Turns out this is a must do event. The magnitude of the balloon launches (600+) in the first day Mass Ascention is overly dramatic. The details for the festival are here. The early morning shots in the dark are of the "Dawn Patrol" where a dozen balloons go up with lights into the darkness. This determines wind speed and direction. This is followed by a continues mass ascention of balloons (launching all 600+) over the next two hours or so. It is non-stop balloon-a-monium. If the Albuquerque Balloon Festival is not on your "bucket list" it really should be! Make sure to see the anatomically correct flying cow, Smokey The Bear, Darth Vader, and the monstrous Cathedral balloon in the shots below!

        

Frankly, the most appalling revelation during this economic crises is the abysmal lack of knowledge of capital markets displayed by our elected leaders in Washington (i.e. Congressmen and Senators). Clearly, most of the elected officials in Congress who were questioning Paulson and Bernanke positively have no understanding of the relationship of "main street" to "wall street" through the capital markets. They have little understanding of finance or even money. Yet WE elected them. And, they sure can talk - that is babble. Sadly, these will be the very people who will vote on the only plan that will save our ability to obtain our children's college loans and our next car loan. Yep, cash in the ATM, our credit cards, and every loan we try to obtain - or already have - are ALL created from the capital markets that are currently in dire straits. Do we want to lose our homes, our cars, our credit?

Folks, it's NOT a bailout in any manner. This is an investment in the United States of America and in our continued financial leadership in the world. The capital markets are in total disarray right now. That means our own money is also in disarray. That's the way capital markets work. It's a fact of life. As painful as it is, let's worry about blame later - there are far more pressing issues right now - most notably, economic survival.

Our future rides on the passage of the Paulson plan. This is a plan that simply provides the time for natural market forces to re-establish a fair value to all those complex financial terms (CDO, CDS, MBS, etc) that few, if any, really completely understand. All of the money we use to live on is "created" from those financial instruments - the capital markets. Truth is, in the end, our Government is likely to make lots of money in the Paulson plan.

Nope, not a wall street bailout, it's a main street savior. The Paulson plan is our "of this world" savior. And please, let's NOT pork it up! Congress, let's stick to the root issue, not the politics - I know, it'll be hard for you - it's times like these to show your leadership resolve not your political prowess.

Presidential Candidates – Show us your leadership skills, not your debate team skills. We are all watching, I certainly am. My vote this fall will be based on demonstrated leadership, not spoken leadership.

I hope that we all take some time to learn a little about how money really works. We have plenty of time to polish our rhetoric later.

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OK, so now it's a couple days later. The day Congress first votes on the Paulson Plan - now known as TARP - Troubled Asset Relief Program.

So, what profoundly egregious behaviors our elected leaders in Congress presented to the world today - Monday, 29Sept2008 - during the failure of the House to either ratify or offer an alternative to our economic crises.

He said, she said, he did it, they did it, how do I look, is my hair combed, oh heck with the patient, the doctors are going to take their holiday tonight. No offense to those elected leaders bowing out to celebrate Rosh Hashana, but what if your surgeon decided to take a holiday while YOU were on the operating table?

Listen to what our representatives had to say today – shameful children. Look at how the GOP played politics "in order to get re-elected" at the expense of the entire global economy. Businesses already are unable to get credit to meet payroll. It's just a matter of time – a week or two – before everyone of us feel the fall out directly, if you haven't already. And our Washington LEADERS did not LEAD – they COWERED. Where are our representatives in trying to educate us on exactly what is going on? No offense folks, but this situation is exceedingly COMPLEX. It is NOT in any way "main street" vs "wall street." Let's be frank, the average person DOES NOT understand what is really happening. Heck, I have an MIT and Sloan School master's degree and I barely grasp but a sliver of the complexity. Make NO MISTAKE this crises is very REAL. You and I lost $1TRILLION dollars - many of our retirement 401k accounts - in the market today alone. Thank you Congress.

This Plan is NOT a Wall Street bailout, it is NOT a fat cat bailout. It is all about MAIN STREET. Main Street is fueled, fed, and enabled by these credit and capital markets – not the other way around. The Plan is all about freeing up money in these credit markets so WE on main street can get PAID, so WE can use our charge cards, so WE can get money out of the ATM machine. After main street is re-fueled with the capital that this plan frees up, everything else FOLLOWS, automatically. Folks it is NOT A BAILOUT. It is a mechanism to free up the capital markets that make the entire world work. Study it. Learn about it. It is frighteningly real.

OUR duty is to learn and not complain until we UNDERSTAND. OUR duty is also to elect LEADERS not children. This stalwart Republican cannot vote the elephant any longer after their abdication of their responsibility to protect we, the citizens who elected them. And they did it solely along party lines.

I am ashamed for the United States of America and profoundly embarrassed for the actions and frankly, inaction, of those we elected.

I will do my part to change that.

        

Did a little hike up and around Peak 6 of the Tenmile Range. I am on the Copper side of this range. On the other side is Breckenridge Ski Resort and Frisco. Yep, you can see it all from up on this range. Not that tall at some 12,600ft, but a rather brutal 10.5 mile (+-4,000 ft) hike over a large portion of non-existent trails. So, there's a lot of steep scramble action. The real problem is that all the USGS topo maps and even a double check of the imagery on Google Earth seems to show trails all around, yeah right, a bunch of this trek, especially on the ridgeline and  back down there wee NO trails, just lots of painful bushwhacking!

Google Earth kmz file is here.

Topo! file is here.

Here we see the other side of the Tenmile Range including the town of Breckenridge, the slopes of Breck, we can even see Keystone's North Peak and just off screen is The Outback. Off in the far distance is the double 14'er saddle of Grays and Torreys and nestled in the corner of one shot is Tiger Run RV Resort, where I seem to be spending my winters. Rounding out the shots I look back over to Copper Mountain and "my" little parking lot in the lower right corner. I am right next to the soccer field.



Here's the summit pano shot. Look carefully, you'll see Copper Mtn, I70 up to Vail Pass, Breck Ski chutes, Town of Breck, Lake Dillon, In the background are Keystone's North Peak and The Outback, and the Grays & Torreys 14'er saddle summit is also visible. Here's the actual pano pic stiched from several photos.


And another pano from the top. Here's the actual pano pic stiched from several photos.


And here's a pano from a lower peak near Peak 6 showing Peak 6 and a better shot of the Copper Mtn. parking lot I am in. Here's the actual pano pic stiched from several photos.

        

Lance Armstrong enters the grand-daddy of all mountain bike races, the Leadville 100. Yep, 100 miles of trail riding. He was obviously well prepared as he smashed the course record set just last year by some 10 mins at 6:47. But, the hometown favorite and perennial winner Dave Wiens smashed his own record of last year pulling in with an amazing 6:45 winning the race again and putting Lance in 2nd.  I suspect having Lance on his tail just 2 mins behind was quite a motivator! Lance has said that mountain biking is closer to marathon running than road biking, and one would suspect he's right. All his recent marathon action must have paid off in The Race Across The Sky!

After Lance and Dave chatted and split the scene - some 30 mins later - third place finally arrived further emphasizing the incredible caliber of those two riders.

Here's the Leadville 100 web site

Here's the kmz of the race and the ultra-marathon

        

Not a high summit but half the trail is bushwhacking. A good trainer for the big one over peak6. A lot of fun too.
Here's the Google Earth kmz of the trail.

pano in Gulch - Mayflower Hill is from left the first little bump w/ tiny snow speck near top. The traverse was across the face of the wide bump in the middle of shot basically skimming the green/bolder line (from right to left starting at the cabin) and then over the backside and up on Mayflower from its right. Then basically down the left side ridgeline to the parking lot basically in the bottom of the valley. Here's the actual pano pic stiched from several photos.


pano from summit - the tallest pointy most peak is Pacific Peak, Crystal Peak is the double looking one to the left of Pacific and far behind. I see Pacific and Crystal from my camper parking lot. The gulch is behind the peak to the right of Pacific. Here's the actual pano pic stiched from several photos.


180 pano on way down. Car is parked at the Y looking roads at right and the gulch is left - the big mountains behind the bump far left. Initial approach is up the road along the bigger tree line in the middle from right to left. Here's the actual pano pic stiched from several photos.


This photo is the ridgeline approach to Mayflower - pretty skinny and straight drop on both sides and all scramble! The descent is straight out the back along the ridgeline

        

Since I seldom blog, your best bet is to follow all the fully interactive Google mapping of where I am and what I am doing over on www.RVDude.com

Enjoy!

        

The premier one day sporting event in the world. The Indy500. Many thanks to my (new) friends in Indy for this opportunity! Seats right at the start of on turn 2. The beast parked way over on the other side outside of turn 4. The track is huge. Yep, just one among 300,000 of my best friends.

Here's the actual pano pic stitched from several photos.


And the rest of the photos



Click for the high res photo and sound file it's only 42mb

        

Added more entries to the "Future Travels" map and fixed the sorting of that list to make it more usable.

Added a new feature to the "Tell Me Where To Go" page which makes it easier to post comments.

        

Just playing around with some basic panoramic photography stuff. Here's a couple to fill you in on all the action out here... I am using a sweet program called AutoStitch to stitch the hand held shots together and a Java based viewer called Panarado to do the panoramic viewer - hence the Java download.

Below are the panoramic viewer and the actual panoramic shot so you can see how it all pieces together. Each panoramic was created from about 20 or so photos and then stitched together.

First is my wonderful campsite just a couple of miles from Breckenridge Ski Resort... Here's the actual pano pic stiched together from 20 odd photos:


Second is the summit of Mt. Quandry, the panoramic I promised with all the pics taken at the summit. And here's that pano pic:

ENJOY!

        

Yep, it's cold being a ski bum. Most nights about zero degrees and most days barely make it into the teens. But hey, when you live a couple miles from several major hills, it's hard to complain! Here's the home front all snowed in - can you see the slopes of Breck in one of the shots? Is that kewel or what? The daily ritual includes a bit of shoveling before any shredding. Of course, like a local, I wait until the premium paid parking lots are unattended and park for free only a 100 feet or so from the first lift! Now, that is ski bumming.