ROY X CONE contest, 1.1.11 - 2.1.12

[robbie]

^ that has to be the best job ever, in addition to letting you drink on the job you work for RW. Friggin lucky!

Anyhow, my days since school has started are more or less carbon copies of each other.

Wake up, take a shower, get dressed and eat some breakfast:

Then pack my lunch:

Then get a little depressed listening to the news :

Then put on my shoes, grab my ipod and walk to work.

Things are looking up though, Friday we're headed back to Tulsa for the Walkmen/Fleet Foxes concert at Cain's on Saturday Night .

[almostnice]

drinking on the job,what do you think?!!never would i do that.pic was taken after closing time,boss!

[fre-co]

What boots Almostnice?

[robbie]

drinking on the job,what do you think?!!never would i do that.pic was taken after closing time,boss!

my mistake.

[almostnice]

What boots Almostnice?

RW 2992.first pair of engineers ever in my life.had to get used to the looser fitting compared to lace ups,but now they are are my first choice for the retail job.also great for kicking the kids around the playground,gives a nice patina,too.

[fre-co]

They look good man. Can't rep.... I'd appreciate closer pictures sometime. I was looking at the 2991 on the interwebs.

Non-steel toe right?

[almostnice]

will post updates in a little while,they are just one week old.yes,its the modern version,no steel toe,cork nitrile sole.

[DocBlue]

Hi buddies

such a long time i have not been here i allow myself to post a non denim pic.

i had 6 weeks of shoulder total immobilisation....wich may explain why i was so silent. ``

my jeans were well worn during that time and evo pics will come soon

PS thanks for the post card Markus. sorry for beeing so long to answer.

but i could not resist to post first pics of riding my bike again : it was this week end at a colleague's wedding.

cheers to all of you and happy to be back in the game

[robbie]

So do we know who got Pomata's pair?

[zissou]

Buon giorno, amici miei! I'm finally taking an evening off from everything that has been making my life too busy lately. So, I thought I'd drink some wine and post up the forever-delayed update from the adventure that my daughter and I took last month.

It's a bit of a tradition that Em and I escape town for a week as a bit of a last hurrah for summer vacation before the school year starts. Usually, it's a week of camping at a National Park, but we've been to most of the parks within a six hour radius, except for Great Basin National Park, which is just over the border in Nevada. As we discovered, it's really in the middle of nowhere! Good thing we brought all the food we needed, and planned well for fuel.

The drive out through the West Desert brought us through the town of Eureka, Utah, which is described as a 'modern day ghost town'. It hit its peak between about 1890-1930, but has been in a steady decline ever since the Great Depression. As it was the commercial hub of the Tintic Mining District in Utah, vast wealth passed through the town, but now it was mostly boarded up shops. The Eureka Gold Church was a reminder of better days.

Here's a head frame from the old Bullion and Beck Mine. This is what they used to lower men and ore up and down the mine shaft.

Walking through downtown, I noticed and interesting advertisement in an alley...

Seems like it predates 1920, when 'waist overalls' was given up for 'jeans'? This would correspond well with the peak of the town.

"A new pair free if the rip"- not a bad guarantee!

Onward! Man, there is a good reason they call US50 'America's Loneliest Highway'.

Finally there. Who can argue with a spot like this to live at for a week?

"Let's get hikin'!" she says. Little did we realize that camping and hiking at 10K ft in elevation would take such a toll in the first couple of days. We live at 4,500 ft.

Decomposers, hard at work.

Crotchity old aspen.

Our second day's hike led us up to a couple of high alpine lakes. pretty view!

[zissou]

One was turquoise blue, thanks to all the minerals in the water.

Good thing we remembered the most crucial ingredients! The trip would have been a disaster without them.

Time for bed!

We spent some time exploring the visitor's center, which included a tour of Lehman Caves. Absalom Lehman discovered the caves one day in 1885 while riding his horse across his ranch. As a former miner in the CA Gold Rush, he immediately knew that when his horse's hoof broke through the ground surface and cold air rushed out, that he had found a cave.

Ol' Ab Lehman promptly started charging $1 admission, which was equivalent to about $100 in today's $, taking into account that everything was so expensive in mining towns. Unfortunately, he had a policy of 'If you can break it, you can take it', so a lot of the stalactites and stalagmites were broken. Here's the iconic Parachute Shield. Doesn't even seem real, eh?

The Lake Room was full of water, thanks to the record snowfall this past winter.

Roys in a cave!

The Rhodes Cabin was built outside the entrance to the cave in the 1920's so visitors had a place to stay.

Howdy!

[zissou]

Since Ab Lehman was living at the caves in those days, he decided to plant some apricot trees.

~120 years later, they were still producing fruit! Em said that she didn't want to eat a hundred year old apricot

I'll take one, though!

Time to head back to camp for some cards and more s'mores.

After a few days in the park, we decided to head into town. Ely, Nevada, was the closest at 65 miles away. Here's the historic Hotel Nevada.

I have a thing for old mural adverts.

All in all, the town sucked, but there were some cool rat rods kicking around town.

On the way back, we stopped to check out the site of an ancient Fremont settlement.

Heck of a place to live, but word on the streets is that there was a vast marsh here at the time.

[zissou]

Alright, enough lazing about. Time to get serious! At this point, we'd been in the park for four days, which I figured was plenty of time to acclimate to the altitude. I had saved the tough hike for just this moment. Up at treeline, our destination was in view- the base of Wheeler Peak, Nevada's second highest mountain.

Who needs trees? Onward and upward!

OK, whatever you say!

I gotta say, Em was a champ.

On the way up, we had a chance to explore a grove of bristlecone pines, which live in the most inhospitable high mountain ridges for thousands of years. So beautiful.

Even the dead trees remain standing for thousands of years. The tree rings from the living and dead trees allow us to to glimpse at the Earth's climate as much as 10K years back.

Hot damn, we made it! Our destination was the Rock Glacier at 10,800 ft in elevation. It was 2.4 miles of hiking (each way) and a climb of 1K ft from our campsite. It was the longest hike I've done with Em, and she was amazing! Not a single complaint. Maybe re-enacting the entirety of The Fellowship of the Ring distracted her a bit? (OK, in full disclosure, I did not wear the Roys on this hike. I've been caught in storms above treeline enough times to take the motto 'Cotton Kills' to heart)

[zissou]

This looks like a good lunch spot. By the way, the Rock Glacier is the only glacier in the state of Nevada, and Utah has no glaciers...

While we were eating lunch, I was keeping my eye on the sky and noticed some grey clouds whisping over the peaks. Time to head down, but not before we leave a message in the snow.

Good thinking, as the skies opened up just as we got back to the trail head. Made for a pretty storm, though.

With double rainbows over the Great Basin.

Well, it was time to head home after a fun week, but I think we have time for one more adventure. About halfway back, literally in the middle of nowhere, we took a left turn onto a dirt BLM road. Twenty two miles later, we arrived at a vast shale quarry.

Fifteen dollars got us each a rock hammer and two hours in the quarry...

...to search for trilobites! We wound up with lots of small ones, but Em found a beautiful one that was about four inches long.

OK, now it's really time to head home. I think we have just enough water, beef jerky, and diesel to make it. Until next time!

[Sansome1877]

One heck of an update zissou!!! Thanks for the wash formula:)

[robbie]

What he said^

gonna have to spread, so much good stuff in your update Zissou.

[DocBlue]

awesome trip and pics Zissou

love the rods......

[roy6]

Very nice zissou. Love the turquoise lake.

The RxCs spent some time in Portland, OR visiting the inlaws.

Brother-in-laws's farmhouse, undergoing renovations:

Our room. No windows currently, as priming is taking place, so the bedroom was in the 90s during the day, 50s at night, and Jaime and Elior materialized looking in promptly at 8am. I hope they were scandalized:

The brother-in-law is a Pacific Coast Trail hiker and leads that lifestyle, so there is a random, rotating batch of roomates, who frankly can be a bit much, but the current batch were awesome. There is a couple who run an organic nursery/feed store/livestock emporium (Naomi's Nursery) who are currently displaced due to a dispute with their ass-hole former landlord. They had to temporarily move most of their nursery stock and feed into my B-I-Ls place. There are potted plants and feed bags all over the place, along with various parts of infrastructure. They also brought along their poultry livestock- a flock of about 12 laying-hens, a rooster, and three ducks.

This is the B-I-L & me with Octavius (an especially small Dutch Bantam) and Bumblfina (a large black hen about three times Octavius' size). They have the run of the place.

The other hens and the ducks are confined to a large chicken-wire cage out back:

(The last one is Octavius again).

[Paul T]

Two epic updates guys - Zissou, your daughter is a champ!

[Dr_Heech]

Zissou,

always look forward to your posts/updates - but this is one of the best!

Looks like one heck of a trip, and a bonus that your daughter loves the great outdoors. Amazing scenery.

Will have to send some rep your way when I can...

@Docblue

Forget about the roys, that bike is awesome.

Good to have you back.

@Roy6

Great pics, those roys are in a league of their own!

(that duck looks a bit anxious mind, hope you explained that the pocket linings aren't made from real duck )

.

[The Clerk]

Zissou & Roy6, wow great photos guys.

I spent today sanding and glue the cracks in the old victorian skirting boards of my bedroom. Worth repairing them as they're deep boards of the sort you don't get anymore. Left the ROYS in a bit of a mess though.

I think they may need another wash. So far they've had an initial hot soak and then a hand wash about 6 weeks ago. Not sure whether to wash by hand or put them through the machine.

[almostnice]

looking great but be careful using the term sanding in combination with the Roys.after the six months mark the competition is getting serious.i am pretty sure roy6 and switch are pretty handy with wet and dry emery paper.

[personicus]

Zissou & Roy6, wow great photos guys.

I spent today sanding and glue the cracks in the old victorian skirting boards of my bedroom. Worth repairing them as they're deep boards of the sort you don't get anymore. Left the ROYS in a bit of a mess though.

I think they may need another wash. So far they've had an initial hot soak and then a hand wash about 6 weeks ago. Not sure whether to wash by hand or put them through the machine.

OH MY!! WINNER WINNER!

[almostnice]

sorry to interrupt your coitus.dont get over-impressed.i was told by a serious information source that The Clerk is suffering badly from excessive dandruff.its all dust in the end.

[The Clerk]

They're not the winning pair - it's just paint dust. They'll look pretty different after it's washed out.

Almostnice, that's litigious talk surely?

[The Clerk]

The sanding that is.... the dandruff part's true enough

[almostnice]

They're not the winning pair - it's just paint dust. They'll look pretty different after it's washed out.

Almostnice, that's litigious talk surely?

as i said,its getting serious.i must admit,i am a bad looser.

[roy6]

^true.

More Portland pics.

Octavius, not so cute at 5am:

My Brother-in-Laws other room-mate just started his own handy-man by bicycle business. Yesterday he was hauling big loads of reclaimed wooden flooring and bags of cement across Portland (about 29 miles). Today was a light day:

Downtown Portland:

Yardsale finds:

Lunch- maggots and coy pellets on a garbage can lid:

[roy6]

Human lunch:

Took another box home for the house- overnight some bartering seemed to have happened:

[wgmds]

i would fucking kill someone for one of their chocolate frosted with raspberry filling!

must spread. good job combining two of the best things in the world!