Author: Steve

Friday I changed my diet to avoid starchy food because I found out I feel better
when I don’t eat it. When I did that, some weight fell off as well. My
weight stabilized in the low 160s. In the last few weeks, however, it has
popped back up five pounds. Now I’m in the upper 160s. I’m the same
person, doing the same things, and eating the same food. What happened? What happened? Ting happened. That’s right. It’s Ting’s fault. My back and shoulder were hurting so I
thought I’d give Ting the acupuncturist a shot at it. He’s good at pain
relief. He did a pretty good job on the shoulder. He did a medium job on
the back. Problem is, every time he fixes something, I go out and play
racquetball on it the next night and make it hurt again. The other problem
is that when you go see Ting, he doesn’t just fix the body part you brought
for him to fix, he messes with other stuff. Other stuff I don’t understand.
He talks about energy paths, and meridians, and other stuff I can’t
remember. I think he messed with my metabolism. It’s Ting’s fault. I dropped Judy off at the adult day-care center on my way to work this
morning. She has that pass. Seventeen pools terraced into the hillside
overlooking the San Juan River, all fed by the hot springs, all ultimately
emptying into the river. They’ll occupy her until lunch. The people on both sides of us left. The first to go was the guy from Del
Rio Texas, in a fifth wheel that looked suspiciously like a converted stock
trailer, up here with his son for a week. He was fun to talk to. Anybody
catch Survivor, with the guy called Big Tom from somewhere in the south? He
would get to talking, and everyone would just look at each other, stumped.
If he got excited about something and started talking fast, you couldn’t
figure out what he was talking about. The guy from Del Rio was like that.
What??? But the people that took his place were bad. They had two rotten dogs that
barked and growled at our Annie. The guy on the other side was from
Beaumont Texas. We liked him, but he left too. The bad people on the left
left. The guy with the chows pulled in on the right side. He takes good
care of them though. He’s a better neighbor. Then the Samboree happened.
A bunch of “group” people. All from Los Alamos New Mexico. All Good Sam
members. They’re all together. There are a lot of them. I think we’ve met
them all…. What a great bunch of people. Lots of people. Lots of pets.
All the pets are well behaved, or at least well managed. These people “get
it”. They are wonderful neighbors. They even invited us to their
“Breakfast in a Bag” get together tomorrow morning. Maybe we’ll check that
out. Interesting array of tow cars. Five Jeeps in a row: two Wranglers, two
Cherokees, another Wrangler. Every day I get to come home for lunch. Sitting by the river in the lawn
chair today, eating lunch, watching the metallic iridescent blue flash off
the backs of tree swallows swooping over the stream in the sun. It’s a nice
way to spend lunch. Finished up at work today. Got it completely wrapped, and the report
completely written. We didn’t have the right people in town to have the
exit conference, but I’ll be in the neighborhood next week, so I’ll come
back here on Wednesday for the exit conference. I think Judy managed to sample every pool at the hot springs. They all have
names. The Waterfall. The Cliffs. Clouds in my Coffee. She even ventured
into the one called the Lobster Pot. Briefly. I’m going to miss the birding here. But then we’re still stuck at 294 on
the bird count. Guess it’s time to move on. At least get us to Ouray so we
can pick up the black swifts. Then we need to find our way down to the
Grand Canyon neighborhood to pick up the condors. I thought we might get
there from here, southwestern Colorado, but it doesn’t look like we’re going
to do any long weekend excursions. The condors might have to wait until our
June trip to Arizona. It turns out there was no need for my lunchtime run today. I went off this
afternoon to snap a picture of Treasure Falls and I found myself on the
trailhead. I thought of Stephanie, the trail runner, my inspiration, on the
way up, and ran the entire thing. It was switchbacks. Steep. But it felt
good. I marveled at the falls. I ran back down. I feel unreasonably
strong. Strong. I need to go play a racquetball tournament, or hike the
Grand Canyon, or something. That’s it! I’m going to go run the Grand
Canyon. Well, maybe I’ll run down, and walk back out. They have thirty-five acre riverside lots for sale here. That wouldn’t be
bad. Thirty-five acres on this river. Tomorrow. Off to Silverton. We haven’t driven there on the road yet this
trip; just rode the train there. The campground manager came by our site tonight. She said they liked us so
much they just wanted to give us a present. And did! That’s never happened
before. That’s it. I don’t want to leave. I’m anxious to move on to the
next job, and the next adventure, but I like it here too much. I don’t want
to go.
Friday I changed my diet to avoid starchy food because I found out I feel better
when I don’t eat it. When I did that, some weight fell off as well. My
weight stabilized in the low 160s. In the last few weeks, however, it has
popped back up five pounds. Now I’m in the upper 160s. I’m the same
person, doing the same things, and eating the same food. What happened? What happened? Ting happened. That’s right. It’s Ting’s fault. My back and shoulder were hurting so I
thought I’d give Ting the acupuncturist a shot at it. He’s good at pain
relief. He did a pretty good job on the shoulder. He did a medium job on
the back. Problem is, every time he fixes something, I go out and play
racquetball on it the next night and make it hurt again. The other problem
is that when you go see Ting, he doesn’t just fix the body part you brought
for him to fix, he messes with other stuff. Other stuff I don’t understand.
He talks about energy paths, and meridians, and other stuff I can’t
remember. I think he messed with my metabolism. It’s Ting’s fault. I dropped Judy off at the adult day-care center on my way to work this
morning. She has that pass. Seventeen pools terraced into the hillside
overlooking the San Juan River, all fed by the hot springs, all ultimately
emptying into the river. They’ll occupy her until lunch. The people on both sides of us left. The first to go was the guy from Del
Rio Texas, in a fifth wheel that looked suspiciously like a converted stock
trailer, up here with his son for a week. He was fun to talk to. Anybody
catch Survivor, with the guy called Big Tom from somewhere in the south? He
would get to talking, and everyone would just look at each other, stumped.
If he got excited about something and started talking fast, you couldn’t
figure out what he was talking about. The guy from Del Rio was like that.
What??? But the people that took his place were bad. They had two rotten dogs that
barked and growled at our Annie. The guy on the other side was from
Beaumont Texas. We liked him, but he left too. The bad people on the left
left. The guy with the chows pulled in on the right side. He takes good
care of them though. He’s a better neighbor. Then the Samboree happened.
A bunch of “group” people. All from Los Alamos New Mexico. All Good Sam
members. They’re all together. There are a lot of them. I think we’ve met
them all…. What a great bunch of people. Lots of people. Lots of pets.
All the pets are well behaved, or at least well managed. These people “get
it”. They are wonderful neighbors. They even invited us to their
“Breakfast in a Bag” get together tomorrow morning. Maybe we’ll check that
out. Interesting array of tow cars. Five Jeeps in a row: two Wranglers, two
Cherokees, another Wrangler. Every day I get to come home for lunch. Sitting by the river in the lawn
chair today, eating lunch, watching the metallic iridescent blue flash off
the backs of tree swallows swooping over the stream in the sun. It’s a nice
way to spend lunch. Finished up at work today. Got it completely wrapped, and the report
completely written. We didn’t have the right people in town to have the
exit conference, but I’ll be in the neighborhood next week, so I’ll come
back here on Wednesday for the exit conference. I think Judy managed to sample every pool at the hot springs. They all have
names. The Waterfall. The Cliffs. Clouds in my Coffee. She even ventured
into the one called the Lobster Pot. Briefly. I’m going to miss the birding here. But then we’re still stuck at 294 on
the bird count. Guess it’s time to move on. At least get us to Ouray so we
can pick up the black swifts. Then we need to find our way down to the
Grand Canyon neighborhood to pick up the condors. I thought we might get
there from here, southwestern Colorado, but it doesn’t look like we’re going
to do any long weekend excursions. The condors might have to wait until our
June trip to Arizona. It turns out there was no need for my lunchtime run today. I went off this
afternoon to snap a picture of Treasure Falls and I found myself on the
trailhead. I thought of Stephanie, the trail runner, my inspiration, on the
way up, and ran the entire thing. It was switchbacks. Steep. But it felt
good. I marveled at the falls. I ran back down. I feel unreasonably
strong. Strong. I need to go play a racquetball tournament, or hike the
Grand Canyon, or something. That’s it! I’m going to go run the Grand
Canyon. They have thirty-five acre riverside lots for sale here. That wouldn’t be
bad. Thirty-five acres on this river. Tomorrow. Off to Silverton. We haven’t driven there on the road yet this
trip; just rode the train there. The campground manager came by our site tonight. She said they liked us so
much they just wanted to give us a present. And did! That’s never happened
before. That’s it. I don’t want to leave. I’m anxious to move on to the
next job, and the next adventure, but I like it here too much. I don’t want
to go.

_____________________________________________
From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 9:18 PM
To: Bill Taylor (E-mail); David Taylor (E-mail); Tom Taylor (E-mail)
Subject: 30a Lunch on the river.

Hot springs pools.

Thursday. I’ve been thinking about racquetball. I think I had a backhand breakthrough
just before I left on this trip. The backhand is supposed to be the most
natural stroke in racquet sports, but given that we all grew up hitting
balls with bats from one side, we tend to favor the forehand. I’m happy
with my forehand shot. It is mechanically sound, consistent, and I think
it’s as good as it’s going to get. The backhand, I’ve been working on, but
it is still a level below the forehand. Given that it is supposed to be the
most natural stroke, though, that just doesn’t seem right. Also, given that
every once in awhile, I hit a monster shot off the backhand, leaves me
convinced that there is room for improvement. If only I can discover what
goes right when I hit that occasional great clean powerful shot. I think I got it! It’s all in the wrist. You have to come through the ball
flat at the point of contact, just like you do with the forehand, but after
that, it’s all about the wrist. If you keep the wrist flat after you pass
through the ball, it restricts the follow-through. If you let the wrist go
right after impact, and let it roll palm up, it allows a full follow-though,
which provides that missing ingredient for a smooth powerful shot. It’s not quite ready for prime time. If you let the wrist go a little too
soon, you just hit the ball into the floor. It’ll take a few thousand more
hits, just drilling, so it happens naturally. But when I do get it, look
out. Although my new backhand may not actually result in any more
points scored, it will make a better noise when the ball hits the wall. Judy thought she would have loads of leisure time on her hands, but not so.
She is busy every day with errands, people to meet, meals, laundry, hot
springs; you know. She’d better quit messing around and stay home and do
some laundry soon. The clothes hamper is full. Motorhomes always have a propane hot water heater. It’s not very big, but
it has a very fast recovery. When we bought this motorhome we were pleased
to discover that not only do we have the propane hot water heater, we have
an electric one as well. When we’re plugged into shore power, we don’t have
to use any propane for the hot water heater at all. If we want to take two
showers in a row, though, and make sure we have plenty of hot water, we can
run both hot water heaters at once, and improve the recovery rate. In fact,
the recovery rate is so good, I got to wondering if I could run it out of
hot water at all, so I took a hot shower, and timed it. A ten gallon hot
water heater, electric and propane both running, fifteen minutes. It took a
fifteen minute shower to run out a ten gallon hot water heater! I’m
enjoying the luxury of full hookups. Did I mention my new birding binoculars? My new wonderful birding
binoculars? Thanks to our friend David from Wild Birds Unlimited, they were
waiting for us at the Pagosa Riverside Campground when we arrived. My old
ones were 8×35. These are 8×42. The 8 magnification is the same, but the
42 relates to more power at the light gathering end. Good optics. Great
clarity. An additional bonus is the close focus range. These can focus on
something only five feet away. Judy’s, by comparison, can’t focus any
closer than twenty feet away. She sometimes finds herself too close to
birds to see them well. Not me! It’s nice to have binoculars specifically
designed for what we’re using them for. A scrub jay visited the feeder today. We had a nuthatch on the tree, a
grosbeak on the seed feeder, and a hummingbird on the hummingbird feeder.
Then the hummingbird flew over to the seed feeder and landed on it. The
grosbeak flew to the hummingbird feeder. It reminded us of Annie and Rags.
Neither will eat their own food. They each just want to eat whatever the
other one is supposed to be eating. Now the white-breasted nuthatch is on the seed feeder again. What’s he
doing on a seed feeder? He’s not a feeder bird. He eats bugs from the bark
of trees. Nevermind. I just looked him up. He likes sunflower seeds too.
We’re feeding Wild Birds Unlimited “no mess” seed. It includes sunflower
seeds. No shells. No mess on the ground. Ooh. Just spotted a house finch. That’s the first one we’ve seen here. I
never heard it, so I didn’t’ even know they were here. Oops. There’s a brown-headed cowbird. A two dozen deer day.

It’s a funky old campground. But we’re getting to love it here. The pondside sites.