… and breathe…

Between a Sisyphusean marketing workload with DNC, a conversion optimization class that operates heavily on the you’ll-get-out-what-you-put-in principle, volunteer activities at the Valley Visitor Center for a full day once every other week, a frozen shoulder that seems to be adamant about remaining stuck, and house construction (Tom’s been going nuts, and we now have flooring down in most of the house, and appliances waiting for installation, it’s very exciting), it’s been a long couple of months between the last post and this one.

Fortunately, the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting closer. Two weeks ago, Tom and I met up with our friend Shauna, and skied out to the Nelder Grove of Giant Sequoias. Neither Tom nor I had ever been there before but it’s close to Shauna’s new house, and it was a perfect day and a great chance to explore. Last week, I got out for a quick walk on the Hites Cove trail to look at the wildflowers. And with those two activities as the sum total of my exercise for the last month, today Tom and I hiked up the Snow Creek trail to Mt Watkins and back. Our agreed-upon turn-around time left me a few hundred yards short of the summit, but I have Tom’s pictures from the top as inspiration for the next trip.

The skiing was brilliant and beautiful, the weather perfect, and it just feels fantastic to really get out and DO something for a whole day that doesn’t involve my computer.

It was about 11 miles round trip, with nearly 4500 feet of elevation gain, and I am bone tired and fully expect to be hobbling and sore tomorrow, but I am ever so happy. I’ll try to post some pictures soon.

There was a lot of adventure in our household the week of 9/9/09. We moved our stuff out of the crawlspace so that our new contractors would have some room to work on finishing out the downstairs unit in our house Saturday and Sunday. Tom climbed the Nose in a Day with Hans on Monday, and then we drove across to the East Side and hiked Mt. Whitney in a day on Wednesday, returning tired but happy to our little place in the Valley Thursday night.
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Although Tom and I spent today pretty much hunkered down with house work, we did manage to take advantage of the evening hours for a quick run and some spectacular scenery. We waited until after the heat of the day passed, around 5:30, packed up quickly, picked up our neighbor and headed out for a evening trail run that took us through lush meadows filled with wildflowers, and along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

The Grouse Creek fire is burning pretty amazing right now. The plumes of smoke hang heavy over the valley, and I’ve seen some people talking online about making their trip elsewhere. Not that I blame them, but in the evening light – fires are amazing.

First, during sunset, the sun set was almost blue and purple from being filtered through the smoke. It was SO much cooler than your average sunny day sunset in the Sierra. And then, after our run – on the drive back down Glacier Point we had to pull over multiple times because the flicker of flames in the forest next to the road was absolutely breath-taking. Towers of orange embers, leaping flames in the darkness, an orange glow putting the foreground trees into silhouettes. Magic, I tell you.

Have I mentioned that the moon is almost full, too? Tuesday, I think.

And we got to see a pair of Peregrin Falcons, the young one screaming out for a food exchange.

If you’re coming to see the ‘classic views’, for sure the smoke gets in the way. But, if you keep your eyes open, there’s a special kind of beauty during burns. No pictures, because we were out for a run, but we’re going back up again tomorrow. Dinner on Sentinel Dome. Pictures.

Plans to set our house in Yo West up to be a revenue-generating vacation home rental are moving ahead. We passed the planning inspection last week, and today passed building inspection, which I think was the last hurdle to get the permit from the county. Now, there are only the remaining insurance and logistics hurdles, and we’ll be ready. Not that those are small hurdles.

In order to rent out your home on a nightly basis, there are certain steps required by the County to make sure that your home is fit for rental. First, there is the permit fee. Then, you need to make sure that your property has safety precautions in place. They want to make sure that your fire extinguisher is located in a place where a visitor would easily be able to find it. A homeowner can keep their extinguisher under the kitchen sink, but a vacation rental needs to have it mounted in plain sight between 3-5 feet off the ground, for example. There are fire-escape signs to be made (silly given our ultra-simple floor plan – but required) as well as notices about neighborhood rules, quiet hours and things like that.

I’ve made a call to our Insurance agent as well, and hopefully she will be able to get back to me with some numbers tomorrow or early next week. I wonder how much extra we will pay in insurance in order to rent. At least there is no wood-fire in the upstairs to tempt our renters to burn our house down.

I know a lot of people are looking to build a fire when they come up to Yosemite, Tom loves the ambiance of the flames and the radiant heat, and a heat source in the winter is always good for me, but we’ve heard horror stories of people who don’t know the first thing about building fires and it’s a little frightening to think of setting them loose in your house, unsupervised. People who have chopped wood on the living room floor with a hatchet and left gouges in the flooring. People who consider starting their fireplace fires with white gas or gasoline. I know that it’s rare, but it’s still a bit unnerving. Nevermind what happens with wood-burning stoves.

With the insurance estimates coming along, now we are looking at trying to figure out what to do with the very special artwork now hanging from our walls. Each piece has a unique and personal story, and we aren’t sure if we would trust them to strangers. My piano. The TV situation – we have an old TV inherited from my grandfather that is nearing the end of its useful life. The screen flickers when you tap the ground in front of it, until it has warmed up for a while. We have a modest, but decent collection of DVDs. Will they get taken? What to do with our books and other personal possessions while other people are in our house? Perhaps we can put all those things in our room and only rent out the guest bedroom? There is still lots of work and decisions moving forward.

Still, with luck, we will be able to take advantage of this summer season and off-set some of the expenditures of finishing out the ground-floor unit… and … um … setting ourselves up with new backpacking gear. But, I guess that is another post.

Now that I pretty much suck when it comes to serious house-building projects, I’ve been given the task of researching cork flooring. Although the upstairs unit of our house is basically finished, we’re far behind schedule in terms of building out the downstairs unit. We’re so happy with our upstairs, that although our initial plan was to rent it out as a vacation rental, we’re now more inclined to keep it for ourselves, and rent out the downstairs when that is finished.  This post is really more for me, but if you’re interested in cork flooring, then by all means…
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We still haven’t managed to achieve some of the unnecessary parts of our house, like painting the trim or 3,000 other things, but we did finally manage to get our parking meter installed. Now we can start making some money off visitors.

We’re quite proud of our parking meter, one of the only ones, perhaps *the* only one in Mariposa County.

Thanks Mary!