Sidetracked Charley

Blizzard Or Post Traumatic Storm Distress.  I began skiing in 1970. I taught it for a dozen years, and attended exams and required workshops always seemingly timed with major storms. I have lived in Denver and Vail, and here in the mountains of north New Mexico for thirty years, 23 in Black Lake. In short I am no stranger to snow. I have been snowed into Winter park for three days, driven over most of Colorado passes in snow storms without four wheel drive. Stuck in Casper, Wyoming over Halloween in a five day blizzard. Had to spend the night in the lobby of the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, and a Holiday Inn in St. Louis because of surprise snowstorms. No rooms at the Inns. But the snow storm which bothers me is the one when I was home. It began December 29, 2006 and continued into the new year dumping feet of snow from Albuquerque north. It closed all five ways in or out of my valley. The Massive Blizzard , the worst some locals said in 70 years, is still talked about. It...

The title is the closing line of my last blog. And I confess I did not believe it was going to be this much later. Things just got in the way. That is excuse one. Excuse two is that nothing moved quite as fast as I thought it would. But I suppose that is better than faster than what you hoped. A friend urged me a few months ago to go for a refinance of my house.  It came at a time when I was considering other changes in my path, no let's call it what is was, my rut. I was getting along with my rut.until a couple houses in the neighborhood sold and I realized I was not taking advantage of my assets.  So, nothing ventured; nothing gained. There are things I want to do like turn the apartment into and AirB&B, add a shower to my half bath downstairs, stain the outside of my house, and take a vacation to Maine with my sister next August. So I took my friend's advice, and it lowered my payments and gave me some of my equity out to be able to do all of that. But it took s...

Transition A lot going on in my life since my last entry on this blog.  It is difficult when you are in the middle of a swamp to obtain the prospective to get yourself to solid ground. Especially if the solid ground is controlled by others or nature: things beyond your control. One of those things in the midst of the swamp was losing my flip phone. The pockets on women's jeans and even the small flip phone did not fit together. This was not the first time I lost my emergency connection to the world but it was significant to the point I did not want to buy another cell phone to again lose. How much time had I wasted on looking for that black thing which once found I had to go looking for glasses to read the messages on it. And to make matters worse it happened when I was frustrated with my server not having a working-well-enough website. So cutting to the chase my sister bought me a smart phone and put me on her service. I always argued I was not smart enough for a smart ph...

Some decades ago I applied for a job working on an island. A small island.  One with only a couple miles of road. No car needed.  The company provided golf carts. And evidently boats for diving trips just off shore. I had just gotten my open water diving certification and it seemed ideal. Then someone raised the specter of island fever. I had been snowed in most of a winter in a Colorado ski resort and certainly understood cabin fever but don't we all want to be stranded on an island? Besides I would have thirty days twice a year to go back to the mainland USA. And in a moment of stark awareness I realized I would probably spend every single minute of those 60 days driving. Driving has been my way of escape since I was 16. No destination necessary. Just hop in the car and drive. I may have even fallen in love with photography because a camera in the passenger seat gave me an excuse to just drive.  But it doesn't take an island or a snow storm to close you into fe...

Yes, this photograph was taken in Utah. I could live in Utah. Looks like a nice little fixer upper with room for expansion. And Trump seems to be in favor of selling parts of our public lands off. Alaska, my sister and I agreed this morning, has entirely too much winter but climate change could alter that. The perma frost is melting. But it brings up why people choose to live in Alaska with all that winter. It has wonderful scenery and you can raise huge cabbages in just 45 days of "summer." And a traffic jam is a moose on your major route to work. I visited Alaska with a USO tour in August in some year in the 1970's. Could have been '76? Admittedly it was hard to get me out of the parka the government provided, but locals said you adapted. So why Alaska? Or Utah? The people. Or the lack of people. And the people that are there are different than you find in big cities. And both have better tourists. What is a better tourist? One that doesn't tell you how ...

Life is very complex at this time. Winter is approaching. Decisions are hanging waiting on the result of actions taken this summer like seeds planted for a garden. These are the things I focus on when I attempt to divorce myself from those things over which I have no control. Things like the orange monster in the White Castle on the swamp. As elections ramp up I more and more feel I have no choice. Or certainly that my choice does not matter. We are no longer a representative republic. First there was 2000 and hanging chads and the Supreme Court doing what it constitutionally should not have done. It was a rip off and oddly I felt grateful we did not riot. But we should have rioted. We were cheated. Where would be now on climate change if Gore had been allowed to be president? At least the Democrats should have screamed but they didn't. The DNC didn't help with the Hillary debacle over Bernie. Another rip off. But by then we had been through 9/11 and the election of ...

Mystic Passage with new frame Fall is my time to do the major clean and reorganization of the house. I don't really do a spring cleaning. I am too busy getting the garden begun. And after a long winter I generally do not want to spend another minute inside. Fall means winter cannot be far away and so the house must be livable. And then there is the studio tour the end of September. The result is I find myself appraising my house and studio on several levels and deciding what needs to be done before the snow flies. And this year I am also doing an upgrade of the rental unit while also deciding whether I want to rent it or not. I have the laminate flooring to replace the well used carpet and that only seems to make me want to not spend that money there while doing nothing major on my list of wants for where I live. Rental units are not as beneficial to the finances as they were before the new tax bill. And I do resent the money spent to make up for renters. And in addition t...