Road time!

Went off to Colorado this weekend to visit my parents and sisters... Been a while since I have had that much road time. ABQ to DEN.. or really a bit past took about 7.5 hours...both ways.. perhaps a bit less.

There was bugger of blasts of wind on entering Colorado. So bad that I passed two trailers on my side on their sides and one on the other side of the road as well. Ugly! Having to fight the buffeting for that long wore my hands out. On the way back it was bad after I passed Raton. No rest at all.

The trip was good otherwise and it was great to see my Mom and Dad and Sisters and nephew and Nieces. Too short but that's all the time I had to get out of State.

I snapped a bunch of shots free hand while driving when I could... and it was safe enough.. so those are below.

On the way out to the tunes of Pink Floyd.

So much open....

So much farther to go. 400 plus miles... longer than a lot of countries out there.

Then into the passes and time for slaloms... woo weeee.....

5th wheel flipped and ripped open on the side guard rail. Driving by at 4 mph.. or a crawl. The truck was fine though.

Clouds low over the mountains.... by the time I got to Colo Springs it was snowing lightly.

In and about Longmont and Lafayette... Lots of rural roads and farms and lots of open bodies of water ( very scary for New Mexicans )  Why.. why is there a lot of water just sitting there...whats it gonna do.. its not a river so we are worried.. hahahaha

We   Are   Talking   Long   Roads!!..... way.... straight and far.  Silly drivers here as well.

On the way back I clicked this just as it appeared on my phones mapping system... Welcome to New Mexico.. We are a dry State... Water wise.

Then I saw this...

And lastly this.. Yes.. I am now in New Mexico.. or home as I call it.

So much open... I've driven most every road in New Mexico for work related duties so as soon as I hit Raton I'm pretty much home .. its all just getting to the other end of that road...

So the ride home seems shorter than the ride up. Overall the weather was cooperative so that made the whole thing easy. When there is snow in the area of the passes... forget it. Stay home... Its safer that way.

Take aways from the trip. Its always good to go home! I am blessed with fantastic parents. I should do this more often if only I could make that happen. Someone else needs to drive.. even part of it. Colorado drivers pass then get back in the right lane and I love them for that.   

There are more but I'm too brain muddled right now to remember them.

Beside that or before all that I did play with making more wall paper for my phone.... Just because I can....

Silly stuff mostly...

My banner for a few years ago that is the same number as my N number on my balloon.

My Lindstrand back glow edit.

My Lindstrand Racer up with a normal lens. Very hard to line things up.

My Lindstrand Racer from outside the burner frame and with a fisheye of amazing strength.

And for giggles... I took the little straight jacket men from my In Czech logo and pattern repeated in a crazy way with one single free guy in yellow... Really like it a lot. I may try lining the little guys up next.. so many ways to play with this. 

Saw this watch somewhere and loved the watch face design and the numbers and how they are arranged. Its just awesome in its perfect simplicity and style.

Well now I am goggly from looking at the screen and not seeing road so I will post this and see what other trouble I can get into before Monday morning.

Hope you had as awesome of a weekend!

( Yes I was as safe as possible taking pictures as I drove.. none of the shots was from my eye.. as you can tell by how poorly lined up they are... Don't drive and take pictures folks.. its dangerous )

#New Mexico #Albuquerque #Belen #Hashtaghighlights

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!!!   Whew... that was a week....

From last weeks Tower rescue to this weeks radar modifications that were supposed to start Monday but due to weather in the area started Tuesday and ended Thursday... whew! Then onto the things that went on ( boring stuff mostly ) during the remainder of the week and then to the weekend and the St Pats Rally in Belen....and to this morning.. Sunday... It was a bit of a rush...

Posted for your entertainment.. ( with comments )

The Nexrad 88D Radar. In Repose.

Looking East at the rising sun behind the Sandias. I had to stop on the side of the road to get it but it was worth the moment.

Launch on Saturday at the St Pats Rally on the main field. We had to be off the field quickly as they had sky divers coming down... and it was a race.

After doing the inflation I had to bail out and let Mo fly as my foot started complaining so I got out and Mo took two up. Rory gives that little extra push to get them up...hahaha.

The sky was very fluid and a good backdrop to all the balloons. I really expected to have time to get a lot of great shots of balloons but the upper winds drove them East so fast I didn't get the chance.

Patturns In Czech hits the upper winds and runs away.

Smokey launch's and watched all the other balloons fly on.

A quick out of order shot of the soccer field launch area.

On the far side of crazy.. no.. Belen.. In Czech drops down out of the speedy winds to a super slow ground track... Trying to find some spot that was not covered n cow poop, horse poop or dead animal carcasses.. sadly people have no respect.

Alan scans for a good spot....

Below are the cell phone shots. Mostly the Samsung note 8 takes a great shot. Like any cell picture thought there isn't much to work with. Zoom in and all usefulness is gone.

Below is a wild wind dragging across the Taylor Ranch area. Big clouds then....

Boom! Dust storm ala extreme. Even closing your nose and mouth there was still that gritty feeling after getting out of it. Ugh!

Day 2 Pilot brief at the VFRS St Pats rally.

Memorial to one of the original rally creators.. Mr Baca.

Lots of little balloons into the sky... It was a pretty sight.

Mo after landing nicely, moving back to clear some razor grass and some horse poops and one dead dog carcass... super ugh!

Driving back North to Albuquerque in Fenway, Mo's truck. Takes about an hour to get home. Worth the drive that day.

We didn't get down to the third day of flying in Belen. My foot was having none of it and the weather looked bad for a flight. I heard some did fly and were fine and that is awesome ... but I also heard some say that it was dicey and gusty. I would have stayed on the ground.

Saturday after ballooning Mo and Alan took care of my bad breaks on my Ram. Replaced rotors and pads. Fantastic job. Much much thanks to Alan and Mo for dealing with it for me.  They look awesome and feel very very nice. As the one brake and rotor were into the metal, I must have pushed too much on that side of the brake petal to cause it... JUST KIDDING!

Out at the regular launch site to watch Mo try to fly. Nice view of the mountains again. Ram just chillin.

Tried. Winds were too gusty here also for any of that inflation stuff for Mojo. She spun and rotated and got ugly. Mo decided it was a great day to go to breakfast.

Another balloon trying it out. Skirt burned in spots and rolled onto myself and the trucks even after we moved them.... My coat looks like I rolled in the sand myself. Washer time!

Will doing instruction thought it was an awesome day for high wind launches and landings and scored a 10/10 on the launch. It was awesome to watch and was done very nicely but yeah.. no.

The other side of that pendulum on launch. Weeeeee.... Once they had rocketed East the dropped it settled down to a nice run North. Good job there guys!

Alan does the full body envelope squeeze with help from his daughter Breezy.. or are they sleeping.. Cant tell from this angle.

Overall a good week.  Many things done. Some things not done. Some things I feel like digging a hole in the back yard and burying.

On the Fallout 4 bit I decided I wanted to try and make a cube at one settlement that was for reasons of building area  would take a 17 by 17 section piece. 17 by 17 sections.. or 170 feet and 170 feet high and 170 feet wide with a 90 foot square of mesh windowed section in the middle. It was hard to do with feeling like you are going to fall off all the time and laying all that was a big pain in the butt!.. but it worked and it looks awesome and yeah.. because I could.

Visio design to see if it was possible and where to set flooring to set walls...

Final after all the work and also making it a viable settlement.

What did you do this week? Was it fun?

This next week I hope to at least capture oh shot on the Sony dslr a day... not just rely on the quick and easy cell phone cam.

FIesta, Flying, F(P)otographs, Fallout 4. The four F's

Licence... I have a licence that says I can manipulate the English language and spelling as I see fit. I am letterillys leaning. Dont judge me!

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Registration started Monday last. Completely different menu and page style and more questions asked that I had to go find answers to to complete... It was not hard but did take a bit of time. Hoping next year that most of the fields will be pre-filled to keep the repeats down.

The new artwork for this years banner............... ..... .....   If you enlarge or really expand the web page Patturns Highperactive pops into view on the left side. I was trying to get a clean clip of the banner and adjusting the size and there she was. Cool. Its a rare shot of PH in a Fiesta shot but as its a one off envelope its very easy to spot.

Debi just posted this. Hilarious!!! Had to share...  I'm waiting 6 months... Hoping those in power would stop this silliness.

So many things happened this week. Some worth recounting..many, well, its better just to put them aside in a dark corner of the room. 

Mainly the office techs set up a rescue training scenario at our Radar site for the Albuquerque Fire Department. This was to see and learn how to remove a person from the top of the dome the quickest and safest if they were unconscious or hurt....or both.. It was... interesting. I'm damaged so I didn't volunteer to be flung over the side.

Seriously high tower. This stairs are at a very steep angle and are made of a heavy unfinished metal. Bang a shin and you will bleed. Been there done that. 

Three teams went through the training. Parts of that were, response, setting up connection points for ropes and what each member did and how to do it. Interesting. Pre-start brief.

Mike gets dropped over the side on this one. Big time safety at all times. Helmets on whenever the hatch is open.

Second day of the last week they brought the heavy rescue truck. Nice!

Tony gets to play for the second evolution and out the hatch instead. More difficult because there are supporting structure beams and the stairs to contend with. From our NWS training... you use your feet to push the "victim" away from the obstacles. Its doable but you have to be able to understand dynamics.

Other than his arms being out instead of tucked away Tony is trussed up nicely.

Pretty much a  fantastic training event. The Albuquerque Fire Department teams are amazing and great people. We learned a lot. 

I spent a bunch of time ( what else can you do while your foot heals and your supposed to stay off the damn thing ) playing fallout 4 modded.... 

Skip over this if you are not interested in Fallout 4...

Some mods work.. some dont.. some do strange things... I am building out Armor between building more settlements... or strongholds... Over killing the weapon emplacements... because I CAN!

Mods allow for many things. The sets I use usually fix building errors where you cant build over a rock in a certain way or there is a bit of trash that cant move and causes the program to refuse to place an item. See..its like this... you have to build in specific areas and in specific zones laid out by the game. Working around this is extremely hard. You have to figure out how pieces of walls will set and how the land grade is and what is the maximum area you can enclose. Not that this stops the game from dropping raiders inside but it helps funnel them if they are outside. 

My favorite mod is a zone expansion but it works some times in some places. I really wanted it to work everywhere but it wont so I went on building this version a little different, learning from the first try. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of fear of falling control to build this stuff. You cant just float off the ground to build a three level wall.. you have to set every one of the wall sections at a time.. every insulator and every light. I've learned how to do it the quickest and I also learned what the optimum housing facility is and the best use of space. 

This is Croup Manor. Its a location full of ghouls. You clear it and the loons in the basement and you can build here. It has a half destroyed manor house on the build zone. I could use a mod to clear the building completely but I dont. I would rather work the best possible way around these things. Plus due to the game dropping raiders inside I usually build everything two levels up so the raiders cant destroy or kill anyone.... mostly. 

I have used this same build style everywhere possible. Two levels at the bottom are open... third is a ring of weapon emplacements to deal with the constant raids... next level is usually living and crops.. next is water production ( piping to wells through the walls ) and the top is power. Using two 500 power generators.. because I CAN!

This is inside of Jamaica Point. Biggest ( almost ) pain in the ass location to build. The area is oddly shaped and nothing wants to sit right. Took a bit to figure out how to deal with it this time... but I did.  This is the second level that is the weapons and entrance and stores area.

Exterior of Jamaica.... Note the back sets.. that's because the build zone is angles in too many places. I took the best straight line and went from there... the straight line is on the back side.

Here we have an error in the program. As soon as you step one foot forward it corrects... I'm always carrying too much.. and am always walking.. Makes battles very interesting.

Egrets the first time I built here there was a fit problem but not too bad. I learned a lot from the first build. This time I built a bit higher... *Mod for building height. Some settlement zones will not let you build very high.. totally wrong....

Aquatic camo.. a new download... I dropped five or six different paint styles......

Starting to populate the armor in the main facility I built on Spectacle Island.

Bunker hill... I really hated this on my first run through the game. The settlement was surrounded by crappy wooden makeshift walls... you couldn't remove them and you were stuck with it. First time I just built above, but it was a hodge podge of space. This time I downloaded a mod that made the location like it really is in RL and also downloaded a mod to allow me to scrap ( within reason it seems ) the walls. I had to be very creative on how to lay the cement walls to fit the settlement zone but it worked and I didn't have to remove too many items to do so... and it came out nicely.

Boston Airport... Limited... You were not allowed to grow food nor process water...aos it was tiny... so you were forced to rely on traders moving from settlement to settlement... WRONG!! Using the mod I used at Bunker hill and another mod to allow water and food processing I built a nice building on this small plot. Its only 80 ft by 130 feet.. so I built up! This is the third level and the entrance is right in front center.

Exterior shot.. the only place I didn't create the same housing style... It worked very nicely.

Yes.. lots of time playing games.. but remember.. I do not watch television.. At all. Most everything on television now is either stupid, ranty or in your face and I'm not interesting in being preached at constantly or have my brain turned to mush. Lots of time to do this and work on other stuff... 

To each his own.

Lastly... Mary and I decided to go to our favorite restaurant for an early dinner... We just rarely get out so....  

Joe's Restaurant in Rio Rancho.   http://joespastahouse.com/

We had some bruschetta (sp?) and fried mozzarella and I had the baked penne and Mary had chicken...

So very tasty and I was only able to eat a fourth of my penne. The sauce was smooth and a hint of wine floated in there. The meat was well processed and not chunky and over all the plate was excellent. Staff is always right there if you need anything and ready to assist with any changes you might want.

From living in Italy for two and a half years I know my pasta and I know what its like to eat in a real Italian restaurant.. and Joe's hits it nicely. If they added Tortellini alla panna with prosciutto Id be there every other day until I died of over eating...

I really hate taking pictures of my food but this time I made an exception.. three times..

Super fresh ingredients... Just like in RI ( Real Italy ). We used to go and get fresh before going out for the night. 

Fried Mozzarella....  Nice because even thought its hot its not just a floating puddle of Mozz...there is texture and a good bite to each piece. The marinara is very nice and holds together.. not watery or sloppy.

First time trying the penne. WOW! A smooth forkful and the slight tang at the back of the portion and when I say smooth.. it was smooth... Not buried under cheese or hidden .. but just there... 

It was a good afternoon and as old people we were home by 430... HAH! 

Guess what I am having for dinner tonight... Leftovers!!!! Going to be very good. 

Much thanks to Joe's for the great dining experience. 

Now its on Sunday.... Foot is trying to be abusive. Much to do today and trying to balance that with keeping this foot up ... something is going to have to shift.....

We also didn't get to do training this Sunday as the winds were forecast to be up in the 40s and it was supposed to rain.... No rain yet.... Winds are gusting on this side of town.

Mo got in a review flight yesterday when it was also supposed to be ugly. He did land in a odd place but I have yet to talk to him about it.. and I always ask about his and other Pilots flights.. I like to understand their thinking in different situations....

Next weekend is the St Pattys Day Rallye in Belen. I did a quick design for their T shirts.. I hope it comes out okay. Not much time to do it and the pictures of the balloons I had to work with were sub par ( just the way it was ) .. and you work with what you have.. Hoping to get better shots for them for next year.

Hoping for good weather next weekend!

Happy new week to you all...