Fall at Flathead

I love being at Flathead Lake any time of the year but fall is really nice. It's like a breath of fresh air after a hot dry summer. Those picnic tables are going to be vacant for several months now. How I wish I could transport myself there at lunch on any given day. There's just never enough time to be all the places you want to be.

Birthday and work station

We've been having a remod here at work and I ended up with a pretty nice work station. And for my birthday, and Queenie sent me a very nice fruit selection covered in chocolate! Well it is pretty darn good! I'm tempted to eat the whole thing but I'm going to have to measure my effort. Has my favorite apples (granny smith) covered in chocolate. Doesn't get much better than that!

Giant slalom ski rule change

It was hard taking pictures last weekend in British Columbia as it was overcast most of the time we were there. Hree is a picture I took of the call colors near Wasa B.C. just outside of Cranbrook. Panorama is getting some snow though.

Well I'm looking forward to skiing as winter nears. And I've got a hot pair of Volkl race skis to do the recreational racing with. Now they've changed the rules on giant slalom for the world cup so that GS skis have to have a long radius side cut. But I got some new old stock women's world cup skis that have the shorter radius that used to be allowed for men. Without going into the whole legacy of rule changes that have taken place lately, these women's world cup race stock skis are fully powerful and still have the shorter radius racers like. Of course I could buy some "cheater" race skis but they aren't powerful like the "race stock" skis are.

Bodie Miller spoke out about the rule change that bumped the radius of GS skis up from the 20m range to the mid 30m range. He said that he wasn't out to win over another racer, he just wanted to ski as well has he could and the new rules for GS ski radius don't allow that. It will force everyone to skid turns instead of carving clean turns, and that's a step backwards. He went on to say he could go to the ski shop and buy recreational skis that he could ski on better than the World Cup skis Head could provid him with. And that's really sad.

For someone like me at the bottom of the ski racing food chain it just means, yes I can still get cheater skis, but I can't get powerful race skis that will carve well. So the rule change to Giant Slalom skis sucks all the way around. Going to have to hang on to all of those old race skis..

Canned Ham

Since I got the Aristocrat, I've taken more of an interest vintage travel trailers. I always had one actually. They are so cool! I just want to live in one.. I want to hear the rain on the metal roof.. I want to play my telecaster and hear the natural reverb.. I want to wake up in the morning and smell the propane burning as I perk my coffee. I want to eat spam for breakfast in a canned ham!

And I want an aluminum Christmas tree too..

Fall mornings and GOP politics

I wish spring and fall would last longer. I love the crisp fall mornings along the river. Here's a picture of the valley as the sun came up. I work over there in the distance. There's actually a river between me and the mountains in the background but it's out of view. Soon the state line bridge will be open and that will make my commute to work much better. I might even put the headlight back on my bike as it's going to be dark after work soon. I find myself trying to finish up things I should have done during the summer, but then it was too hot and now it's too cold. I did crawl up on the roof and paint my chimney at lunch though.

I've been watching the Republican debates. I honestly don't understand the popularity of Rick Perry. He seems to have absolutely nothing to offer except that his campaign has a lot of money. He wants to be president but didn't enter the race with an economic plan as he admitted in one debate. He criticized Cain's 9 9 9, but it seems that what Perry offers so far is 0 0 0... It makes me think that even if he does have a plan now on his website or something it's an afterthought or something one of his staffers came up with.. Donald Trump said of Cain's 9 9 9, that it favored the rich like himself, and not the lower and middle class but "at least it's something".. I guess people are starting to figured it out though. Since they've seen Perry in action he's dropped to 3rd in the poles behind Romney and Cain. It frightens me that Rumsfeld advised Perry, and makes me wonder if we really need another governor from Texas as president until the country recovers from the last one.

Hunting camp with the Aristocrat

Here's a picture of the Aristocrat travel trailer and the old Ford F250 up at hunting camp. It was a good first test of the trailer. It got down below freezing at night and I stayed warm thanks to my Hydroflame furnace which worked perfect. My friend helped me start the propane fridge and that also worked great. Those things if working are worth more than what I had to pay for this whole trailer. So everything works except the tail lights. I used some magnetic trailer lights for towing a vehicle and just stuck them to the bumper of the trailer for this trip. And below is a shot of my bunk. Since it was just me in the Aristocrat, there was no need to make down the table.

Travel trailer interior pictures

Here are interior pictures of the new/ old Aristocrat travel trailer. I took them when I first went to look at it so the owner had a bunch of stuff in it. The dinette is in the front with bunk above, and the kitchen in the rear with toilet room on the right. I wanted a dinette in the front or rear with windows all the way around because when you are inside it's a great view of the forest or whatever and it makes a great place to sit and sleep. That was a major priority for me.

There's a small toilet in the bathroom but no sink in there, and the toilet works so that's a bonus. There's a little water damage in the corners but it isn't leaking now and it's pretty minor. It's not enough for me to want to tear into it. The stove works as does the furnace. I haven't tried the fridge yet but I suspect it will work also. It runs on propane only.

Vintage Travel Trailer

Queenie and I took the 1968 Aristocrat travel trailer out for its first road trip over the weekend. We made a tour of a couple of the little lakes here in eastern Washington and had lunch in it along the shore of Hauser Lake in Idaho. We are going to have fun with this! I got a screaming deal on it too ($450) and it really doesn't need much work inside. The paneling and cabinets are nice, the upholstrey has been re-done and it has new curtains. It's not perfect, but It's very clean for how old it is and I found that they can be advertised as clean and be totally filthy. The wiring needs some work and it has one broken window but other than a few minor things it's good to go.

I've been wanting one of these trailers for years and have looked at quite a few. I looked at various brands, but I really wanted the same thing my parents used to own, and this is almost exactly the same except it has a different floor plan. Theirs was an Aristocrat Lo Liner, and this one doesn't have the Lo Liner logo on it but the shape is the same. I wanted something light vintage and small. I also bought the same vintage tow vehicle my parents use have, an old International Scout. It's also slightly different than the one they had but about as close as you can get. It's the same color and everything. They had a Scout 800A and this one is a Scout 800B. It has a tow package on it too. The Scout needs a little more work to take it on long road trips but should be fine for day trips or short overnighters.

It's funny how we become our parents.. In some ways anyway..

The holiday season

I've been thinking about not looking forward to the holiday season again. I've written about it before. The party at work, the insanity at all of the stores. If I hear that consumers aren't spending enough one more time I think I'll barf.

I'm always happy when the whole mess is over. Here's what I wrote about going to church and I talked about church hymns being some sort of honesty test. Like if you're not singing with enough conviction, a trap door might open and you'd fall straight into hell. Well I guess church tends to bring out the guilt in me...

***

I had to fake my way through a few church hymns. I'm a pretty good faker. I have a pretty small singing range. Three or four notes.. They had the words to the music printed in the hand out they give you to let you know what's going on. But you could also look the hymns up in the hymnal if you wanted to read the music. One of the hymns was really complicated. I was looking at the score in the hymnal thinking, how do people fake something this complicated? So then I faked it with a thoughtful confused look on my face because the choir is up there looking straight back at all of the people in the congregation and probably trying to decide who is faking it. That's what I'd do if I were in the choir... Then I got to thinking how church hymns might just be some sort of honesty test...

There were the usual people at church. The young and the old. A pastor with a peaceful smile. I'm sure he knows who's faking it... A little girl with a battery powered candle who stood a the pew in front of us and then just dropped onto her bottom in a seated position with the weight of a bird. It gave me cause to think,.. If I stood on the pew and just and just dropped onto my butt I'd probably throw my back out...

But there was one older lady who really stood out. She had a red sweater on with a red flashing Christmas light necklace. I had to admire her courage for wearing that. This was after all a candle light service and they were going to turn the lights off at some point... Then I thought what if I wore a necklace like that?... What would people think? What if we all did? What if 17% of the population wore flashing light necklaces?..

As usual it was hard for me to keep my mind on the service, but I'm sort of glad I went.

Wild Horse Island Pine Tree

Here's a vertical version of a tree I took a pic of on Wild Horse Island. I'm using three different browsers and they seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to blogger.

But yes, and duh.. I did have my editor set on medium picture size and didn't notice. Well the wheel's going around but there aint no hamster...

Hey that could be a country and western song..