Well, ain't we got fun. Mary Alice is still nursing the cold from hell that she picked up on the ship, which luckily didn't hit till we got back. I have the sibling cold from heck which hasn't inconvenienced me too much yet - just used up a lot of tissue.

The power was out when I returned home from Redding. It was still out when I left for Eureka this afternoon. With the power out we rely on our old fashioned wall phone to get messages out. But, the phone was out for a day or so. Then when it worked again we would get calls from a neighbor asking if the power was on. PG&E called him and told him his power was on, but he didn't want to turn off his generator unless it was really true. It was not really true. PG&E called the water board, which uses electricity to pump the town water from the river, and said power would be on last night starting at some point between 7 p.m and midnight. Wrong again. Not a flicker as of 3 p.m. the next day.

So we have a propane stove - still cooking and doing some heating with it. Electric oven, tho, so my boxed pizza stayed in the box. We have a wood stove for heating the house - but an electric log splitter. Oops. Our supply of split logs was running low as I left for sunny Eureka.

Food was low too. The Alderpoint store was closed one day, but open Saturday. Good thing. Bruce and I started over the hill at 8:30 a.m. so he could shop while I did my KMUD show. KMUD was not on the air, they were broadcasting internet only, due to the phone line being down near Pratt Mountain. We got about 3 miles up when the snow falling and the snow on the road defeated my front wheel drive Volvo. First time ever that I've failed to get over the hill in a snowstorm. About 10 a.m. we tried again. Got within about 100' of our first high point, and had to turn back. As Peter Hillary said in his lectures on the boat, knowing when to turn back is an important part of adventuring. I said I'd drive by the Alderpoint Store. Bruce ridiculed me. But it was open. Cold as hell and not well lit, but open. I got $82 worth of emergency supplies and food. Mary Alice isn't cooking right now so Rice-A-Roni here I come.

At 2 p.m we made a 3rd run at the hill and got over. Up top there were a million PG+E trucks and some new poles. Turns out the big storm's wind snapped at least one and maybe several. Road more or less clear of snow all the way over. But no power in Garberville or Redway. It was easy to tell which stores had backup generators. Got to Murrishes and shopped by flashlight. Lots of people I knew there, as usual. Had a good chat with Estelle and Kathleen back by the soft-drinks. Finally a clerk with a light came and I could find the ginger beers for M.A. En route to Murrishes I went by KMUD and left my laptop charging. George was still there but there was no air, just internet, and he said he would bail at 3. p.m. He did, but now I know the punch code to get the door open. Gathered laptop, and considered further shopping until Bruce mentioned that the rain in Redway was falling as snow on the hill. Over the hill, snow on the road. At one curve I lost traction and skidded towards the uphill side (good) but also towards a red car coming the other way. It stopped and I didn't but I managed to change the skid direction enough to miss them. I was skidding uphill. I drove very slow for the rest of the way home. Still a ton of PG&E trucks, as there were today when we drove out to go to Eureka. Snowed on 101 most of the way to Eureka, but, believe it or not, partly sunny skies in Eureka. Cold, tho, temperatures similar (no kidding) to Antarctica.

Ah the lawyers life. Spent Wednesday night in Ukiah. Nothing to report except that at Patronas the pizza has now become "flatbread". Same item, really good. I had a tart with a small scoop of icecream for desert. Ummm.

To make my vacation possible I pushed everything into early Jan, and now I'm paying the price. In court at 8:30, rush out get some trial exhibits from the photo shop, back at 10 a.m. The joints really jumping, looks like a lawyers convention. I'm not the only one who pushed everything off until January. But, I'm the only one who has to get to Eureka by 2 pm. so after a polite interval I leap up and say "Your honor, I have 3 short items". Well, not all that short, but the judge is kind enough to hear my cases then. Off to Eureka at 10:45, eat a ramen in the car (its my new diet, really) and sail into Eureka in time for my 2 pm, see a client in jail much to my surprise, back at 3, off to Fortuna to get my car back from the shop and to leave the '94 for a checkup, and its off to Redding. Yes, over the mountains in the wintertime with the storm coming in. Rt 36 to 3, through Hayfork, and connect with 299, over the Buckhorn and into Redding. Little bit of slush and ice at the highest elevations, lots of snow in the woods, and its raining like crazy, but no real problems. I get to the motel and they say "good thing you had a reservation. I-5 is closed and we've rented all the untaken rooms." Turns out my rain was the high country's snow. Court at 8:15 am, meet with client about case, and now I'm ready to head back over the mountains. The internet says the temperature's up, CALTRANS has no warnings about the roads, and so off I go.

I have already written about hydraulic log splitters, so I'll just repeat that they are a great thing to have if you need to split wood.

Its the Olympus Camera with the 18 power optical zoom that I want to praise now. I have had a succession of Olympus digital cameras, starting with a 2 megapixel. That one was stolen in Vienna and replaced with a 3 mp version. Both had 10x optical zooms. For the Antarctic trip I reasoned thus: even though I'm going way down south on a trip of weeks and thousands of miles, I am still going to end up being farther from the things I want to photograph than is consistent with good photos. The 18 power zoom will overcome that in many instances. But with the 10 power zoom I've been getting blurry pix, how to fix that? The 18x Olympus has anti-shake (its called something else) which fixes those little twitches that ruin otherwise good pix, and its a 7.1 mp camera so there will be more ability to enlarge the image that the 18x gets me. This was an entirely good call. I have posted several of the images I was able to take on this trip, and virtually every one of them depended on the zoom to be good.

I don't recall what this camera cost - and by now its probably cheaper anyway, digital objects having a shelf life of 10 minutes or something - but I can tell you it is worth it. I'm betting that a Froogle search will turn it up for $300 or less. Happy snapping.