Finally! or Ain't Technology Great?

That last post was more than a bit prophetic. I had not really intended for the interruption to last this long. It's a long story so I'll just post some of my journalling notes here to catch you up. The reason I've not posted sooner will become obvious if you read all the way through but I'll tell you anyway. My cell coverage was the pits and then my laptop's hard disk expired. 'Nuff said.


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7/21/03 9:52 PM

Looks like we may not be able to stay in or around Telluride. There's not much available that has what we'll need for long-term. Certainly nothing in the town itself. All they have is Town Park which is nice enough but there are no hookups. Not good for more than a week anyway. There's a place outside of town that may work but I'm sure it's booked up. Only eight RV sites and they charge a lot for the extra vehicle. I'll need to do some research for Silverton. Cat's going to check on mobile parks but I have a feeling that may come up empty. Simply put, even though we'd love to live there if there's no provision for long-term, fully equipped parking of our rig then it's not where we belong.



7/27/03 7:09 AM

Our drive across southern Colorado was generally uneventful. I say generally because of a few object lessons that were provided for Nick. One in particular sticks out in my mind. I'm sick of the impatient arrogance displayed by people in general but especially by many drivers. One nearly ran us off the road. He wasn't content going around one car. No, this guy had to try to pass the entire column. It probably wouldn't have angered me as much if not for two things: he'd already pulled back in -- he could easily have waited the five seconds required for us to pass. And he decided he wouldn't wait thus endangering our lives. I had to slow down -- not easy with 9000 lbs rolling - and started pulling over to the right. Nowhere to go, but what choice did I have? Nick asked what was wrong so I took the opportunity to teach him a bit about courtesy. Really chapped my hide

At any rate, here we are in the KOA campground just north of Ouray. It took a lot of time to climb the mountain with this load. A lot more time than I thought it would. Highway 550 seems to be much steeper than some of the others. Especially coming up from Durango. What we saw of Silverton (passing through) I liked. I'll know more about it soon since we'll be heading there today. We got into Ouray after midnight, night before last, and we managed to spend a bit of time walking through the town yesterday. We went on up to Montrose from there and looked around. Cat's decided that she definitely doesn't want to live anywhere near there. Nice that it's not too far away and seems to have nearly everything she's been used to. Ouray is nice but, as she said, nothing here makes us say "this is it!". We'll see what Silverton has to offer. I pray it's an opportunity that begs us to stay. I have no idea what that may be yet but I have a feeling that when we find where we belong, it will be obvious.

We went over Owl Creek pass yesterday afternoon. It's easily passible by auto. A dirt road all the way, it's well maintained. It does get up high: 10,800ft -- and there's much beautiful scenery to view along the way. It drops down to Hwy 50 on the other side which will take you to either Gunnison or Montrose. We came back through Montrose. Our dining experiences so far have been dismal. We've yet to find a decent Mexican restaurant even since we've been though the desert southwest. Bad luck? Who knows. We've both come to the conclusion that a really good restaurant is in order. The one we ate at in Ouray yesterday was pretty good but not as good as it could have been. My Philly cheesesteak sandwich wasn't bad -- not quite what I'd expected but not bad -- and Cat's would have been better with more mayo or at least the horseradish that was promised.


7/28/03 7:15 AM

Doubts loom. Uncertainty lingers. I never expected to just waltz into Colorado and find bliss. There are possibilities here in Silverton but is that enough? I saw a note posted in the office of this RV Park we're staying in. They're looking for Motel managers at Triangle Motel. Apartment and utilities supplied, it said. Year 'round. Any pay involved? Don't know. We might be calling an end to our "vacatiion" and going to the front range to look for jobs. After all, if the house doesn't sell, what choice do we have? We've talked to a few people. I guess it's a lot of work to make a living in these parts. There are a lot of reasons to do that. I've considered them all before but neither one of us wanted to just trade one city scene for another. Clearly, there are some major differences. The weather. The famliy. The scenery. I really would like to be around my siblings more and I hate that I'm missing out on much of the growth and development of their kids. Maybe we should. There's a number of businesses that are hiring there. Do we give up the dream of living "in" the mountains. No. Do we take more time to find out what's possible rather than just jumping into it? Probably.


7/29/03 7:55 AM

Silverton. The town is nice enough but the kind of people it seems to draw is disturbing. Maybe it's just the time of year. Or maybe it's just where we're currently staying. Even so, yesterday I saw a number of rigs driving around town with quads on the back or in trailers. The park we're in has been inundated with "off-roaders". At least right around us, anyway. Jeeps everywhere. And motorcycles. Parked around the perimeter are other trailers loaded with similar equipment. Not really what we had hoped for. Yes, Telluride may be a "yuppie", "tree-hugger", "new-age", type of community in some ways but at least they show more concern about the condition of the wilderness around us and the types of visitors there reflect that attitude. Here we have "money" but it's the kind of people only out for the thrill of the ride. They are all loud and obnoxious, treating this place like their own personal playground. I could say something to the management but we're the minority. At least the Telluride folks seem to think personal space is important. Here, it's all about the thrill. They confirmed it themselves. I overheard one of them saying yesterday morning "you don't want to miss this ride. It's the best one of the trip". Do I think such activities should be disallowed. No. Am I concerned about the way this sort of person might treat the places they "ride" through? Certainly. From some of the overheard conversations it's clear that they're not really interested in "sight-seeing". They come here strictly for the "thrill". Yes, they bring money into the town but at what cost?

I checked out the steam train yesterday morning as well. We were really looking forward to taking that trip but I just don't see anyway to justify it this time out. Way too expensive. And the best trip would be to originate in Durango anyway. Otherwise they bus you back. To the tune of $150 for all of us to make the trip, it just doesn't make any sense to do that. We did, however, go through the "Old One Hundred" mine tour. That was a delightful experience and well worth the price of admission. You ride into the mine in the same sort of rail cars that were used by the miners and you get to experience much of what they must have known. There's a wonderful history lesson to be learned here, especially on the specifics of how they did it. Demonstrations of various types of mining equipment were given and explanations of what everything is and how they used it all rounded out the trip. Go prepared. It's a steady 47 degrees inside the rock -- and it's all rock -- and damp. Water drips constantly from the rock. They provide a slicker and hardhat but most people arrive wearing shorts. I imagine they got a bit cold while inside. Well worth the effort to go see this.

Cat and I talked some about our plans. I confess to feeling disillusionment coming on. But I have to recognize that it may well be just God's way of saying "don't hang around long". I'm more prepared now, though, for the reality of having to start out --- and start over --- on the front range first. Living in the high mountains is our dream but maybe this is not the best time for such a change. Maybe we should spend a few years on the front range where we can get reestablished, get loose ends tied, and enjoy family. I'm open to that eventuality. I was never really closed to it. Just wanted to believe that we could make it here if only the right doors would open. But that's also my criteria for knowing God's leading. If there are limited or no opportunities for us I'm not going to be stubborn and try to force the door open. Sure, resettling will take effort. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that the right place will have a demand for what we both can offer.



8/1/03 7:18 AM

I've been really bummed the last few days. I suppose it's just a culmination of things. We've not really had any vacation, it seems. Open-ended plans also tend to make one uneasy. I suppose above all, that sort of uneasiness comes from the lack of income. Eating up what you have, uncertain about the future, no idea where you'll eventually end up... these things all clump together to make a body both tense and depressed. Beginning to feel responsibility close in. Then there's the living in close quarters.

This trip has been a lot like that old song "My Elusive Dream". That's sort of what we've been doing. Maybe that's even part of the problem. Both of us feel detached from what we know. There is security in familiarity. Then again, trying to live in this trailer for this long probably has a lot to do with it as well. It's not easy. We'll move on today, passing through Gunnison and trekking across the San Isabel forest to Colorado Springs. Will we settle there? Don't know. Maybe.

I guess some of my biggest frustration is not having the phone service I need. There's clearly service in the area. I see people with cell phones in use all the time. Just one more thing that irritates me about big business. I know that coverage is probably the one thing that sets the providers apart and is a large part of specific revenue but I think that all these providers need to share networks and open up communication channels to everyone. Yes, it might require more infrastructure. But investing in upgrading existing systems rather than overextending resources to build new --- and almost always duplicate --- towers is just good sense. Duplication is stupid. Redundancy is one thing. This crap is well beyond that. I've seen places in the city where multiple towers stand less than a few blocks from each other. In some cases they were in the same location. Idiotic waste of resources.

I was jarred awake this morning by some bozo at 6AM moving his noisy rig around the park. Not sure but I think it's the one parked out in front of us. That noise woke me up and because my bladder was doing it's thing and the sunlight was coming in, I had little choice but to get up. Haven't really slept that well the last couple of nights, probably due to worry more than anything. Being where we are in this park there's no way to sleep too late anyway. It's time for us to go. There's no hookup here and the battery got hammered the first day using an inverter to drive a fan. Should have known better but that's life. I've had to run the truck many times just to have enough power to do basic things like -- see what you're doing, wash dishes, flush the toilet. Minor things. Defeats the purpose of having a trailer. Oh well.

I don't really know why but I've been depressed, really down, the last few days. Maybe it's simply because of the realization that this fantasy is coming to an end. I truly did not want to have to go to work for someone else but that's not the whole story. I should be thrilled at the reality that I'll be closer to my family. I am. We'll all be able to get together at one time again. Russ will be the only one that has a long way to come. It's not impossible that soon, he too will want to come back home. I think mostly that I'm beginning to feel the pressure of responsibility.


8/2/03 9:44 AM

We decided to stop outside Salida. We found a nice RV Park on the mountain 12 Miles above it. We'll spend some time here and look around at some ghost towns then move on down to the Colorado Springs area.


8/6/03 8:48 AM

We are just outside of Colordo Springs in an RV park called Rocky Top. We're just minutes from Springs and even the farthest possibility - Cripple Creek - is only 30 - 40 minutes from town. I don't know what this road is like in winter but that seems to me to be a comfortable distance to drive. I've not really started looking in the 'Springs area. I missed the Sunday paper (guess I could spend some time at the library for that) and I'm having nothing but issues trying to get us online. We stopped at the library yesterday and I managed to get the phone numbers and basic connect info but I could not get the downloaded fancy dialer software to save to a disk. Stupid Winblows. I really miss my previous setup. So I decided to do it the old-fashioned way. Got things set up on my box but there's something wacky with the USB setup because the phone (modem) is seen but won't respond correctly. I tried the phone on Cat's machine but XP is brain-dead for this as well. It wants a driver. I think I probably installed one from the CD I had that came with the cable for W2k but I don't (stupidly) have that software with me right now. This is preventing me from searching the job opportunities or applying for any of them. You can say I'm relying too much on the Internet and technology but I happen to have looked throught the Denver paper and the positions I could apply for ask for the resume via Email. Fairly standard anymore for a high-tech position. Everything was working fine up to our Telluride visit. Then --- nothing. No, I couldn't connect up there anyway but at least I'd have been able to when we got here. The sad thing is, I think I had copied all that software to the Windows partition but obvoiusly since I lost the entire drive (IDE errors on boot - it's on-board controller is fried) that's moot. I thought to pull stuff from the server last night but the BIOS prom apparently has a bad battery that did not keep the config so it won't boot. I could probably fix that but we left the only monitor we had with us with Megan. So... what this all boils down to is that I can dial up, I'm sure, but I need a land-line to do so. The office here doesn't even accomodate that. The library is a good resource but unlike the one in Seattle, there's no (at least I didn't see any) phone lines available for those with laptops to use. My V60 will work -- already has in both dialup and GPRS -- but there's other problems I 'm not sure I can resolve.

Barring all that, I think the Colorado Springs area is where we'll stay. I more or less decided that if we ended up on the front range, that's where I'd rather be. I've not looked around the city of Colorado Springs before but I must say that as cities go, it's the nicest one I've ever been in. I don't feel claustrophobic driving around there. The streets are very open, they only have a few tall buildings (probably ordinances here as well -- I hope so, anyway) and it just doesn't feel like a big city. Sure, there seems to be a lot more sprawl but not any more than any other place. It's actually quiet and beautiful. Trees line the streets almost everywhere you go and the mountains provide a wonderful backdrop. Even so, I don't think we will live anywhere in the city. We'll do a bit more searching today. We found a nice RV park above Manitou Springs but with every silver lining it seems there's a cloud. It's a beautiful park that one would hardly know is there. They have all the things we need, including a telephone hookup at the site. The real reason we probably won't end up there, nice as it is otherwise, is that there's no other kids there. Nick would be alone again. There are a few places back up the road that we plan to check out today so we'll see. These are the two main priorities right now. Getting settled in -- more or less permanently -- and getting a job. Not exactly the adventure we'd hoped for. Still... it's not over. We'll stop here and regroup. Get baggage dropped. Save some money. Plan for a better place. We need time to investigate the possibilites anyway. At least it's an area that is historically and geologically rich. That keeps Cat happy.

Things are looking up. Brent sent an email saying we've had an offer and will be faxing the paperwork for it soon. I called him back and got the particulars on it. Apparently it's an FHA offering that has us giving the buyer a 6% discount. Not what we wanted but we're tired of having this thing hanging over our heads. Cat agrees, though she really would like to see more of a return from the sale. I'm to the point that I just don't want that payment hanging over our heads anymore and if these folks will buy it, so much the better. I'll go pick up the paperwork tomorrow (going to the UPS store in Woodland Park) and we'll probably be able to close and be done with the thing by the end of the month.

We also stopped at a campground today that handles a lot of long-term residents and it was really nice. It's close to Woodland Park and is run by a guy that I already like a lot. He has a very nice spot for us to park our trailer -- which includes a telephone hookup and a mailbox. Another thing that's really nice about this particular campground is that Pike's Peak is clearly visible. Very nice. Only a mile or so from Woodland Park, it's on county land, not any city property. It's also on it's own well which makes the water a whole lot better.


8/9/03 2:14 PM

Today is an interesting weather day. A big storm just rolled through and it took out the power for about twenty minutes. It seems to be a couple of systems clashing together. Lots of lightening. Interesting to watch.

I finally got Cat's computer set up to dial the USB modem and give us a connection. She's a lot happier. We are moving to Verizon since they have far better coverage, especially here in Colorado. Even in places you'd think there would be no coverage from any systems. Worth the switch. She now has a Motorola V120. A nice little phone. The best part is that it uses all the same accessories that my V60 used, including the data cable.

We'll be moving to a different park in a couple of days. I think it's a better place for a lot of good reasons. It will put a new demand on us in that we'll have to start using our tub/shower. Cat's shuffling things around to make that possible. It's going to be a challenge to live this way but what choice do we have? I'm shopping for a new job and will soon be applying to several places. Prayers appreciated.


8/10/03 8:02 AM

First use of the Airsream shower. Nick was the guinea pig. He seemed to enjoy it. He tends to goof around at it and take a lot of time which is a good test of the hot water supply. He wimps out and only uses luke warm water but still, it's a good measure. As far as I know, he didn't run out. I used it this morning and I'm quite pleased with it, actually. Should have been using it all along. Gotta fill up the LP though. I know we're getting low. There's also seems to be something wrong with the car that I hope a simple tune-up will cure. It's going through the gas at least double if not triple the normal usage. I think it's been doing that since Arizona. Ugly.

We'll be in this campground one more night then it's time to move down the road to our new and semi-permanent place. This isn't all that bad a park but there's a lot he could be doing to improve it. They seem to do just the minimal to get by.


8/11/03 7:25 AM

We'll be moving to our (semi) permanent spot today. I'm actually looking forward to it. This is an Ok place but too exposed. We'll probably only be there for a few months, at best. I'm thinking no more than through the winter. Maybe sooner. Cat's been looking at the real estate offerings and is stunned at the prices. Can't say I blame her. Compared to what we saw in Washington, this is very encouraging. We're mostly looking for land where we can set this trailer and then build to suit. Time will tell. Cat's been social with one of our temporary neighbors here and had the opportunity to view the inside of their motorhome. It's a class A. Of course, now she thinks it's great and that we should have one of those instead.


8/12/03 9:04 AM

We've moved to the new RV park and so far, I'm much happier about it. For one thing, it's the first time I've had the Owner (not just one of his managers) help me park the trailer. He even dug a couple of pockets for the wheels to drop into. That's service above and beyond. We don't plan to stay here any longer than necessary but I can tell you this: I'll always steer customers his way when I'm gone -- and probably before then. Wade seems to encourage long-term residents. He has one guy that's been here 13 years. If it were just me, I can see doing that. But not a family.


8/13/03 9:12 AM

Today is Cat's birthday. I got her several things that she wanted, already. I'll probably get something else for her before the day is out. One thing will probably be to take her to see the Garden of the Gods. I got her a cake that we enjoyed part of last night.


8/15/03 8:39 AM

One more step towards permanence here. We obtained a storage unit and unloaded the truck there. Then we went to Springs where our crates are being stored and began the tedious process of unloading from them and loading the truck. We chose to do it ourselves since they wanted another $300 to deliver them. We managed to get most of one relocated. We should be able to get the rest today. Probably take about five trips though. Then there's the headache of arranging the storage. That will slow us down some. Going to be a heavy work day.