Slide awnings don’t seem to be designed for use in snowy situations. Don’t get me wrong; I think slide awnings are a good thing. I think they just don’t go well with snow. The slides go out. We get bigger rooms inside. The slide awnings protect the top of the slide from all that stuff that happens to the outside of the motorhome. They keep the top of the slide room from bringing all that “outside” back inside when the room is retracted. They did their job. They collected a lot of snow, keeping it from accumulating on the top of the slide. The canvas sags under the weight. Snow accumulates. Now we have a half-foot of snow on top of the awnings. We retract the slide, the awning doesn’t retract into its spool, it just bunches up on top of the slide room. The slide doesn’t close well with all that stuff bunched up against it. What to do? We’re supposed to leave tomorrow. Do we just wait for the snow to melt before we move? Judy suggested we brush the snow off with a broom. I’ve done that once before, from the roof of the motorhome. I survived that trip to the snow covered slick rounded roof of the motorhome to brush the accumulated snow off the slide awnings. I don’t want to do that again. We have a little step-ladder in the house. That’s not tall enough. We have a big step-ladder strapped onto the back of the motorhome. That’s not tall enough either. Still can’t reach the top of the slides with the broom. But Judy… Judy is so smart. The step-ladder is tall enough to reach to the top of the Jeep. The Jeep is tall enough to reach to the top of the slides. Judy pulled the Jeep next to the motorhome. I climbed on top of the Jeep, and got all the snow brushed off the slide awnings. A little more messing around and we got every slide to retract just like they’re supposed to. Victory! Slide awnings are not designed for use in snowy situations. So what do we make of this? Do we go in search of a better design for slide awnings; an improved design that will allow us to move from place to place in snow country? Gee. Seems like the only other alternative would be to move the motorhome to some place that doesn’t get snow. Difficult decisions.
Basalt
Stormy weather. Wind, snow and cold. For as long as we’ve been here in the Roaring Fork Valley, the weather hasn’t mattered. It is what it is. Now we’re starting to watch it more closely. We’ll be heading across the continental divide to our next assignment in a couple days, weather permitting. Got to catch the weather window; ride the blue sky east. Saw a bumper sticker we liked: “If you’re lucky enough to live in the mountains, you’re lucky enough.” Good attitude.
Football
Still thinking about the Broncos’ win, a win with a total offense of just seventeen points, and I think I’ve figured out the problem. It’s not that the Broncos offense sucks. The problem is that they have been playing against such good defenses. In fact, I think that all the defenses in the league must be well above average.
I recognized a bird!
At Pete’s Pond! Not the little birds bouncing around in the bushes, but big ones, standing right in the edge of the water. Not the Francolins running around squabbling, we’ve seen them before on Maui. They’re not native to Maui, they were imported, but now wander the grounds of expensive resorts, chuckling and trumpeting each morning, making it sound like a tropical jungle. No. I saw an Emperor Goose, a native of Europe, standing in the shallows. We saw one once before on the Texas Coast. We puzzled over it for days, knowing it was something exotic, something that didn’t belong in South Texas. We knew it wasn’t just some stray bird, having lost its way during some windblown migration, because he was with another bird totally out of context, a black necked swan. The black necked swan was easier to figure out. He’s a native of South America, and we found him on the web within a day. For some reason the Emperor Goose took longer, but we knew there was something unusual going on to have two exotic birds, from two different parts of the world, floating free in the shallows of the Laguna Madre. We found out later that there is an exotic bird collector in the neighborhood of Rockport/Fulton, and you have to be careful about counting any unusual birds you see in the neighborhood. Given that, we had to give back the Mute Swan out of range we had identified and counted the year before. Not that we can count the Emperor Goose we saw on the internet on our North American Life List, but sitting here in Basalt Colorado, I got to see a bird on the other side of the planet, compliments of an internet webcam, and recognize it! How cool is that.
Football
Go Broncos!