New to Us Trail and Off the Rails

Greetings Earthlings?  How are you all in this time of disaster, disarray and hurtling towards our own doom?  We're good.  Fall has continued to be a gift, we have not wasted it.

There has been gardening.  Actually gardening is too strong of a word for what I have been doing, which is killing weeds.  We have a small flat weed  here that is impervious to Round Up.  I guess we're going to have to increase the kill level to Noxall, which can only be used when there is no wind.  For the time being, I've been sitting in the grass, applying the weed sticker to them.  

Here is Jim, deploying grass fertilizer for the first time in 15 years.  15!  Owning a stick frame house provides hours of entertainment.

We brought the agave with us from Tucson.  We need to re-pot him.  The sun destroyed parts of the current pot, making it very difficult to pick up.  After the re-potting he will move inside for the winter.

When we arrived at this house, there was a derelict circulating water feature, full of algae and mosquito larvae.  Upon closer examination, we noticed that the pump motor was gone, there was much algae, and we gave up on it.  The junk guys took it away, thing weighed a ton.  Now we have this, a little Japanese lantern.  He's concrete so freezing weather will not hurt him.

Yesterday was an amazing day.  It started out overcast, which made it feel cold, especially on the shaded parts of the trail.  We went to a trailhead farther north than where we have been starting.  It's hilly, but not quite as steep as the other trail segment we've been riding.  It was funny, we climbed up the first steep hill, got to the top, realized we had not put the parking pass on the dash, and went back down to the car for the pass.  We decided to drive to the top of the hill we had just climbed since there was a trailhead there, and I did not want to climb that section again.  It was good, when we got to the turn off for the Deep Creek Overlook, I was able to make it up that hill.

There are large rocks there.  I think there is frequently water running through it, hence the name Deep Creek, but yesterday it was dry.

It was very still.  Look at the reflection in the water of the grain silo. 

We kept on riding - the trail is amazing.  They've done significant work on it.  There is a new section formed by re-grading a large section of hill so they could put switch backs in to lessen the effort required to get up it.  Spokane is hilly, I guess there were glaciers in the distant past.

Eventually we reached the end northern terminus of the Centennial Trail at Lake Spokane, which is formed by a dam.  There is a lovely campground there with full hookups and boat ramps.

It was pleasant to sit in the sun, prior to returning to the car.  One thing that has been so much better than riding in Tucson in the summer (or fall) is that you don't have to start really early, and you can take your time because you're not trying to get back to the house before the heat kills you. 

When we got back to the car, the sun was out and the reflections in the water looked good.

Who is interested in the supply chain?  It's more than just the docks at the ports shutting down due to Covid.  It's also disruptions in the rail lines needed to move stuff away from the docks.  In 2015 Union Pacific laid off thirty percent of their people.  This removed any resilience they had to respond to difficult times, like the time of Covid.  There are not enough truck drivers, both to pick up at the docks and pick up in rail yards.  Adding to these issues of chaos is the fact that in the US, shipping, rail and trucking information systems do not talk to each other.  In the EU, everyone puts their data into a common data base that is available to everyone for scheduling.  We are far behind the curve on this, it's embarrassing.  WAPO did a really good in depth article on the subject, which is long, but worth reading. 

Also interesting is the coming difficulties in the EU.  Norway has not received enough rain to effectively generate electricity from their hydro dams.  Russia is not likely to send enough natural gas to fill the gap.  There is fear that there will not be enough energy to keep the residents warm this winter.  Add to that the transportation problems stemming from Brexit in the UK, and it could just be a delightful season of being cold.  The Independent covered this situation in a good article.

It just seems like the wheels have come off the entire planet.