buckle-up

Last month I opened the blog with the commentary, “with April showers, May flowers” and I closed with the remark, I don’t mind the rains – the floods, on the other hand, well that’s an entirely different story – and there are predictions once again for a few more wet days to come. Well, little did I know just how much rain we would get – it’s been days of torrential rain followed by even more rain. As June came to an end, the temperatures finally rose to the 90s Fahrenheit, a first for the year, and a first since September 2014. So now I can add that it’s not just with April showers, May flowers but come June, it’s monsoon! Fortunately, what the rains didn’t stop were the visits to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where Margo’s identical twin grandsons are being looked after – having been born prematurely back on April 13th (in the middle of one of our earlier trips to the west coast), they’re doing it tough. If you would like to know just how much monitoring is performe...

The local Colorado weatherman glowingly reported on how “with April showers, May flowers”. However, what he didn’t count on was just how many showers we would experience – rainfall records all across the state were smashed this May as the rain just kept on falling. In my last post I wrote how April is typically the snowiest month of the year, even as May can prove to be the wettest, but little did I know just how wet. With May almost over, we were informed that there had only been two full days of sunshine, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall those two days. Fortunately we were able to open the pool and as the picture above so accurately captures, yes the clouds are still with us and it rained a short time later. The good news, particularly if you should live in California, we didn’t have to top up the pool with water prior to the opening – there was more than enough water in the pool for our pool man to complete the opening. Relief from the snow was definitely a blessing...

While there may be nothing eye catching about this photo, it tells a story all the same. Devoid of decals and advertising, the 2003 “50 th Anniversary” Z06 Corvette is back in street guise, although it is hard to hide the presence of tow hooks, a harness bar and yes, the mount for our GoPro. A terrific Christmas present mind you, the GoPro that is, but video will likely be that of favorite canyon passages than of favorite road courses. The transition to a street car reminded us both of how good this Corvette really is – with barely 20,000 miles on the odometer after a dozen years of so, and it’s interior in pristine condition, it’s a heck of a ride. Imagine, just for a moment, these cars can still be purchased for a lot less than a reasonably equipped new econobox! And the engine bay, after three years of track duty, remains as clean as the day we picked up from the dealer all those years ago. A 5.7 liter Chevy small block V8 may not sound as impressive as it once day but it’...

March was a time to travel and once again it was a case of packing all we needed into the Jeep. The weather can turn on a dime and the forecast in the days leading up to our time on the road looked anything but promising. However, after the record breaking snowfalls of February, the month of March, which is the snowiest month of the year for the Colorado front ranges, saw very little snow but that didn’t mean we missed out on further cold snaps. It’s to be expected living in the foothills, with multiple peaks passing 14,000 feet the thermometer can head to the negative blue graduations pretty quickly, but all the same, it’s a time to enjoy home cooking and we certainly didn’t lack for anything as the weather kept us indoors. The picture above is of Margo throwing on a big pork chop that she was adding to a panful of spices and vegetables, mostly onions naturally, while on this occasion, even though I was out of sight, I mixed the evening’s martinis. However days on the road s...

Give me champagne on ice, and a spouse that is nice … or something like that! While not pulling directly from the Eagles and their Hotel California masterpiece, a song I still have trouble fully comprehending even though I just read that the song was “about the seductive and destructive nature of wealth in California in the Seventies. It's about the attractiveness of booze, drugs and free love, and how hard they can be to give up, even after you've realized how bad they can be”. After making California my home on more than one occasion, this interpretation kind of makes sense. At any rate, the real story coming out of Colorado is that it’s cold and if the snow continues through to the end of February, it will produce an all-time record snowfall for February in Denver. Running outside to place a bottle of champagne on the table as the snow kept falling was a tad risky as there was a layer of ice just beneath the surface – the result of a mild thaw between snowstorms – some...