Helping a friend and neighbor...

Helping a friend and neighbor...  I've written before about Tim D.'s health challenges.  One of the consequences of his current state is that he's no longer strong enough to move his irrigation pipes.  These are “hand line”: 3" diameter, 30' long pieces of aluminum pipe that weigh roughly 40 pounds each.  That weight is a little misleading, though, as generally when one goes to pick up a piece of pipe it's still full of water.  To empty it, you lift up one end – and that weight is more like 100 pounds.  Tim uses about 25 pieces of this hand line when irrigating.  It takes 6 days to complete a cycle of watering, each day moving the pipe to a new location in the fields.  Then after around four days of no watering, he starts the cycle of watering all over again.

So this is a non-trivial amount of work.  One adult, working alone, can move all the pipe in around two hours (including time for clearing clogged sprinklers, walking to the edges of the field to turn valves on and off, etc.).  During that two hours, you might walk a couple of miles in addition to all the weight lifting.  You'll also get soaked when fixing sprinklers, and your feet and jeans bottoms will be covered with mud. 

Tim can't do this, so what happens to his fields?  Nothing!  That's because his neighbors (including me) are moving his pipes for him – cheerfully, happy to be of service to Tim.  Three adults and a bevy of kids are doing it.  If we needed more, there would be a small army volunteering to help.  This is so heartening to see!  And I get great satisfaction from being a part of it...

Day 6...

Day 6...  AKA “Escape from New York!"”  We spent way too much time on the New York State Thruway, otherwise known as I-90.  The tolls on this road beggar belief.  If someone tried to do this in the Rocky Mountain States, I'm fairly certain the population's reaction would include as much high-velocity lead as was required to eliminate it.  In the Empire State, the sheepish population just pays...

We got off the Thruway at Utica, and made our way on back roads across the rest of New York, all of Vermont, and into Plymouth, New Hampshire where we checked into the delightful Tea Rose Inn.  At right was Debbie's favorite part of this B&B: the feline greeter.  :)  The scenery on our drive today was beautiful: the best of New England's rolling hills (which for some reason they call “mountains”), excessive amounts of chlorophyll, rushing streams, and lots of lakes and ponds.  This was Debbie's first time ever seeing the northern Appalachians.  I was a bit surprised by the relative poverty of most places we drove through – I guess the heyday of the Adirondacks is over.

We went to bed tired of being in the car, and preparing ourselves for tomorrow's descent upon the south Maine coast...

Some mixed granite news...

Some mixed granite news...  The granite folks showed up to install the granite on the cabinet that I built, right on time.  It was exciting to see them arrive – four guys in two trucks (at right), with our rock and all the tools they'd need to install it.  They unloaded the seven individual pieces of rock and carried them all over to my cabinet – and a few minutes later, we had set the grill components in place to test the fit.  It was perfect (photos below)!

Much to my relief, the installers found no problems with the cabinetry.  Even more to my relief, the grill components fit exactly as they were supposed to.  So why is the news mixed?

Take a gander at the photo at right.  The piece on the right is supposed to be about 1.5" longer, to match the rear edge of the piece at left.  The fabricators simply cut that piece too short.  The installers have saws, so if the piece had been too long they could have shortened it.  They did not, however, have a rock stretcher – so this means a do-over on that one piece, and that they couldn't actually complete the installation today.  They did leave enough of the rock in place so that we can get our gas installation completed tomorrow – and after that there's nothing stopping her from starting to grill again.  She's been waiting for this day for four years now.  I predict much grilled food in our immediate future!

Here's a gratuitous photo showing one end of the cabinet, before we moved it to the deck.  The spar varnish did a great job of making the color variations, grain, and knots “pop” visually.  I hope it's as durable as I was promised!

Day 5...

Day 5...  Niagara Falls!  Debbie had never seen the falls before, so I laid out our trip to give us a few hours there.  We drove most of the way from Ashtabula to Niagara Falls along the shore of Lake Erie, through a series of waterfront towns.  In Ashtabula itself, we drove over this really old-school draw bridge.  The controls have been updated to something a bit more modern, with computers and everything – but the mechanics are straight out of the start of the 20th century.

As we passed by Erie, Pennsylvania on I-90, just east of the intersection with I-79, we spotted a cemetery that stood out for the flags that appeared to be on every grave, along with a profusion of fresh flowers.  We got off the freeway and found a road that would take us there, and we spent a half hour or so just walking around (photos below).  Something we've both noted in our travels (including a ridiculous amount of international business travel for me) is that different places have very different notions of how to honor or maintain graves, especially of military veterans or casualties.  Even different places in the U.S. differ greatly.  For example, in San Diego (where we used to live, and with a large military presence), the beautiful veteran's cemetery on Point Loma is meticulously maintained, but there's little evidence of visitors – every time I've visited I've been nearly on my own.  In much of Utah, the situation is virtually reversed: even the non-military cemeteries are well maintained, and a high proportion of graves have fresh flowers, carefully maintained greenery, and often a flag or other patriotic symbol.  Most of the U.S., in our experience, is somewhere in between – with urban areas tending toward the rarely visited side, and rural areas the opposite.  This was a veteran's cemetery, and it was obviously visited very often (we had trouble finding even one withered vase of flowers).  There was a relatively large and well-equipped staff there to tend it.  The oldest graves I found in my walking were from WW I veterans; some were just days old.  I find such places very moving, and all too rare (both here and in other countries).  Some big exceptions: Japan, South Korea, and Estonia.  I'm sure there are others, but those three I have quite a bit of experience in.

We settled into our B&B quite early in the afternoon, and set out to walk all around Niagara Falls.  This turned out to be about 3.5 miles of walking all together – more than Debbie has done in several years because of her knee injuries.  First up: some videos I made from three different viewing points:







Now the photos:

Walking around Niagara Falls – which I last visited nearly 50 years ago – was quite the shock for me.  The changes in the area are stunning, most especially on the Canadian side.  I was not prepared for the high-rise hotels, giant casinos, and the thousands of visitors.  Despite this, our viewing of the falls was actually better than it was all those years ago, because a ginormous platform has been built over the river that lets you walk to a perfect viewing position, high in the air.  It cost a whole $2.50 for the two of us to gain admission to that, and it was well worth the money.  The trails that lead around to the upper end of each of the falls are now paved and graded for wheelchairs – so walking to all of them wasn't much different than walking on a sidewalk in the big city.  There were crowds of visitors everywhere we went, even on the longest of the trails (which wasn't actually very long at all).  At a guess, I'd say two thirds of the visitors were foreign, dominated by Japanese and Chinese.

We ate dinner partway through our walking, at a restaurant called Savor.  It was just wonderful (photos of our meal below).  Debbie had two appetizers instead of an entree: a rather spectacular salad, and some excellent mussels.  I had a mixed seafood and pasta dish in an absolutely delightful sauce.  Our excellent and very entertaining waiter talked us into dessert even though we were both quite full – and we were very glad he did.  The chocolate cake with unsweetened whipped cream (whipped to the just-shy-of-butter point) was insanely good.  We departed with zero hunger, big smiles on our faces, and very, very happy tummies...

While walking around downtown, we spotted the little guy at right up in a tree (actually, just outside the restaurant's doors).  He's got a cupcake wrapper in his paws that he'd stolen from a (still occupied!) table nearby – the people at the table never saw him do it.  We don't have any squirrels or chipmunks in the valley where we live, and we miss their antics!

To my great surprise, Debbie wanted to walk some more after our dinner.  Some of our falls viewing was during this walk.  We also ran across some old monuments, one of which is at left.  There were probably a dozen or so in all the places we walked.  It is pleasant to see them in a location where so many people pass by, even if few people stop to look.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day.  We walked back, finally, to our B&B and went straight to bed – we have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow...

Rodeo night...

Rodeo night...  Debbie and I went to the Hyrum Rodeo last night (lots of news photos here).  Most of this was very enjoyable.  The barrel racing is my favorite: fast horses and beautiful women, as the announcer said.  From the noise she made, I'd say Debbie's favorite events were all the bull and bronc riding events.  I enjoyed seeing all the families there, and the excitement of the youngest ones as they watched.  Also a lot of fun to watch: “mutton-busting”, wherein some very young kids (I think some were only 5 or 6 years old) compete to see who can ride a sheep the longest.   Some of the kids were thrown off in the first foot or two, some launched themselves off the sheep in fear, some didn't even start – but a few rode the sheep, sometimes running very fast, for five or six seconds.  That may not seem like a long time, but I'll bet it was for the kid! 

There was one event near the end of the evening that somewhat spoiled things for me: a young man was injured while attempting to ride a bull.  We don't know much about his condition.  He was carried off the field in a stretcher with two EMTs in close attendance.  The announcer said that he was awake and talking to the EMTs, but that's all we know.  Watching the event, it's very clear that bull riding is a crazily risky thing to do – in fact, no comparably risky sport comes to mind. We're hoping the fellow will recover completely from this, and also hoping that we can get some news on his condition...

Day 4...

Day 4...  We drove from Champaign, Illinois to Ashtabula, Ohio.  Basically today we were just covering ground; nothing in particular expected in scenery or things to do.  We woke up this morning in our pleasant B & B in downtown Champaign (at right): the Champaign Garden Inn. The previous evening we'd taken a nice walk around a few blocks in the area – brick streets and older homes with big, big trees.  We explored around a defunct and rundown YMCA – very grand looking, it must have been.

The drive across the rest of Illinois, all of Indiana, and most of Ohio was not especially remarkable in general.  There was lots and lots of beautiful farmland, and the occasional annoying city (I'm looking at you, Indianapolis!).  We were both taken aback by the terrible condition of the roads in Indiana, and frightened by the rude and aggressive drivers.  As in nearly all of our trip, we kept running into construction delays – often for no apparent reason, as there was nobody doing any actual work.

We also noticed for the first time that the big birds circling overhead were nearly all buzzards or vultures – hawks were rare.  In the west, it is precisely the opposite, with hawks (or other raptors) dominating the thermal-effect gliding crowd.  Neither of us remembered this from our childhood, so either we've become so accustomed to raptor domination in the west that we've forgotten – or raptors have befallen hard times in the east.  Once we noted this (to us) strange fact, we were on the lookout constantly – and the raptor shortage held for our entire trip until we got well into South Dakota on our return.  Weird!

The highlight of the day, without a doubt, was Akron, Ohio.  I've been in Akron before, though not since the mid-'70s, and I was not expecting what we found on this day: the city was clean, green, and filled with prosperous businesses.  I've no idea why it's an island of attractiveness in the middle of a desert of relative poverty, but it is.  When scouting for a place to eat our dinner, we spotted something that seems most unlikely: a restaurant specializing in poke (the Hawai'ian raw fish dish that we love).  We decided to try it, and we were very glad we did!  Our poke bowls below:

These were made to order, and delicious!  The style wasn't much like the poke we've had in Hawai'i, but no matter –  it was really good.  Then after we downed our poke, we wanted some ice cream – and we found Mary Coyle's homemade Italian ice cream parlor.  Heaven!

At one of our supercharging stops (I've forgotten which) on this day, we had something unusual (for us, anyway) happen: at the same time there were four Teslas at one supercharger, and three of them were Model Xs (the oddball was a Model S)!  This was so weird I had to take a photo of it. :)  I understand from friends that in the big cities the superchargers are often full, with a waiting line, but we've never had this happen.

The final coat is on!

The final coat is on!  On our grill cabinets, that is.  As planned, I put the second coat on this morning – and now this afternoon I've just finished the third and final coat.  Even with just two coats the finish was beautiful.  The third coat has already finished leveling and has started to cure, and it's even shinier now – it really looks like there's a glass surface there. 

The next challenge will be for my brother and I tomorrow afternoon, as we attempt to move the three cabinet sections from the paint spray tent (at right) to our deck.  The moving itself isn't the challenge – doing so without damaging any important part of the finish will be.  There are two reasons why that finish is vulnerable.  First, the varnish takes 10 to 20 days to completely cure, and it's hardness and toughness steadily increases over that period.  Second, the underlying wood (western red cedar) is fairly soft – quite a bit harder than pine, but nothing at all like the hardness of, say, maple.  An inopportune whack could put a big ding in the finish and possibly even the wood.  We will be very careful tomorrow!

That paint spray tent was a serendipitous find.   I did some research into what might work, and found several references to this sort of collapsible, pop-up canopy with add-on sides.  Recommendations mostly suggested Dacron or Nylon cloth (or similar non-porous plastic fiber) to reduce paint adhesion.  So I went looking on Amazon just in case they happened to have such a thing – and they did!  At quite a reasonable price, too.  It seems quite well made, though only time will tell on that.  I have it sitting on the asphalt in front of my barn, held down with 150 pounds of lead weights that I have for clamping (cloth bags with 25 pounds of lead shot).  So far it has only seen 12 mph winds, but it didn't budge in those.  It's 10' x 10', and at least 8' high on the inside (higher toward the center).  The screened window lets in plenty of air, but no leaves, seeds or bugs.  If it were dusty and windy I'd have to shut it, but the past few days have been beautifully clear.

Have I no hope for the future of America?

Have I no hope for the future of America?  A friend asked me this by email recently.  Here's my reply:

I really have given up hope for the future of this grand experiment called America.  I don't see any path to a shining future for the U.S. shy of a revolution that fundamentally changes our form of government.  The best I can gin up is that we had a good long run compared with most forms of government ever tried.  I still have hope that I'll be able to live out my life relatively unmolested by the government, but even that is fading slowly.

On a daily basis I am grateful that I do not have children whose likely future would haunt me...

Tom...

I recently received the email below...

I recently received the email below...  The inmate James Powell is the despicable “money manager” who stole my mother-in-law's retirement savings about 10 years ago.  He also stole the savings of several dozen other people, mostly older widows, at the same time.  After a few years chasing him down, prosecuting, and convicting him, he was finally sent to jail for far too short a sentence.  They managed to recover about 12 cents on the dollar, which was too little and regrettably too late to help Kate in any significant way.  Her last few years on this earth should have been much more comfortable than they actually were, thanks to this utter waste of oxygen.

Anyway, this email informed us of Powell's imminent transfer to a halfway house in preparation for his release next year.  The email is a typically inscrutable government communication, but is at least useful.  What really irritates me about this is that real criminals who hurt people badly get such short sentences compared with so many non-violent drug-related convictions where only the “criminal” gets hurt.  There's something badly wrong with a system of justice that perpetrates and does not fix such obvious injustices.

The email (with some redactions):

XXXX XXXXXX

RE: JAMES POWELL 
       Register Number: 68450-061 
       Docket Number: 10-CR-00075 

Dear XXXX XXXXXX: 

You have requested to receive notifications regarding JAMES POWELL, an inmate incarcerated at this facility. Notifications concerning this inmate will be provided to you through the Victim Notification System (VNS). You may obtain current information about this matter on the Internet at https://www.notify.usdoj.gov or from the VNS Call Center at 1-866-DOJ-4YOU (1-866-365-4968) (TDD/TTY: 1-866-228-4619) (International: 1-502-213-2767). In addition, you may use the Call Center or Internet to update your contact information and/or change your decision about participation in the notification program. 

You will need the following Victim Identification Number (VIN) '2744077' and Personal Identification Number (PIN) 'XXXX' anytime you contact the Call Center and the first time you log on to VNS on the Internet. If you are receiving notifications with multiple victim ID/PIN codes please contact the VNS Call Center. In addition, the first time you access the VNS Internet site you will be prompted to enter your last name (or business name) as currently contained in VNS. The name you should enter is Lorenz. 

This notice is to inform you that JAMES POWELL has been approved for placement in a Community Corrections Center (CCC), otherwise known as a halfway house, and will transfer from this institution on April 17, 2019. After the transfer, the inmate will be located at Talbert House for Men in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

In addition to the information provided regarding this offender's CCC transfer, the following information is relevant to the inmate's eventual release. The inmate is scheduled to release on October 15, 2019. The inmate is not eligible for parole. Upon release, the inmate will reside in CINCINNATI, Ohio, and will be supervised by the United States Probation Office at USPO - Southern District of Ohio - Cincinnati, 110 Potter Stewart, United States Courthouse, 100 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. 

You may cancel this notification at any time by calling the VNS toll-free number provided, or by submitting your cancellation request in writing to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Also, if BOP staff initiate a notification and are unsuccessful in contacting you due to inaccurate contact information, your participation in the notification program may be canceled; therefore, it is essential that you continue to ensure your contact information in the VNS remains up-to-date. Finally, notification will terminate when the inmate has completed service of the sentence for the crime which resulted in the notification.

If at any time you have any questions or concerns regarding this program or the offender's status, please do not hesitate to contact me at the above address or you may telephone the VNS Call Center. Sincerely, H. Miller Unit Manager

A busy day, slightly delayed...

A busy day, slightly delayed...  I got up this morning at 4 am, with every intention of putting a second coat of spar varnish on our grill cabinet.  The first step (a light sanding of the first coat, a blow-down with compressed air, and a rub-down with a tack cloth) went just fine, and I was finished with that at 5:45.  Then Mother Nature intervened: the varnish I'm using says that the minimum temperature for application is 60°F – and wouldn't you know it, it was only 55°F then.  I'll have to wait another hour or so for things to warm up.  The forecast calls for a high of 81°F, so eventually it will warm up.  The timing is a bit critical for me, as I need to get the second coat on this morning so that there's time for it to cure before I put a third coat on this afternoon.  Yesterday it took about 6 hours for the first coat to cure enough that I could have re-coated, though not quite enough for a sanding.  I'm not planning to sand between the second and third coats, so the second coat doesn't have to cure quite as thoroughly before I apply the third.

This evening we're going to the Hyrum Rodeo.  We went last year with our friend Aleck L.  Debbie and I quite enjoyed it.  I think Aleck mainly enjoyed it as a sort of anthropological investigation into white farmers. :)  That starts at 7:30 pm, and we need to get there early to get a good seat – which puts a hard stop on when I can put that third coat of varnish on.  I don't think they're likely to delay the rodeo to help me out!

Between the first and second coats I'm going to start catching up on nearly a month of backlog on my bookkeeping.  I have a dismayingly large pile of credit card receipts to deal with, as on our 18 day trip we were using the credit card far more frequently than we usually do...

Little things...

Little things ... about being home after an extended absence are a real source of pleasure.  There are some that anyone could guess about me, such as being with my puppers again.  Some are not so obvious, though.  For example, having tea in the morning, a top notch Darjeeling made with the delicious water from our spring and a touch of the wonderful milk we have delivered.  Then there's my morning shower, in the shower we designed to suit our own liking.  As I write this, I'm watching the sun light up our green valley as it climbs over the Wasatch Mountains to our east, and enjoying the serenade of a thousand or so birds greeting the morning.  It is good to be home...

"Castrated poodles" (describing Republican Congressmen)...

"Castrated poodles" (describing Republican Congressmen)...  That's my phrase of the day, and unfortunately I'm not sure who to attribute it to.  It's clearly derived from this George Will essay, in which he calls Republican Congressmen Trump's poodles.  Someone then extended the thought to that all-too-apt phrase.  On Twitter, he estimable Claire Berlinski extended Will's thoughts questioning the worthiness of the elected Republicans into questioning the Constitution itself.  Both are meaty food for thought...

First coat of spar varnish...

First coat of spar varnish!  The last two days I've been racing to finish putting the cedar “skin” on our grill cabinet (one step at right), and last night I did the last bit.  My brother Scott helped me lift the three sections onto saw horses in my paint tent late in the afternoon – and then I was ready to start the painting operation.

The spray I bought for this sort of work is a Graco HVLP 9.5, pictured at left.  The “HVLP” stands for “High Volume, Low Pressure” – a technology that uses a large volume of air at low pressure to distribute the paint.  This particular kind of rig was recommended to me by a professional painter for cabinet work, and after using it for the first time today I can tell you that I got very good advice.  It is very easy to control the paint with this unit, particularly compared with the conventional high pressure spray rigs I've used in the past, or with the more modern airless painters.  Highly recommended!

Since I'd never used one of these before, there was a definite learning curve.  The spray gun has more adjustments on it than you might think, and I had to fiddle a bit to get the thick spar varnish to work right.  I thought there was a good chance I'd have to thin the varnish down to make it sprayable, but it worked fine right out of the can once I got the gun tweaked right.  This particular model of sprayer has a gun that works in any position, even upside down.  That made spraying the inside and the bottom quite straightforward – I'm so glad I didn't have to brush all this!  It took me about two hours, including the initial learning curve, to spray the first coat on all three sections.  I did the outsides and the insides all in a single go; there will be just four small spots on the bottom of each section that are left unpainted; I'll touch those up with a brush.  The photo at right shows one cedar side after the first coat – I'm quite pleased with how that came out.

One thing I'm not so happy about: my beard and mustache were painted quite nicely!  I had to shower after I'd finished to get all that out.  Fortunately the varnish doesn't stick too well to hair, and some vigorous scrubbing of my face got rid of most of it.  I'll be wearing a face shield next time.  :)

Day 3...

Day 3...  We drove out of Nebraska, across Iowa, and halfway across Illinois today.  We stayed last night at the Westview bed & breakfast, just outside of Lincoln.  It was a delightful place to say – beautiful grounds, a grand view to the west, and a most pleasant room (at right) with a full kitchen.

We told Angela, our hostess, that we'd be leaving early in the morning – and she insisted on making us a (delicious!) breakfast and bringing it to our room at 6 am.  Wow!  That's a photo of her concoction at left.  I've no idea what you'd call this thing, but it was really yummy.  A nice way to start off the morning, and as things turned out, this was the only time on the entire trip when we got our breakfast part of the bed & breakfasts we stayed at.

Angela found out we had a Tesla, and she asked us to take her picture with it so she could tease her boyfriend about seeing a Tesla before he could.   That was fun.  :) 

We passed miles and miles of beautiful farms on today's drive – gave us a real appreciation of the stunning productivity of America's farmlands.  In Iowa we saw lots of terraced farms.  I don't remember this from the trips across Iowa I made in the '60s and '70s, but that could just be my memory.  In addition to the terracing, we noted an interesting technique for preserving soil – wherever there was a place in a field where water ran off, permanent grasses were planted instead of a crop.  These hold the soil in place and slow the runoff down enough that it will drop any entrained soil.  Combined with the terracing (which reduces runoff in the first place) this appears to be a very effective way to keep soil from running into the rivers.

Iowa had particularly beautiful rest areas on the Interstate, nicely landscaped, well-tended, with interesting displays and art.  Much of the latter was related to soil conservation – apparently a very big topic in Iowa.  At one of these rest stops, as I climbed back into our car, I noticed an (expensive-looking) cell phone lying on the pavement.  After some messing about (the phone was completely unlocked), Debbie (who knows more about Android phones than I do) managed to call the boyfriend of the phone owner.  Turns out he was in the car with the young woman who owned the phone, and they were just a few miles away!  We waited a few minutes for them to return, and then gave the phone back to the very grateful young lady.  We were cell phone heroes!

It's a damned shame...

It's a damned shame...  A neighbor and close friend of ours, Tim D., is hurting.  He had a nasty form of cancer, in his neck and head.  This necessitated surgery late last year, and he's been on radiation and chemo until last month.  He's lost 15% of his weight, and has gone from a hale and hearty farmer to the point where he can't safely stand in a light wind (seriously).  His appetite is practically gone; food even smells unattractive to him.  His voice is almost gone, from dry mouth and overall tiredness.  It's so sad to see him suffering like this.  He's told his doctors he's stopped taking one particular medication, because it's knocking him for a loop; as best we can tell that drug is for his rheumatoid arthritis, so that seems like a good tradeoff. 

Debbie and I spent some time with him today, to give him some company and whatever comfort we could provide.  During that visit, which was generally pleasant and full of good humor, we learned from Tim that his beloved dog Lexy had died.  As if things weren't bad enough for Tim already!  She was badly injured by a swather (a giant mower that cuts alfalfa for hay) in Tim's hay field, most likely because she was nearly deaf and probably didn't hear the machine approaching.  When they got her to the vet, the only real option was to euthanize her -- that must have been an agonizing decision for Tim...

Lest I sound too hopeless, I should point out that we are still hopeful that Tim recovers from his cancer, and that something else can be done for his arthritis.  Our reactions here are for his current unhappy state.   He's such a good man.  Life often seems unfair, and this is certainly one of those cases...

I'm in a race with the clock...

I'm in a race with the clock...  We have granite for our grill cabinet scheduled for install on the 25th (next Monday), and I haven't yet finished the cabinet.  So I'm working as hard as I can to get that thing done.  Currently I'm installing the cedar “skin”, which I should finish in a few hours.  Then I'll be sanding that skin, installing some corner trim pieces (tricky because they need to be glued to the four outside corners), sanding them, and then I'm ready for painting.  I'm using marine spar varnish – really tough stuff – and that's oil-based.  That means I have to wait a day between coats, so I'll have lots of time to blog while I'm waiting for each coat to dry.  You'll see my trip posts appearing then...

Home!

Home!  We got home as planned yesterday afternoon.  The dogs were overjoyed to see us, most especially our two “old men”: Race and Miki.  Jahar (Debbie's Savannah cat) was over the moon to see her again, and has been frantic every time she leaves the room.  Last night I had a (large!) glass of Scotch, first one in over two weeks – very nice.  We slept in our own bed – oh, that feels so good after being on the road for a while!  I luxuriated in our shower last night, and again this morning; I've really missed that on the trip.  Had our usual morning routine this morning, including feeding the dogs – they really liked that.

Our friend Michelle H. took marvelous care of our animals and house while we were gone.  We knew she would, and that knowledge kept us from worrying at all on our trip – that's such a nice thing, and so different than on trips we took away from our homes in San Diego...

There will be posts about the trip, with photos, later.  First I have a bunch of catch-up to take care of around the place...

Day 2...

Day 2...  We got an early start this morning, leaving Cheyenne at just about daybreak.  Our route was basically I-80 all the way, but we sure traveled through some beautiful country.  Much of it was through rolling hills, or along the Platte River.  All of it was green, green, green – except when there were flowers.  Nebraska has way more trees than I remember, and far more water.  We really enjoyed that drive!

About two-thirds of the way into our trip to Lincoln we stopped for a while at the Crane Trust preserve.  There's a beautiful trail there that we spent a half hour on, but to our surprise there was live music, food, and more – it seems we stumbled into their 40th anniversary bash unawares.  That's not our kind of thing, so we left – but it looks like a great place to come back to.

The highlight of the day for us came at an unlikely location: the Gothenburg, Nebraska Tesla Supercharger.  We took a little walk to the sod house museum there, where I spotted a very weird windmill and spent a few minutes trying to figure out how it could work.  A little old lady popped out of the museum, the guide there – and we spent the next 90 delightful minutes just talking up a storm with her.  Her name is Suse Pederson, 85 years old, and she's as full of great stories as anyone we've ever met.  She and her husband used to own the local airport and the associated flight training school.  Both were pilots and instructors.  We learned a tremendous amount about the town and the area in that short time!  We parted reluctantly, and only after several tries and several rounds of hugs.  We've been smiling about that encounter all day long. :)

Some memorable events of the day:

• We saw a few more baby antelopes.  As we got closer to Lincoln, though, the incidence of antelopes gradually petered out to zero.
• At one stop we ran across a mother plover with four babies – cute as buttons – who was simultaneously herding the young ones while trying to lead us away from them.  What a good mom she was!
• We saw our first deer on the plains.
• We're ensconced in the Westview B&B in Lincoln, a big house divided up into guest rooms.  Ours is a spacious suite that includes a full kitchen, and has views of the countryside to the west.  The facility is just outside of town, on a large property that you'd think was out in the country somewhere.  We love it!
• We ate at the Leadbelly Bar and Grill in downtown Lincoln.  The food was spectacular!  The first photo below was my entree: the Smokehouse Mac & Cheese.  The second is Debbie's Southwest Cobb Salad with rare steak.  We also had a peach cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream, and the cobbler was miraculously not mostly sugar – it was delicious!
• We finished off the evening with a walk through the sunken gardens in Lincoln.  It's a beautiful place, though a bit formal for my taste.  We quite enjoyed it, though, both for the gardens themselves and for the very nice people we met there.

All-in-all it was a very nice day...

Day 1...

Day 1...  We made it to our planned destination (Cheyenne, Wyoming) safely, and with some time to spare.  The trip over here was more interesting than we expected it to be.  The fellow at right was near the second supercharger we stopped at, in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  It's actually associated with the restaurant in the background.  Looks weird from the front, but a little shocking from the back. :)

Along the road on today's trip we spotted quite a few Sandhill cranes, and about two bazillion antelope (including one baby!).  There were lovely flowers as well, most especially Camas lillies in the low wet spots.  We saw several places where there were patches of them alongside snow fences – Debbie came up with a plausible theory for that: snow piled up in front of the snow fence, melting to make a wet spot conducive to Camas lillies.  Sounds likely to me.  There was beautiful, well-watered sage over a stretch of 150 miles or so.  I love that color!  At one point we got sprinkled on, but the nearest cloud was at about a 45 degree angle to us – all we can think is that the wind blew the rain onto us.  We also saw patches of gorgeous yellow flowers that we're pretty sure were yellow lupine (they were too far away to be positive about).  The photo at left was taken about 75 miles from Cheyenne as we passed through some particularly nice terrain.

One interesting thing we saw was hundreds and hundreds of automated oil wells.  These are much less intrusive on the landscape than the old rocker-arm oil wells.  Most of them have no visible infrastructure outside a small shed, other than a fuel tank (propane, I think) and a satellite antenna.  I know these are remotely monitored and controlled, which means the companies save a great deal of money in labor (traded off by the increased capital cost).  I think they're a huge improvement on the old style wells.

Once we made it to Cheyenne, we stopped to eat at a place called Ribs and Chops – had a great meal of fish tacos for Debbie and fish-and-chips for me.  Very nice.  Then we went to the Cheyenne Frontier Days museum, associated with the famous annual Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo.  The museum was fascinating, especially for the collection of horse buggies there (one example at right).  We spent almost two hours in there, leaving only because it was closing.  Cheyenne must have a dozen or more museums, most of which look interesting to both Debbie and I.  I suspect we'll be returning here someday to explore them.  There's also a botanical garden that looks quite promising.  And our bed-and-breakfast is super nice.

And then there are the shops.  Debbie spotted one called “The Wrangler” and spent some time in there while I charged the car.  She sent me several texts, the gist of which was “I love this place!”.  When I picked her up, her eyes were glistening and three giant shopping bags were in her hands.  I shudder to think what she did to our credit card account. :)  She said she got a pair of boots like the giant one at left.  Those fancy boot statues are scattered all over Cheyenne.  Apparently they're some kind of city symbol...

Random blog post alert!

Random blog posting alert!  From tomorrow morning through June 18th, Debbie and I will be on the road.  We're not sure whether our lodgings will have WiFi, and we may well be pressed for time – so blog posts for that period are highly uncertain.  Photos in the blog posts are even more uncertain!