The light!

We've had some pretty nice sunrises lately and I found some pictures on my phone I thought I'd put up here. Longer days are nice!

2014 Wrap-up (make-up for laziness?)

Somewhere around the start of summer, I seem to have stopped posting things here. I suspect it might have something to do with the first few pictures here. We scraped and painted our whole house and when we were done with that, we roofed our garage. It was all quite an undertaking.

We've lived in our house for over ten years but have never painted so we don't know when it was last done. Some of the paint was so checked that it looked like the varnish on antique furniture. The internet told me that if you make sure to re-paint as soon as the paint is getting chalky on the surface, you don't have to scrape the old off in order to re-coat. Good to know, my guess is that it was chalky when we bought the house. What you see here was a pretty typical average, where about half of it came off down to the wood. Thankfully the siding is original redwood so even the bare parts don't rot or anything.

I'd noticed a while back that the insulation in the roof of the garage was starting to look saggy and then later it started to pull its staples and fall down. There was obviously a moisture or ventilation problem but this didn't make sense because it'd been fine for the last 8+ years, why is is screwed-up now?

Enter the '90s roofers. This was a crew which laid nice straight rows, trimmed all the ends to be even, put on a good ridge-cap, all without noticing that they didn't use a starter strip on the end of either eve. This meant the grooves in the three-tab shingles on the first row had nothing under them but tar-paper! Credit where credit is due - that tar-paper and later, sheeting, held on for a long time. What I discovered was that I now had a roof which looked like brand new underneath except the end 8" or so was pretty much non-existent. I could actually look through from above and see the board under the eve. I can't imagine how moisture was making it's way in there.

Thankfully the previous owner kicked in some extra cash when building this garage to make sure it would last - all the eves are fiberglass/composite underneath and cedar on the ends with all cedar trim. Other than a couple rafter-tails, nothing but the actual roof sheeting was rotten! I just walked down the ends with a circular-saw, cut it off, and patched it in with strips.

Then it was cyclocross racing season again! We hadn't planned to do much of this in 2014 but were inspired by working at our Pella race and started up shortly after.We did a pretty full circuit and traveled as far as the East end of the Quad Cities. It was, as usual, fantastic and I enjoyed all of it. Traveling, racing, spectating, it was all great and I look forward to next year!

These pictures should pretty well summarize how Corrine's season went. She spent a LOT of time on podiums and has now upgraded to the next higher race category! Nice work!

Then it snowed and winter was here:

And that meant it was time for stouts:

The Real Deal

Finally we didn't have to settle for watching a storm go by on radar. Some pretty awesome shelf clouds went right overhead today while the temperature dropped fifteen degrees or so.

Saturday

We've been up extra early for work lately and there have been some great sunrises. Today was especially nice as there are clouds which is a rare commodity these days. 

Turned a bunch of fuel into smoke and noise, then headed home. 

We put in a five mile walk out to Big-Rock Park. This is the longest walk I've ever done on flip-flops, score Olukai.

Snow-day the first.

As if in response to my previous post, Pella experienced its first snow of the year today along with much of the state. Enough fell to give everything a good coating and temps stayed low enough that it stuck around for a good portion of the day. I'm guessing we had about 1" of accumulation but it's hard to tell because it was extremely wet and heavy. The snow plows were even out working - this cut down on the amount of testing we could do on the car's AWD system but it was still fun, even if we did only drive around on patchy slush.

Around noon, the sun popped out which made for a pleasant afternoon. It's always easier to operate at a high energy level when there's sunshine.

A little gray on top, but lots of fire in the bottom.

Some combination of the visual end of a season that was the snow, and a powerful sunset made me think of the lyric in this Rise Against song which goes: "We raced the sunset and we almost won.."

After the sun's final exit, we're back to blue skies again. 

Transition

It does appear to be that time of year when I arrive at work under a great sunrise nearly every morning, so long as the weather cooperates. With that comes a sense of urgency that this time is not to be wasted, it is slipping away to a day when mornings will be dark, cold and icy. The snow will be flying soon and I must try my best to soak in more of the outdoors until then. That feeling will pass though because winter is fun too - it's somehow fulfilling to fight against the elements and survive, a sense of accomplishment I suppose. The struggle makes everything else better. We'll get there.

And there was a shift in the breeze.

The sunrise when I got to work this morning.

....a mere 45 minutes later.

Pre-Sunset

Saw a great start to the sunset after work this evening, had to snap a couple pictures (this is the view from the company's parking-lot).

The river-bottom south of town looks to be getting wet.

Racing the sunrise

Getting to work just as the sun pops over the horizon lately, I figured I'd make use of the camera which now follows me around most of the time.