Into the Vortex

A few days in Sedona. Santa Fe is for museums, history, overpriced art, and divine green chiles. Probably a sweat lodge or two, but no vortexes. Sedona is New Age Central.

Bettie overlooking Sedona from our hotel. Look closely and you can see the aura emerging above her head. The hotel is located near one of the vortexes. — at Sedona Sunset Overlook.

Sedona crystal power

This is an authentic Kirlian photo of our joint auras (we opted for the cheaper couple's rate). Our faces are vaguely discernible just below the centerline.

The detaled report by our consulting Aura-ologist. How could she have known that I'm curious and Bettie is creative? I'm certainly impressed. And for only $60 you too can gain similarly deep insights from http://www.aurasbyjamie.com/. And she's on Facebook too!

"A lot has been happening in the last few days since we left Tucson, so I'm backing up to Sedona to catch up. Sedona is Ground Zero of the New Age (or should that be the Old Age, it is soooo twentieth century). But where else can you have your aura read, go off-roading in jeeps and ATVs, and pig out on cactus fries and flax-seed crust pizza?"

The 'Pink Jeep' tour took us to spectacular off-road scenery, as well as scaring the cactus fries out of us. But you'll have to wait for the video.

Friends at dinner

Last morning in Sedona rented ATVs. We've never been on one before. Self-guided circuit through death defying defiles, over bone shaking boulder fields, and up/down steep hills. And that was the beginner's trail. Was it fun? Yes. Verdict? We miss our bikes.

Tombstone

View from hotel, Tombstone.

Hotel signage. Apparently the rules are strictly enforced.

If only half the stuff they tell about this place is true, it is still unbelievable

A few years ago in Santa fe we saw a fascinating museum exhibit on the surprising parts played by Jewish pioneers and cowboys. Not much mention of them in tombstone but there is a modern monument here in Boot Hill.

Tombstone Public Transport

This particular office carried its own term limits, evident from the grave markers on Boot Hill 

A coroner's report on an outlaw dead by hanging.

A reconstruction of Tombstone's system for rehabilitating outlaws. The recitivism rate was near zero.

OK, we admit it. We went to the show. Corny, hokey, dubious authenticity, sure. So you want to make something of it? You know where to find us. — at O.K. Corral.

Interior of the Birdcage Theater. The name derives from the private boxes in the upper story, where the ladies entertained their gentleman clients.

The original Faro table of Doc Holiday. — at Birdcage Theater

Black Mariah, for that last one-way ride to Boot Hill

Cactus with an attitude

"Bettie & cousin Jan. taken at the historic Hacienda Hotel in Tucson. Hotel of the golden age Hollywood stars while shooting movies in Arizona."

Comfort food

One of our favorite food stops

"Sweet corn chowder, shrimp pasta salad, chipotle turkey club."

Wild West Adventure

Beginning car trip to Tombstone, Tucson, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Ouray-Silverton-Durango (Million Dollar Highway), and then home. Originally planned it on bikes, but one of us not quite recovered from earlier adventure.

Chappell Chill ride

Route

Church near Chappell Hill

Willow City Bridge

Bar at Chappell Chill

BMW Club Oscar Store ride

Scenes from a ride to the Oscar Store (near Temple TX)  with the Houston BMW club, 3/24/2012. I annoy people again with my GoPro camera. There were riders from Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. The Oscar Store is a tradition, dating back to the 19th century. Good hamburgers too. http://www.oscarstoretexas.com/

Forest ride with Kamy

A ride through some Forest Service roads around Lake Conroe, TX. Bikes are my F650GS (800cc twin) and Kamy's brand new 2012 R1200GS. There was rain a few days ago, and the sand had a comforting amount of cohesion. I had only one "Oh S--t!" moment.

Video notes: Recorded with GoPro Hero2 at 1280x960. Edited in iMovie. Uploaded at 720p HD.

We want to be Kelly

Scenes from a benefit for Kelly Lancaster at the Track Shack, 18 March 2012.

BMW Club Ride to Fayetteville

Bellville Shootout

Shooting practice in a Texas forest. A test of my GoPro edited in iMovie, with a bit of play with iMovie slow and fast motion. Recorded in 1280x960 (960p) 30fps; uploaded in various resolutions.  The guns are: Colt .22 pistol, Glock 19 9mm pistol, 20 gauge over/under shotgun with target loads.

Bandera courthouse

Castroville

Taqueria San Juan, Castroville

Mi Tierra, San Antonio

Christmas Letter 2011: The Year of Living Dangerously

On the River Road at Big Bend

With the above title you may correctly presume we enjoyed some (mis)adventures this year. But first, the usual stuff that is boring for you to read year after year and equally boring for me to write: I remain involved with  Houston Investors Association; Bettie continues actively in Allen's Landing Band and president of North Boulevard Park HOA; we both do a bit for Houston Early Music.

Allen's Landing Band

Allen's Landing Band grows better each year, and we are very pleased with its artistic quality. There have been changes in membership, but the core of Bettie, Bobbie, and Renna has lasted intact for several years. Though it remains only a part-time activity, unaffiliated and unbiased enthusiasts have deemed it the best vocal bluegrass band in Houston. If you are in Houston, please try to catch one of their performances at Hickory Hollow.

Riding the "Three Sisters" in the Hill Country

And now for the adventures, centered around (surprise) our motorcycles. Since taking up the sport three years ago I have ridden over 40,000 miles, and Bettie in one year 12,000 miles. In our 2010 letter I described the bikes, and we are still riding the same. During the first half of the year we went to the Hill Country twice, to Arkansas, to Big Bend, and I completed the de rigueur Iron Butt SaddleSore 1000. These are blogged separately (follow the links and read forward in time) so I won't repeat.  Bettie achieved her own "mini Iron Butt", riding 600 miles in one day from Fort Davis to Houston. So at this point I think we can claim to have graduated from apprentice to journeyman motorcyclists.

All of these trips were very enjoyable and without regrets other than sore butts. Now about the misadventures ... In July we left Houston on bikes for a two week trip to Colorado. We endured two days of hellish heat getting out of Texas, and then the fun began, motoring across northern New Mexico, through Raton Pass and into Colorado. But as we approached Denver in a rainstorm, in executing an ill-judged rest stop Bettie's bike tipped over on her foot, breaking three metatarsals. This misadventure is also blogged separately, so I will just say that she recovered completely from the injury, enough so that we were ready for our next (mis)adventure.

The instructor showing us what not to do.

 Our "enduro" bikes are primarily road bikes but also capable of modest off-road travel with riders of sufficient skill. To gain those skills we enrolled in the highly regarded two-day BMW Performance Center off-road motorcycle training in Greer, South Carolina. There, riding school bikes similar to our own, we would learn how to negotiate trails, sand, gravel, hills, ruts, and rocks. And to add to the fun, four other friends from our local "BMW gang" signed up as well.

Most of the first day went well, and all of us gained knowledge, skill, and confidence. We all took a few falls, of course, but that's part of learning and our gear prevented any injuries. ... until
in the mid afternoon, Bettie caught a bad mud patch on a slope, spun out, corrected, then fell as the bike headed for a fence. Dejas vu all over again: the bike landed on her leg (same one), this time breaking the distal fibula and tearing the ligament. So back to Houston, to surgical repair, and now she is on crutches for a couple more weeks.

A dollar bet won by the Texans from the instructor

An old joke goes "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" Well, we actually did enjoy the experience in spite of the injury. Later as I was on the phone describing the mishap to a couple of friends, one a psychiatrist and the other a psychologist, I could well imagine them trying to decide exactly which section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual applied to our particular psychopathy, and perhaps you are pondering a similar question. Why subject ourselves to this risk and damage? I can philosophize about the need to accept  life's risks etc etc but that will be unpersuasive for non-motorcyclists and for motorcyclists, unnecessary. Suffice it to say Bettie and I are eagerly waiting the time when she can get back on her bike and we can again be off. Our plans are to ride to Arizona this April and see the Grand Canyon, including a ride down to Phantom Ranch (this last on mules, not motorcycles).

Thus, we look forward to 2012, and another year of living dangerously but hopefully accident-free. And we wish the same for you.

Leigh & Bettie

A few more photos

BMW Offroad School "incident"

 Our "enduro" bikes are primarily road bikes but also capable of modest off-road travel with riders of sufficient skill. To gain those skills we enrolled in the highly regarded two-day BMW Performance Center off-road motorcycle training in Greer, South Carolina. There, riding school bikes similar to our own, we would learn how to negotiate trails, sand, gravel, hills, ruts, and rocks. And to add to the fun, four other friends from our local "BMW gang" signed up as well.

Most of the first day went well, and all of us gained knowledge, skill, and confidence. We all took a few falls, of course, but that's part of learning and our gear prevented any injuries. ... until
in the mid afternoon, Bettie caught a bad mud patch on a slope, spun out, corrected, then fell as the bike headed for a fence. Dejas vu all over again: the bike landed on her leg (same one), this time breaking the distal fibula and tearing the ligament. So back to Houston, to surgical repair, and now she is on crutches for a couple more weeks.

A dollar bet won by the Texans from the instructor

An old joke goes "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" Well, we actually did enjoy the experience in spite of the injury. Later as I was on the phone describing the mishap to a couple of friends, one a psychiatrist and the other a psychologist, I could well imagine them trying to decide exactly which section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual applied to our particular psychopathy, and perhaps you are pondering a similar question. Why subject ourselves to this risk and damage? I can philosophize about the need to accept  life's risks etc etc but that will be unpersuasive for non-motorcyclists and for motorcyclists, unnecessary. Suffice it to say Bettie and I are eagerly waiting the time when she can get back on her bike and we can again be off. Our plans are to ride to Arizona this April and see the Grand Canyon, including a ride down to Phantom Ranch (this last on mules, not motorcycles).

Bettie practicing for BMW offroad school

Bettie & I are planning to go to BMW's off-road riding school sometime this fall. Former students glow with enthusiasm, turning from total neophytes into competent off-road riders in a day or two of professional training. We don't plan to tackle the Trans-America Trail or ride to the North Slope; we simply want to handle the occasional dirt/gravel road without stressing out.

WRAP UP OF OUR COLORADO TRIP

This is a bit late in coming, but here are a few more details of the final days of our unlucky Colorado adventure. When Bettie broke (we did not know at the time) her foot, we were out of cell phone range, so we could not simply call 911. No problem: I had acquired a SPOT satellite emergency communicator designed for such situations. What a great opportunity to try it. So I popped open the lock and and pressed the 911 button. The device determines your location via GPS and sends a signal to a satellite network that causes the monitoring service to send local emergency responders to your aid. OK, press button. Lights begin blinking. Just to be sure, press again. 

Now we wait for help. And wait. And wait. After about 1/2 hour, when we could have been bleeding to death, no help. Eventually I gave up and rode my bike a few miles further on until I got cell phone service to call conventional 911. Help came right away, and based on the paramedic exam, we decided against immediate carriage to the hospital. Instead we chose to be transported to a local restaurant (biker bar, actually) from which we intended to call friends for help. The ferrying back and forth from the accident site to the restaurant provided me with my first (and hopefully last) opportunity to ride locked in the back of a sheriff's car. 

At the restaurant things didn't work as we expected, and Bettie's foot was hurting more and more. So we arranged for a taxi to take her on into Denver (about 45 miles) and I followed on my bike. I first stored her bike in a lockbox provided by the bar. Did you know that biker bars have storage lockers for motorcycles? When a patron has celebrated to the point of incapacity, the bar persuades him to take a taxi and leave his bike safely stored at the bar. I was able to avail myself of this arrangement.

The hospital did its thing and determined that indeed there were broken bones. So all doubt about continuing our vacation on motorcycles was resolved: we made plans for Houston. The next day was full of scrambling to identify and engage a shipping service for our bikes, retrieving Bettie's bike from where we stored it, preparing the bikes for shipment, getting air reservations,  acquiring TSA approved lock boxes for transporting firearms, figuring out how we would get our bulky riding suits and other stuff back. (It turns out you can take a surprisingly large amount of equipage on a motorcycle.) Etc etc. 

Our friends in Denver were great and helped us every way they could. Things worked out as well as we could hope, and we eventually arrived in Houston. I was still pissed that the SPOT system had so badly failed. Until I realized, that when I pressed the 911 button the second time (just "to be sure"), that was a signal to cancel the help request. It actually says that in the manual, and in fine print on the back of the device. Brilliant. Later I learned that SPOT faithfully contacted the Colorado emergency service, but then withdrew the alarm after I inadvertently said "never mind". Oh well.

Broken but not bowed

Update on Bettie's foot: We saw a specialist in Houston today. The bones should mend by themselves (no surgery) in about 6 weeks. She now has a "cam walker" (sounds like something from Star Wars), a sort of buckle-on boot that serves as cast. She can walk on it and take off when not needed. She is already talking about attending the BMW off-road riding school.

I wonder if we ...

Bettie arrived at the terminal on crutches. We were given a chair and
an official pusher who whisked us through lines and gates like VIPs.
We've never had it so good in an airport (except for the
aforementioned TSA scrutiny)
.
I grant that it is impractical for Bettie to break her foot prior to
every flight. But could she simply wrap it and arrive on crutches? We
would not claim disability, but simply rely on the imagination of the
checkin agent. Hmmmm ....

Bomber Bettie

Returning by air, we had to check our concealed you-know-whats in
locked cases and declare them to the TSA. I was apprehensive, never
having done this. No sweat. The TSA didn't even look at them. What DID
through our dedicated agents for a loop was Bettie's temporary splint.
It took 5 agents 10 minutes and 1 Xray to prove she is not a dreaded
Bandage Bomber.

Miss Indomitable