Another Week- Another Attempt to Lose a Hiking Partner

For this weeks adventure in the Sandia's, de-I's Sandia Outfitters ( Our Motto: You Have Nothing to Lose but Yourself) called for a hike that we do very rarely because it requires starting from one locale and arriving at another. So you have to drop off a vehicle at the destination and then drive to the departure.

Gaius Derf had set a block on his phone to prevent me from inducing him to do any more of my hiking adventures. Fortunately for me, I had an underground IT guy hack into his computer and create a false reservation for him from a reputable outfitter. When he got to our departure point and found out the truth, it was too late

Gaius Derf
"How the hell did he get into my computer?"

This hike has us starting on the west side of the mountain going up the Embudito trail. The total hike will be 8 miles. We will start at 6200 feet and go up to 8200 feet at our hightest point.

We start by heading due east to begin with up the side of the valley towards that peak to the left. The first two miles has a lot of steep spots and is pretty exposed to the sun. We climb about half the altitude gain over this section. It is very warm now so it was over 7o degrees when we got going at 7:30 AM

Once we get first climb over, we can see our next stop. We're going to descend down into the valley and then climb the peak just ahead and end up at the pass just to the right of it, Oso Pass.
Descending into this valley and the climb beyond are one of the really neat and beautiful parts of the Sandias. Not many people hike it because it is in the middle of the trail system and not easily accessible. Of course whenever you have a lack of people there are other things to make up for it.

"Uh de-I. What's that large brown bear like thing behind you?"

"RUN!"

The next two miles are some of the lushest sections of this National Wilderness. My picture below hardly does it justice. Derf says it reminds him of the eastern part of the Cascade Range in Oregon. It's hard to believe that just a mile to the west we were hiking in desert!

Never can resist the picture of a cool rock

Just before we break through the forest and get to Oso Pass there is this fabulous panorama of Sandia Peak. Unfortunately I had my phone camera set for too high an exposure given the incredibly bright sun we had today.
When we get to Oso Pass we are halfway so we have a 4 mile descent. This picture is just after we started down and we are now going due south. Just over that rise into the valley is our destination.

You can see just how dry things are now and this is just a half a mile from where we had lush forest.

Accidental picture of my shadow while I was putting the phone away :(

As we head south, we pass areas where we often hike

The Embudo Valley

A shot of the City of Albuquerque looking toward downtown

We are now 6 miles into the hike with 2 miles to go. We're on the Three Gun Spring Trail which I've written about before. We've gone through some mild descents and re-climbs but have only really given up about 700 feet of altitude so we have a steep descent ahead of us. This is also a section where there is no cover at all and is real desert. The temperature was pushing 90. I brought have juice and half water with me today. The electrolytes in the juice made a big difference.
At our destination

"Come on Derf. It's only heat stroke. Don't be a wimp and get in the car."

No Cooking

At least for awhile. Because on Wednesday night we had a

Kitchen Catastrophe!

I was working with one of my largest and heaviest pots which slipped out of my hands and into our nice new (just over a year old) high tech Silgranite sink with the following result.

I was stunned, shocked, totally upset. And as it turns out we are going to have to deal with the manufacturer and they don't seem to be in any state to resolve this quickly. I suspect it will be a number of weeks before the kitchen is truly operational again.

But before you shed to many tears for me Argentina remember this. This is a problem of abundance. I know three people right now who are dealing with serious illness - two with cancer and one with an unknown abdominal bleeding problem. Those are real problems. If this is all we have to deal with, I'm a lucky guy.

Gahd de-I, Is There No End to These Florida Posts...No

At least not yet. Things were packed in the St. Pete area for the weekend of the 4th.

The Goths were pooped and Tim di Bufallo had to fly to Austin and back on Sunday to pick up his two kids from his previous marriage (that's and flight and back in one day - yuck) for their 6 week summer stay.

On the way back over the causeway I got a Gulf of Mexico sunset shot.


When we got back to our hotel, it was bedlam. Cars were everywhere. There was not a single parking space in the hotel parking lot. Turns out there were fireworks right in downtown St. Pete just about where we were. Finally I dropped Wife off and cruised the streets until I found what I thought was a good space. Wife was still at the entrance of the hotel and we watched the fireworks.

Turned out the parking place wasn't such a good idea. The car got towed. Had to schlep out to get it bailed out. Of course I had wait outside since the place was locked up and on Sunday some kind of on-call person had to drive out un-impound me. Well I didn't like the looks of the neighborhood, was getting bit by bugs, noticed that there was quite a gap between the gate and the fence, and that I could see exactly where my car was. So I squeezed through, opened up the car and sat down much more comfortably.

When Mister on-call guy arrives he looks around puzzled outside the gate. I get out of my car call and wave. Boy is he pissed. I guess its not in the rules for me to do anything to decrease my discomfort from the whole experience. So this young shit glowers at me through the whole procedure but I just give him smiles, thank him and wish him a nice day.

I did call him an asshole once I was driving away :(

I'm just pissed off that I was careless about where I put the car.

The Florida Room

One of the neater things about the Pulisha and Tim house is the "Florida Room". I don't know if this is a real name of rooms in Florida. But it is essentially the pool covered with a metal frame and bug netting and an outdoor sitting room that is covered so you can get out of the pool and sit or come out in the evening and sit like a living room just open to the outside.

Looking out at the pool from the 'room'

Scanning around

This is actually a play area that is off from the room

Looking back at the room from the other side of the pool

Pretty cool huh. Couldn't you see Pu and Tim hosting the family get together?

The REAL Truth

In my last post, our idyllic vacation in the lovely Florida vacation village of Pass-A-Grille was interrupted by our realization that granddaughter's J's head had been opened up and stapled shut - clear evidence that of the alien nature of this family!

This of course meant that we had to get to the bottom of this. What if this was all part of an alien plot? What if my poor family is now the first wave of the invasion. What if they were going to get us next!!!!!!

We spent much of the following day surreptitiously checking the everyone's head. And we needed to get pictures too. So we made all kinds of excuses about why we wanted to take pictures from high places down on the Visigoth skulls.

Finally, we were outed and they said we were over reacting.

The truth? J had fallen down the night before in the shower and whacked the back of her head. Much fright ensued with a lot of blood on the head. Pulisha was set to take J to the emergency room but Tim, a true son of Buffalo, said, "that will cost way too much. Let me take care of this."

So he cleaned the wound and stapled it shut. Nice work Tim.

The End

Not really.

The REAL, REAL Truth?

Pu did take her to the emergency room and in fact the actual medical procedure is they stable it shut. Who would have believed it?

Florida - Our Story in A Billion Pictures

We are in St. Petersburg Florida visiting Daughter Pulisha, Son-in-law Tim di Buffalo, granddaughters C and J and grandson A aka The Visigoths. Both things are very un-barbarian on this trip. In fact they seemed since they have moved to have reached a high state of civilization :)

The Goths live in a fabulous little community, Pass-a-Grille that is just south of St. Petersburg Beach. It's just south of the the real heavy duty touristy area. I really, really don't like Florida and was not looking forward to this trip. But the area they live in and their home are like a isolated beach community.

The beach hotels on the strip of St. Petersburg beach just north of Pass-a-Grille were very pricy (this being the 4th of Juy weekend even though it is off-season). But we got a great deal on a Hilton in the downtown area (53 bucks a night on Hotwire!)

The cleaning people left us personal notes.

And they did this for my razor. Pretty cool huh!

Grandchildren Pictures
(absolutely obligatory)

The Red Menance
(looks like an angel doesn't she)

C is always ready to have her picture taken

Trying to get a shot of A is a challenge because he is always in motion.
Here he is with Wife

Historic Pass-A-Grille

The downtwon area

J in a mellower mood

C helped me by carrying Wife's camera stuff
We called ourselves Gloria's Glorious Mules

Daughter Pulisha
Look at that calm demeanor that comes from working a full time management job, a big time gig in the Air Force Reserves and raising a family.

Tim on A chasing duty

I was in full grandpa mode. The minute we got out of the car C and J and I dashed ahead. I saw this ice cream place, an even though it was 10:30, we were in like a dash. There were no restritions and J ordered Cookie Monster ice cream with these consequences.

Beach side photos

AND THEN WE FOUND OUT THE HORRIBLE TRUTH - THIS FAMILY ARE ALIENS.

We examined J's head when the parents were not looking and found this

If you look closely you will see - IT'S STAPLED! THERE IS SOME KIND OF MECHANICAL IMPLANT IN THERE!

STAY TUNED FOR MORE OF THE SHOCKING TRUTH!

Imperial Expeditionary Force - Destination Florida

We here in the Imperial capital of the the de-I empire, Albuquerque, are nothing if not vengeful. Ending in March, we finally were freed from the depredations of the barbarian tribe known as the Visigoths. For almost a year and half, they would descend on our city, attacking our gardens, our larders, capturing our women folk and forcing them into child care bondage. Put finally they moved off. And we have located their new abode in St. Petersburg Beach, FL.

So off we have organized our revenge attack. We will swope in arriving just as the Visigothic horde is having dinner tomorrow. Trust me. We will capture Gothic Queen Pulisha. We will force her and her consort Tim di Bufallo to wait on us hand and foot.

Vengence will be ours.