Hiking and Stuff

As I reported Monday we decided to do a little hiking--This time going up to the Snoqualmie Pass area. During my blog post then I couldn't recall the name of the place we were going to go, but a little investigation revealed that it was Talapus Lake.

It was my first use of the hiking boots I scored on Craigslist a while back, and I have to say they performed well. More than one time I walked on mossy rocks, roots, and fallen logs, and I never lost my grip. I had plenty of comfort too.

You see some odd things on hiking trails, but when you think about it, why should they be any different than any other place? I think it was the fact that there are not exactly a lot of people on a hiking trail. After all, it's not like you're at the mall, right? Imagine my (our) surprise when a nun passed us on the trail. Yes, a nun. We had just been on the trail ten or fifteen minutes when a woman dressed in her full nun gear (not the long gown style, but still all black and white with the headgear too) passed us on her way back down to her car with her companions. Interesting. Come to think of it, I'm not sure exactly what she was wearing because I was too surprised to take in all the details. Later on we were halfway back to our car when we came upon a family group of Indian or some other middle eastern folks. What caught our eye first was the fact that they actually had a baby stroller with them! Also, one of the ladies in the group was wearing open sandals with nylons. See? You just never know.

My truck is now fully operational. Woohoo! Okay, at least until the next time it doesn't want to start... I came home Monday and the time felt right to take it down to have it emissions tested so I could get my license tabs renewed. For us here it's every two years, and this was "the year" for my poor ol' truck. That was a lot of what motivated me to get it going. Anyway, I drove it down and ran it through. Right off the bat it failed both gas cap tests. They pressure-test gas caps before they even do the running portion of the test. Fortunately it passed that part, and they said if I went down and bought a couple of new caps and came back to the office with them they'd change my fail to a pass and I'd be good to go. I argued for a while about both caps failing at the same time, but to no avail. After all, they were old caps and didn't get much use recently to keep them pliable either. So the good news is after spending $15 on an emissions test, $18 on two new gas caps, and $65 on new license tabs, my truck is now operational. Oh yeah--Insurance too. While I was able to add the truck online over the weekend, I have yet to receive the policy change in the mail with the bill. It shouldn't be too much. I still don't know if I trust the truck implicitly, but at least I can drive it now (after the tabs show up today or tomorrow) if I need to. I do know that it's in dire need of a wash and wax. The finish has oxidized pretty badly and the chrome wheels have started to suffer the degradation of the dreaded acid that is cat piss.

I'm pretty excited for Suzie. She has gotten her second client for her Memory DVD's business. Not a bad start to have one per week. She's going places with this thing--I can tell. I only hope it doesn't go too crazy to where she's having to sacrifice sleep and other things to meet deadlines, although it would be a nice problem to have wouldn't it?