More tree activity

Sorry. Time for me to rant a little. I'm up earlier than usual this morning as I'm waiting for the City's insurance adjustor to come talk about my claim for the trees they cut down. Gotta love blood pressure!

The City people, of course, all think it's terrible of me to come after them for this. I'm the bad guy.

All this stress and trouble is actually because the Tree Board chairman has such arrogance and conceit along with utter contempt for other people and their property.

He still doesn't understand why I'm not eternally gratefull for his efforts in my behalf; cutting down and removing those terrible Elm trees and offering to replace them with some new, better trees. Of course, the fact that my trees were adult, large and great shade providers and more importantly...were MINE, is just nit-picking on my part.

Everything about this has been, at best, an irritant. On the worst days, I'd have sold out this property for a tank of gas. Oh well. Summer's coming and I can get out of here and back to West Yellowstone where I belong.

Made it home

I finally made it home again Sunday afternoon. No new adventures in the 190 miles between Colt Angell's house and mine. I even made the trip from Wells, NV to here without a spare tire!

Now, Joann and I have to really get it in gear, selling ads and getting things together for our Gathering on June 4th and 5th. I'll be doing sound at the Gathering in White Sulphur Springs, MT the first weekend in May.

After our Gathering is done I'll start the trips back and forth from West Yellowstone (Parade Rest Ranch) and Virginia City (Virginia City Cafe) while I still try to keep some of my computer repair customers happy.

Hangin' at Wayne's

Well, I made it here ok. Got the camper parked in Wayne Nelson's yard and I'm "ridin' the grubline" in American Falls for a day or two. Atually, we're working on our setlist for the show we will be doing in Virginia City, MT on Memorial Day at the Bale of Hay Saloon.

The wind is still howling ouside and I really don't want to drive in it anyway so working on a bunch of songs is much better.

I'll be on the Friday night Show in St. Anthony, ID this weekend and then I guess I'll be headed home for a while. Got to get going on the Townsend Gathering.

The Adventure Continues

Where do I start? The showcase in Mesa, AZ was a great success, I think. I got a couple of definite bookings, several probables and a bunch of likelies...all starting Dec '10 so they don't do me lots of good right now.

I went to Main Street Billiards after the showcase and tried a tournament. I did my usual 9ball routine. Run 5 or six; basically, do all the work, then leave the last couple of balls for my opponent. No joy in the tournament for me. I left Mesa Wednesday night and headed NW. I stopped at a wide spot between Wickenburg and Kingman for the night then kept on peddling Thursday. A pretty easy trip there except for Hoover Dam where the traffic was being stopped at both ends for security checks. When I got to the top, I stopped at the lookout and waited until the traffic mellowed a little before I kept going. I hit Vegas at about 8PM and just peddled right on through and then took 93 N. This morning was pretty easy and I just kept on moving north. At Panaca, when I fueled, I noticed that the sidewall of one of my back tires was cracked and didn't look good at all. It failed me about 15 miles south of Wells so I had to find a good place to change a tire.

This is the first time I've had to change a tire on this pickup and I was enchanted to find that I don't have all the tools! I had to jerry rig getting the tire out from under the truck, getting it jacked up and all that. Changing a tire (usually a 15 minute job) took me about an hour and a half. I'm in Wells tonight and will head for Wayne's tomorrow. I'm probably going to wing it without a spare until I can get to Wayne's and maybe I can get a used tire someplace. The "spare" I put on looks like one of the original tires for this pickup. It's a great looking Cooper and I wish I had three more of them!

I need a nap!

Winter Driving as bad as I've seen

I left Cedar City, UT yesterday at about 4:30PM. The wind had died down a little and I decided to chance it at least as far as Kanab so I headed east on SR14. I saw the flashing sign that said the road would be impassable to trucks several miles ahead. So what? I'm not a "truck".

About 8 miles from Cedar City I encountered a pretty good snowfall but nothing spectacular. I kept going. A couple of miles later, the snow was coming harder and the wind was blowing it around pretty good. Also, the road was climbing pretty steeply. I kept going. At about 12 miles out, I put my rig in 4WD...and kept going. Not long after that, it was snowing and blowing so hard that I was having a hard time seeing the road in front of me but there was no place to turn my big camper rig around so...I kept going.

The visibility was almost zero, the snow and wind hammering me and still no place to turn around. Things seemed to be leveling off a little as i came around a turn and found a Coke truck parked in a "wide spot" on the westbound side. I stopped and made sure he was ok and asked about what was ahead. He told mt it was worse but
I might be able to turn around a couple of miles ahead. I kept going.

At the top of the grade there were several cars stopped, including a Utah Highway Patrol car. the Patrolman told me that there really wasn't much room to turn around anywhere within about 5 miles ahead but that I had already covered some of the worst of it, other than visibility. I kept going.

Soon, I was at about 5MPH, low gear, 4WD and peering through the windshield, trying to see the tracks of the last idiot who had gone this way. My lane was blown full and when I met other cars I had to bust through drifts to give them room. The windshield wipers where clogging up and I had to keep reaching out and banging the wet snow off of the drivers side wiper. Definitely no place to turn around so...I kept going.

Finally, I came down in elevation enough to be able to get almost to 25MPH and even shifted into 2nd gear. The drivers side wiper shredded so I had about a two inch strip to see through; still following the last guys tracks. I just hoped he knew where he was going!

I was thrilled to see the junction with US89 and an open Conoco station. When I told the guy there that I had just come over from Cedar City he kind of stopped what he was doing and looked at me incredulously. "You came over 14?" he said. I said: "Yeah and not only did I come over 14 just now but I was driving that", pointing to my pickup/camper outside. I asked him how things were from there to Kanab and he just laughed. "If you could drive over 14 in that today, you can definitely make Kanab". They didn't have any windshield wipers so I switched the passengerside/drivers side wipers and headed south. That part of the adventure over.

I'm still wondering if SOMEbody doesn't want me to get to Mesa for some reason. I'm in Tuba City, AZ right now, getting ready to keep on heading south. Who knows what will be next?