Steve and Judy's Travels!

With only one game remaining in the preseason, the Broncos are undefeated.
I think they’re going all the way. Racquetball in Grand Junction. Racquetball in Cortez. Racquetball in Las
Vegas. I don’t ever have a match, so I just go hit the ball in an empty
court and lurk. I watch for someone else that might want to play. On the way into the courts in Las Vegas, I saw a guy hitting in another
court. He was kind of old, didn’t look to be in very good shape, and his
shots were weak. There wasn’t anything there for me, so I went on to my
court and started warming up my shots. Shortly, here he came, the guy with
nothing, to introduce himself and invite me to play a game. Oh well. He was properly hospitable and gave me the serve to start. I was careful
with him and didn’t serve it too hard. He returned it well. After ten
minutes, I was well beyond being careful with him. All we had done is trade
serves, with only the occasional point scored. I was down four to one. His
stroke mechanics are horrible. He has no power. What he has is a game that
puts the other guy in a position to hit a weak shot, then he steps up and
capitalizes on it. He has a game! I like to outhit the other guy if I can. All I have to do is hit the
perfect backhand power shot from the deepest corner of the back court. An
offensive shot from the back court that is perfectly executed is a beautiful
thing. However, an offensive shot that is almost right is much worse than a
mediocre defensive shot that is designed to move the other person around in
the court and get them out of position. An offensive shot that just misses
comes back out to the center of the court for the other guy to put away. I
played the game I wanted to play. I hit it hard. I broke away in the
middle part and got a comfortable lead, but somehow that evaporated and he
was ahead again by the end of the game. I was down twelve to fourteen when
I got the serve back, got lucky, and served out the game. Thirty minutes to
play one game! I won it…….. by one point! I’ve been working on maintaining my shots. Guess I need to work on my
scouting skills too.

The Beaver has landed. After all our buzzing back and forth between
Washington and Texas, we’ve settled in Colorado for three weeks of jobs in
the Roaring Fork Valley. Three weeks at one place! Can you imagine that?
We’re at an RV Park in Basalt. The jobs are in Glenwood, Carbondale, and
Glenwood. It was cool in Raton this morning, forty-six degrees. Drove two hundred
miles. Had lunch with Matt, Kari, Alex, and Steven. Drove another two
hundred miles, and here we are. Seventy-five degree day. We ran the air
conditioners nonstop in all that hot weather. Now we’ll get to run the
heaters some. Looking forward to a new client tomorrow. Hope it’s an easy one. Well, it
doesn’t really have to be easy, I just want it to be one where all the
pieces come together by the end of the week.

Like I said, it was cooler and dryer outside last night. We slept at the
same temperature as always inside, we set the air conditioning on 60
degrees. When we got up in the morning, the outside of the motorhome didn’t
look like a giant glass of iced tea, covered in condensation, on a hot
summer day down south. And the first time we opened the door to go
outside… all the glass and mirrors inside did not immediately fog up. It
was cooler and dryer. White winged doves, yellow rumped warblers, curve bill thrashers, and cactus
wrens. Have you ever driven from Big Spring Texas to Lubbock or Amarillo? It is
sooooo flat. There are towns named after how flat it is. La Mesa,
Plainview, Levelland. We have been to Plainview and it is aptly named. You
can certainly see plains in all directions. We have been tempted to divert
to Levelland but haven’t yet. We are certainly curious to see what
distinguishes Levelland from the surrounding countryside. A perfect place for cotton. Cotton, cotton, cotton for all those miles.
Two hundred miles of cotton…. And oilwells. The ground is perfect for
growing cotton and oilwells…. and that funny little plant that looks like
tiny corn but with a big puffy thing in the center. It appears that they
harvest the big puffy thing in the center and leave the little corn plant
kind of thing in the ground. We haven’t figured out what that is yet. We
haven’t stopped to look. We haven’t stopped to ask. Big Spring to Lubbock to Amarillo to Raton New Mexico. We did it. We did
all the leaving it took to actually leave Texas. And in a few more days
I’ll probably get that song refrain about “Happiness is Lubbock Texas in my
rearview mirror.” out of my head as well. Becky, have I thanked you enough
for bringing that up? Tomorrow, Colorado.

Left in the afternoon. Got off the island and through Corpus Christi.
Stopped for the night at Choke Canyon State Park. We didn’t see the
javelina, the raccoons, or the vermilion flycatcher. We did see the deer,
black-necked stilts, white-faced ibis, grebes, cormorants, caracara,
sissor-tail flycatcher, roadrunner, wild turkey, barn swallow, cliff
swallow, cave swallow, and chimney swifts. We have a job in Glenwood Springs on Monday.

We need somebody to invent something. Know those two pins that connect the
tow gear to the front of the tow car? You have to have two of them or the
whole thing doesn’t work…. those two pins. Know how when you pull the
pins to disconnect the car, you have the disconnected tow bar in one hand
and the second pin in the other. You have to set the pin down, fold up the
tow gear, then remember to turn back and put the put the pin back in the
bracket on the tow car so it will be there the next time you hook up. That
pin. Someone should invent a pin that stays attached to the tow car at all times
so people that might forget to turn back and put the pin back in the front
of the tow car before they drive it away won’t be disappointed the next
morning. I mean just in case that ever does happen to anyone. Got an early start this morning, made a quick stop in San Antonio to run an
errand to an RV supply store, and headed northwest. Through Boerne,
Kerrville, and Junction. Turned right at Sonora, north to San Angelo.
Stopped for the night at Big Spring, migration home for thousands of
sandhill cranes, none of whom are here right now because it’s not time to
migrate. Got barbecue at Brenda’s. It’s still hot, high nineties today, but we’re farther north and the
humidity is lower. It promises to cool down below eighty tonight. Saw
robins, lesser goldfinches, curve-billed thrashers, and some little brown
birds. Still trying to figure out the flycatchers with yellow bellies we
saw at Paradise Pond. Maybe juvenile eastern phoebes.