Weather

Well, I made it to Fountain Hills AZ from Albuquerque. Drove through the worst weather imaginable. High winds, blinding snow storm, and heavy rain. It's still raining here in AZ. I always thought that I would be able to escape the weather in Wyoming and then New Mexico by driving further south. It's miserable here. Tomorrow should be better but not by much. hopefully I'll get in some riding before Wednesday's evening crit in Phx if I drive over there. Stay tuned...

Jan 31
Weather here has not been very good for cycling as of late. Temps hovering around mid 30s has forced me into indoor training and gym workouts. I hope the other travelling cyclists in town (Team Astana) are enjoying their stay. Instead of choosing a nice place like Maiorrca or some other tropical oasis they chose Albuquerque too. Lacking my extreme cold cycling clothing it looks like I will be spending a few more days off the bike before I hit Arizona and their highs of mid 60s.
It actually snowed yesterday day and evening.

Jan22

With my small (10ft) travel trailer packed with food and clothes I headed south with my 2 dogs toward warmer climes. A 4liter Toyota Tacoma towing a »35 year old travel trailer seems like an easy task when on paper. After all it’s a “lightweight” wooden structure built on a steel trailer frame. It didn’t seem like it to me. Semis were travelling at the same speed as me which was comforting. Gas mileage was a bit dismal, but hey, I was hauling my living quarters for the next 3 months. Instead of pushing it all the way to Albuquerque I decided to stay next to the Pecos river outside of Santa Fe some 45 or so miles. I remember spending 3 days fly fishing on the river back in 2004 and really like the area. It was interesting being there with snow on the ground and 6+ inches of ice on the river. It’s at somewhere above 7500 feet that I spent the night in sub 0 temperatures. The perfect way to find out how well the heater is in the trailer. I slept like a baby with the heater keeping the inside toasty, what a difference from sleeping in the back of the truck with a couple comforters over my sleeping bag to keep me warm.

I pulled into Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque the next morning since the campground with electric hookup is only $11 a day, what a bargain. This is now base camp for the next 7-10 days.
I must say that Albu is goathead thorn central. I have never been to a place where thorn-proof inner tubes are a necessity before. Stopping by a nearby bike shop on Saturday I got the lowdown on riding here, ride defensively and avoid the following roads… Wow, this is going to be fun. So the next day I fired up the CX bike and rode 5 hours on air force base roads. No cars, no (h)assoles, no worries. It was great to be out after fighting to get 1 hour of training in on the indoor trainer while it raged +35mph @17 degrees outside in Wyoming.
On a note of the location in which I am staying. The Fam-Camp at Kirtland is loaded with rabbits. Having a rabbit OCD dog (Nikki) this could be viewed as either good or bad. Every time she is let loose from control there is the high speed chase of the cottontail into his/her hole. Axel contributes to the chase but I think it is more an attempt to try and show up Nikki as he thinks he is “Top Dog”.
So it was on that 2nd day in Albu that I noticed that my trailer tire was worn to the cords. Wha! Huh! How! Crap!! All came to mind. I guess I was lucky as I’m such a detail oriented person or I might have tried to drive another 500 miles and suffered untold consequences. I replaced that tire that day. Quotes from the local repair shop were around $500 to replace the bent axle that appeared to be the culprit. Not going to happen I decided. This was a darn nice weekend trailer but maybe the Idea of an extended trip in it was a pipe dream. I decided to check out the RV dealerships that were numerous on my ride out Central Ave (Route 66) en-route to a 3 hour ride with much climbing.
After looking at a ’08 trailer on sale for $12K, which was nice but seemed very cheap from the fake wood grained interior, I headed to the next lot to see what had really intrigued me. The silver sided trailer made by none other than Airstream, the legend of travel trailers.
Financing in place I rolled out from the service department 2 days later with a new 16’ Bambi Ocean Breeze special edition.
Living in luxury. After all these years of sleeping on the ground, in the truck, on the snow, showering by portable camp-shower, wearing a down coat in the tent, shi**ing in the woods, coffee presses, campstools, daily trips into town to buy ice to keep the beer cold, and reading books by headlamp I’d finally arrived at the pinnacle of on the road living.
Decadence at last!
Air Conditioning, heater, double stovetop, refrigerator/freezer, bedroom, shower/toilet, hot water, 10 disc stereo system with DVD 4 speakers and a 15” Sony Wega flatscreen TV! All in a sleek, silver, special edition, Ocean Breeze Package. Decadence, you betcha!

more than just an outdoor guy

X X 9- 9/ 9/ 9/ X X X 9/X=214
My best bowling score yet. Too bad it was in practice

Winter Blues

Ahh, wind and cold. I don't really mind them that much if they didn't come at the same time here. 28 degrees with 30+mph winds produces some unbearable weather. Somehow my dogs don't seem to mind the icy conditions. The go out for walks with me with the same reckless hapiness that they have when it's 75 degrees and calm out. I wish I could share their enthusiasm. It's not happening though.
Hope is on the way, less than 2 weeks til I roadtrip for 2+ months.
Temps are looking pretty good in Phoenix right now.
Phoenix Weather

Computers and bad weather

Today I discovered what happens when your laptop falls 5 feet onto it's side corner.

Miscellaneous hard drive failure problems.

After spending 4 hours of dealing with a computer that kept locking up and rebooting every 5-10 minutes trying to backup all the files that I wanted (still could not get all my documents as they were in corrupted locations) I decided the effort of refomatting the drive and then hoping that the errors did not continue requiring a new hard drive was enough to consider a new laptop.
Into town I went in driving through a blizzard. Found what I wanted at a reasonable price, and drove back through the blizzard home with my new laptop. Lighter, faster, brighter, and much more memory and hard drive space.
The Vista Home operating system is a bit different after being used to XP Professional all these years.

I can't wait to be on the road to the Southwest. This has been the worst winter I have seen since I've been in Wyoming. Snow, wind, cold, and more snow. It got up to a high of 30 degrees (and 40 MPH gusts) today. That's the high til Wednesday where we are forcasted to hit 40.

Jobless II

Well, it's been since 30 November that I'm unemployed. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I've been able to ride outside during the week, wake up when I (or my dogs) want, work on my bathroom, and otherwise relaxed while others drove through the nasty weather that we have had in the last week.

The state requires that I apply at 2 employers a week to draw unemployment benefits. Any one want to vouch for receiving my employment application?

Oh Yeah,

Merry F'n XMAS