Winter technically hasn’t started yet…but it has still handed us an early ass-kicking.
About a week ago, after postponing my trip to Bishop to hang with Tom in favor of staying at our cabin during single digit temperatures to make sure we didn’t lose appliances, crack pipes, etc. I was headed home to check on our house before THEN heading to Bishop. The nasty cold storm early in the week had produced snow down to the Sacramento Valley and significantly more in the Sierra foothills, but there was a break in the action. It sounded simple enough…head home, make sure everything is ok then finally down to Bishop to see Tom.
Excitement (to see Tom, not drive more) quickly dwindled when I flushed a toilet at home which somehow resulted in the hot water heater releasing water from it’s overflow (which was never to code and just dumped water on the garage floor.) Tables were turned and Tom was now quickly on his way home to assess the problem. As of Sunday around midnight, after 5 Home Depot trips, Tom working about 20 hours in two days in frigid 35-40 degrees temps, we still couldn’t get the hot water heater and new plumbing to work. A pressure problem still exists, which we think we can solve but we were out of time. We both chose to leave for Bishop together, knowing that we’ll be spending Christmas working on the plumbing.
After a 5+ hour drive to Bishop on Monday night in frigid temps and occasional icy and snowy roads, we finally arrived (to yet more snow, apparently not entirely common in Bishop.) Again up past midnight, we finally settled in to crash. It felt like we were barely asleep when both of our cell phones rang to alert us that the alarm had been triggered at our house. The sheriff was dispatched, apparently finding no problems. All this on top of the craziness of the holidays and both of us swamped with work.
The joys of warm, summer riding on dusty singletrack seem to be a distant memory covered by piles of snow and the call of the snowboard. Winter will be fun but so far has been a little nasty to us. And although I look forward to riding my new board on the slopes at Mammoth, don’t think I’m forgetting that in 5 days, the days start getting longer and we count down towards those dusty days of summer…