Smoke gets in your eyes

And in your lungs, which is much worse, healthwise. This morning the air seemed better; not good, but improved. At 6:30 I rode my bike to the athletic club, and at 9:30 to South Davis, and while the air wasn't anywhere close to being clear, it seemed possible that the worst of the smoke pollution was over.

I was wrong. Sitting at my computer here in the living room, all the windows open, about noon I began to smell smoke. Looking outside, the air was thick again, burning my eyes and giving me a headache. So it was back to closing the windows and turning on the air conditioner, and counting myself fortunate that I don't have a job that requires me to be outside in this stuff.

Whether that particular upsurge resulted from a new fire or just a wind shift that blew more our way, I don't know. But it's a bad start to the summer. Very bad.

Building better mousetraps

I have mice, or rats; something, anyway, that has left its calling card that says "A rodent was here." So I went looking for disposal methods.

Somewhere, there's a man whose path to his front door must be a six-lane highway, because there's a mousetrap to suit the preference of even the most fastidious rodent assassin. There are two major brands in the mouse-and-rat trap biz, Victor and d-Con. Both offer a wide line of killing tools, from baits that poison the little critters to traps ranging in sophistication from the classic snap trap ("proof of rodent death" being the major selling point here) to the slightly more upscale glue traps (ditto) and the d-Con "no see-a da mousie, no touch-a da mousie" disposable trap (bait it with peanut butter, rotate the top, set in place, and when the indicator on the top says "bingo!" (or something to that effect), you simply pick it up and throw it in the Dumpster) to the truly high-tech electronic mouse trap, which uses four AA batteries to electrocute the invaders.

I don't want to use poison (the victims die who knows where and then putrify) and spring traps are out of the question (the chances of simply maiming the poor beast by catching a foot or nose makes me weep), and even the "quick kill" feature of the electrocution method arouse the humanitarian in me. I don't want to kill the little guys; they're just trying to make a living like everybody else. I just don't want them doing it in my house.

Luckily, for the softies in the crowd, there is the Victor Sonic Pest Chaser, which uses high-frequency sound to repel them. (N.B.: Unless you want your gerbil to suffer a psychotic break, do not use this method.) Plug it into a wall socket and the rodents go elsewhere. That, anyway, is the idea. I bought a twin pack and put one in the kitchen and one in the living room. I have no idea if this will work, or, since it's high frequency, even if they're emitting anything at all, except perhaps a high-frequency laugh.

Games for your brain

"The Daily Overlook"  listed this yesterday. Try "Dragger."

Road trip

My friend Dorothy and her son John took John's daughters to camp yesterday, and two days earlier, Dorothy had invited me to come along. So Saturday evening I stuffed a few things in a daypack and joined them.

Camp Towonga is in the Sierra, near Yosemite, so following a stop in Groveland for a picnic lunch, we deposited the girls at camp and took Hwy 120 up to Tuolumne Meadows. We stopped first at the west end of the meadow and followed the trail over to Pothole Dome and walked up it about halfway. From there we had a great view of Cathedral, Unicorn and Cockscomb (sp?) peaks and the meadow below, ribboned with water. All that exfoliating granite encircling us . . . unlike any place else on earth.

Descending from there, we drove a bit farther and walked up the trail toward Soda Spring. The trail crosses the Tuolumne River, small at this elevation but moving quickly, a portent of its much stronger and swifter iteration as it drops down the mountain. At Soda Spring, I scooped up a handful of the carbonated water that bubbles mysteriously from the rock; it tasted a bit like Alka-Seltzer. On the way back to the road, encountered a half-dozen or so marmots, fat and sleek, snuffling through the grass. They look like sombody's pet, soft and furry and cute.

Once back to the car, we drove to Olmstead Point and gazed out over the valley (terribly hazy due to so many fires). Past Tenaya Lake and up and over Tioga Pass, elev. 9,943 ft., and I got a good look at Mt. Dana; some years ago I hiked to the very top of that mountain. It's 13,061 feet high, and other than as a passenger in an airplane, the highest place I've ever been.

Once over the pass, the road descends steeply through a landscape completely different than that on the west side of the Sierra—drier, harsher, unglaciated. Found a place to stay in Lee Vining—a motel that has as one of its "rooms" a double-wide mobile home. For $150, we each had our own queen-sized bed in our own bedroom; two bathrooms. There was also a kitchen and a large living room (with a fireplace), but we took no advantage of those; instead, we went to dinner at the Whoa Nellie Deli, conveniently located inside the Mobil station at the foot of Tioga Pass—unprepossessing ambience, fantastic (and unlikely) menu, deliciously prepared. Dorothy and I had fish tacos; John had ahi tuna.

This morning John got on his bike and rode north on 395; Dorothy and I split a bear claw with coffee in the garden of the motel, then headed up the highway, meeting John at Walker Burger in Walker. From there we drove into Reno, where John lives; he took us to the Greyhound station and we boarded the 12:30 bus to Sacramento, arriving around 3:30. I'd left my car at the bus depot Sunday morning, and so drove Dorothy home before heading back to Davis.

Gone from home less than 36 hours . . . the best kind of road trip there is.