging by how strong it felt and sounded to me. It took me a while to go back to sleep but eventually I did. First thing Saturday morning I checked out the quake on the USGS website. They described it as being 2 miles ENE from Verdi-Mogul. That is exactly where I live! It was only a magnitude 3.0 but no wonder it felt big. I was almost on top of the epicenter. Today I put the exact coordinates into my GPS and found out that it was actually centered about one mile to the east of me. I think I’ll use the GPS to go check out the exact spot.

I received the GPS for Christmas and I’ve been having fun learning how to use it. Yesterday I hiked 3 miles up the mountain we live on. The top of Peavine Mountain is a long way off but going 3 miles up gave me a good work out and some great views. Where I turned around I saw a herd of about 40 deer.

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The hike yesterday was so nice that today I decided to do another out my front door hike. I also decided to try to find my first geocache using my GPS.  This time I headed down hill. A new road is being built that will connect us much more directly with interstate 80. It is supposed to open this spring. I walked down the new road, across old highway 40 and down to the Truckee River. The geocache was fairly easy to find. It was kind of exciting to find my first one!

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I decided to try to find another geocache nearby. It was back up the hill from the river. The location was supposed to be in this old car but I couldn’t find the cache. As I was making my way back home I startled some more deer. It was fun hike and a beautiful day. I am inspired to find some more geocaches!

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Now that I’m home I’ve checked out the clue to the cache. Maybe later this week  I’ll try again to find it.

What I did on my last 7 March Firsts

On March 1st my friend Christina did a great blog list of what she was doing on March 1st for the last 5 years. She is participating in the NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) challenge to post a list every day in March. I’m not going to do that but I thought I would tell you what I was doing on March 1st for the last several years. It is always surprising to me how time goes by and how my life and the lives of my friends and family change.

2002 – I was working at Sun and spent the day in an all day managers’ meeting.

2003 – Duke and I ordered our wedding invitations.

2004 – I had a piano lesson and and worked all day at Sun then went birthday shopping for Duke.

2005 – I worked at Sun all day and was busy studying for my CFP exam. My March 2005 blog entries are here.

2006 – I was working at Intuit and went out to dinner with Bonnie, Bill and Duke to celebrate Duke’s and Bill’s birthdays. My March 2006 blog entries are here.

2007 – I was retired, I picked up Aidan at the baby-sitter’s and went with Shan to his 6 month check up. My March 2007 blog entries are here.

2008 – Last Saturday the 1st of March I was in the Bay Area visiting. I had breakfast with one friend, lunch with other friends and dinner with Shan, Aidan, Valerie and Vicky.

As you can see I’ve been blogging for more than three years but you may wonder how I know what I was doing on March 1, 2002 . Like Christina I also have a Journal 10+  . I don’t always get around to writing in it every day but I do enjoy looking back to see how my life is changing.

Dad’s Echocardiogram

As many of you know my Dad recently moved to Reno. His house in Escondido, California is for sale. He was staying with Duke and I while he waited for an apartment to open up at Classic Residence by Hyatt. A beautiful apartment overlooking the courtyard became available a couple of weeks ago and he is now moved in and settled. It is really nice having him near by.

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Dad has been working to get established with new doctors in Reno. Last week he found a cardiologist who he likes.  On Tuesday he had an echo-cardiogram. I went with him and got to stand behind the technician while she used the machine to look at his heart. The echo-cardiogram machine looked a lot like like the ultrasound machines used on pregnant women to check on their unborn babies. As teh technician placed the wand on Dad’s heart you could see it quite clearly.

Looking at Dad’s heart as it pumped was so cool. I could see the valves opening and closing like the swinging doors in an old western saloon. Dad’s heart on the screen was about 6 inches long and 3 inches across. I assumed that it was life size but she told me that the picture was enlarged. The upper heart chamber is only about 5 centimeters (2 inches) across. It is impressive to think of such a little organ pumping blood all through his body.

I would love to have worked on the software for the echo-cardiogram machine. My first programming job out of college was working on air traffic control software. I found it fascinating. I suspect that interpreting the bouncing sound waves for the echo-cardiogram is similar to interpreting radar returns for air traffic control. The software has to interpret the returns, display them, and give the operator the tools to analyze what she is seeing.  What a wonderful challenge.

Sierra Canyon Snowshoeing at Prosser Creek Reservoir

We had a big storm over the weekend. At our house in west Reno we got about 8 inches of new snow and up around Truckee they got about 2 or 3 feet of new powder. In the middle of the storm Friday night the power went out for about 3 hours. It was kind of fun to sit around listening to a battery operated radio and knit by candle light.

It was above freezing all day yesterday so the snow has pretty much melted off the roads. In spite of the relatively warm weather it was gray and windy all weekend. This morning the skies had cleared and the sun was shining. It looked like a great day for snowshoeing.

Seven of us met at the lodge and headed up to Tuckee. We got off of Interstate 80 and headed north on highway 89. The plan was to park and hike along Sagehen Creek but the snow was high on each side of the road and there was really no place to park .

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So we headed back south and found a side road that was sort of plowed. We parked and snowshoed in a big loop along the edge of Prosser Creek Reservoir. This was the first time I have snowshoed in really deep new snow. When I was in the lead and breaking trail I would sink in about two feet with each step. It was fun but also was very hard work.  When I was following other people who had packed down the snow the hiking was so much easier.

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We were only out for a couple of hours and our big loop was about a mile but as you can see it was a beautiful day. It was quite a work out. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. If you would like to see the rest of my pictures from today you can see them here.