Scattered Thoughts . . .

The sky cleared up today and we haven't had any rain falling from the sky so I headed outside to see if I could accomplish something with one of the larger projects on my To-Do list.  I had previously cut all the supports necessary for the outdoor kitchen roof structure so I decided it was time to install those supports so I could remove the temporary supports. So, now I have clear headroom when I walk into this little kitchen area.  ( As a sidenote...  I wore my new ball-cap hard hat today...  good thing because I slammed my head about eight times today while I was installing the collar beams.  My mild-TBI headache is back but I'm certain that it would have been far worse if I wasn't wearing the new hard hat.) Every support that I added today was both glued and bolted.  I bolted everything with 3/8" galvanized bolts.  This support, below, forms a nice stiff triangle of support keeping the column upright... This is the same type of support on the opposite c

The terrain and landscape that was passing outside our windows had changed.  The changes were obvious.  When we checked our gear and timetables, we found that we had passed into California. We had a speedometer app running in our roomette...  an altimeter app running...  and, when we could get cell service, an active map.  Will had his GPS Garmin running across the hall in his roomette.  I also had a scanner so I could listen in to any necessary train radio chatter or even any emergency radio chatter.   Actually, writing about all these electronics reminds me that we had a little problem somewhere in the middle of that expansive west that I wrote about in my previous blog entry.  In the middle of nowhere, we heard a thump and then the train came to a stop.  This is when having the scanner would provide us some information. By listening to my little handheld scanner, I learned that we had hit a stacked pile of rocks on the track.  Clearly, someone had deliberately piled these rock

It was really odd...  we seemed to make it through Moffat Tunnel and to Winter Park far more quickly than I had imagined.  I felt like we were in some sort of weird time warp.  I somehow always envisioned Moffat Tunnel as being much closer to California than what is real.  Yet, we still had two days left to travel before we would arrive in Adam's new hometown in California.   The first part of this segment along the Colorado River was beautiful even if shrouded in falling snow.  That solid straight embankment along the edge of the river is I-70...   Around mid-afternoon each day, we would venture from our Sleeper Car to the Lounge Car for a few drinks before dinner service to watch the scenery pass by outside our mostly-glass car... We are now putting some distance between us and that bomb cyclone snowstorm at this point and the weather is beginning to clear...   It was somewhere around this point where the isolated, undeveloped, exp