We had a fairly bad snow storm today that unfortunately started around 9:30. You know what that means, everyones at work while the roads get from bad to worse and the commute home turns into a full contact sport. I grew up at high altitude and love driving in the snow, but here in Santa Fe I only like driving in the snow if the roads turned into a hockey rink overnight. That way government offices and schools are canceled or on a delay and everyone who cant drive in the snow stays home.

Take the Tuesday before last, the roads were about 2 inches of snowpack back ontop of ice yet not a single accident or a single set of tracks off into the ditch. The entire downtown and plaza area felt abandoned, it would have been awesome for pictures. Last Thursday, however, the snow started about 8:30AM and by 9 they were treacherous. There was no delays so everyone was out on the roads, crashes everywhere, and the flatbed dually pickup that passed me going 60 ended up flipping 3 times 15 miles down the road on a curve so slight that its almost not there.

Today marks the third bad storm in three weeks where the day started off perfectly clear and overcast and by 10AM the roads were horrible leaving 1000’s of drivers who otherwise would have stayed home no choice but to brave the conditions to get home. So heres a few winter driving tips for my fellow New Mexicans and flat landers who dont know how to drive in the snow for when they are forced to that I’ve learned over the years.

continue reading "Winter driving tips"

Have you ever gone out for a ride only to see dozens of bikes going the other way and you realize you’ve missed some rally that you didn’t know was happening or forgot about? Yeah me too, all the time. Looking around on the Net I’ve come to realize that there is no one place for all the local rallies and events. You can find calenders here and there with a small handful of different things listed on each one, but no one place to get an idea of what all is happening everywhere across the state.

Over the last month or so I’ve been bookmarking all of the local event pages I can find and decided all of my time and effort may be of use to others too.

So new for 2010, I’ve put up a calender for New Mexico Motorcycle Events at the top of the page. If I get the time I may also go through and add in various car shows and other gear head type events. This is still a work in progress and hugely time intensive to scour the net in December and January to find links, times and dates of events for the rest of the year, many web pages have not been updated yet. So if you know of any that I may have missed or not put up yet let me know the info and I’ll get added or updated.

Well 2009 and the ‘aught decade are about to come to a close so like everyone else I was doing a bit of reflection and realized its been one very busy year in motorcycling for me. No wonder I’m so far behind on keeping up with this blog

A new addition to the family, Dad gets a V Star too.

continue reading "Year in Review"

Coming back over the river and through the woods from Grandma’s house we stopped by the Plaza on our way home and I took the opportunity to practice some more night photography. Hope you like it.

continue reading "Christmas Eve on the Plaza"

Some more pictures of the lights with some videos of the Carolers and the Albuquerque Symphony that I uploaded to YouTube. I am very impressed with the sound quality of my Canon PowerShot S5IS. For just a “prosumer” point and shoot SLR like camera not a true SLR or a video camera the sound and picture of these is outstanding.

At the time I got it, it was one of the only digital cameras that also had stereo sound. The two microphones are about an inch and a half apart though, I dont know how much “stereo” you can get with that. Having said that these of the orchestra especially sound great. Check em out and let me know what you think.

continue reading "Albuquerque River of Lights – Videos"

Over the weekend we went to the Albuquerque River of Lights at the BioPark. The light displays are amazing and good photographic material. Check out the calender for additional entertainment, the night we went had carolers and the Albuquerque Symphony playing for music as we walked. Some of the displays and the fountains are driven by the sound also, very neat.

Fun for the whole family. There was blinkie light up cotton candy and glow sticks for the kids and coffee, tea or our choice of hot coco to warm up after a quick sprinkle made things a bit too cold.

I’ll put up some videos of the Symphony and carolers in another post, stay tuned.

continue reading "Albuquerque River of Lights"

Last Day.  We had an awesome time at Colorado Gators, I think it was the highlight of the trip for Cece, but now it was time to head home and the weather looked to be turning bad that afternoon on the way.  So far every day it was supposed to be extremely bad weather we stayed insulated in a pocket of fair weather with storms all the way around us. Our last trip was the same way so maybe our medicine wheel really works, but better not to tempt fate.

The imposing ruins of this old church stood guard over an old cemetery out in the middle of nowhere.  The roof was gone and the whole building gutted except for the exterior walls. The place was deathly quiet and the wispy clouds preceding the oncoming front gave it a surreal other worldly feel. Spooky.

continue reading "Day 14 – Santa Fe or bust"

Cuchara Colorado

One of our best days so far, nearly getting to sleep in a real hogan with buffalo right outside and getting to cruise through amazing mountain vistas all day. My friend Patrick asked why we went halfway across the country when we have such good riding right in our own back yard. Well I guess you dont realize what you take for granted until you have to do without.

Colorado Highway of Legends Scenic Byway is spectacular. I highly recommend it if you want to spend several hours going through switchbacks, along mountain lakes and through some of the best scenery we’d seen during the entire trip thus far instead of taking the 1/2 hour by Interstate to get to the same place.

Cuchara is at about the halfway point, it sort of reminds me of Cloudcroft or Timberon, New Mexico except with less paved streets if thats possible. I love all the log cabins and rough sawn timbers with bark still on them they use for siding. It’s a mountain mans town, my kind of place, way out there. Not too far distance wise but takes a long time to get there no matter which way you go.

continue reading "Day 13 – Roaming the Colorado High Country"

Trinidad Colorado

Back at the Colorado Visitors Center in Lamar we had gotten some great advice that The Highway of Legends was not to be missed. Originally we had planned to go through Walsenburg to cut some time off our route to camp the next day on Navajo Lake. I sure am glad we rerouted, Trinidad turned out to be an amazing little town. Brick streets everywhere and very cool old brick and stone buildings. I could have spent a whole day just looking at all the neat architecture in this place.

We found out later this was suposedly the sex change capitol of the US, didnt seem any out of the ordinary to me. Then again we arrived late and left before most places were open

continue reading "Day 13 – Trinidad, Colorado"

Hollywood's Old West

Dodge City’s Boot Hill Museum may have been a little too touristy for some people with the shows and curio shop and movie set style buildings according to some other online reviews and comments from some locals, but the actual museum exhibits were very interesting and well done giving a good depiction of life on the plains in the Old West.

They show a little bit of the Hollywood’s version of the Old West that everyone knows and is familiar with to contrast with the actual Old West.

continue reading "Day 11 – Boot Hill Museum (2): Life in the Old West"