October has been unusually warm.

Tom and Sid on a kayak.

As much our September was full of action, October turned out different. Lisa, who fell ill right during our ballooning, had definitely shed her cough only by start of October, some five, six weeks into it. Tom and Hippo, who caught it from her with a fortnight delay, coughed throughout the first half of October. My plans to go autumn camping in Yosemite, were thus nixed; there was no point dragging a lung sanatorium to a tent in high elevations. All this while October was beautifully warm, allowing me to swim in our unheated pool around the tenth of the month, which must be a record; our swimming typically ends sometime in September.

The weather was still beautiful in mid-October, and after some organizing, we ended up driving out with Švajda family to Elkhorn Slough, to ride ocean kayaks. We had been there a few years back and my mind held a memory of a hassle with rubberized suits, neoprenes — and cold. This time, t-shirts were OK, and the ride million times more pleasant. The only confusion ensued with the kayaks with foot-controlled rudders. If you want to turn left, you have to push / stretch your left foot, i.e. contrary to bicycle handle-bars. It struck me as awfully counter-intuitive, and I fought with it a lot. On the other hand, our children appeared to have grown, gained strength, for they PADDLED like their lives depended on it, and drivers had an easy time. Tide was just beginning to drop, and the lagoon was full of water and creatures. We saw sea otters really up-close, as they hunted for and smashed clams, unafraid of us tourists.

Lisa and Carol on a kayak.

Druhá Tráva.

On the following weekend I was showing symptoms of withdrawal from nature in advanced stage, and insisted on a hike in Pinnacles. We usually take the High Peaks loop, with a part of the journey over steps hewn in rock, narrow bridges, holding railings; we all enjoy it. The kids were rumbling and Hippo was coughing, but we made it. On the way down, in boring switchbacks on the side of the mountain it was horribly dusty and we spread out to avoid breathing each other's dust. My kids had disappeared around a bend and Sid followed some distance behind. Suddenly I registered a sound as if a soda bottle were being opened and gas were escaping. At first I thought that my own soda bottle began leaking, the one I carried in my backpack; my second thought was that perhaps Sid had opened his. However, he started to call me to come back, for what we heard was a rattlesnake.

The serpent curled up under a bush, sampling air and waiting for our move. Apparently it was ready to defend itself, and we took pictures from a respectful distance at full zoom. But finally I could see a real rattlesnake; it was large and well fed. We did not manage to photograph its rattle; well at least I had seen it.

Under a rocky tooth.

Steps in the rock.

I went with Lisa to the ranch where Foxy lives on the same weekend. A week earlier, during a dialog with one of the women in the stables, it turned out that they had started a new Pony Club. Shelly owns two ponies and maintains a squad of mothers, who rent the ponies from her on a day by day basis. That's just ideal for us, no racing and jumping, but an opportunity to visit and pet the ponies, and perhaps to ride a little. No trainers, simply a leisurely way to satisfy Lisa's affinity to horses for an affordable price. And a way to show Lisa how much work it takes to have a horse, and that a half hour ride is typically bought by another hour of care. We shall see where it will lead us; this weekend, we came to meet the owner and check out how it works and, of course, see the ponies.

On Tuesday evening, Sid and I got on the internet to reserve a hotel room for our next ballooning get-together in Coalinga. We had finally figured out how to organize the whole weekend. That we would not go to see Druhá Tráva on Friday in our town (for by then we would be on our way to Coalinga), but we would see the concert on Thursday in Felton (i.e. after Lisa's ponies), and Tom's birthday (which fell on Friday), we would celebrate a week later. Alas, we had soon found out that our sophisticated plans were for naught, since one could not get a decent hotel in Coalinga on such a short notice. And since Coalinga is in the middle of nowhere in the shape of a half-desert, where it's fifty miles to next town, one cannot get a decent hotel room anywhere nearby.

Rattlesnake.

Redwood park in Felton.

After we had stopped hitting our heads over our own stupidity, a feeling of relief had arrived. We would have nothing but the ponies on Thursday. On Friday, we would go to the concert. Tom would celebrate his birthday without stress and delay, having time to assemble his lego train that he'd been wanting for a year now (it would be difficult to pack a large lego box on a hotel room, with over 800 pieces).

During the week I was supposed to see a training of one of the mothers, Katja, to get a better idea what can be done with kids and ponies, but just as I drove out, Tom called me that a piece of his dental braces had fallen off. Thus I hurriedly called the dentist not to go home yet, so that they could fix our braces; I had to cancel everything including ponies, and we sped off to Mountain View. They had fixed the braces and I had decided to stop by Woodshed on my way, to buy tickets for Druhá Tráva on Friday. I stormed into the music shop and declared that I wanted two Friday concert tickets. The clerk looked at me as if I had fallen off of a tree — what tickets, pray tell? Now I was gaping and began to explain, it's Druhá Tráva on Friday, performing there at Woodshed. I received an explanation that there would not be any concert at that location, for the city of Los Gatos had forbidden concerts there. The we managed to disentangle it — Woodshed, the company, which organizes the musical performances and had been using a hall behind the music shop, has moved them to a small church in Willow Glen. Well — this had been close; had we gone straight to the concert, we would have arrived at the wrong place (for we did notice online that it was Woodshed alright, but we never paid attention to the address in a small font underneath).

A birthday peloton.

Birthday boy at a restaurant.

Thursday was supposed to be our first official Pony Day. I took the kids home from school, planning to get in, change, eat a snack, and set out to the ranch. Alas, as I was exiting the car, I saw a half-empty left rear tire — and the nail stuck in it. The feeling of easy going had vanished; I chased the kids in, called Sid to be ready to pick me up at Costco (where they fix flats); I re-inflated the wheel and sped off. Fortunately, they had fixed my tire in under an hour, and Sid could stay at work, and I could take Lisa at least for a while, before it got dark, to the ponies. I had to cancel my Thursday climbing; I would not have made it there. Even so, by the evening I was ready for a stiff drink; I felt somehow as if all our ingenious plans were failing.

Fortunately nothing had failed on Friday, and we got to the concert at last, and it was awesome, in spite Druhá Tráva having left their ill base-player in a hospital in Houston, Texas. We chatted with two more Czechs who came — Suchýš and Radka, and with the musicians, which was great. They must be a bit crazy, for they tour the whole country in a van, covering fourteen thousand miles in the space of six weeks. Well, we can be glad that someone ventures all the way to us from time to time, and with such a great music.

Garage party :-).

Cake.

We could not disentangle and decide, what to do on Saturday morning. The children kept claiming not to be hungry and not wanting to go anywhere, until Hippo commanded that we go to Felton, have a Thai lunch, and then go for a walk in a redwood forest. Already on the way the offspring began to bother, whether we're there yet and that they are HORRIBLY HUNGRY, which led to a lecture on the benefits of deciding sooner and quicker. I don't know how much they had appreciated the lecture, but the lunch was very good, and later they participated with an unexpected verve in running in the woods — apparently they still need their outing. On Sunday we introduced a training ride to a restaurant. We hadn't been out on our bikes for a long time, and since we had planned a grandiose happening in celebration of Tom's birthday for the first weekend in November, we were in need of a practice run, to prevent the celebrant and his sister from excessive complaining.

Organizing Tom's autumn parties is always a gamble: will it rain, or will it not. This time the weather was merciful and I could issue the signal for our guests to be delivered with their bicycles. They kept gathering like cockroaches to a bait, and those who came earlier had to make several trips around our block to keep busy; then I could issue bright orange t-shirts to the kids and bright green to the adults, and we could go. We were supposed to gather ten children, but Max and Klára gave up at the restaurant, while Raphael and Joachim had held a soccer match through the lunch and joined us on our way back. Julia could only join in the afternoon, in the cake phase. The number of minor riders in the peloton thus varied between four and six, although we had total eleven guests.

Back at home, I left the peloton in our garage — they received textile coloring pens and could decorate their bright biking t-shirts (purchased for this purpose in a hobby shop for — literally — couple of dollars). I figured that I would not let permanent markers enter into my house; that I really didn't want to worry about where to put all those bikes for the rest of the afternoon — and that the kids could use the front yard space. All that had worked out, and thus, while adult guest kept nudging their chairs deeper into our shady garage with the setting sun, the children alternatively colored their t-shirts, climbed our tree, threw a ball, hollered, and chased each other. Last guest left by seven thirty in the evening — thus Tom did have nine hours of continuous celebration — in fact, much more intense partying than my 40s had been. We all had enjoyed it to the fullest.