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After thinking COVID was the big story for us in 2020, the fire started. Early on 8/16/2020 lightning strikes north of Santa Cruz set off fires that eventually coalesced into the CZU Complex Fire.

We watched the reports and were fine for the first few days. By the 19th, we were seeing lots of ash and large, burnt tips of oaks land on our driveway and cars. We had been preparing to bug out as the news worsened.

In February 2020, we took a valentines day trip to Santa Barbara to stay at the El Encanto. 

In May 2019, we began the installation of a new roof that would support solar panels. We had some sag in the garage headers that needed to be corrected before we could get the panels installed. We got bids from the local roofing companies. One of whom required us to get an engineering solution to the sag. After getting a bid from an engineering firm (about 3k to fix), we checked back with Moriarity Roofing who said they could address the sag in their work.

In April 2019, Lynda received her miniature poodle Leo.  Here’s a collection of shots from his first few months with us.

In January 2020, we went to the NFL playoff at Levi Stadium. The 49ers were playing the Green Bay Packers and we had seats up front on the 50 yard line. We’d never been to an NFL game and we had a blast watching people, the game and the half time show. We had jets overhead, brass bands, cheerleaders, good snacks and a lot of entertainment.

I’ve been away from Drupal for a few years and was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to place and horizontally align 3 blocks in the footer.

Turns out you simply need to turn the Layout Builder on for a content type. From there, I simply created a 3 col grid and placed my three previously made blocks.

This post has a far more detailed explanation of how to make this work.

In August 2020 just prior to the CZU fire, we purchased a Jeep. It turned out to be our bug out vehicle. Note the smoky air from this picture taken 081920 at 0752.

Lynda had been driving a 2013 Ford Focus ST as her commute car but our needs were changing to need more space for transporting nieces and nephews, the dog and associated gear.

Over the years, we outfitted Big Red with rubber floor mats (a must), Gobi rack, iKamper roof top tent, ARB awning, Dometic PB40 battery and CFX 55 12v fridge, tail gate table and associated gear.