Just checking in, I was missing the blog and feel like I haven’t ridden in forever. A best friend I grew up and went to school with is visiting from the Bay Area this week and we are having a great time catching up and getting out on the town. I WILL be back in the saddle this weekend and am greatly looking forward to it!

Hope everyone rang in the 2012 year with fun and safe festivities! Us wild partying folk at Redheaded Endurance were in bed and snoring away when the neighborhood honkies fired off their arsenals at midnight, or we might have joined in 😉   I don’t have any resolutions, per se, but I am looking forward to my first AERC 50s, my first endurance rides with my mare Desire, and more fun times with my redheaded filly sidekick, Sheza. Oh–and my Specialized saddle arriving sometime in the next few weeks! Can’t wait for that.

No rest for the wicked here, there are chores to be done. Wishing everyone a fun, safe, and successful 2012!

As of yesterday the heater is up and running and the house is warm! A week and a half and $2200 later..still no riding getting done, and possible family/friends visiting this weekend/New Years, but hoping to get back in the saddle soon..

I sure wish I was starting a new post on this blog to glory in my toasty warm house and talk about the ride I went on yesterday. Instead my house is still an ice cave and yesterday was spent sitting around (yet again) waiting for the heater guy. He had assured me, I had assured myself, the difficult parts were done and he would return with the new flue and pop the heater in–viola, the house would be livable again! It was not to be. Heater guy, who I had been planning to give a glowing recommendation but who can now go suck eggs, forgot to check the flue when he picked it up. So he drove 30 minutes to Chico to the supplier, picked it up without checking, drove +- 1hr back to Bangor, put the heater in, went to drop the flue in and……”well..huh…umm…it looks about..12 inches short.”  Calls the supply place, tries to blame it on the new guy who misinformed him that the flue would extend to 140″ inches…while it says on the box, in clear view, “Extends up to 120 inches.” Sure the new guy probably did misinform him, but come the eff on, a heater guy with 25 years experience doesn’t CHECK the part before heading back up into the hills for a day two attempt at a simple heater fix? Apparently not. I really hope he was embarrassed, because he should be. And so, my blog-reading friends, I get to sit around yet another day and wait for him to show, and hope and pray that today we do in fact get heat restored to the house. Or else..

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with their friends and families. I sure did. My husband finally got home from visiting his family in southern California on Saturday night. He had been gone since Tuesday and I was enjoying all the heating and repair drama by myself. Plus a crowd of animal spectators. Sometimes I think about the great variety of behavior our animals see from us. We spend a great deal of time with all of our animals and they see us at our worst and at our best. You wonder if any of that sinks in, don’t you? Anyhow, it was great to see my (very tired) husband and we had a lovely little Christmas morning in the cozy cabin, wood stove stocked to the brim. I got EXACTLY what I wanted, which was a radio and speakers for the Bomber. I enjoy me some NPR and ipod usage, and not having that option was surprisingly irritating to me. I can only sing to my chihuahua for so long. My trusty husband had the radio and speakers under the tree. He also upgraded our phones, so Redheaded Endurance has officially joined the current technology phase. I went from my basic military grade flip phone to a Samsung Galaxy Something or Other. An Android smart phone. Needless to say I went bonkers on it on the drive over to the coast yesterday. I planned to do the driving since the husband had just gone 800+ miles over the week but he insisted on taking the wheel so I got to veg out on the smart phone. First things first: install free Scrabble and Words with Friends applications. I must confess. I love word games. My family often played the board game Scrabble at nights growing up and I’ve followed it lovingly into the digital age. It’s kinda awesome to have my dorky word game habits available at my fingertips, at lightning speeds. It scares me that my phone is more efficient and capable than my desktop computer at home. But that’s the way things seem to be going!

We had a very nice time at my parent’s house for Christmas dinner and present opening. The gathering consisted of myself, my husband, my sister, her husband, and their 4 kids (new baby in tow!), along with my granny, my step-granny, my brother, and my parents. The only portion of the immediate family missing was my brother and his wife and baby, who were celebrating in their hometown down south. My step-granny hadn’t been to a holiday gathering in years so it was very nice to see her. She has a hard time figuring out where she is and who people are sometimes. I have truly never been around this is an older person before and it was a bit of a shock. She is very healthy and physically well though, which is a blessing. My husband is so good with kids, he was telling riddles to my nieces and nephews and granny was getting in on the action. We had a delicious home-grown roast beef dinner (Yorkshire pudding–heaven!) and an entertaining round of opening presents. I must say my parents instilled the orderly, one person at a time, present unwrapping tradition very strongly in me. It’s so funny to go to Christmas with kids and see the unbridled enthusiasm and impatience. I almost remember that feeling! It was good fun and my husband and I got an awesome awesome present from my brother and his girlfriend: A BBQ! We love to BBQ all summer long our cheesy cheap BBQ is about on it’s last legs. What a fantastic present and we can’t wait to put it use. We had drawn my sister’s kids in the Secret Santa drawing so brought along a little pile of goodies for them. I loved hearing my niece exclaim “Oh it’s JUST what I wanted!” when she opened her doll.

We were supposed to spend the night at my brother’s house but to do so we of course had to pack everything into the car, and then drive right past our turning to head for home. The anxiety dog, aka Wilbur the wiener dog, had barfed and whined his way over to the coast. Now, getting gas, fully packed, on the road, Wilbur and his chihuahua sidekick were peacefully passed out. With freezing nights at home, the heater-less house, all the animals, and already being on the road, we just decided to go for the 4 1/2 hour drive home. We cleared it with my brother and off we went. I wanted to spend some time with my brother but we had a lot to take care of at home and avoiding the holiday traffic and another miserable ride with a whining wiener dog was too tempting. We made it home about 12:45 and mercifully slept in this morning. Now it’s time to do some chores around here, need to get in some more firewood before the possible rain comes. And some day soon..ride?

 

Well it’s been a mighty long week here at the Redheaded Endurance home base. The propane guy came to the rescue Thursday and brought us 17 gallons to get us by until the big truck delivery on Tuesday. Yesterday the heater guy made it out around noon with the hopes of installing a new heater and getting the house turned from ice cave back to humane dwelling. Unfortunately, as usual with our fixer-upper house, things did not go smoothly. The first step of course was getting the old heater out of the compartment on the backside of the house; the repairman disconnected everything and all that was left was getting the flue to telescope up off the top of the heater so we could pull the unit out. This was where things went wrong. The poor guy tried for a good 45 minutes from every angle (even on the roof) and with every tool but could not get the flue to move up off the heater. At that point the flue was clearly not salvageable for reuse with the new heater, which meant the heater installation couldn’t happen. The observed holiday Monday means that we can’t get a new flue until Tuesday. So the house remains an ice cave and we’ll be rushing back from my parent’s house Monday to be here Tuesday for the propane delivery and heater repair. The repair guy was actually really great, thank god, he did his best to save the flue and when that failed and he finally managed to destroy the crap flue and get the heater out he took the needed measurements, cleaned up.. then noticed, diagnosed, and fixed (free of charge) the propane shut off valve in the heater compartment that was LEAKING that the other heater guy (with the $1000 higher quote) looked right at and didn’t even register. So if he hadn’t done that we would have shut the compartment and propane would have continued to leak out and throughout the whole house until Tuesday..dangerous AND depleting our small propane supply that won’t be boosted until Tuesday either. Very grateful our cabin bedroom is heated with wood and that I thought to buy a router when I was out in town Wednesday so that I’ve been able to use the internet on the laptop in the warm cabin.

That’s all for now! Looking forward to celebrating Christmas with family and then hopefully getting back to some riding! Merry Christmas to all and hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.