From snow to fires!

I left Las Vegas yesterday morning in the chilly morning desert air for the final run towards the west. The sky was pretty hazy, but I figured since it was chilly, it must've been precipitation (in the desert though?!). I got about 30 miles outside of Vegas and started to smell the smoke. It didn't get really bad until I was a little north of Los Angeles when there was actually soot falling out of the sky. Amazingly, about 10 miles south of LA, the sky cleared up and I could hardly tell that there were fires burning out of control behind me.

As I rolled into Whit & Kathie's driveway in the late afternoon yesterday, I couldn't believe that I had ridden over 1500 miles through 5 states! It passed so quickly! OK, the day riding in 40 degree temps didn't pass by that quickly!!! My Harley ran beautifully and mercifully, I didn't encounter any precipitation the whole trip! Once again, I have to marvel at how little we actually need in this world. Two bags on my big plus saddlebags contained all I needed for the week I spent on the road. Admittedly, the key is having a functioning credit card!!! As I left an electronic transaction trail of my journey through the southwest, I thought about how easy it would be for someone to track my path. It's hard to imagine back to a time when folks had to pay cash as they made their way out west! I consider myself pretty flexible when it comes to traveling, but I have to admit to getting annoyed the few times I pulled into a service station that didn't have a pay-at-the-pump pumps! How inconvenient to go inside to pay!!!!

Since I've been in my new state of residence, I've spent my time hanging out with Whit & Kathie. I'm afraid it won't be long before Whit tires of Kathie and I ganging up on him! The presence of my Harley in their garage was the catalyst Whit needed to finally take in his Victory cruiser for service to become road worthy again! He has a sport bike, but I think he realized that we won't be doing many roadtrips if Kathie has to ride on the back of his sport bike for long periods of time!

As always during moves, I'm feeling a bit unsettled. I'm a creature of habit and I get a little frazzled when my things aren't in their "place". I'm going to try to enjoy my last day off the work grid tomorrow before Monday when I'll have to face the hundred or so emails that piled up in my work mailbox during my week on the road. The rest of 2007 will be pretty hectic as I travel back and forth between Colorado and California during this transition time. The saving grace is that I'm in warm weather now and have some friends around me who have incriminating stories about me dating back to my Navy days!!!

I'm not sure what the next adventure will be, but hopefully I'll be reporting that my house in Colorado Springs has rented and that I've found a place to move my things into here in California! I'll go back and add pictures to the posts I did from the road on my blackberry when I can, so feel free to revisit those posts to see how well you visualized my trip!