Two Pilots & an LSW: Colorado

I just wrote out an entire page of stuff and hit publish and it said it published and then it was completely disappeared. I’ve NEVER had that happen before! That is…holy crap that’s frustrating!!

And here the first line of my original post was “Well, that’ll put you in a good mood! (No, really!)”

*sigh*

If it wipes it out again I’ll probably throw my iPad into the wall. Okay, I won’t do that. But you’ll never know this fascinating stuff from today because I’ll quit. ;)

We bucked some pretty tough headwinds all the way out here, made it a 4.2 hour flight to Gunnison. They had us shoot the ILS, which is a DME arc to intercept the localizer, which you don’t do much of in Indiana. So that was good. It was so cold there, they leave their courtesy cars running outside all the time, so when you get in it’s super toasty. It was nice!

I dropped off Ethan and went over to Grand Junction, where it was 38 degrees but it felt so much warmer I couldn’t even wear a coat, it would make me sweaty. Unreal.

I kept busy today. Picked up the rental car, where he told me I met the “traction laws”. I was like…cool…what are traction laws? He said parts of I-70 and other roads in the mountains you are legally required to meet certain tire and vehicle specifications, and he was letting me know my tread depth and 4-wheel-drive made it legal for me to drive on those roads. So….okay, sounds like I need to go find a mountain to try not to drive off of, doesn’t it? ;) That was my plan for tomorrow.

Except.

The mechanic thinks the plane will be done by tomorrow morning, so I’ll probably need to stay around just in case that happens and we end up leaving.

First thing I did when I got here was take a picture of the bathroom, and decide not to send it to Steve and tell him mine was working how about his.

I walked around a mall. Haven’t done that in ages, but I both wanted the exercise and wanted to pick up a couple things I need. My sunglasses are lost (good pair) and broken (bad pair), and I can’t find a replacement. I have a small head and big lenses look stupid on me, or fall off, and I need thin arms to go under my headset. I went through four stores in the mall, from the cheapies to the place where I thought “those look okay” only to see a $180 price tag and think “nooope”. I’m way too hard on sunglasses to spend that kind of money on them. They scratch, bend, break, get lost, it’s just how it is, and I know it.

I picked up some chapstick, and I was looking for a big wallet. My nice small travel wallet is still in great shape, but my big one with everything else in it is looking really sad and ragged. I picked one up that looked a lot like my $20 wallet, and the price was $150. As If. Same store that had $180 sunglasses. I noped out of that store, don’t need anything from there. Found my replacement wallet for $25 elsewhere.

I also looked at coats. My Glenndale jacket is shredded on the sleeves, is old and dingy and falling apart. The other coat I wear is an old warm coat that has a torn pocket and just doesn’t look all that nice either. So I was at a different store, saw a black North Face coat that was warm, waterproof, and looked nice on, I thought. Then I looked at the price tag of $425 and put it back as carefully as possible. Later I found a nice dark green Columbia coat that looks similar to the one I like to wear all the time except it looks new, darker, and has no stains or torn pockets…for under $100.

From there I went to see “Heartland”, an “Angel Studios” movie in the theaters about a nuke that gets dropped near Los Angeles and the resulting chaos as people try to get out of the area, and one family who are preppers, have a compound basically, self-sustaining, and how it worked, what they did, and how they had to keep everyone else out of it to have enough for themselves, they thought. Except it’s a Christian movie too, so it’s no John Wick, and the ending is more peaceful than you’d expect. I still actually thought it was pretty well done, and I liked mostly regardless. I guess it’s going to be a TV series too, and the next episode you could watch when you got home if you wanted. I might wait till they all come out so I can see it in sequence and not wait in between shows. It was good, though.

Went next to Kohls, to try one more place for sunglasses. Out of 5 racks I found one pair that looked like the ones I like, put them on, and they’re too big for my head, slide down. *sigh* Still no luck.

Headed from there to dinner, at “Devil’s Kitchen”, which is on the top floor of a building, surrounded by glass windows, with a lovely view. I had bison, and a tasty blondie with butterscotch, carmel and chocolate chunks in it. And a glass of Malbec wine. Good stuff. I actually got the blondie to go, so I ate it while I wrote this the FIRST time. They made one error. They left the blondie cool, but then in the paper box, they lined it with aluminum foil, and then put carmel on top. Now I can’t microwave it with the aluminum foil on there, so I had to sacrifice the carmel. Tsk tsk.

Earlier I paid a $20 bill for a $13.34 item, and got $6.66 back in change. The lady crossed herself and said “that is bad”. THEN I ate at Devil’s Kitchen. Oh dear. I mean, bad luck things already happened, so what the hell, right? It was a good day, pseudo-Satanic things none-the-less. ;)

I’m going to try to go to bed here at 9 pm this time, which is 11 pm our time, so I can get up at like 6 am here time which is 8 am there time so I stay kind of on a normal schedule. Got it?

I bet these will be prettier after I edit the coloring to what they naturally were, but I don’t have that here, so here they be.