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Downtown Fort Worth is about like downtown Denver. This is Sundance Square, it's something like a cross between 16th Steet Mall and LoDo.
Some pretty neat buildings like this one... This was the performing arts building I think.
One good thing about the trip so far, is that we're getting some good practice at packing the car. The original plan was to take so little that we'd be able to throw everything in the back of the SUV into the front two seats, and sleep in the back of the car. We didn't quite get there... luckily everywhere we've slept in the car, we've been able to safely move enough things outside of the car to make room.
In Fort Worth, we managed to ship two giant trashbags full of extra stuff back to Denver. Hopefully we're a little leaner now.
Breakfast at Wafflehouse. Fried eggs on waffles, with syrup. Only in Texas.
The Houston is about four hours South of Fort Worth. Plenty of time to kill, we decided to shop for a replacement windbreaker... but the only place that was selling Patagonia clothing didn't have it. =(
Spent the evening with my friend Levi and his lovely wife A. Levi lives in Arlington, on the way out to Houston. Coincidentally, Levi is also into odd things like Kombucha, so I gave him some of my kefir grains to have fun with. Which is working out great by the way!
I've never used Google Maps to keep track of anything, but it's pretty handy! I'm higlighting my route as I go on my map. From Pueblo we drove to San Isabel national forest, and spent the night at the Great Sand Dunes. Then drove down to Santa Fe to spend the night there.
San Isabel was gorgeous. It was at elevation, so snow covered pines. We didn't know this was here, but there was this wacky castle right off the road! Interesting story behind it.
The idea was to continue North and West through through San Isabel, then South into the Dunes, but when we stopped to take pictures of the castle, we realized that my windbreaker must have fallen out of the car at the last Starbucks!! =( This was an amazing windbreaker, and was my only jacket for the trip. So we turn around, get into cell phone range, and call the Starbucks... no luck. Oh well. I bought a used jacket, heavier than my old one, at a thrift store in Walsenburg.
Here are the dunes... snow capped peaks behind it are nice contrast to the sand.
Here's my hammock! You can see the bug netting across the top, and wind/rain tarp. 
I managed to just get this setup before sundown. There's no indication in these pics, but it's blowing like crazy. And cold. About 5 min after I took these pics, I tore the tarp down, and re-pitched it like a tent directly over my hammock, sheltering both sides from the wind.
This was a great test. The car was parked a few feet from me, so if I couldn't handle sleeping in the hammock, I knew I could sleep in the car. It got down to the low teens that night, and the wind was gusting up to 20mph. 20mph winds at that temp really sucks. Really really sucks.
I was quite impressed though. I listened to the wind howl like mad all around me, but wasn't really touched because of the tarp. Instead I was gently rocked, which was quite pleasant. I had my sleeping bag, and a sleeping pad. The Thermarest ProLite3 is great. However, I bought the small size. The small size is big enough for shoulder to hips. Your head and legs aren't protected.
This turned out to be a huge mistake. The sleeping bag is compressed to nothing when lying on it in a hammock. Your top is warm, but backside is unprotected. The sleeping pad works great, but my head and legs were freezing.
After that night, we headed South to Santa Fe. New Mexico is really pretty right outside the Colorado border.
Bev and I snacking on something Igor sent with us... which is basically a giant Kit-Kat like wafer, about an inch thick.
A quick stop at Ojo Caliente, Bev's mother told us about their mud baths... which sounded really cool. But they weren't doing it that day, and wanted $22 a person for their mineral pools. So we moved on.
The road to Santa Fe. Had dinner at Maria's. This is a great place, amazing green chili and great rellanos. Decided to camp at the Marriot for showers and a warm bed.
Bought my backpack today! It's the REI Quick UL 45. It's not quite big enough to pack all of my gear on the inside, but sleeping pad and hammock/tarp are tied easily enough outside the pack. I'm able to put my sleeping bag inside the pack! Which is nice, since it's really expensive, and I'd hate to snag it on a bush or something.
By itself, it weight just over 2 pounds. I've packed it full with what I'm anticipating to bring with me. My estimated pack weight will be around 20 to 25 pounds with food/water for three nights. I'd like to trim it down some more, but this is a pretty good start!
Cost was $100 dollars at REI, which brings my bill up to $529 dollars. OUCH! On the plus side, I hope to use this gear a lot in the years to come.
So one of the cool things about the iPod Shuffle is that you're supposed to be able to use them as USB storage pretty easily. In fact, it was one of the reasons that I decided to buy it, I was looking at buying a larger jumpdrive anyhow.
The problem is, it ships with this awkward docking station thing... you can see it in the cradled in it on the pic. The dock comes with a three foot cord that plugs into USB. It's not something that you really want to carry around with you, which immediately makes this thing a bad jumpdrive replacement. Luckily I found the IncipioBud, which is about the smallest adapter that I think can be made, and for a great price. $10 dollars after shipping. Up to $429 in sabbatical costs.
According to my friend Igor, whom I trust implicitly about these things, the Plantronics 510 headset is the best headset for price/quality. The rest of the internet seems to agree. But that was so last season. If the 510 was that great, the 520 should be even better! It's pretty new, most of the reviews on Amazon seem to be favorable, and I've been using it for about a week now and have no complaints. =)
This should be really handy on the road... trying to squeeze a Motorola RAZR between your head and shoulder while driving is just not good for your neck! Cost: $48 including shipping on Amazon. Which brings my budget sabbatical up to $419.
Woot! I'm can now connect to the internet anywhere I have T-Mobile coverage, this should be really handy. Unfortunately, with T-Mobile GPRS/EDGE, I'm connected at 12Mbps, that's about twice as fast as dial-up. I suppose I should be more optimistic... SWEET! *TWICE* as fast as dial-up!!
Anyhow, thanks to Ginger for hooking me up!!!
So my most recent, and most expensive purchase... a new sleeping bag. I looked pretty hard at the ultralight sleeping bags out there, and this is supposed to be one of the best all-around bags. I plan on mostly hiking, so weight is my primary concern. After reading some other people's experiences, I'm sold on the idea that you should be as comfortable as possible when hiking so you can actually enjoy your time outdoors. This means comfortable clothes, light pack, and enough warmth to get by. Unfortunately, it comes at a cost unless you start engineering your own gear.
So here it is, my new Marmot Helium. It weighs just over 1 pound, and stuffs into a bag that's a little larger than a loaf of bread. It's down, feather light, and I still haven't gotten over how the thing feels in your hands. Cost? $292.00 after taxes. I got this at 25% off, which brings my sabbatical costs up to $371.
I haven't posted in a couple of days, but I wanted to put up this pic because the weather had turned so quickly! It was almost 70F on Saturday, and this is what it looked like the next day!
Oh well, it gave me time to finish babysitting iTunes so it wouldn't crash while loading the rest of my mp3s. I've also started ripping the audiobooks that I've started getting from the library.
I was disapointed that iTunes has a section in its library for Audiobooks, but you can't tell it to put things there. This guide was pretty handy for describing how to get around this, although what I ended up doing was a little simpler than what is described.
I found that it was too hard to leave all the tracks separated, and it cluttered up iTunes too much. I also didn't like having one GIANT mp3 for the entire book. So I use iTunes "Join Tracks" feature, but I don't bother joining all the discs together, as is described in the guide. I end up with one mp3 per disk, and it shows up under Audiobooks. Perfect.
While it's on my mind, I've got a couple of goals while I'm not sitting at a desk all day.
- Don't wear my contacts unless I'm driving at night, or staring at a screen for long amounts of time.
- Meditate Daily
- Train Daily
Spent the evening with my friend Levi and his lovely wife A. Levi lives in Arlington, on the way out to Houston. Coincidentally, Levi is also into odd things like Kombucha, so I gave him some of my kefir grains to have fun with. Which is working out great by the way!
