Team Green Chile (Max & I) decided maybe it was a good idea to do a little training. I pushed for some snow riding through the canyon — we found conditions worse/better than I guessed. Very challenging, and good training. It was great to finally get out for a bike ride together!!

(Fluorescent yellow so the mountain lions can see us and not run us over when they ran past…)

The trail had been driven by one car, and was very dry powder — mid-wheel deep. It was very challenging riding (walking/pushing), but good training.

Max introduced me to some very interesting biking technique (ok, I’ve actually spent quite a good bit of time riding this way through deep, challenging, narrow tracks in snow)..

Here’s the map of our route:

After a fantastic holiday visit with family in Lubbock and Houston, Carrie and Aven flew home.  But we had a piano, a successful Ikea shopping trip, and a 14′ uhaul to get home!  So Torsten and I had our first good, long road trip.  We started out from Houston at about 4am on January 1.  Torsten was so jazzed about the trip, he stayed up for a good while!  We both enjoyed watching the first sunrise of the year.  The first stop was in Bastrop to get some gas, and we were already in our sixth county of the drive! (Torsten had slept through probably half of them.)

We took a little detour to head up to North Austin and visit Bill and Elaine O’Brien, to get a half hour of catching up and coffee.  (Bill taught both Carrie & I physics as undergrads at Southwestern University, and he has kept in touch through multiple visits to Juneau and regularly catching up at AGU.)  On the way out of Austin, we went back south, driving along Lake Travis. I couldn’t believe how low the lake was! It reminded me a little of a dramatically low playa lake out in West Texas..

Next we went over to Llano and a ~25 mile detour south from there to get to Enchanted Rock.  What a fantastic place to revisit after all these years.  Torsten and I hiked up to the top, and then I found out that our good friend Dale from SU was also there!!  We didn’t manage to connect (other than via facebook), but it was fun to be so close!

From Enchanted Rock, we went back up to Llano, then it was driving up towards Sweetwater. In that area, I tried to estimate how many windmills we saw — my best guesstimate is between 6,000 and 7,000! And these weren’t old-timey, get water for the cows out of a well, windmills. They are industrial grade, high voltage transmission lines, clean, green, power generatin’ machines. WOW! It was amazing to both Torsten and I to see all these windmills.

I tried to get the oil vs wind juxtaposition:

Just before we got to Post, the windmills disappeared, and it was serious, old school, oil in the air time. Torsten said “I kinda like the smell, even though it really stinks.. It smells like fresh money.” It was getting towards an amazing sunset for the first day of the year, so I got a “classic Texas panorama” and then a fun shot of our shadow:

We got into Lubbock at about 6:15pm with 645 miles under our wheels, some good hiking, and lots of together time. It was great to meet Grams with a dinner ready, and some nice beds to fall into. We spent a little time there in the morning, but shoved off by about 10am.

Torsten (I mean, DJ Torsten) provided some great music. He sense of taste was perfect as he had the ZZ Top going as we drove through La Grange. Then we got a healthy mix of Lady Ga Ga, Chemical Brothers, and even some LMFAO before he settled into mixing up some fresh original tracks on Garage Band on the iPad. As we cruised past Post and into Lubbock, I took over to put on a healthy Terry Allen, Jimmy Dale, Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, Flatlanders mix. I think the two best road songs that came on where “Amarillo Highway” and “Two Roads”. If you don’t know two roads, you should read the lyrics (midway down this article — the whole article is good!).

The rest of the trip up to Los Alamos flew right by, with lots of “good” road trip food, lunch at Dairy Queen in Santa Rosa, NM. Trains, oil derricks, windmills, tumbleweeds..

What a fantastic trip!! Soon Aven will be old enough, and then the whole family can enjoy some ramblin’ around the lower 48. In the end, Torsten and I covered 1024 miles (yeah! it was literally 1023.7 miles when I returned the truck in Pojoaque.). We crossed 25 counties in Texas. And we have a piano!

I did a fresh wipe and reinstall of the talus-and-heavner.com blog (along with the rest of the web part of that site).  Did I get the wordbooker wordpress/facebook integration setup correctly?  This will let me know!

After lots of bit rot, and a few evil mean nasty hackers, talus-and-heavner enterprises is declaring html bankruptcy and wiping the slate clean.  Fresh blog install (with an import of all the old goodies, maybe it’ll work?) and on a very few minimal things pulled across from the old t-h-webiverse (the gallery..).  Yell if something you love and miss isn’t there. Otherwise, welcome to 2012, onward through the fog!

And it is reaching a fevered pitch! We’re anticipating a fantastic Thanksgiving Dinner, with friends local and with thoughts of friends and family all over. And then it is time to ski!! Reading the reviews, it looks like Sipapu is where we will start, then go get some cross country fun in at Enchanted Forest.

Aven and Torsten are extremely ready!

See ya on the slopes!!

Here’s my usual commute — this is from a bike ride home last week. I ran it in this morning. I hope the movie works for ya!

I’m trying out new apps.. This is mapmyride. Kinda fun!

We took a long Veteran’s Day weekend to road trip to Roswell and Carlsbad. Grams got the spontaneous award for driving over from Lubbock to meet us!

Aven was a fantastic driver (at least at the Sonic drive in)

We spent the night in Roswell, went for a swim in the hotel pool, and then drove on to Carlsbad. It was so exciting to get to the park!

We had a great ranger/tour guide!

It was very exciting to take the 750′ elevator down, especially when they turned off the lights! Then we got to take the ~1.5 mile walking tour around the caverns. We all loved it!

Even the bathrooms down in the caves were cool!

We got super lost, and had to get some new friends we met down there to show us the way out:

We met up with Grams after a nap, and spent the night in Carlsbad. Another good swim in the hotel pool, and we drove up to Roswell. We took a driving break to go to the International UFO Museum.

Torsten and Aven were very good hosts to their new buddy

The main display had a rotating saucer, smoke machine, and aliens that breathed, moved, and lotsa great music and sound effects:

After the museum, we went to the only spaceship themed McDonald’s for lunch, iMovie hacking with Grams, and lots of playing:

It was a very successful drive home (with dinner and Petco stops in Santa Fe) — Aven did fantastic, so we might be ready for some more fun road-tripping around the lower 48! Torsten thought the best part was the caving. We were all very glad to see Grams. And bonus: we got home Saturday night, so one more day of the weekend!! (It is a gray, fire in the fireplace, make frames, clean house, mellow kinda day).

If you need the whole gallery from this trip, it is all yours..

Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide by Jill Homer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fantastic personal narrative about an incredible bike ride. I really enjoyed the read and was completely inspired to do a few short segments of the ride! There were some fantastic “one-liners” My favorite:



“I pedaled because pedaling was the most natural course of action.”



View all my reviews

Data Analysis with Open Source Tools by Philipp K Janert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good thought provoking read. It is a reminder of lots of techniques I’ve already “learned” — but a great practical review and refresher.



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Although scheduling attempts completely failed, I think at least 3 of the 4 folks got out biking. (at least 2 of us ended up solo). Anyway, I had a good ~25 mile ride today. I want to keep track of the various trails. I was riding 50 psi 2.9″ (74 mm) tires today. Rode on road to the golf course, then single track, then eroded double track down the canyon below our house to the “Y”, then over to the truck route and up the road, then trail/road up the ski hill road (ran out of time..) so turn around, downhill to PEEC, then single track through the canyons back to the golf course and home over by gymnastics/stables..