Monkey

I finally got around to updating the Happy Monkey Snowboards site for the 09/10 season. I’ll be building custom boards as usual this season, and I’ve also introduced two new stock models. Check it all out here: www.happymonkeysnowboards.com

We had a nice 4th of July party at our house yesterday. Grilled some tasty meat, had plenty of good snacks and a good time with a few friends. Then, in the evening we made smores over a small fire, and set off all the fireworks I bought at Boom City earlier in the week. It was an extraordinary amount of fun. Here are some pictures that Helen took of the fireworks. There are some really cool long exposures in there.

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Helen and I are planning a trip to Nevada in the fall to do some sightseeing and camping. We’re planning to spend a lot of time off the main roads, and given our experience with the Subaru on our trip to Belmont Mill a few years back we’re taking the truck this time. But we don’t have a lot of experience with the truck off-road, so Helen and I got the sled deck off the truck on Saturday and headed out to the Cascades to see how it handles on some bumpy forest service roads. We decided to use many of the same roads that I’ve recently snowmobiled on, so we went out to Gold Creek and headed for the radio tower.

It went very well. We went about 38 miles on the forest service roads, which were a mix of gravel, loose dirt, and snow. There were a few patches of snow left on the road near the top, up to two feet or so in spots, but the truck had no problem with that. I got a better feel for how it handles on really rough roads, too, in a few places, and how it feels when it gets loose in gravel and loose dirt. We took the 4832 to 126 and drove up to the radio tower and took in the view, then we drove down to the bottom of Monster Bowl where we snowmobile a lot. Then we took the 4948 all the way out to Little Kachess Lake then back around to I90.

We had a great time, and we’re surely do it again. We’ll try letting some air out of the tires to soften the ride a bit, and I think Helen will wear a sports bra next time

A few pictures:

Well, it’s snowing again. We’ve got a good 3” on the ground so far this evening. The snow is the mountains is primo right now, but honestly I have to say that I’d prefer not to have it on my doorstep anymore

Today I am declaring total victory in my war with the Mouse Army. There has been no activity in the territory that they once occupied for quite some time now. Overall, I captured and released more than 50 agents, though some were, of course, repeat captures. This will be my final communication on this matter.

Here is a glossary of terms that I used in my previous posts on the topic, for those that might have been wondering:

• The Mouse Army – the group of deer mice living under my house and populating the woods around us by the hundreds
• The Frontier – the walls between my shop and the crawl space under my house
• My Territory – initially, just my shop
• Enemy Controlled Territory – the entire crawlspace under my house
• Operative – a Deer Mouse
• Eastern Border – the back of my house, which faces east
• Hidden passage across The Frontier – a small hold under the bottom of the furnace in the shop
• Counter offensive into enemy land – me crawling around the crawl space under my house
• The Spider Coalition – the rather large group of spiders living in the crawl space
• Outpost – a clump of fiberglass insulation that the mice build little nests out of
• Great Stuff – Great Stuff spray foam, the hard kind
• Western Border – the front of our house
• Alternative enticement devices – peanuts
• First marking method – spray paint
• Second marking method – glitter glue pen for kids
• The Hatch – the hatch down into the crawl space
• Subterranean means of ingress – a hole that the mice dug along the foundation down to a drain pipe that went through the foundation wall