Fully Rested

I woke up last night at 11PM...a full hour late. I fell asleep around 11AM, and woke briefly around 5PM...I don't know if the alarm woke me and I turned it off and went back to sleep, or if I forgot to set it before passing out so early. I fell asleep before writing my daily CorduroyPlanet...hence the late post today.

You see, Tuesday I only got two hours of sleep before my "Monday" night, and boy that was one  painful shift, even with 30 minutes of shuteye for lunch!

So, up an hour late, I skipped my shower and shave, my dinner, and was only  one minute late...in fact the crew roared away from the shop about 10 minutes earlier than normal!

The grooming is still good...firm pack with all the sugar you can till up! So. armed with plenty of radio podcasts I roared off into the night. I tidied up two ramps right off the bat, and then set about making lots of corduroy.

The crew was way low maintenance, and toiled away in a most workmanlike manner.

The waning moon caught my attention when it rose just before 0530. I'd been meaning to catch a few photos, so I had my digicam in my bag.

Jeweler got a new iPhone and he's been taking a bunch of snaps with it, and they show up on Facebook most days, so I was feeling like the First Runner-Up in a backwater talent show who knows where...

I like the way the dash lights reflected in the windshield evoke a comet's tail...and I do regret the white socks! You can see what looks like the moon reflected by the back window too...actually that's a button on the Gunfighter Grip...looks like the moon...a little...

I haven't started carrying a tripod yet...but I'll make a point to during the next Full Moon...Movies by Moonlight? Hell yes!

All this gadget play is fun, but I'd rather be fighting a huge storm period...good news ahead, the weatherdudes are starting to say showers Sunday!

Fingers still crossed!

Old Home Week

Homecoming even...

As of Monday, I've been hearing from a lot of old compadres this month. Landcruiser Scott e-mailed after our meeting in the parking lot back at the beginning of the month. The first woman groomer I ever worked with (back in the 80's) dropped me a note this week as well. Julie got in touch, and some of my non-grooming friends from the past have shown up on my Facebook page this week...

Could it be that three weeks in January without any storms have turned otherwise engaged, focused ski people into bored, aimless web wanderers? I dunno...

I do know that I'm fully bored and feeling aimless...no news is no news...becalmed in the doldrums is kind of like Earthly Purgatory...even the Local TV News is infected...they featured a story this week about "the dangerous conditions on Sierra Ski Slopes"!

What the Frick? This was a new low, even for ratings hungry Valley News Directors! The Sacramento TV Stations have proven themselves to be cheerleaders of doom this season...a chance of showers is ballyhood as "a difficult weekend for driving Sierra highways" and this week, beautiful sunny weather on the slopes became "dangerous hard-pack conditions at Sierra ski resorts".

Beyond the pale..this week's conditions are no more dangerous than any firm-packed time...helmets are smart-wear for sliders anytime..put one on!

Tuesday has dawned a little brighter...SPEED is re-airing the 2010 German Grand Prix...just the diversion my mind needs...laundry and baking some Oatmeal/Nectarine Cookies are co-conspirators in my Self-Deception Plan...so far it's working...

Serendipity Saves My Night

Circumstances turned yours truly into a Big Crankypants Saturday night. I got all my sleep and everything...to no avail...

One of my guys, Eskimo, must have had too much caffeine because in the space of a mere three hours, he'd come up with three new Game Plans for his shift...all without any impetus from changing weather, machine breakdowns, or crew illness. He was on a roll, and I couldn't squelch his fervor to save my life.

I've always been a "don't say anything if you can't say something civil" guy...in fact I make it my business to never call out an employee over the 2-way radio...in fact if one of my guys needs a talking-to, I wait until the next shift when my blood pressure has returned to normal, and I've had a chance to "sleep on it". These bumpy roads are really opportunities if you don't squander them in a white hot fog.

So there I am...grinding around the hill at a slow walk...even with my boss reflexes fully aroused, and after a full day's sleep, "highway hypnosis" finally turns my eyelids heavy, so I key the mic and announce: "I'm goin' 10-7 for lunch", pull up to a remote steep, throttle down, turn off my lights, recline the throne, and set the timer on my iPod for 30mins...

In a second or two, my night vision kicks in and there's the International Space Station, scudding across the sky headed NNE! Not that bright really, but still an awesome sight as it glides by.

All the stars had aligned to give me that exact moment...Eskimo's over-caffeinated "planning" and every other little change-up combined to award me with that little moment.

Eskimo will get my treatise on planning next week...after a relaxing weekend...

After my nap Sunday, I looked at the internet to confirm my ISS sighting...I found another satellite that caught my interest, NASA's NanoSail-D2. This micro satellite surprised NASA when after it was believed lost to malfunction back in Novenber, the little loaf of bread sized satellite deployed it's 100 square foot solar sail and phoned home!

This guy is not very bright in the night sky, and it will reenter and burn up in 90-120 days, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for this one!

Record High Temps

Sacramento broke some records Saturday. Downtown hit 69°F and at Executive Airport, the mercury topped out at 71°F besting the 66°F set for the day back in 1976.

Ever so fortunately, the afternoon high on my Mountain was down into the low 40's, almost a 10°F fall from Friday.

This won't change things much...so I'm concentrating instead on a scheme to stay awake for Sunday's Packers vs Bears NFC Championship Game...fortunately it's the early game! I have enough room on my DVR to capture the AFC contest, when no matter what I do, sleep will have it's way with me.

Sticking With a Theme

Inspiration is where you find it...from Friday afternoon's 3:08PM Reno AFD:

LONG TERM...TUESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY...
THE WEATHER DOLDRUMS CONTINUE THROUGH NEXT WEEK AS AN UPPER RIDGE
REMAINS FIRMLY IN CONTROL OVER THE WEST. HIGHS TO REMAIN AROUND 5
TO 10 DEGREES ABOVE AVERAGE THROUGH NEXT WEEK. SNYDER

There it is: Doldrums...we're still becalmed, weather-wise...

It goes a little deeper too...after two weeks of no storms to fight, my enthusiasm is adrift in the doldrums as well.

My trusty old BR350 is running like a thoroughbred, there's more than enough firm snowpack to last another month or two, and iTunes is serving up more than enough Radio Podcasts to distract me nightly...what's missing then?

Thrills! There's no thrills on hard snow...no adrenaline anyway...taking pleasure from the delicious home-baked rye bread of my Pastrami and Jarlsberg sandwich, and the adolescent humor of the Afternoon Drive Time Show doesn't give me the same jolt as a fierce storm fight or a big plow project to be shoe-horned into a full night's Work Orders.

On the bright side, this week's Full Moon and clear skies made for stunning visuals on the mountain. As the moon was setting in the west Friday morning, Venus was rising in the east. It was as bright as the two groomers' lights atop the mountain from my view.

Astronomically speaking, this season has been largely mundane. All that early weather obscured the meteor showers, and there's been no naked-eye comets so far. NASA's Shuttle Program has been grounded with fuel tank cracks, on it's way to the mothball fleet.


There's two or three Shuttle missions still to fly before Washington scraps the program. I'm more than a little nervous for two of them. The External Fuel Tank cracks and fix on Discovery were enough to make me wonder, then one of the astronauts got in a bicycle accident and suffered a reported broken hip, so he was pulled for a replacement astronaut...these guys are doing some spacewalking on Discovery's final mission set for a late February launch.

The Shuttle Commander for shuttle Endeavour's April mission is Mark Kelly, whose wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords D-AZ was shot in Tuscon in early January. Commander Kelly is staying at his wife's side until further notice, and has been replaced in training.

Like they always say in the NASA films, Godspeed to you all!

Becalmed

I do find myself a little underwhelmed tonight...the weather has reached monotonous territory around the Tahoe Sierra. I feel like I've been watching the midsummer weather on Bay Area TV...the very textbook definition of monotony...I even saw the telltale signs in Thursday afternoon's Reno AFD!

Searching in vain for a little meteo-stimulation, I looked at the January 90 Day Climate Outlook Discussion. Wadda know? All the new to me acronyms are there in black and white. Some of these weather discussions can be a little dry, and this one in particular is.

The sad thing is it's calling for continued dry weather, and calling the La Niña moderate to strong.

I jumped to the Northstar Weather Discussion Blog and found a tiny ray of hope. It seems the models are starting to suggest that the ridge over the West Coast may be retrograding soon. If the ridge moves west, temps will fall in the High Sierra, and the storm door may open again.

I guess you could say I'm feeling a little like I imagine a sailing ship's captain whose mighty sailing vessel is dead in the water, becalmed by the lack of tradewinds somewhere adrift in the Horse Latitudes.

I've surely been overstimulated by all the adrenaline producing early winter and late fall heavy weather. I miss my adrenaline! Not to mention my Hero Snow!

Streaking

Well, my streak of good nights continues...as does this streak of zero snowfall. I heard the weatherdude on KCRA3 say another week ahead without rain or snow. Tuesday nights steady East Wind put the punctuation mark on his remarks.

My tractor continues to run like a gazelle, the cab of my pickup is finally drying out, and I've deployed sunglasses every morning this week...these are the Good Old Days!

Now, about the weather...I found another Tahoe Sierra Blog, Northstar Weather Discussion. I see more alphabet soup weather cycles cited in this blog...right up my alley!

As is always possible with La Niña events, Winter could end early...not what the boater in me wants or needs...lots of winter snow means wet boat ramps in October!

Skiing is good, the resorts are above the valley fog, but helmets are a very good idea....

My Mountain is still grooming out nicely, and with the East Wind back, afternoon high temps are back to normal...Mid-January is way too early for the Corn Snow and Concrete Regime to set in!

So I guess I'll bone up on the new to me weather acronyms...MJO, PNA, NAO, so I can better understand the forecasts.

Cold weather will be good for ice fishermen...I gotta get a day on the ice in this season!