Painting The Bus - Lemonhead

After we got back from our long winter break road trip in the bus, we discovered a few leaks in the windows after it rained on us a few times. The worst leak (which has been bad for some time now) is around the bottom of the front window. The rust that is forming under the window seal is defeating the purpose of the window seal! So every time it rains we got a big puddle of water on the rubber mat in the front. Another leak we discovered was around the sliding window on the sliding door. As we were camping in New Mexico, it down poured over night. Water started dripping in at the top of the sliding door window, into the pilot seat where I was sitting, eating dinner. The only way to fix it at the time was to put a towel over the outside of the window so water could stream down through the towel, past the window. It worked, but now it was time to fix it!!!


Grinding the rust around the window seal.

We started out by removing the front window and getting all of the seal off of the metal. This wasn't as easy as it would seem, since the seal was melted/glued on in some places. Then came the grinding to get rid of the rust that formed all around and under where the window seal was.


Stripping off all of the paint.

There were a lot of dings from rocks hitting the front of the bus from the road. Some dings were shallow, but others were deep and the exposed metal started to rust. So in addition to grinding around the window seal, we decided to take off all of the paint on the front. This is when we discovered that there was actually a lot of bondo behind where the spare tire mounted. The spare tire mount was bending the thin sheet metal which makes up the front of the bus, so we took it off and sealed the holes where it mounted.


A layer of primer goes on first.

Taking off all the paint and redoing the bondo in some places took us a month! We only worked on the weekends, so it took a long time and really dragged out. We also fixed dents and dings in the front that had been there since before we bought the bus over 5 years ago. I think one of the previous owners bumped into something with the spare tire and it indented the whole front. Also, before we bought it, a huge rock was thrown out from under a lawn mower and then got flung into the front of the bus, leaving a huge gash. We fixed that too.


The first coat of the new color is being painted.

We chose to repaint the bus to the original burnt yellow color, called Chrome Yellow. We found information on what color the bus was originally painted in the M-code on the tag that is under the dashboard on the driver's side. So the front doesn't match the rest of the bus, but little by little, we will fix every body panel and repaint it to match.


A video of the color going on.

Romy was a lot better at painting than I was, so he applied all of the paint with a paint gun. We got the paint from a place called San Leandro Color, a paint shop in the Bay Area. It was kind of expensive, but it was really good primer and paint. We put a few coats of primer on and then sanded it down before putting on the actual coats of color. We found that wet sanding was the best and helped get the primer really smooth!


The paint is all done!

Once the color got on, it started looking really good and very shiny! All that hard work in prepping was all worth it! Seriously, about 80% of all the work in repainting isn't actually in the painting part. It's all the work you do before hand! The paint really smelled, so we worked with masks on our face the whole time (and during sanding too). The paint smell leaked upstairs into our apartment for a few days, so we had to have all of the windows open for ventilation!


The finished front! It's now called Lemonhead.

When we were finally done painting, we were sooooo happy! It then took us a relatively short time to put all of the trim and lights and other stuff back on. We got a new window seal and then put the old window back in (it was still good). Then we washed everything one more time and now it's finished! We gave the bus a new name. Because of the yellow front and the yellow pop-top canvas, we call it Lemonhead! We also bought a bra for the bus, and when we drive it now, we put the bra on to protect the new paint. We should've had one the entire time, really. We also replaced the sliding door window seal, and now that window doesn't leak anymore. Yay! After all that work, we are taking a break for a while!

Crazy Mountain Chickadees

Even though it was spring break this past week, we decided to extend winter a little bit longer! After getting news of the non-stop snowfall that the Sierras were getting (and are still getting), we decided to go skiing and snowshoeing at Lake Tahoe.


Technically, its the first week of spring, but it still looks like it's winter in Nevada!

On the first day of our trip, we went snowshoeing on the northwest side of the lake, in Nevada. We had a brochure of the Tahoe Rim Trail, a trail which you can hike (during summer) all the way around Lake Tahoe. We looked for a place where it intersected a main road (Hwy 431) and drove there to get on the trail (now under many feet of snow) to go snowshoeing. Usually, big trails like that have parking areas or large pull offs, so it was our best bet to find a parking place off the highway. When we got there, there were already a bunch of cars, so we knew it would be ok to park and leave the car. Once we got our snowshoes on, we headed off into a large meadow.


The trees are frozen, covered by an icy snowy frost.

There were a few fresh snowshoe tracks and cross-country ski tracks. But none of them went directly across the open meadow. I wonder if its because people thought it might be a small snow covered frozen lake (which is what we thought a first), or if they just didn't want to disturb the open flat snow field with fresh tracks. After looking at it a while, we figured it couldn't be a lake, because the surface of the snow was tilted at an angle. I don't know of many lakes which have an angled surface ;-)


A close up of the frozen branches of a tree.

We didn't trek through the open field either. Instead, we headed off into the forest, where we climbed steadily uphill through snow covered pine trees. We heard many birds singing in the forest. When we took a water break, all of a sudden a bunch of small song birds flew around us and landed in the trees we were stopped next to. Some of them were very curious, and started swooping down at us, flying at our heads and straight towards our face! At first we thought that they were angry at us, so we moved on, thinking that we should have our water break next to another tree.


Winter scenery!

So we trekked a bit farther, to another tree. But the birds kept following us. And they kept swooping and flying at our heads! What was going on?! Then Romy decided to start waving his pole at the birds, to see if they would attack the pole instead. They weren't afraid of the pole! Instead, they just flew and sat on it! Then Romy put out his arm to see if they would land and sit on his hand. To our amazement, they flew right into his open hand! They just did it for fun or something, because we didn't have any food or anything a bird would want, except a place to land.


Mountain Chickadees flying at and landing on me.

After the initial excitement of wild animals being all friendly, we decided we should keep moving, since we came here to go snowshoeing, and not bird watching. So we kept going, and soon found another snowshoe-er's tracks, which we followed, since breaking our own trail in the deep fresh snow was getting a little tiring! The trail started to climb pretty steeply, and after a while, we were getting so tired we decided to take a lunch break. We weren't used to all this physical activity at about 8,500 ft in elevation - we just came from sea level in Oakland!


A chickadee on my glove!

As soon as we sat down in the snow, the flock of chickadees were back. They followed us all this way! Now they weren't afraid at all anymore. They were landing on our heads, shoulders, hands, where ever! When we opened up our backpack, and took out our fruit and power bars, they were all over us. It was hard to eat, because as soon as you exposed a portion of your bar, there was a chickadee on your hand pecking at it. Maybe they are so friendly because they know hikers carry food! The weirdest thing was how crazy they were for our dried banana chips. They loved those more than our granola bars. Weird! After we were done eating, they still hung around, swarming us. It was a lot of fun being surrounded by them, singing and flying from one perch to another, but we were getting cold sitting in the snow, so we got up and started trekking further up the mountain.


A movie of chickadees landing on Romy's hands.

As we neared the top, we saw Lake Tahoe come into view below us. The wind started to blow and some of the snow clouds were clearing up over the Lake. We looked around to see if we could get to a higher place for a better view. Then we saw a distant small peak, which had a bunch of icy covered trees. We started heading for it. This time the slope was so steep, we had to put our heel bars up on the snowshoes so we could climb better. Finally we got to the top, and now we could see the whole of Lake Tahoe, around the whole shoreline! We didn't even know that we would be able to get this view when we started the trek!


A movie of chickadees invading our lunch break!

I guess we were really high up and pretty exposed, because the chickadees no longer followed us. All the trees were covered by a coating of frozen icy snowy frost that was wind blown onto all of the branches. It made the trees look really white and frosty. Since we were at the top, we decided to take a break before going back down. The sun started to come out and shine on us, so it wasn't that cold anymore. When we checked what time it was, we didn't realize it took us so long to get up there (since we took so many breaks to play with the birds). We decided it was best to start heading back down, since we still had to drive to our motel, which was in South Lake Tahoe.


A pic of Romy snowshoeing.

On the way down, we found the steepest way and ran down, trying to ski with our snowshoes. It was pretty hard to do, since the snowshoes don't easily slip and slide. It took us almost an hour to get back. When we returned to the lower elevations, we heard the chickadees singing again. We waved good bye to them, and headed towards the car. We'll never forget the crazy chickadees!

Kayak Roll Clinic Video

I just stumbled upon this video that was taken while Romy and I were taking a kayak roll clinic at the Strawberry Canyon pool at UC Berkeley last year in May. It is on the Cal Recreation Sports website as a demo video for the kayak roll clinic classes. I am the one in the small red kayak, and I think Romy is in the greenish one with the yellow tail.

National Western Rodeo + Casa Bonita!

While we were visiting Romy's family in Colorado, we happened to be in the right place at the right time to go see the largest rodeo in the nation! Every year, cowboys and cowgirls convene in Denver for a two-week long rodeo and stock show, and various other competitions. Romy and I have never been to a rodeo before, so this was going to be a new experience for us! I was really excited about going to see a rodeo in real life, after Jerraline told us about it earlier this week.



A high-scoring cowboy riding a bucking bull.

We got tickets online for the opening day rodeo, which was in the convention center in downtown Denver, right off of I-70. The tickets were almost sold out by the night before, when we finally got around to buy them, and they only had the cheap nose bleed tickets left. But we didn't care! I was really crazy excited for some reason! We went to the rodeo with Romy' second cousins, Alyx and Alyssa, who oriented us once we got there. They've been to rodeos before, so they told us all about the rules of competition. When the cowboys ride on the bucking horses or bulls, they get points not only for how long they can stay on the animal, but also for how good they look doing it! I tried taking pictures while we were watching, but video turned out better. Here are my two favorite videos I took.



A cowboy riding a bucking horse which jumped really high into the air while bucking!

After the rodeo, it was about dinner time and a Saturday night, so Romy's second cousins (who we went with to the Rodeo) suggested we go to Casa Bonita to eat. Casa Bonita is the place that was made fun of on South Park because of how epic it is. Its basically a huge Mexican restaurant, but its so, so, so much more! Its a place that's hard to describe, but I will try. To get in, you need to purchase a meal, which they serve cafeteria style. Then, they seat you inside, but this restaurant has no ordinary seating. There are three levels, and multiple themed rooms. We were seated inside the depths of a gold mine, where deitz lanterns hanging over each table provided mood lighting. There is a roaming mariachi band, and tall sculpted cliffs with a two story waterfall. Cliff divers jump from the top of the falls and plunge into a seemly shallow turquoise pool, lit from the depths. There is the scary Black Bart's cave which you can explore, and try not to pee in your pants like all the little kids running wild inside. Or you can watch a choreographed gun fight, or a man in a gorilla suit and pirates. This is all after you eat of course. The food was so-so (we got the cheapest thing on the menu, which was the taco salad), but you can order unlimited sopapillas and honey. Mmmmmmm.


Me and Alyssa getting our taco salads at Casa Bonita!

Going into Casa Bonita was like entering a time warp. We spent 4 full hours inside. We didn't wait very long in line to get our food (~15 minutes), and it didn't take us that long to eat either. We literally spent 3 hours exploring the place, and at the end, we sat down in the 'theater' for a real magic show! The magician was casa bonita quality, but still entertaining! If you're ever in the Denver area, I recommend going to check it out with a bunch of friends. Oh yeah, and pre-game before you go in, because the beer is kind of expensive inside.

XC Skiing at Tahoe

Now that school is over for the year, we are on winter break and decided to get into skiing a lot more than we have in the past. We kicked off the skiing season with a trip to Lake Tahoe to go cross country skiing. My goal is to get in shape, and enter and finish the Mammoth Marathon (42 km) on my skis in April at the end of the season! I'll be working towards that goal all winter long. Along the way, I want to participate in a few other XC races, all listed here.


One of the warming huts at Tahoe XC, where we took a break and had hot cocoa.

Another nice thing about being on winter break is that we don't have to do all our traveling and fun stuff on the weekends only. Going to Tahoe mid-week is incredibly cheap! We got our motel room for only $30/night! And it had a jacuzzi, free breakfast, and it was only 3 blocks away from the casino area near the Cali-Nevada state line. It was clean and quiet, too. The place we went skiing at, Tahoe XC, had a half-off Tuesday special on trail passes, which made it only $12 to ski on Tuesday! And on Wednesday, they have free skate lessons at 10am. Mid-week is awesome! Oh, and there were less people too.


Romy skiing. There is a lot of fresh snow!

We took out our nordic classic skis the first day of skiing at Tahoe XC. The trails snaked their way through a jeffery pine forest which is normally a state park when its not covered in a many feet of snow. The couple of days before we got there, all of the Sierras got a couple feet of fresh snow, and the compacted base beneath our skis was at least 4 feet deep! Some places already had 13 feet, and it's not even Christmas yet! The trails were all groomed, so we looked at the map and decided to take the biggest loop we could. Since it was our first day, we stayed on greens and blues. We also saw on the map 3 warming huts that had a propane stove, water, and a kettle, so you could brew yourself some hot tea or make hot cocoa. We decided to go warming hut hopping!


Taking a break from skiing!

We maybe over did it a little on our first day! We skied a total of 16 km (a little more than 1/3 of a marathon) and I felt my muscles getting sore towards the end while we were still skiing. Stopping to have hot cocoa and tea was nice. Cross country skiing uses your whole body, but mostly your quads and inner thighs on your legs, and triceps and shoulders in your arms. You also use your abs for stabilizing and balancing on your skis. The trails are mostly level, so you use your own power to move forward on the skis. Its like jogging. Skating I think is even harder. There were a lot of skaters on the trails. We want to rent out some skate skis and go for the free lesson on Wednesdays to see what its like. Skaters go a lot faster because the motion is more like roller blading on skis.


Romy next to the big trail map at the end of our day at Tahoe XC.

When we finished the giant loop, we hopping in the car and drove to our motel in South Lake Tahoe. We drove along the Nevada side, because I think its nicer (not as many towns, and better views). When we finally reached our motel, we were pretty hungry, so we walked to the Stateline Brewery in time for their happy hour, where that were serving $3 pints of their homebrew and also had cheap mini pizzas! After dinner I was totally exhausted! We had plans on going back to Tahoe XC for their free skate lesson the next morning, but instead, we decided to sleep in and take it easy and go find some place to test out our back country XC skis instead.


Climbing the hill to try skiing down it with the back country skis.

We drove up to Spooner Summit, which is the top of the mountain pass on Hwy 50 between Stateline and Carson City, NV. There is a plowed parking area for snowmobiles off the side of the highway. In the summer it is one of the trail heads for the Tahoe Rim Trail, a trail that encircles Lake Tahoe. We parked there and got out our back country XC skis, which are a hybrid between downhill skis and cross country skis. They are long and have a fish scale grip bottom like an XC ski, but they are wide (for flotation in deep snow) and have metal edges like a downhill ski. The bindings are a little beefier, and the boots are stiffer and higher, so you can maneuver on downhill turns. We will be using them this winter on our trip to Wyoming to the Tetons, so we needed to try them out (we got them used from craigslist). Plus we've never skied on skis like these before.


Romy skiing down the hill near Spooner Summit in Nevada.

We skied down some snowmobile tracks until we found a nice hill that was clear of trees and had fresh powder. It was tough climbing up the hill in skis (I had to climb with my feet and skis spread apart in a V shape) because sometimes I would start sliding backwards down the hill! Eventually we got the hang of it and got to the top, and skied down a few times. We discovered a few things from doing that. First, Romy's skis need to be waxed because they were building up snow at the base, which really hinders motion. And second, I need to tighten my boots because the long skis were really hard to control on the way down! I think we will have to have more practice using these skis on downhill sections, but along the flat terrain, they worked very well as XC skis. We did much better skiing the downhill parts of the hill that had powder vs compacted snow from snowmobile tracks. I think the skis are designed to handle better in ungroomed snow than on groomed snow.


A video of me falling down after hitting snowmobile ruts in the snow.

Romy also decided to take a video of me while I was falling after I hit snowmobile ruts on the way down, near the end of hill. I look so funny! So after a few times of going up and down the hill, we headed back towards the car. We were pretty pooped out! But now we have a couple days of rest before we get out on our skis again in Wyoming. We are planning to go snow camping in the back country with our skis to visit some hot springs near Jackson Hole. Can't wait!!!

Some Videos to Share

While we were on our trip with Nicole and Marcel, they had a camera that took short video clips. Some of them were pretty good, so I thought I would share them.

Here is a video of Nicole and Marcel driving off road in the Salmon-Challis National Forest in central Idaho. They were following us and we were going to Sheephorn Lookout Tower which a little higher than 8,000 ft. I thought that the forest and mountains in this part of Idaho were absolutely beautiful and I want to go back again!




The next video is of Romy chopping wood at the Peel Tree A-Frame, the cabin we rented from the Salmon-Challis National Forest in Idaho. There were a bunch of cut pieces of wood that needed to be split so that we could make a campfire. Romy was having a bunch of fun doing it.




The final video is the funniest! We were in Idaho (again) but this time near Lava Hot Springs in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. We were looking for a camping spot and along the gravel road, there was a huge pick-up truck that was stuck in the mud. People kept passing him without helping (which we didn't know) but we stopped! He was so desperate that he accepted our offer to try and help tow him out with a VW Beetle! We tried it, if only for shits and giggles. We didn't really think we could tow him out anyways. . .