Well it may be simpler to write a blog about The Black Forest Fire than to text those who have written me tonight. As Matt wrote earlier, we spent alot of the day in town repack and sorting our storage unit. We worked in the heat and some smoke while we repacked unable to see the fire from our vantage point on the south side of the Springs. The bluffs we used to hike so often, were in our line of site.

We monitored the fires progression on the radio as we are living at the Air Force Academy just across the Interstate from the fire. With the unpredictable weather – relentless heat and gusty winds, there is no way to know where the fire will go or when. We have gone everywhere together (including Abby) and carried all of our “to go gear” with us in case we couldn’t get back home for whatever reason. The fire has doubled back on itself at least a couple of times in some of the hot spots so you don’t know what it will do. The alternative northern routes to Denver have been closed and requests have been made that the Interstate be avoided if at all possible. With over 38,000 people evacuated (some of them our friends) and the emergency crews, fire fighters, officials and news crews trying to get access to the places that others are trying to flee, it has been a challenge. Matt and I tried offering our assistance yesterday with evacuees coming onto the Air Force Academy but were told that we weren’t needed. We are trying to interact with some of those who have evacuated but they are quite closed off emotionally and are tough to engage. We will continue to reach out.

We have been working hard to get ourselves ready to leave on Monday and have had a group of things to complete as Matt wrote about below. Continue reading

Silence is descending on the campground. It is dusk, the lamp post a few spots down has just come on, illuminating the trunk of a tall pine tree. Quiet time is still over an hour away but aside from the occasional laughter of children up by the volleyball net the stillness is welcome and relaxing. The contrast with the windswept prairie that we left last Friday is startling.

We departed the windswept prairie the morning after my last day at Raytheon. It was a welcome event in many respects. Finishing up the J.O.B. and leaving the campground at Buckley AFB…which had become a bit tedious after three weeks. It is a newer facility (year old) as far as campgrounds go but the constant wind and the repetitive drone of the Blackhawk helicopter got to be wearisome. For some odd reason the pilots would fly around in circles from early evening till 10pm and their orbit brought them right over the campground each time. Some sort of training mission I suppose but not sure of the purpose.

We didn’t really mind the F-16s even though they made a heck of a lot more noise because they generally left the area after taking off. Then there was the occasional transport aircraft heading out.

A transport plane lifts off from the adjacent runway

Arrival at the Air Force Academy campground was a refreshing moment. It felt really good to be back in our old stomping grounds, in the foothills with Pikes Peak in the background. We got checked in (super friendly staff) and found our campsite nestled in the pine forest. We got the trailer unhitched and leveled out and proceeded to “make camp” which has taken on a new twist.

We’ve had plenty of tasks to keep us busy here in the Springs as we finish up our purging and last minute acquisitions before we hit the road. We stopped into New Life Church on Sunday evening for the service and had an epiphany. Continue reading

Gee…who would have thought that hitches could be such a challenge. You never saw John Wayne have a bunch of trouble hitching up a wagon and moseying off into the sunset with the beautiful girl. I’ve learned way more about hitches recently than I really wanted. Getting the right combination pulled together into a smoothly operating rig can be a bit of a challenge but I think I have all the right stuff now. Horsepower…yep, wagon, hitch…yep, beautiful girl…yep, just need the right sunset on the right day 😉

Horsepower: comes from a Ford PowerStroke Turbo Diesel motor in a F250 SuperDuty Crew Cab 4×4 Truck. We wanted a diesel so there would be no question about towing capability in and through the mountains. The other important checkbox was towing capacity. The trailer (wagon) is pretty stout and weighs in around 9K lbs so we had to eliminate a number of trucks that were in the price range we wanted to stay in. We eventually found this truck which we bought from a dairy farmer up a little east of Greeley, CO. Being a work truck it is showing a little wear and tear but it had only seen two owners, has been well maintained and we even have the receipts to prove it. The only real downside was that coming from a dairy farm there was an embedded cow manure smell to the interior included at no extra charge After a couple of serious cleanings including Rug Doctor units rented from the local Home Depot and an Ozone device I bought we are finally getting it tamed. Which is a good thing as it has a pretty spiffy leather interior (Lariat Package). “Crew Cab” means it has four doors with a full-size back seat. Abby is pleased but still hasn’t mastered getting in an out yet.

The bed of the truck looked like a typical farm truck that got used to haul “whatever” and was pretty rough looking so I invested in a bed liner kit for it which made a huge difference. I also found a used toolbox to go behind the cab so we will still be equipped for repairs when the need arises (notice I said when, not if, no delusional thinking here). Most farm trucks are equipped with what they call a gooseneck hitch for hauling horse and cattle trailers and this one was no exception. But our wagon is a little more upscale than that and we need a fifth wheel hitch to tow it. So, I located a used Reese 16K slider hitch and had a shop in Denver remove the old hitch and install mine. The only thing I have left to do is install some spring helpers to give the suspension a little extra help when towing.

It also has 4-wheel drive which will come in handy given my propensity for wanting to find the “perfect camping site” unvisited by humans for the past hundred years. I suppose I’ll have to adjust my expectations a bit now that I have a 31ft wagon (containing dishes and other breakable things in it) bumping along behind me.

Seasons come and seasons go. We are currently in transition from a season of Success to a season of Exploration. The season of success was defined mostly by societal norms of making lots of money and reaching the top of your career field. While I achieved this it did not end up being particularly fulfilling to the soul and the income seems to get spent nearly as fast as it comes in no matter how big the stream. I found myself becoming increasingly depressed with the prospect of punching my ticket for another ten years or so in the daily grind. It is amazing how we can fool ourselves into thinking we are actually making a living when in reality we have become nothing but drones on a treadmill with our vision being shaped by the media. Not being a conformer at heart I found my view of retirement as the goal was becoming a vacuous perspective. On the one hand it seemed to be slipping away given the hits we took in the housing market and recessions and yet, the way forward as defined by the tunnel vision of success was to see only a distant and dim light (future promises) at the end of the tunnel. One thing seemed readily apparent; plugging through another ten years of the routine was obviously not going to make THAT big of a difference and I wasn’t too sure just how much “life” there was going to be left in me by then.

If… IF… you wait ’till you’re 50… to start living? To start injecting passion, risk and adventure… the “stuff of life” … I got a lil’ bit of news for you… less than 2% of 2% are gonna do it. By the time you’ve ticked off 50 summers, you’re so set in your ways, and so locked down by the ingrained fears and “what ifs”, the likelihood of you changing the things you’ve been doin’ wrong for half a damn century, exists somewhere ‘tween not likely and ain’t gonna happen. The emotional inertia created by the fear and stagnation drilled into you by the system has become so much a part of you that it’s insurmountable by most. — B.K. Gore

So, if you find yourself following a path that is leading nowhere you really want to go there is an obvious solution. STOP, conduct a little situational analysis, and head out in a different direction. This is where the risk and adventure part come in…the “stuff of life” that makes it worth living. Sometimes you come to a fork in the trail and can make a choice. At other times there is no fork and you simply have to go “off-trail”. This is one of those off-trail times. Fortunately, I have experience in this sort of thing…Rhonda can provide a variety of stories about some of our off-trail experiences and we are still here to relate them 😉 The really cool thing about going off-trail is that although you have a basic sense of direction you really don’t know what is around the next bend or over the next hill. Occasionally, you find yourself in a box canyon and have to backtrack but usually there is a way through although it may not be obvious and may require some extra effort.

This is called exploration and people who did that in years past, e.g. Lewis and Clark, were called explorers. You won’t find that listed in the career books these days but one of my life long aspirations was to be one. My vision was modeled more after Star Trek; To boldly go where no man has gone before, but although I reached the rank of Captain it was only a desk I piloted, not a starship. Nevertheless, life is what you make out of it and sometimes you have to grab at the opportunities you have in front of you before it becomes to late. Many quotes have been penned about opportunity lost.

Halting forward progress on the path of life and redirecting is not a simplistic thing the further down the path you find yourself. We are fortunate that we have made some significant reductions along the way which have made the redirection easier; sold the house a few years ago so no mortgage tying us down, moved into a one-bedroom apartment last fall so already have a small footprint in terms of possessions, and still more or less debt-free. This allowed us to re-purpose some assets, submit the Letter of Resignation, and in the spirit of “Go West, young man” purchase a team of horses and a Conestoga wagon. Next week we “hitch up” and head out. 😉

Okay, so I was kinda mean the other day. It’s been known to happen occasionally. We have used our trusty Jeep Grand Cherokee to haul a variety of things for us over the years. After all it has a factory towing package and a V8 motor, so might as well get some use out of the ‘U’ tility part of SUV. The easiest thing it was ever tasked with was pulling a light 5×8 utility trailer that time we moved a few houses down and across the street. It made quite a few trips that time but probably never exceeded 10mph and it was flat terrain. Little did it know what was ahead though.

It got more of a workout that time I found a 1971 SAAB out in western Colorado. That time we rented an auto-dolly from U-Haul and drove out to Grand Junction to pick it up. The drive back took us up over Vail Pass on I-70 and then through Breckenridge and over Hoosier Pass. We had to take it slow and easy going up the passes but the Jeep did well and we got the cartoon car as we came to call it home to Colorado Springs.

When we moved from Colorado Springs to Aurora we rented a 12 ft open trailer to assist with the move and it made a couple of trips up the I-25 speedway hooked to the back of the Jeep.

Shortly after moving to Aurora we found a 16ft enclosed cargo trailer that we bought to replace the monthly costs of a storage unit we had rented when we realized we had more stuff than square footage in our new rental house. We transferred the stuff from the storage unit to the trailer, brought it home, and parked it out back. This trailer also helped facilitate some of our move to Brighton last summer and about the same time we used it to help move a friends stuff into storage down in Colorado Springs. But, alas,the trailer/storage-unit then became surplus as our new landlord did not want it parked at the house. We sold it to a fellow who was moving to Texas.

Most recently the Jeep hauled a 6x12ft enclosed U-Haul trailer full of some of our stuff back to a storage unit in Colorado Springs. Say what? Back to Colorado Springs you say? Well yes, but that is another story…back to the point of this story…so what did I do to scare the Jeep? I backed it up to our most recent trailer acquisition. I thought the Jeep tires were beginning to go flat when it showed up in the rear view mirror.

We are adding a bit of security to the website. In order to access it you will need the password. The password is: CO4FUN which is short for “Colorado for Fun”.

There will be many new posts coming as much change is in the works.

Greetings from Colorado,

Getting an update posted on the website has been on the ‘to do’ list for much too long and this weekend we are having ‘jammie days’ to compensate for all the “un-jammie” days of stress we have had in the last several months. The activity has been immense and much has transpired since we last wrote in June.

Family News: We are Grandparents again! Josh and Selenda had their second boy, a few weeks ago and we have gotten down to see them. He’s a cutie with lots of dark hair like his Papa. His big brother is adjusting to the new normal quite well. Josh is finishing up his Masters degree this fall amid all the family growth while Selenda takes some much deserved time off from her job at Honeywell. Kristina and Daniel are doing well in California. Kristina has decided to pursue a degree in graphic design and is having a ball! She loves her classes and is being pushed to engage in lots of creative projects. We will get together with them here in Colorado over Christmas. Daniel wants desperately to ski – he missed last season while he was deployed and will probably be gone again next Christmas, so it was his request to be able to ski this year. We don’t ski (never learned) but will love to spend time with them in any way possible. We will have a condo in Keystone for almost a week. Some of Daniels family will join us as well. They have become extended family for us as our families were close before the kids married and so after the marriage -they just had their 3 yr anniversary!- we have deepened the bonds and often do holidays together.

Relocation News: Yes, we’ve moved again. Really. We spent the first part of the year looking at opportunities in Colorado Springs, wanting to be close to Josh and Selenda and family. We had a house all ready to rent there but Matt was offered a promotion at his present Aurora location, we knew we had to go to plan ‘B’. Continue reading