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Thursday, May 22, 2014

TUESDAY UPDATE: What's New with the BattleWagon

Phew... so what have I been up to?  For starters, I have the newest BattleWagon, and her name is Road Kill.  She's a beautiful beast of a 1983 Suburban.  It's the perfect truck for what I have going on, living in Bozeman, Montana with my new family.

Our long term goal is to have enough property for a few farm animals, a garden, and a yurt, and maybe another property back in Alaska to visit or shoot for as a bug-out.  For now, we're in an apartment with a year-long lease that ends next Spring.  We also got caught extremely off guard moving here and losing work, so now we're digging out of quite the financial hole.

Still, living here is beautiful.  I had the experience of the country song on a back road in Montana in an old Chevy truck with a beautiful girl sitting in the middle of the bench seat, right next to me.  It was amazing.  And, since we're cheap, we go hiking and have fallen in love with Hyalite Canyon, one of the many, many canyons that have raging creeks and start at small, clear lakes high in the mountains.

As practice for bugging out, we're going to do some family camping trips this summer.  The funds simply aren't there for the ultimate goal of yurts and overlanding, but we'll get there.  We're lucky to have landed in a place that has tons to offer in relatively close proximity, and for that, we're thankful.

MONDAY THROW-BACK: December 17, 2007 - Monday - 4:55PM - Denver, Colorado

[Personal Journal]

"My body is sore from a ¾ day of snowboarding yesterday at Loveland.  [The Chin] has made a very dramatic improvement since I rode with him about a year ago at Eldora.  A few more times up, and we may  be able to try some trees together.

"[BattleWagon1] has an oil leak somewhere.  I may be grounded for Christmas because of it.  I'll email Dad and get his thoughts.  If only I could ride the old Columbia to Salida and not die...

"Work today seemed productive.  Since [Lindey] was training to run the new printer, I had few distractions and accomplished a bit.  We were supposed to get a truck this afternoon, but it never showed.  I hope that doesn't throw off the rest of my week.

"I've been thinking a bunch about [The Oldest] over the past few days.  It's a little unsettling having him here.  I wish we could scatter him at Lily Lake, but I don't think [His Mom] or I are ready to discuss it yet."

It's interesting looking at brief accounts of what I was doing over seven years ago.  Here, one of my best friends, a dude with a huge chin, a total asshole of a pervert with the biggest heart you'd ever find, went snowboarding at Loveland Ski Area.

My first van, the original BattleWagon had a leak, too.  I remember one time I drove it from 13th & Quebec to 13th & Grant in Denver and had to put three quarts of oil in it to get me there.  I was convinced it was going to cost me thousands of dollars, so I didn't drive it for weeks.  It turned out to be a $100 (with labor) O-ring.

Lindey Staar, one of my favorite co-workers of all time, was working on the FujiFilm Acuity flatbed printer that the company I worked for at the time had recently purchased.  Since it's December in this entry, I'm guessing the truck I was talking about was one we were going to do graphics on.

Posting these entries are also forcing me to talk about my kiddo, the oldest son of mine, who passed away from SIDS when he was less than 5 months old.  He died in 2006, about a year and a half before I wrote this.  I had just been given my "share" of his ashes, and was bitter with his mother for a long time and for various reasons, many of which remain unjustified.  I was also crushing on a place called Lily Lake, a small, high-altitude lake on the backside of the Blanca Peak Massif in southern Colorado.  The Chin and I had hiked there a few months prior, and it was a truly religious experience