The last nine months have been a whirlwind for us.  Last winter in Central Oregon was severe with record breaking snow.  We spent December and January shoveling snow, a little skiing but mostly planning and arrainging to get utilities to the property and attempting to design a new home.  By February we had enough and headed to Arizona for 3 weeks in Tucson and another week on the outskirts of Phoenix and Sedona.  We had a great time and were able to get in 300 miles of trail riding, attend the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and spend a few days exploring and socializing with friends.  It was awesome to escape stormy, cold weather to spend our time in shorts riding our bikes on trails and over obstacles avoiding sunburn and dehydration.  We are looking foward to returning next year with hope we can purchase a nice speciman to display in the new house.

By spring power and water had been installed to the building site on our property but we became mired in design of the house.  Our friend Caryn, designer of our Gold Beach house, stepped in to provide insight into a new approach better taylored to our desires and for the last 5 months we have been incorporating her suggestions into our home design.  The preliminary drawings are done and on September 1 we submitted our Visible Landscape Management Application to the county where we have our design, location and colors reviewed to ensure conformance with a county ordinance regarding visual impacts to a rarely visited segment of the Deschutes River.  The review takes at least 2 months and is not likely to be done until the snow starts falling so our goal is to build a driveway and septic drainfield this fall and start construction on the house and shop next February or March, weather permitting.  We are anxious to start building and move to a more rural setting.

We spent all of last spring in Gold Beach getting the house ready to sell and dealing with 30+ years of accumulated stuff.  We thought it would take a month but instead it took 3.  While there we demolished the original house.

In June our house went into escrow before it was even advertised and the escrow closed in mid August.  It’s wierd leaving a home and area we loved and spent so much time at, but life moves on and we have many avdentures to pursue that are more convenient to do from where we are now.   Maintaining two houses and properties 300 miles apart in radically different climates is not practical for us and we are relieved to consolidate into one area.  Our next consolidation effort is to sell / get rid of much that we don’t need.

The eclipse here was quite an event and totality was awesome.

Since the eclipse this area has been innundated with smoke from nearby forest fires. Our Fall plans are evolving and dynamic with the main objective being to get away from smoke.

We closed on the property yesterday, went there this morning and skied around for awhile, taking care not to ski off the cliff.

Toby is excited and has been throwing his ball to show his enthusiasm.

Today was a snowy day, about 8-10 inches of dry fluffy powder at 15 degrees.   As soon as we found out all of the paperwork was in to close on the property purchase we also found out the bank and title company were closed due to snow accumulation.  Instead of closing on the property we shoveled the driveway a couple times, got the skis and snowboard tuned and waxed for tomorrow, and put on snow shoes for a romp in the back yard.

Tomorrow we will be at Mt Bachelor if we don’t get in a wreck on the way, Friday we will own the new property, Tuesday we meet with our builder and house designer to start the house design process.

My latest solution to slipping knee pad problem arrived this evening.  They are called Shirt Stays, are half the price of a quality garter belt and much better suited to outdoor adventures.  Here is how they look on Amazon.

And here is what they look installed sans riding short.

They attach well to my heavy duty body armor and the straps could fit beneath my riding shorts in case I need to “drop trow” if Nature calls.  If nature is on hold  I’m almost ready for Cline Butte, our local black diamond to double black diamond ride we see every day from our back yard, all that is needed is to get in shape and more courage.

The garter belt showed up and although it fits well the attachment to the knee pads is not adequate so I improvised with safety pins.  It turns out that garter belts attach to much thinner material…I was never warned because no one in my family wears nylons, much less a garter belt….if they did I would have borrowed on of theirs!  Good thing I ordered a pair with free returns. Here is a photo maybe I can sell it to Amazon for their add.

I hope I didn’t offend anyone looking for our holiday greetings card..keep scrolling down and you will find it.

Yesterday we finally went riding and it was cold…so cold we wore tights.  The problem with tights is that they are slippery and our knee pads slip down below our knees. The same thing happened a month ago I crashed and my knee and tights were damaged because the knee pads had slipped down and not offered the necessary protection. Yesterday I was riding along wondering about how to prevent the knee pads from slipping down and the only obvious solution was to get a garter belt so I ordered a set from Amazon on Cyber Monday.

Hmm…do I get leather, vinal or lace? I ordered black lace to make them more stealth, in case you were wondering, and my compression short undergarments are not nearly as sexy!. Will post a picture on how they fit in a couple of days.

Here is a print version of this year’s Season’s Greetings we mailed to those without internet access or who we did not have email addresses for.  The much longer version should be accessible at the top right of this page or through the following link  https://ronsonn.com/about/

Dear Friends & Family:

It’s been a couple of years since we have sent out our annual holiday greetings. Not because we didn’t care but because our life over the last two years has been a whirlwind. In 2015 we decided to retire and each of us worked about a month. In 2016 we reduced our work to a week! Ron is lucky because to maintain his license he only has to pay an annual fee but Dorothy also needs to work 5 weeks/year to maintain hers. Soon she will start as a Nurse Practioner with Volunteers in Medicine in Bend which sounds like an awesome place to work. Looks like Ron will be putting a few hundred more miles on his bike in the coming months than Dorothy will!

In July, 2015 we decided to explore what living in Central Oregon is like so we purchased a house that was under construction in Redmond. We moved in the day before Thanksgiving with 6 inches of fresh snow. After spending most of 2016 in Redmond we have decided to make Central Oregon our home. We are currently in a nice modern neighborhood inside the city limits. The house is fine but lacks privacy and storage/shop space. We recently found a spectacular 5 acre parcel with the Deschutes River flowing through it about 2 miles southwest of our current home. We are in escrow and hope to have a house built on it in 2017. We also plan to put our Gold Beach home on the market in 2017.

Our lives in the last two years have focused on recreation and living life to the fullest. Last February we got new mountain bikes and took them to Arizona and Utah for a month. 300 trail miles later we returned to Central Oregon and got into a routine of riding 12-20 miles/day, 4-6 days/week. We have ridden 1700 trail miles so far this year. Our skills have improved, our injuries from falls are healing and some significant weight loss accompanied the exercise, however, additional weight loss will be realized if our beer consumption decreases! Ron took a break from regular brewing because the Redmond house lacks sufficient space. The 2016 brewing season was limited to 20 gallons during a single coastal visit. 2016’s IPA was shared on special occasions including parties and Oregon State Football tailgating. Our future residence will hopefully have room for brewing, space for shop tools, raft storage and maybe even a camper van. A hopeful project in 2019-2020 is to build a van conversion to make future explorations more comfortable than tent camping out of our Toyota Sequoia that has a quarter million miles on it.

We recently took a trip to New England. The fall color was spectacular and visiting relatives and re-connecting with old friends was awesome. During the winter we still enjoy skiing but prefer to spend 4-6 weeks in Arizona and Utah riding mountain bikes. Last spring we spent a lot of time landscaping our back yard in Redmond. We learned a lot and hope to apply those skills when we build a home. The river front property we plan to build on is naturally landscaped with a Central Oregon native xeroscape that we have become quite fond of.

Kyle, 22, is in his third year at Oregon State University and is on track to graduate in 2018 with a degree in civil engineering. Last summer he worked as a firefighter, on a berry farm, and as a laborer on a construction project. He hopes for an internship in 2017 to get some engineering experience.

Rilea, 24, graduated from Oregon State in September, 2015 with a degree in Human Development and Family Services. After getting her teaching credential and working in Redmond for 6 months she decided to try something else besides classroom teaching and is pursuing that goal.

Adios Amigos y familia. We hope to see you in the coming year. Join us for the total eclipse on 8/21/2017!!!

Last Wednesday I hooked up with John Gross, one of my freshman dormmates, circa 1972-73, in quest of chinook salmon on the Elk River located a few miles north of Port Orford on the southern Oregon coast.  It was a busy day on the Elk with most of the fishermen launching their drift boats at the top of the drift, about 8 miles upstream of the take out.  John, who owns Roaring Fork Guide Service and fishes the Elk regularly, said we should only bother fishing on the lower 3 miles where most of the fresh fish would be and well downstream of nearly all the other fishermen.  The first hour and a half was slow then 2 fish were hooked and landed within 10 minutes at the Stick Hole, one of John’s favorite spots.  90 minutes later we had our third and largest salmon.  When we got off the river we were met by ODFW employee Dina to measure and record our catch.  Dina also happens to by one of my renters so there was lots of cajoling.   I later found out from Dina that we caught 25% of all the fish recorded that day out of 32 drift boats that fished the river the entire day.  Although we had a great time and were done by noon most fishermen got skunked and were discouraged after spending 8+ hours on the river.  Is it luck, skill or was it John’s Stanford and UC Berkeley  educations that made the difference?  I conclude it is a multivariant analysis requiring a larger data set to arrive at a valid solution.  I’m applying for a grant to Roaring Fork funded in part by my great sense of humor and lots of beer to expand the data set to help solve this complex problem.

We are attending dads weekend aka family weekend at Oregon State.  The afternoon started at a house with a few dozen of Kyle’s friends and their parents.

My IPA was a hit

An hour and a half before the game we went to a tailgate party hosted by Michelle and Scott Springer, parents of one of Kyle’s fraternity brothers.

We got into the stadium just before the Beavers entered onto the field.

Beavers are ahead 7 to 0 with 9 minutes left in 1st quarter

We had 45 yard line seats row 12, score was 21-10 at halftime.

After a halftime and 3rd quarter tailgate session the score was 35-10 and the game ended 42-17. go beavs!!!!

The property we are in escrow for is located at 4853 SW Loma Londa Drive in case you want to find it.  There are no fences or gates but the neighborhood watch will likely come around if you just show up unannonced and attempt to camp.  Here are a couple of maps showing the location of the Loma Linda Property and our existing home in Redmond @ 4466 SW Umatilla Ave.  If you have a trailer or RV our HOA will send us a nasty letter if you park it at our house on SW Umatilla Ave longer than 48 hours in a month so you might as well stay in a guest bedroom.  Also, for God’s sake, don’t leave your dog off a leash, he/she may attack one of the neighbor’s defenseless leashed dogs or even carry off a child and trade it to the coyotes…the HOA is something we are looking forward to missing.

I tried to load a video but it must have been too large.  We would provide UTM and latitude/longitude coordinates are not yet ready for Amazon drone deliveries and wish to not give out an accurate digital location in case the president elect decides to thin out the opposing herd.