Something followed me home

... in the dark this evening! And it wasn't a zombie either.

Yes! I did it -  I bought a brand new bike!! As in, the bike had 0 miles on it before the inspection ride and I got to put the first real miles on the way home.  I gotta say that the decision was really easy once I placed my blue Beemer for sale. My gut and smile kicked in together and were in total sync. And today I went back to Denver to see if my gut matched reality. 

First though, I need to thank Wolfram and our buddy Kevin for their awesome support and patience all of today; it was a marathon day. We left Nederland at 10am and didn't get back home until 7:30 this evening.

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone but me that I chose the BMW F700. Well, the pro lists for the Versys and the Beemer were long, the coin toss technique was not working... but once I put my bike up for sale, it was like my bike-life flashed before my eyes. All of the rides and places we had been together surged through, how I'd longed for these quirky- Wall-e eyebrow shrug- headlights since I first saw them ride by, and how I enjoyed going over bumps and off the beaten track. Now though after having to ride the last 10 miles of our ride home on dirt roads, in the dark, I'm even happier with my choice.

My one hold out was whether a lowered seat would give me enough foot-on-the-aground... and it did! We took another test ride, and then we started the dance. I gotta say though Foothills BMW made my life easy. I knew what farkles I wanted on the bike worked with the parts guy. We walked through each item, looked at the manufacturer websites, and came up with the wish list. I was not going to ride with a vulnerable underbelly exposed around my rock-infested neighborhood just waiting for a rock to kick up and puncture the oil sump (or what have you). 

Then we talked numbers... and I talked to the service manager, looked at their bikes, talked options ... went to lunch (nom nom, the Carnation Restaurant is awesome), talked numbers and bikes and I came away very happy. They went out of their way to get most of my farkle list installed today so that I could ride the new bike home with the bash plate and crash bars ready for the 'just-in-case' plus the luggage. Really, each person contributed to the whole buying experience. 

And then there was the ride home. It was almost dusk when we left the dealer. Lots of traffic going through Denver; then completely dark on Hwy 36. All three of us got split up due to lights, but met up in Boulder. Then... Boulder Canyon was closed and we were forced to go another route over Sugarloaf!  Urban, highway, then back roads. 

Through the whole ride I kept noticing how wonderful the bike handled, how it purred up and down every hill and every curve. It rode like a charm! Home at last!

Quick update: The air quality here is not very good. Riding down from Nederland this morning, the air was clear (and a bit cold ~40F) but by 8:30, the area around Boulder was blanketed in a shroud of smoke. It smelled like a camp fire and my eyes burned riding from Table Mesa to Gunbarrel. Near Ft Collins, the plume from the High Park Fire is being blown eastward then spreading out.

Air quality Index - note that the maps can't take into account the topography so there are areas that are worse and better than others. For instance Table Mesa / South Boulder Road near 76th street is quite smokey while in Gunbarrel, 3 miles away, it is significantly clearer.

Panorama looking northeast, to east, to south, to northwest  (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/technology/bao/webcam/)

Looking toward the Flatirons (http://boulderflatironcam.com/)

 Meanwhile @ 8000 feet... its clear (http://nedcam.nednet.net/)

Another year and more fires. As we are coming to the end of a La Nina cycle (a double one), we would like to think it is getting wetter outside, however it is dry, dry, dry. Relative humidity is between 3 - 10%. If you have been trying to survive, keeping an eye on, or worrying about the High Park Fire or the Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fires (and way too many others), there have been many tweets and discussions about the fires. I've pulled together some images with links to the resources for the past few days to try to make sense of the descriptions. Thoughts of safety and rain go out to those of you impacted by this fire.

Incident Information System
http://www.inciweb.org/
Overview of the current wildfires around the U.S. including

Current and official information on the High Park Fire  from Larimer County Emergency Information
http://larimer.org/emergency/emergency_detail.cfm?nam_id=85

4:48 PM - Jun 11  The official cause of the High Park Fire has been confirmed as lightning.  The High Park Fire remains at 36,930 acres with 0% containment.

'Photos' of the fire plume from Space (using MODIS)High Peak Fire near Ft Collins, Colorado

June 11, 2012

June 10, 2012

Source: Fire Detection Maps with MODIS images
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/imagery.php

Perimeter of the fire

source: Fire Data in Google Earth using modis

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/googleearth.php

source: Google map of High Peak Fire from Daily Camera/Denver Post
https://maps.google.com/?q=http://extras.denverpost.com/media/maps/kml/high-park-wildfire-2012.kml&msa=0&t=p&output=embed&z=12

 source: http://www.9news.com/images/High-Park-Fire-Perimeter-36930acres.jpg

source: www.geomac.gov

WFAS Fire Danger Map
http://www.wfas.net/maps/

 

source: Fire Potential Briefing for Rocky Mountain Area
http://gacc.nifc.gov/rmcc/predictive/outlook/Fire_Weather_Briefing/Fire_Potential_Briefing.html

June 11, 2012 Smoke plumes map

June 10, 2012 Smoke plumes map

source: http://www.firedetect.noaa.gov/viewer.htm
GIS-type viewer showing fire locations and smoke plumes

main page:
Wildfire Interactive Maps
from NOAA National Geophysical Data Center
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/wildfire.shtml

 

USDA Forest Service Direct Readout Data Portal - Under Land Products - Fire and Thermal Anomalies
http://directreadout.fs.fed.us/main/product?familyname=Fire+and+Thermal+Anomalies
Please read the product description to understand how these images were created and to interpret the colors

today's wind: hint.fm/wind/

more resources:http://forestry.about.com/od/forestfire/tp/wildfire_maps.htm

Interagency Real Time Smoke Monitoring for California and New Mexico : http://www.satguard.com/usfs4/realtime/fleet.asp
These graphs show the air quality in hourly and 24 average concentrations

NOAA GOES imagery: http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/

http://gacc.nifc.gov/rmcc/
http://wildfiretoday.com/2012/06/10/high-park-fire-update-and-map-june-10-2012-very-active-saturday-night/

http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/wildlandfire/latest-news-map.html 

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=78236 

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78090 

Pine Beetle Kill Maps: http://www.fortheforest.org/page_27 

 http://csfs.colostate.edu/pages/mountain-pine-beetle.html

Learn more!

Using  Forensic  Science  to  Solve  a  Wildlife  Crime

Become an investigator of a wildlife crime with NSTA’s forensics CSI curriculum book. Practice eight forensic lab procedures. Then piece together clues from the crime reports, interviews, and physical evidence you have analyzed. Finally, identify the wildlife victim, human suspect and wildlife laws that were broken. 

Date/time:      Saturday, July 14 and Sunday, July 15,  9:00 – 5:00

Credit:            1.0 semester credit from Colorado School of Mine

Grade level:  6-12

Location:       The Wildlife Experience, 10035 Peoria Street, Parker, CO 80134

Fee:                $135 ($50 tuition,  $75 registration, $10 admission fee to TWE)

                        Optional:  $25 curriculum book: Using Forensic Science to Solve a  Wildlife Crime (pay at workshop)

Questions?        

Call Laura Arndt, 303-660-6925 or email to laura.arndt1@gmail.com

To register:  Send Name, address, email, phone number, What/where you teach, payment to

          Nature Connections, 1779 Ward Circle, Franktown, CO 80116.

cobwebs

Whew, I almost dodged that one. A creative spasm gripped me, so I thought I would dust off my sadly neglected blog... but then there was blogger asking if I would like to review the unpublished comments; a helpful tip (admonishment) to check the comment section occasionally since I don't let any comments go through unchecked... so I did that, and there was as usual a few comments that are really advertisements for something else... and then they ask if you would like to review your popularity dashboard, convert the blog into a Google + account, and oh, look at that, my rss feed for my recent photos had gone kaflewy. The mundane, non-creative stuff oh so often expands to fill every crack of life. yawn.

With all of this to distract me, its a wonder what my creative moment was all about! But here I am writing. So that is something. 

And now God has turned out the lights by sending a cloud in front of the sun and it is actually kind of cold outside. But for the first time in many months, I sat outside, in the sun, just looking at the mountains. I'll rush off in a bit to start researching for a paper, and that's ok; however right now I watch the shadows traverse the high country and watch the wind riffle the tree tops.

I don't seem to have a pic handy of the mountains, so here's a similar feeling photo instead:
 

 


There. A creative moment. And because mostly this site uses riding as a metaphor for creativity, well, we'll just have to be content with landscapes today.