.:: DonnieNix.net ::.

Crappy weather has kept me off the bike for over a week. I’m going today for a lap at Blankets. Hopefully, I won’t have lost too much…

Casey and I swapped my pedals for his yesterday to see if my crappy Shimano pedals were the source of a popping and creaking. They are. Now I need to get some new pedals. Sealed bearing pedals are on my list now. I’m thinking some Crank Bros Candys…

I taught Josh to play the rhythm part of Wish You Were Here last week and I played the lead solo. It was pretty neat. He just started playing guitar a few weeks ago.

With gas prices going down, I’m thinking about a bike trip to North Carolina. And if they continue to go down, I’m thinking a Moab trip in April. Oh yeah.

This is my Boxer puppy, Roxie.

She is now 6 months old. A few weeks ago she got VERY sick. We took her to the vet and they told us she had Parvo. This usually kills puppies. We made the decision to do whatever it takes to save her regardless of the price. We didn’t even consider the alternative. It cost us a fortune, but it was worth it to us. She’s a great little puppy. She is all better now and back to her rambunctious ways.

I bought “Teach Yourself Classic Rock Guitar” from Amazon before I went to Austin and I’ve really had fun with this book. It teaches you 6 different classic rock songs step by step, or measure by measure. Each song that was selected for this book shows you something new to learn. For example, Love to Change the World shows you arpeggios, Green River works with the pentatonic scale, Long Train Runnin works on rhythm guitar, and so on. It’s a really cool book.

I’ve been working my way through the lessons and I learned the Green River lesson this past weekend. What a cool song. John Fogerty and CCR recorded this in 1969 and I’ve always liked the raw badass guitar sound that he puts together.

There’s one more lesson in the book, and it’s learning to play lead guitar and solos for a song called Green Onions. It’s an old Booker T and the MGs song that you might have heard in American Graffiti or any other nostalgia movie or TV show.

First I am going to work this week perfecting Green River. I have all the parts down, I just need to put them together.

I got an electric guitar for Christmas and I’ve been practicing a lot. I still have a ways to go but it’s really fun and keeps me busy. The full songs I’m currently working on Big Log by Robert Plant, Hysteria by Def Leppard, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. I’ve also learned little bits and pieces from a bunch of other songs:

• * main riff of DayTripper (Beatles)
• * main riff of Jessica (Allman Bros)
• * China Grove (Doobie Bros)
• * opening of Lola (Kinks)
• * All of Ah Leah! by Donnie Iris (Power Chords!!!!! Really easy…)
• * a bunch of other riffs and licks…..

I can pretty much play anything with a guitar tab now. It might not sound right at first and be really slow, but I can run through the tab a few times and present some semblance of the original tune…

But, like I said, I still have a ways to go.

Went for a ride yesterday. It was nice. I had to keep it in the small chainring all the way but it worked.

While I was riding, Melanie adopted a 3 month old Boxer puppy. She’s cute. I’ll post pictures later. Boo is kind of freaked out, especially when she lays in his spot and tries to eat his food. He’s a good dog though, so he’ll get used to her and everything will be cool. We haven’t named her yet, but we’re working on that.

As you probably know from my other posts or from knowing me personally, I’m a gigantic over-planner. I love to bust out the Excel spreadsheets and work out a vacation plan. On our Grand Canyon trip, I started planning this thing in January and we pulled it off with only a few hitches, mostly caused by an unwillingness by certain people to stick to the plan. But we won’t go there.

For 2008, I am in the extremely early stages of planning a bike road-trip to Crested Butte, CO, around the 4th of July. This would be me and Casey doing basically what we did in Oct ‘06 when we went to Fruita. The Crested Butte trip is something he and I have been talking about since Sept 05 when we tried to ride there but were kicked around by the weather.

The plan now is to toss the bikes on the rack, load up the Hyundai Tucson and head west on June 30. We’ll spend 3.5 days riding around CB and Gunnison, CO, then come home on Saturday. Since this will be around the July 4 holiday, I’ll only have to take 2 days off from work. That will work out pretty good.

I think I’m going to make great efforts to NOT over-plan this road trip. For instance, we don’t really need to take so much food with us. The last time, we took enough to eat for a week, but ate out a lot more than I had planned or budgeted. We ended up tossing a lot of the food out because it either went bad or we needed the space. The same thing happened on the Grand Canyon trip.

The thoughts of a July 4 holiday in CB is very cool. It will be awesome seeing a fireworks show against the backdrop of the Rockies. We’re not going to do any side trips, like to Boulder or Moab, this time. We plan to focus all our efforts on Crested Butte. This should be fun.

Later in the Summer, Melanie and I are thinking of heading to either Hilton Head, Destin, or someplace in the Smokies like Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge. Maybe even Western NC. It’s still up in the air. We considered doing another massive vacation and flying to San Diego/LA, but after some consideration, we decided to delay that for another year and do a simple vacation in 2008. We’ve kind of had our fill of cross-country vacations for the time being and so we are taking a break. I am looking forward to going to Southern Cal, just not this coming year.

Other than that, I think we’ll do an early Spring trip to Louisiana to see relatives, a trip to NC to also see relatives…short weekenders here and there…It should be good. I’m looking forward to 2008.

Went to Arizona and Colorado (with a little layover in Moab, UT) in September. This was the big vacation I’d been planning all year and everything went well. I spent way more money that I’d budgeted but we had a good time.

All the pictures can be seen here.

We headed out on Sept 13 at around 6:00pm, hit some traffic north of Cartersville,GA, that cost us an hour. Everything went swimmingly from there until we got close to Flagstaff.

We drove straight through for 24 solid hours, only stopping for food, gas, and bathroom breaks. The route we followed went up I75 to Chattanooga, then northwest on I24 to Nashville where we picked up I40 west. Then it was 1500 miles west on I40 through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and finally Arizona.

When we got within about 40 miles of Flagstaff, we ran into a massive traffic jam caused by a multi-car pileup. Everything stopped. People were getting out of their cars and setting up picnic areas in the median. We sat there for about 30 minutes, then finally jumped the median and drove back to Winslow, AZ, where we ate and tried to plan our next move. We were so close to the hotel, relatively speaking, and we were exhausted, sore, and frustrated.

I mapped out a route around the wreck, but it took us about an hour and a half. The little backwoods road took us way out into the desert and through this little one-horse town, but it got the job done. It was kind of unnerving because it was so dark we couldn’t see anything more than a few feet off the road. I was worried about hitting a deer or something.

Finally we made it back to the interstate and we were past the wreck, so we hauled ass to Williams, AZ, found the hotel and crashed. I don’t remember much about the drive from where we got back on I40 to the hotel. I was so dazed and tired by then…we’d been up and on the road for 30 hours.

We spent the next 3 days at the Grand Canyon and I got one ride in at Schultz Pass in Flagstaff. We left Tuesday morning and drove for about 6 hours from Williams to Moab, UT. Wow, the desert scenery was amazing. We drove through Hopi and Navajo reservations, through Monument Valley, and rolled into Moab at about 3pm or so.

After we checked into the hotel we just hung around town, bought some souvenirs, and ate dinner. It was nice and the weather was great. The next day, I went out to Sovereign Singletrack trail and had a good time after I finally found the trail.

We left Moab that afternoon and drove the 6 hours to Longmont where we planned to stay 2 days before heading home. I rode Kenosha Pass with my buddy, Cynthia, and her friend Rocky. It was great. We were above 9000ft all day and it was torturous on my poor sea-level lungs. I finished it, even if I looked like the most out-of-shape person on earth.

We left on Saturday and made it home sometime around 10:00am Sunday. We made GREAT time coming home but the whole trip really beat me down.

We spent so much time in the car, running on little to no sleep, that it took me about a week before I felt normal again. I think this was the last trip like this I will take. It was bad enough that we drove for 30 hours to get to Arizona, but then over a 4 day span we drove 6 hours to Moab, 6 hours to Longmont, then another 24 hours back home.

It was worth it, but very tiring. We finally got to see the Grand Canyon and some really awesome parts of this country. Next year though, I think I’ll vacation in Tennessee or North Carolina.

One of the cool things about mountain biking is getting out where you are by yourself and seeing things you can’t see while cruising past in a car at 60mph.

Yesterday, out at  Blankets Creek, I was on the backside of the trail near the lake and heard a bunch of stomping in the leaves on both sides of me. I figured it was deer because they are all over the place out there of late. I took a quick glance around and noticed a rather large doe standing right beside the trail about 30 feet ahead.

I slowed down to a crawl and coasted up to the deer and stopped right in front of her, about 2 feet away. She didn’t move, just stared at me.

I stood as still as I could, so that she wouldn’t bolt, and we looked at each other without moving for about 3 minutes.

She was a pretty animal and I didn’t want to spook her, but it was inevitible. I moved a little, just shifting my weight, and she bolted down the hill.

I continued on down the trail, a little lighter in spirit.

7 days and counting. We’re leaving at noonish on Oct 11, set to arrive in Grand Junction around 2pm on Oct 12. We’ll have 3 1/2 solid days of Fruita trail riding, then we’re driving to Boulder to ride Hall Ranch and Betasso Preserve.

So far so good. Gas prices have fallen and since we first started planning this trip, it has shaved almost $100 off the total estimated trip cost. The weather forecasts look promising, and the everything is coming together.

If I can just keep from breaking a bone, I think we might be able to pull this off.

Okay, here’s a little thing I’ve been toying with for a while.

I get some pretty substantial referral bonuses around the first of October. I’m taking some of that and buying a new Santa Cruz Heckler frame with a nice Fox fork. That’s my little bonus to myself for a year of hard work and sacrifice.

The 2nd or 3rd weekend of October, I am going to take 4 days off work, wrap that around a weekend and road-trip to Fruita, Colorado, for a half-week of trail riding and fun and games.

I’m going to drag Casey along with me because he probably won’t get many opportunities to do stuff like this after he gets married.

If we can wrap the weekend of Oct 14-15, then we could drive to Moab on Sunday and take in the final day of the 24 Hour Granny Gear race that is held on that weekend. Cynthia is racing in that beast and I’d like to see her out there because she’s so cool.

I’m thinking, take the Tucson (4WD would be handy), load it up, get the XPort bike rack, leave Wednesday night after work and drive non-stop to Fruita.

• Arrive Thursday night and sleep off the travel stress
• Ride all day long Friday
• Ride all day long Saturday
• Sunday, drive over to Moab, ride a few trails and catch the finish of the 24 hour race.
• Sunday night, drive to Longmont, spend the night there.
• Ride Hall Ranch on Monday, then come home.

Two full days in Fruita, 1 full day in Moab, and we’d get to ride Hall Ranch. That sounds like a wicked plan.

Gas cost

Total miles: 3200

Gas price:  $2.90

Tank size:  17 gals

MPG:  24

That gives us a range of about 400 miles per tank. That means 8 tanks of gas, 136 gallons. At ~ $2.90 per gallon, the total gas cost would be about $400. Hotels would be about $50-$60 per night because we’d stay at the cheapest place possible, so 4 nights at, say, $60 per, equals $240.

Taking our food from here and eating on the cheap means the whole trip would cost about $800. Divide that by 2 and it is totally do-able.

The only problem is that now that I have it written down, something will happen to kill the plan. In February, I had a plan laid out for a weekend-plus to go to NC to see relatives and do some riding. That weekend, they had a horrible ice- and snow-storm so we had to cancel. In June, I had plans to go to Cleveland and see a baseball game with my DTFC buddies. That got shit-canned. In July, I had the Mother-Of-All-Vacations planned out to the smallest detail, and we all know what happened there.

I still don’t know what Melanie will say. She might want to go. If she does, that’s fine. If not, I might just pack her off to see her relatives in Louisiana. She’d enjoy that more.

We’ll see how it goes.