WombatNation

I finally got around to posting some photos from the epic cabin fire. Since I’m not keen on image crawlers indexing my photos, you’ll need to copy this into the location box on your browser after that http:// thingie.

www.wombatnation.com/gallery/cabin_fire/

Here’s a couple samples. The first is the fire raging full on in the attic. The silver bars are the reflective parts of one of the fire trucks parked out front. Thanks to the fireman, parts of the house were actually saved.

This is what happens if you watch too many reality shows.

There was flame and smoke at our cabin in the Tahoe National Forest early this morning, and it wasn’t from the Incinolet burning off the remains of a burrito. An electrical fire in the wall upstairs resulted in about 2/3 of the cabin suffering major damage. The new part of the cabin didn’t burn, but I suspect the smoke damage is probably pretty bad.

The most important thing, though, is no one was injured. My step-niece and her husband unfortunately had to be the ones up there when it happened. Nothing like arriving late at night while it’s snowing, turning on the lights, smelling that distinct ozone odor, then watching in horror as smoke and flames start coming out of the walls.

Forget seafood, eat riverfood. My brother-in-law and I caught these two brook trout (and a couple other brook and brown trout we released) in the South Yuba River a couple hundred yards from our cabin this past June. They made a fine dinner that night for my wife and me. The South Yuba is stocked with rainbow, brown, and brook trout every year.

This past winter was not very kind to the cabin. We had over 10 feet of snow on the ground for much of the winter. The former outhouse that we use for storing fire logs sank a few inches in the back from the weight. Fortunately, it’s small and sturdy, so I think it will survive.

One of the most popular things on my website is my two-part pictorial essay describing and depicting in glorious detail the magical wonders of the Incinolet incinerating toilet at my cabin. However, I had left a major gap in the story. Sure, I included lots of photos from a charming Incinolet marketing brochure. Sure, I included lots of photos of the actual incinerator toilet at my cabin. But, did I provide my inquisitive readers with a photo of the toilet in action?

No, I did not, and for that transgression I deeply apologize and plead for your forgiveness. Without further ado, flame on!

And, yes, that is a genuine, authentic, antique (maybe) chamber pot next to the throne of fire.

Today, I encountered the sultry enchantress called Lola Montez on foot. It’s not the same as upon my faithful aluminum steed, but that will have to wait. Lola was relatively clear, but she had an algae coated mucky bottom.

As I had feared, yesterday I ended my bike climb (or more accurately, bike drag) only about 150 feet short of where the wicked climb changed to a private dirt road on a very gradual slope. The rest of the climb would have been relatively easy.

Since the only object I brought that told time was my cellphone, I left it on during the hike. Amazingly, I got a signal most of the way. Often, I got a really strong signal. I-80 is pretty well covered with cell towers. I hiked at a relatively quickly pace, jogging at times and made it to the lake in almost exactly an hour. If you actually like to look at what you are hiking past, you should budget more time. During the hike, I encountered three mountain bikers, one large but scared dog apparently owned by someone living off the private road, and roughly 436 chipmunks.

Somehow, I managed to “sleep” at least ten hours in a sleeping bag on top of a thin therma-rest pad on a hardwood floor in the loft. Perhaps so much time was able to pass between when I went to went to bed and when I got up because the luxurious and sensuous feeling of sleeping on something resembling the soft feel of a granite slab lulled me into waking at least once a hour and lying awake with aching shoulders, hips, back, neck, etc. until lack of sleep dragged me back kicking and screaming into my next thirty minute nap.

I headed outside and joined C in cleaning up the wooded area in front of the house. We picked up a lot of dead underbrush and burned it off in a big metal grill-like contraption. To borrow a term from the fire department (I originally accidentally wrote tern. Wouldn’t it be fun, though, if all fire departments loaned out seagulls, just for the asking?), we need to create defensible space around the cabin. This will be a big project. The cabin and the lot are an endless provider of projects, should we choose to accept them. There’s a nice balance between projects that require lots of money and projects that require lots of backbreaking labor.

After S and J took off at around 2, I said goodbye to C who was leaving at 4 and packed up my bike and gear and then drove over to the trailhead for the Lola Montez trail. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember how to switch the settings on my bike computer from my road bike tires to my mountain bike tires, so I didn’t collect accurate distance measurements. So sue me.

The Lola Montez trail goes a short distance (¼ mile?) on fairly simple singletrack, and then turns right onto a private gravel and dirt road. The dirt road is a mostly gradual decline for about a mile. Not long after you ride through the dry creek bed for Lower Castle Creek (hmmm, I wonder how long into the spring this will be unrideable), it becomes a private road, so you then turn right onto a singletrack trail. The first ¼ mile or so is fun and easy. Then the trail pitches up. I like climbing as much as the next climber, but this was mostly in deep sandy dirt with occasional small logs serving as water bars on the trail (and as occasional forceful dismounters of me from my bike). Did I also mention that the trail starts at 6640 feet and hits Lower Lola Montez Lake at 7180 feet after only about five miles? The second singletrack starts even lower at 6430 feet due to the drop on the private road. Just over a mile later, you are at 7000 feet. That’s a nearly 11% average grade on a really difficult surface. Did I mention the deep sandy dirt?

Lola Montez kicked my ass. I slogged my way up the hill as best I could. This meant lots of walking the bike. Just dragging my bike up the hill in the deep dirt was exhausting. Because the climb often went for over a hundred feet with nothing remotely resembling a flat section, it was nearly impossible to start riding again each time I had to stop. Unfortunately, the altitude and the lack of time I was spending on the bike made the “ride” not so fun. Looking at a topo map after I got back to the cabin, I think I was tragically close to the point where the ride mostly flattened out (becoming 200 feet over 2 miles instead of nearly 600 feet over 1 mile) on the way to the lake. Next time, I go all the way unless I break a bone falling backwards off my bike while trying to hurdle a water bar.

Despite all this, I think it’s an awesome trail that I will thoroughly enjoy when I am in good enough shape to stay on my bike for most of the climb and for all the descent. Unfortunately, that won’t happen this year before the snow comes. Next year, I swear I will meet the mysterious woman the locals call … Lola Montez, destroyer of out of shape bike riders.

October 5, 2002, for the record. C, S, and J met me at the house. Actually, I barely caught them before they headed out to Donner Lake to catch trout for dinner. Next time, I get up at the right time, I don’t screw around packing things at the last minute, and I get lunch at a restaurant less crowded than the In and Out Burger in Auburn at 11 am. They open at 10:30 am, and by 11 am I already had to wait fifteen minutes to get my food. I wouldn’t be surprised if an investigative reporter revealed that they are slipping nicotine or some other highly addictive drug (Unreal Tournament 2003?) into the hamburgers.

Anyway, they all headed off to the lake for a couple hours, returning with three nice-sized trout. C grilled them in foil with garlic, onions, bell peppers, and lemon pepper seasoning. Yum. Fish are like corn. Every hour you wait between separating them from their previous home and cooking them is costly. If you can get them cooked and into your mouth in less than four hours, the taste difference is spectacular compared to what you usually get in a restaurant or are able to purchase and cook from a store.

One minor problem with weblog categories is that sometimes you want to have a relatively long introduction, i.e., more than just the one or two line description at the top of this page. The obvious thing to do is to provide an informative introduction in the first post (unlike this post, which so far has been completely uninformative). Of course, if you do that, people will read the introduction only if they start reading your weblog category right after you start publishing it or if they are obsessive people who read everything, no matter how dull. In general, you should avoid the latter set of people in life. They are better known as stalkers. If you don’t want to end up as the featured subject in a poorly-made-for-TV movie on Tuesday night at 3 a.m., I’m telling you, avoid these people like the plague.

Hey, whom am I kidding? Virtually no one will read any of this blathering ridiculosity (it’s my weblog, I can make up words if I want to), so why should I worry whether no one will read all the posts all the way back to this introduction or if no one will read any of the posts. So there.

Anyway, if you’re still with me, we bought the cabin in a 50-50 split with Sandra’s sister and her husband. The downstairs is about 650 square feet. Upstairs there is a narrow loft, due to the steep slope of the roof. The cabin is on about 0.8 acres of land.

The big problems we have to deal with are inbound and outbound water and other outbound waste materials. The lot has a 12 feet deep hand-dug well. Even with an expensive water filter, we aren’t too keen on using surface water sourced that near to the surface, especially with a major road not too far away. Yum, yum, nothing like a little MTBE-laced water in the morning. The house also doesn’t have a septic tank. The shower, bathroom sink, and kitchen sink essentially drain into a hole in the ground. It doesn’t even meet your basic graywater trench standards. An Incinolet incinerator toilet dispatches human wastes. Our first big projects include drilling a well (which will likely need to be about 250 feet deep) and putting in a proper septic or graywater system. Because of required distances between the well, the septic system’s leach field, the property lines, a seasonal stream, and the road, the placement of the well and the septic system will be a significant challenge.