My car Almost caught on fire today.

Almost I say. I had just picked it up from the shop where it has some engine work done on it. I'm driving down the road and I smell gasoline...

Uh huh so what do you think... It's not me It must be that guy who just passed me. Nope. The smell doesn't go away and then the car stops... Hmmm.

Someone comes by and tells me that there is a large amount of something coming out of the engine compartment.

OK That's it. I pull over and sure enough it me and my car is spewing gas into the engine compartment. Apparently the gas line separated right where it curled over the top of the manifold. Clip just gave way.

No Fire. Thankfully and the shop came out and fixed it. Owner gave me his own car to drive for the day. Catastrophe averted

Mountain Bike ride in Horse Gulch -- Durango Colorado

So my oldest daughter gets out of school today and the school has a planned mountain bike ride up horse gulch. This trail is located off of Route 3 College Drive (I think) It heads uphill right away and then opens up into a great meadow and the trails scatter all over for miles. We just did an easy loop through the meadow.

Awesome trails and they are great for trail running too. I can't wait to get out there to run.

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Man I just feel bad for her.

If you ever wanted a "Do Over" this is it.

Michael Colca Furniture maker

I met this man and his wonderful family while we both were in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was very impressed with his work and wanted to point it out to all. He crafts handmade Furniture in the Arts and Crafts Style.

Check him out. www.michaelcolca.com

Amazing Ladder Tricks

Things you should never do with ladders.



The rest are here

Not that anyone is reading, But

I'm finally back home after what has been a marathon month and a half.

• Driven across the country 3 times (Twice in a truck)
• Moved my entire household
• Put kids in new school
• Watched the stock market drop 10% and volatility increase to 39. Yikes

Now today for the first time I am starting to get the routine back. Get up, get the coffee Blog a little and start in on my list. So far so good.

Can this be any more difficult?

All I want is to transfer my license from one state to another. I am moving so I should be able to hand in my license from one state and get another from the new state. Apparently not...

The second state so far does not accept my name because it changed when I got married. They do not like the fact that my current license does not have my full name (including middle) on it. Well it doesn't because the first state only has room in the computer for my middle initial.

Is my passport enough proof? No

Is it enough that the federal government has used my name for the last 13 years? Nope.

Their answer (Colorado that is. Yes, Colorado is the new state) They tell me I have to go get a name change from the local court. WHAT??

OK,so I go to court and tell them I want my name changed from what it is to what it is. You've got to be kidding me.

Next step is to see if they have some sort of appeal process. Ugggh.

Remember I said I was done moving! NOT

I'm sitting in the ABQ Albuquerque airport waiting for my Southwest flight back to NH. Nice... I'm heading back to pickup the rest of our stuff and then drive across the country. Yup I'm doing that again. That will make 3 trips from NH to Colorado in the last month and a half. This is probably a record for me.

It will be nice to get it all done. Hopefully I'll get a nicer Penske rental truck this time. The other one was not that bad. It was actually pretty good. I'm rambling now. The drive will be long, but at least it will be done.

What do you do on your birthday?

Had the big 40 today. You know it really is mostly a regular day. However, we did head up to Lime Creek just north of Durango and went flyfishing. After that we went further north to South Mineral Creek in Silverton area. I fished using a parachute royal wulf attractor . This one was slightly different as it had four rubber bungee type cords sticking out of each side to mimic legs. This pattern works really well up in the creeks here north of Durango.

After that the kids wanted to take me to Tequilas. They always like the birthday thing there because you get flan and then have happy birthday sung to you in spanish. All in all a good day.

More on my "Quest" saga

Got the modem today. Did everything that it asked me to do. Then got to the CD installation.
...
...
...
...
Nothing.
...
Sigh. So I called tech support. They had this minor problem fixed in NO time. I am up and running here. Modem works great. Quest customer service gets passing grades today.

Nice start to our phone service.

Got our phone line set up through Quest the other day. Line went active this morning.

First phone call came in this morning... Wrong number. Uh oh. Even worse the person was looking for some steel company. I wonder if the number belonged to that company in a past life. I suppose it could be worse... It could of been Lindsey Lohan's old cell number. I would have said Paris Hilton's but her's was already given out.

Have I mentioned Heartwood Cohousing?

Don't think so. This is where we moved to. Heartwood is a cohousing community located in Bayfield, Colorado.

Heartwood is physically setup like cluster housing. There are 24 different living units. Some are duplexes and some are single family houses. (There are actually a couple for sale). The houses are all located close together. Surrounding this particular cohousing community is about 200 acres of pasture and forest.

There are lots of opportunities to interact with your neighbors, and for me this is one of the primary reasons that we chose to move to a place such as this. You can learn more about cohousing in general at http://www.cohousing.org/. That is where we started when we first heard about it.

My last moving post?

I probably can't be that lucky that this move is over...

Dropped off the Penske rental Truck yesterday down in Santa Fe. That went well, except that the drive sucked. I need to be done driving for a while.

Had a good experience with a moving company here in Durango. Aaron's moving company. 970-382-8589 They came recommended by the previous owner. They showed up with two guys and had the truck emptied in about 2 hours. Well done and no damage to the furniture or other stuff. They even moved a small piano.

High marks for Penske Rental Truck

Have to hand it to Penske rental trucks. I drove the truck across country 2500 miles. I had a minor engine problem so I called the Penske customer service.

I spoke with Lee. He got me connected with a Penske service center on a Sunday afternoon. Well done. I talked with the guy. He had me come in and he checked it right away. NO WAITING.

Admittedly this was slightly out of my way, but not much. Here's the best part from a customer service point of view. After I had had the truck looked at, and was already back on my way, the Original customer service rep called me on my cell phone to check and see how everything was going.

Reward excellent service. 5 stars to Penske. I would definitely rent a truck from them again.

Wow it sucks to drive this far

So I'm tooling along in a rented Penske Truck. Well not right now, but I was yesterday. I left NH in a raging thunderstorm, got soaked and then climbed up into the cab of this really large 26 foot moving truck.

Penske came highly recommended to me by the mover Central lakes Region Movers. These guys were fabulous, friendly and worked hard. They had a difficult job with me because I could not get all of my stuff into one truck. Bummer. Anyway... Penske trucks are supposedly newer and better kept up than Uhaul trucks are. I have been happy with truck so far, except for the fact that I was told that the truck would have a CD player in it. Well, this may be a minor problem but I am driving like 2700 miles and I want to listen to my Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. All that said. The Penske truck has a loading area that does not have the wheel wells intruding up into where you pack the stuff. Just about everyone I talked to said rent a Penske over a Uhaul. The Penske also cost less.

So I fixed the problem and got something to convert the CD to my Cassette player in the truck. All is OK.

Life for us goes on as we move towards this new beginning and adventure in Colorado. More to come later.

Turn A PENCIL Into A LIGHT ! - video powered by Metacafe

Cool. I wonder if Edison tried lead too. He probably did.

When the Power of Love is Greater than the Love of Power

Then the world will know peace.