29 April 2013

Safe and Sound

Well, I made it safely to Bodie... but it was a wild ride to get there. Look for that story in the next few days. I want to get settled before I put up a post about it, but I thought I'd let ya'll know that I made it here.

23 April 2013

Sort of like a halfway point

 I'm overnighting in Flagstaff this evening. But first, pictures from Gila. I stayed in the town of Gila Hot Springs, just a few miles down the mountain from Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Per Alyssa's recommendation, I camped at the Wildwood Retreat and would highly recommend it to anyone heading that way: very clean, very nice facilities, reasonable prices, and unlimited soaking for campers! I soaked every morning as I watched the sunrise and every evening as I watched the sunset. Lovely.
 On one day I pedaled up to Gila Cliff Dwellings and poked around. It was a neat little place, the staff (almost all volunteers! wow!) was fun to chat with, and it was interesting to compare what I saw and heard and read to what I learned and observed at Montezuma Castle. These structures were somewhat contemporaneous, but were built by a different cultural group than the Castle.
 The next day I rejoined Amy (a Big Bend volunteer who I more or less caravanned with up to Gila Hot Springs), to go for a little seven mile hike. Along the trail I almost stepped on this good luck token: a gopher snake! (They keep rattlesnakes away, so they're good to have around.)
The Gila National Forest was lovely, and there seemed to be an endless supply of trailheads on the drive up to the town. I think it would be a good place to spend some more time. But now my mini-vacation at Gila Hot Springs is done and I'm on the road again. Tomorrow I pick up my trailer! I'm so excited - and so hoping that everything goes down without a hitch... except for the proper hitching that I'm supposed to have when I set it all up and start towing for the first time! If all goes well, the next time that I post it will be to tell you that I am safe and sound in Bodie and to show you pictures of my new, humble abode!

Until next time...

16 April 2013

Boquillas + Bike Rides

Continuing to play catch-up with recent events: on Friday I went to Boquillas. Graden, Beau, Amy, and Mike and Nancy Coe was the group I latched onto for the day. It was so much fun to meet people in person that I'd been talking to across the river all this time. One of them, Esteban, was very gracious and gave us a town tour. Finally, my Spanish seemed to come back: as we walked through town I was asking him all sorts of questions and listening to his answers and things were FLOWING! Yay! Just in time for me to leave. Oh well. I explained to them that I would not be in the crossing because I had gotten summer employment elsewhere, but that I would hopefully be back in the fall. Esteban said that there might be a party in October to celebrate the crossing being open again, so perhaps I'll get to see that when I return.

On Sunday Alyssa convinced me to join her in Terlingua to go mountain biking with a group from Desert Sports. The morning started out nice, but it got to be a pretty hot day. I started off by saying that I wasn't a very good mountain biker, but at the end everyone was telling me that I was pretty smokin. "That's some pretty technical stuff for out here," one guy told me, "I would say if you can ride that you're pretty good." So maybe I shouldn't say that I'm not good, but rather that I'm scared out of my mind when I am riding. Still, my goal was to not fly off the bike that day, and I achieved that. Although I learned the hard way that a bike that's a bit too tall for you has its downsides when it stops and you keep going and land on the top tube. Ouch! All in all we rode 24.9 miles through the desert and my legs and arms are covered with scrapes from the mesquite and other spiny plants that we pedaled through.

Last night was my last Burger Bike for the season. I could really feel the day before's mountain biking as I got started - particularly in my knees, which I had failed to do my exercises for the previous day - but I pulled through. In fact, I think I've pretty much become a cycling powerhouse. I thought I was doing poorly most of the time, but kept pumping it up and working on my cadence... by the time I got to La Kiva Hill I was powering up and maintaining speeds above 5mph (more like 8-10mph) and I still managed to make a new record for myself by the time I got there. 1 hour, 54 minutes. Wow!

At the Starlight last night Alyssa and I met up with Paul Wiggins, a local silversmith who has made some nice pieces for Alyssa in the past. Based on a sketch I did of the Sierra del Carmen skyline, we each commissioned him to make bracelets for us. This is easily going to be the most expensive piece of jewelry I will have ever purchased, but it will definitely be worth it. I gave Paul the park address to get a hold of me once I get into town. Hopefully soon after I get to Bodie we'll be in touch!

Today I'm finishing up my laundry and working on the finer details of my trip. This evening I'll be up in PJ for yoga, and I'll probably stop by the Chino Court Crew for the last time before I go. Tomorrow will be spent rearranging and packing my stuff and packing it into my car so that I've got proper access to things I need access to and whatnot. For the first time I will be carrying my bike on top cross-country because I will most likely be putting it to use when I'm in Gila for those few days. I doubt if I'll get another blog entry in before I go, so the next time you hear from me will probably be either somewhere along the way to Bodie, or once I'm finally settled in there, which should be by next weekend, amazingly enough.

Until next time!

11 April 2013

The Highland Games

As promised, I've tracked down enough footage of the Highland Games event to give you a few glimpses into how epic it really was.
To start off, I was all decked out in crazy East District warrior gear because I had been adopted by the East District LE rangers for their team. My warpaint is pretty rockin: one side is the 3-spiral Celtic female symbol, the other is the ancient Scottish symbol for 'rock on'. In case you're wondering, I made that second one up on the spot that morning. The guy unable to handle my awesomeness there is my friend Doug.
East District made some rad shirts at Graden's the night before. If the letters look a bit crooked, that's because the night before was an epic going-away party for a long-time staff member. None of us got to bed before 2am that night, and the games started at 10am. Personally, I didn't get to bed until 3am and was randomly woken up by a CAR ALARM at 6am, so I was literally carrying through the excitement of the night before for the entirety of the Highland Games and once they were over I completely crashed, to the point of dozing off in camp chairs while we waited for the results to be decided. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The games consisted of several timed events, several distance events, and one tournament event called the tug-of-love. This I excelled at so that I beat two people (one of whom was the overall winner for the womens games) and lost to the man who went on to win the event.
It was a lot of fun, kilt-flying action.
There was quite a variety in the outfits being worn that day. Note the Hawaiian Scotsman.
As you can see, it was the Hawaiian Scotsman who unseated me at the Tug of Love.
Afterwards we all lined up for a game of Tug-of-War over the irrigation canal.
It was a grueling contest...
... but I and my team ended up in the drink. :)
My friend Alyssa "McSmooch O Lot!" and Raymond were the overall winners (and happened to be the oldest competitors for each gender, as my friend Amy pointed out).
My friend Matt "McGravy" Graden got the Best Warrior award. I think with the combination high scores, mohawk, and warpaint he probably earned it.
And to end it off, I'll let you watch Alyssa and I duking it out on the Tug-of-Love. This particular competition line-up brought quite a bit of murmuring since we're known to be buddies and now we were about to pull against each other.

So that's the Highland Games in a nutshell. It was absolutely hilarious. Most participants were chain-drinking beers and/or still hungover/buzzed from the party the night before. ALL the participants were wearing kilts, and I have to say that guys in kilts and warpaint do look pretty good. I can't wait 'til next year! Maybe by then I'll have an actual kilt instead of the ingenious two flannel shirts buttoned together. :)

Until next time!



10 April 2013

Open and Shut

The Boquillas Crossing Port of Entry officially opened today. C'est la vie. I purposefully missed the opening ceremonies by attending a fire refresher in PJ - I knew that if I went I would just feel bad that I wasn't a part of it. Instead I learned a little bit about what's required to be a wildland firefighter, met some friends for lunch at the Chisos Basin Lodge, and rode my bike all the way back home again. I stopped at the POE on the way and walked down there (without my passport) just to see what was going on. It seemed pretty busy, but I couldn't say that the NPS personnel were really doing anything.

My not-really-doing-anything job ended on Friday. Saturday I participated in the Highland Games (which I will hopefully get some better pictures of later... don't worry, a post on the event is forthcoming). Sunday I hosted a House Cooling Shindig. Monday I packed and cleaned and moved out of my house. Now my things are either in George's garage, my car, or Alyssa's house (where I'm staying for the next week or so). Travel plans have bounced around like rubber balls for the last few weeks, but I think I've finally got some semblance of a game plan for myself, I've just got to work out the logistics.

I found a trailer! I'll post pictures once it's actually mine, but I've made arrangements with someone on craigslist to pick up a nice little vintage trailer on my way through Las Vegas... more on that later - like when it's actually mine and has a name and all that jazz. But hopefully it'll be a good space of my own to live out of while I'm at Bodie this year. I'll be starting work there the 1st of May! That's two weeks earlier than expected, which cuts into my travel time, but will hopefully allow me to get a paycheck a bit sooner than I otherwise would. We'll see. There's going to be several newbies working this year, so I'm curious what the season will bring. More on my goals for the season later, however, as I'm going to have plenty of time to make more blog posts on specific things in the coming days.

For now, I'm enjoying some time off. Yesterday I biked Boquillas Canyon road with Alyssa, hand-biked to the campground to chat with Amy, napped on my bed with Roadie, looked at cool organic earrings online, drove up to PJ for yoga and chatted with the Chino Court Crew, drove home and hand-biked to the campground to chat with Jane, watched an episode of History Detectives on PBS.org, chatted with Alyssa when she got home from work, rinsed off in the shower, and went to bed! Talk about a productive day.

Tomorrow or the next day I might go to Mexico. I've got at least one more painting (maybe two) that I want to do before my time here is up. I start taking care of George's dogs again tomorrow morning, and I have every intention of walking them at least once a day. It's breezy and cool down here - a perfect day for bicycling - but now I definitely need to go take a shower.

Until next time.

02 April 2013

My (sort of) last week

I'm definitely in countdown mode right now: three more days of work, one day off, and I'm done! Then I'll be packing up and moving out. Except that I'm just going to put my stuff in my neighbor's garage and move into his house, because I'm not leaving, I'm just going to bide my time for a couple weeks!

Rumor has it that, now that I'm going to be gone, the crossing is actually going to open. Hilarious. I hope I get to go across. I also kind of hope that it gets delayed (again) just for the comic aspect of it all.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to be doing, but since I've got an open schedule, I'm letting everyone know that whenever they want to do something they need to just hit me up because I should be available. There's talk of various epic adventures from a canyon-to-canyon bike ride to crazy-long backpacking trips to camping out in the open desert. I haven't made any solid plans or decisions yet - just thrown out ideas.

I'm most likely going to drive up to Colorado with Alyssa when she gets done and hang at her place for a week at least before heading out to Cali. I'm still trying to figure out the whole trailer situation for Bodie - word on the street is making me think that I'm really going to need my own space this year if I want to stay sane and have a good season. I've been craigslisting for bargain buys, but haven't made a move on anything yet since I've got so much lead time on it right now and the cl turnover is usually pretty quick.

So that's what's up. Not much new, just a lack of time, and the fact that I did the Burger Bike in under two hours last night! :)