MistyCastle

I’ve been working a 9/80 flex schedule this summer so I can have some extra three-day weekends and we finally got out for a camping trip last weekend. All of our old spots are too far away now so we got to go exploring and find something new. I was a little leery of how crowded the mountains might be close in to Denver but I guess we went far enough out that it wasn’t a problem. That decision was partially solved for us by a burning ban from Boulder to Hwy 119 around Central City/Blackhawk. Going camping without having a campfire is just wrong so we ended up going west of Hwy 119 out into the Arapahoe National Forest and found a spot up in Mammoth Gulch that had a really nice view of James Peak.

The weather has been a bit sketchy here lately with pretty frequent rain storms and the weekend didn’t turn out to be any different. We got to our site by mid-afternoon on Thursday and managed to get camp set up before the storms rolled over the mountains. I had picked up a new tarp before heading out and sure was glad we had it. I used it to make a lean-to and we put our chairs and “kitchen table” under it, made a cup of coffee, and waited for the storm to roll on by.

The first storm produced enough rain to point out some flaws in the tent site selection with regards to campsite drainage. In particular, there was one waterway that was determined to go right beneath our tent! A minor diversion channel took care of that problem and I was grateful for the early rain. Those are not the kind of things you want to find out in the middle of the night. The rains came and went throughout the weekend but we managed to stay dry and overall we still had a lot of nice weather in between.

One unpleasant side-effect of all that rain was an abundance of mosquitoes. I have to confess I’ve gotten really spoiled living in South Central Colorado where mosquitoes were practically non-existent. Fortunately, we had some oils that Rhonda had brought along and some OFF which kept them from biting (mostly) but it’s still a little disconcerting having them swarm all around you.

Abby was kept entertained by the local squirrels and chipmunks and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend too. We went for a short hike on Saturday down to the valley floor and found the creek that we could hear rushing along from our campsite. It has been a late spring in the mountains and there is still a lot of snowmelt which keeps the creeks moving right along. The water was incredibly cold but that did not keep Abby from getting in. There were a number of folks fishing the creek trying to catch a mountain trout for supper. Abby went fishing too but she didn’t catch anything either

We had heard trains chugging along during the weekend so after we packed up Sunday morning we down into the valley and found the Moffat Tunnel which was built in the 1920′s to connect Denver with Salt Lake City and then on to the West Coast. The tunnel goes under the Continental Divide, is 6.2 miles long and comes out near Winter Park on the other side. There were a bunch of vehicles(30 or so) parked there which seemed odd until we realized there is a trailhead there for the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.

We decided to go home a different way and headed up to Nederland, CO where we stopped for coffee & ice cream, and then a picnic lunch by Barker Meadow Reservoir. We then followed Boulder Creek down the canyon, on into Boulder, and finally back to Aurora.

Mark one off the Bucket List. I’ve always wanted to participate in a road rally and last Friday we were car #52 and crossed the Start Line at 8:52am. The 59th Annual Rallye Glenwood Springs was underway. This was Time Speed Distance (TSD) Rally and Rhonda was the designated driver…I was the navigator. A little background may be in order.

A TSD rally consists of a set of instructions specifying a route to travel, and a speed at which to travel. A team, consisting of a driver and a navigator, attempt to travel the specified route at exactly the specified speeds. A TSD rally is not a race. Traveling too fast results in penalties as does traveling too slowly and no rally will ever require you to drive in a reckless or illegal fashion. Arriving too early at a checkpoint hurts your score, as does arriving too late. You are scored on how closely to the correct time you arrive. The rally route generally takes you over lightly traveled rural roads in the scenic countryside.

The weekend was a great experience and we had a really terrific time. The people were wonderful and the event was very well organized. The Rallye traversed a Westerly route out of Arvada, CO into the foothills and eventually connected to US-40 which took us up over Berthoud Pass (11,307 ft) and through Winter Park. It wasn’t too difficult to follow the route instructions but there were some tricky spots that messed us up and we lost time getting back on course. Somehow it just didn’t seem all that important given how much were enjoying the drive through the mountains with the top down on a beautiful Colorado morning.

We continued on US-40 till we made Kremmling where we stopped for lunch. We then headed South on Hwy-9 for a short ways before diverting Southwest onto the back roads eventually coming out and ending the event at I-70 and Dotsero. The latter part of the route tended to have slower speeds and made the drive a tad bit tedious but the scenery made up for it. We had varying scores…too early…too late…almost spot on, and in fact I’m not sure what our final tally was. They haven’t posted the results yet. If you want to read some more about the basics of Rallying look at this article: Rallying for Beginners…and others

The Tour on Saturday was actually more fun than the Rallye or at least I thought so. It is not a timed event but has a similar flavor to Rallye in that you have to follow a prescribed course (more or less) and find answers to the Tour “questions” along the way. For example; one question was “British Car owners would like this Ranch _____”. So when we drove by the “Spare Parts Ranch” we knew we had nailed that one and went on to the next Instruction…”Turn Left onto Surface Way Rd”. Typically, there were three or four questions to be answered in each of the small towns we went through. This created some amusing scenes of British Cars roaming back and forth through the town at very slow speeds while driver and navigator craned their necks looking for signs. This route went on a southern loop down around the Grand Mesa National Forest and back north along the west side of the Maroon Bells which were absolutely stunning.

Sunday was the Car Show in Two Rivers Park and the cars were parked right along the Colorado River on a beautiful, sunny Colorado morning. There were plenty of interesting cars including a 1936 Triumph Gloria Southern Cross which I had never seen before.

Next year will be the 60th Annual Glenwood Springs Rallye and the plans are underway to make it a very special event. Do mark your calendars for the second weekend in June 2012 and come out and join the fun. Here are some photos of the events:

The Slideshow thingy is not working …just click on the first picture then arrow through them.

This turned out a touch blurry so I got creative with it.

Waiting our turn to start the next leg at after a checkpoint.

Chilling out by a roaring stream.

Getting ready for a quick picnic lunch.

Some friends we met that own a Jaguar XK-150

A line up of MGs along the Colorado River

Coming down the mountain pass.

A little experiment with night photography.

Following a Porsche down the backroads.

The Azura Winery outside Paonia, CO. A stunning view for sure (the mountains). But the car is really cool too. That's a 1963 Porsche 356 by the way.

A 1936 Triumph Gloria Southern Cross.

Another creative attempt. I applied an edge process that makes it look a bit like an old magazine photo.

Cool 1971 TVR Vixon at the show.

On the Rallye...which way do we go?

Cattle Drive creates unexpected delays.

Here we are.

Just ahead of a new Morgan waiting to start the next leg.

Stop for 30 seconds at all RR Crossings.

The Good news is: I am going to try once again to start keeping the website up to date.
The Bad news is: I am NOT going to try and write articles on all the major events that have transpired since the last article.

Instead, here is a very concise update…

June 2010 – We took off on a nice camping trip to the Moab, Utah area. Had our usual series of adventures and misadventures. I actually did write an article about this trip but can’t find what I did with it. If I find it I will publish it.

August 2010 – We became Grandparents! Josh and Selenda brought Caleb Joseph Grimes into the world. The poor little guy had a rough go of it for the first few months but is doing great now. We are all very happy and proud. Will work on getting some pictures posted.

September 2010 – Mad dash trip back to Iowa for a visit. Good to see everyone and darn near got killed on the way home. Good defensive driving by Rhonda in the middle of the night in the middle of Kansas saved the day (night?) as we came upon an accident in the middle of the Interstate.

October 2010 – Things start looking shaky at work. News from corporate HQ sounds suspicious.

November 2010 – Daniel comes home safely from Afghanistan. Bad news confirmed at ITT. They will be closing our facility. I accept a severance package rather than stick around.

December 2010 – Interview for a new job with Raytheon but take a short-term consulting position doing computer security work out at Vandenberg AFB, CA. Spend Christmas with the Brown family in Omaha.

January 2011 – Fly out to California and start work. Rhonda drives out to join me and we have fun poking around the California Central Coast. Got to watch a big rocket launch at Vandenberg.

February 2011 – Raytheon calls me and offers me the job. I accept. This requires relocating to Aurora, CO. Drive back to Colorado and start working to put the house on the market.

March 2011 – Sell house for full price the first weekend its listed but have to be out by end of April. Get sick of commuting from Colorado Springs to Aurora ( 1:20 minutes each way).

April 2011 – Jen Stellema comes to visit. Find house to rent in Aurora and move

May 2011 – Unpack (well, mostly) and get settled in. Beginning to feel like home again. Nice little 10 minute commute to work.

So there you have it. It’s been a whirlwind but things should settle down now.

It’s hard to grow things in Colorado. Way different from the black dirt in Iowa that we were used to. Up until now the only thing we’ve taken a stab at was tomatos and even those were a touch difficult due to the short growing season. This year Rhonda saw a neat idea in a magazine that we could use to extend the growing season and so we decided to try our hand at gardening again.The basic idea is to accomplish three main things; better soil, solar gain, and regular watering.

We covered the ground with an old carpet earlier this year in the hopes of raising the soil temperature from solar gain. This worked out pretty well and I spaded up the soil to a depth of about eight inches and then Rhonda started adding compost, vermiculite, and other stuff to improve the quality.

The “structure” was my challenge. The magazine picture shows what looks like a simple hoop structure made out of a few boards, some plastic water pipe, and a plastic covering. I made a trip to Lowes and came home with some materials. It was one of those build it as you go projects which can sometimes create some interesting twists and turns in the design. The structure came together pretty well but the plastic covering was not so fun. Seems like every time we went to put the plastic on it was windy.

The fundamental concept was to create a raised-bed, square-foot style garden with a covering to extend the growing season and in this, we succeeded. The manual watering thing wasn’t going too well so to accomplish a daily water scheme I managed to tap into an unused zone on our sprinkler system and rig up some mist sprayers inside the structure which were programmed to come on for a short bit every morning. This made a huge difference in how the plants grew.

It has gone pretty well for a first attempt. We did have some problems with the soil being too “hot”, chemically that is, and the crazy plastic did not hold up to the intense ultraviolet well at all. By the middle of the summer it had gotten brittle and a good wind came along and shattered it into many pieces. But we’ve gotten quite a lot of yummy produce out of it so far.

Ooooff…I just realized it’s been five months since I’ve updated the website. I also noticed that four months ago…three months ago…well you get the picture. It a hasn’t been very high on the priority list. I’m going to try and catch things up in chronological order so be patient even though some of the exciting news is later in the summer.

Every garage should have two Jags…a His and Hers Jag. Ok, maybe not…but for a short time I met the criteria. Goldie and Whitey as they became known to keep them separate. As I mentioned in the last post Whitey found a new home and now we are back to one Jag in the garage.

Oh…I’m also back-dating the articles so they will more or less show up in the right order and time of year.

Back in late January I saw an ad roll across Craigslist for a 1979 Jaguar XJ-S Coupe. It was a cold, snowy night and the thought of going to look at it didn’t really trip my trigger. The price did though so I mustered up some resolved, called the guy, and went over to look at it in the dark. I did all the things you are NOT supposed to do when evaluating a car to purchase. But I ended up buying it anyway. I was thinking parts car…

So, I had a tow truck bring it home the next day and spent some time going over it trying to decide whether I should just part it out or maybe try and get it running again and put it back on the road. There were an awful lot of things wrong with it. It would start and run but just barely. The brakes were almost non-existent, the interior pretty ratty, and it leaked oil like a sieve. But, on the plus side, the body was straight and it had been repainted sometime ago. It looked nice and had potential.

I decided to see if the engine could be fixed without too much effort and that would be my deciding factor. Thus began a three month journey in Jag restoration. The laundry list of repairs is too extensive to really get into but in the end I had it running again and a large number of the deficiencies corrected. It was definitely a learning experience but I am grateful for the opportunity as I got to learn and experiment on another car so now am much better prepared to work on my own as the need arises.

I sold it this past weekend to a fellow that wanted a project Jag and was willing to continue the restoration.

Say what? Well..yeah, a couple of new developments. Josh and Selenda called the other day with some interesting news. We are going to be Grandparents this year! Selenda is expecting with a due date in early August. This is pretty cool and we are very excited for them. Thus begins a whole new chapter in life for us all. So, one day in the not too far distant future we could have little feet padding around the garage wanting to help Grandpa fix the Jaguar.

The Jaguar? If you read the Hobby Swap post you know I picked up a Jaguar project last month. I’ve been puttering about with it some and decided that I would chronicle my current project as well as my history of British Car adventures on a subsection of the MistyCastle site which I have dubbed the Garage. These pages can be reached using the menu bar in the header or using the Pages links in the sidebar.

It was fun hunting for the pictures, going back down memory lane and documenting the history on my other cars. I still have a couple left to write about. One of them, an early 70′s MGB, was a short term fix-up and re-sell project and I have realized that I do not have a single picture of the car. The other was a ’67 Spitfire, a major restoration project that never got anywhere. Well…that’s not entirely true come to think of it, I did get the motor running again.

I’ve joined the Jaguar Club of Southern Colorado and am looking forward to meeting some of the other local enthusiasts.The meeting next month is at local restoration shop (ReinCARnation Auto) that has done some phenomenal work. I’ve only looked at their website but what I saw was quite inspiring and I can’t wait to see some of the actual works in progress.