Up in flames

Rawley's friend Luke came on Thursday. Like Rawley he has the same skinny and tall build, so much so that they even joke that they are from the same stock, the skinny chicken leg stock.

He works at fancy restaurants as a barista.

Today the three of us went out to hike the Arbuckle Grade with Nellie. After kidnapping her in Rawley's new ride, we rode a few miles north to Rumsey and across the troll bridge to start our hike. The way up was sweltering hot but beautiful. Besides the turkeys and turkey vultures, we were completely alone in the dry heat until we encountered a gang of dirt biking teenagers and two men in a black pickup. Rawley of course commented on how vulnerable we were being all alone in the woods and mentioned how he had run into another person with an ATV and a rifle on another hike he had been on. Of course we were completely fine and made it up to the top of the ridge where we could see the entire Capay Valley in all its beauty. After locating Full Belly from those heights we noticed a huge plume of dark smoke not so far away. On the ride home, the smoke could even be seen above the trees so being the pyros that we are, we decided to go check it out. Stopping first at the Guinda Corner Store for some post-hike ice-cream, we watched Cole speed by in his bright yellow volunteer firefighting suit as we listened to the store women gossiping abut the fire. Apparently some people had wanted to burn some brush and then the fire had gotten out of control. Smelling the smoke beginning to waft through the store door we rushed out to the car to go see the fire for ourselves. We rounded the bend in the creaky Mercedes and all of a sudden the smoke was billowing above us in a seventy foot plume. A small house and some horses stood in the foreground and three kids threw a baseball around in the garden as though completely oblivious to the roaring fire behind them. But as we drove further down the road we could see behind the house to the big flames that jumped and twitched in a blazing orange mass.