Current

We're Here!
Yes, we've finally made it to Nebraska! We drove two vehicles - the van, loaded to the gunwhales, and the Contour, similarly full. Tex rode in the van, perched on a couple of boxes between the front seats. We brought along some "Talkabouts" from Motorolla, and they worked out great. (They are a kind of "walkie-talkie", with a range of supposedly 2 miles.) We coordinated our pit-stops and looked for motels with minimal confusion.

It took us 3 days to make the trip. Normally, we make it all the way to Alburquerque the first day, but this time we only got as far as Winslow, AZ the first night. The next day we made it to Alburquerque to visit our friend shortly after lunch, and then on to the Varley's ranch in Santa Fe to see their Tiger Horses. What nice folks! And the horses were beautiful too! Friday evening we finally arrived at Wyndmoor. Boy, were we ever happy to stop driving! And Tex was finally tired of "go for a ride".

Saturday we unloaded the car and part of the van and rested a lot. It was really hot and extremely windy here. We rested most of the afternoon. Sunday we finished unloading the van - wow, did we ever cram stuff in there! We couldn't figure out how to get some of the furniture out without moving a doorway :-) Sunday's weather was still hot, but at least the wind wasn't too bad.

Monday we drove around looking for windows for our studio and a contractor to install them. As it turned out, there's a good place nearby. He came by on Tuesday morning to take measurements and make an estimate. [1] This is the busy time for them (and just about everyone else we talked to) so it will be about 2 months before they can come and start installing the windows. Since the windows are the first things that need to be done, it means that everything else (insullation, electric, walls, plumbing, floor, heat/cooling) will be delayed as well.

Tuesday, I got internet service! Yep, a dialup with a top speed of 36k bps.... they are upgrading soon to 56K bps, so for now things are just a little slow. Wayne was very sweet and put a phone jack in our room. It was fun; I got to help with snaking the phone line through the wall and under the carpet. I spent much of the rest of the day unpacking computer stuff and setting it up. Funny, for a laptop, it still takes up lots of space (scanner, printer, various media readers, etc.) I am hoping to get a digital camera soon. I don't mind scanning too much, but to use up a roll of film then take it to town for developing and printing is longer than my attention span can handle.

Since it will be awhile until work starts in the studio, I'll be working on setting up a horsebarn. I don't know yet how long it will take to get it built, but I'm hoping Murphy will be able to come in mid-late September and I hope it will be ready for him then. Otherwise, we'll have to wait and ship him in the spring.

Dick has been happily playing vibes and all his drums in the studio. We get pretty good air through there so it's pretty comfortable until mid-afternoon. He's also been mowing the property with the DR mower for a couple of hours each morning.

All for now, I'll be updating pretty regularly now!

leemarley

[1]
I was very dissapointed. We had spoken in person to the people making the building (Cleary) and had a model of what we wanted to do, including tall windows in one corner and a French (double) door on the other end. When the window guy came out, he explained how the braces in the building were such that to put in the double doors, that end of the building would have to be taken apart and rebuilt. And our tall windows were exactly where the wind braces were - if we took those out, the building would be out of warrentee (and could blow down in heavy winds). Not only that, but when the workers made the building, they staggered the horizontal supports so that the windows we could have were either too high or too low and wouldn't line up. If we had started with an old warehouse and had to work around these constraints, or if we hadn't shown the guy what we wanted, I could understand. But I feel as if we were lied to by the Cleary people.