Life gets away from us sometimes (also as you will see below, connections have been problematic in the great American outback). Economy in some areas we have been at has been pretty awful. El Centro has about 24% unemployment, yup. However, lots of alternative economy goes on there.

We sent a letter last year and thought we'd put the first part here on the web site that we're going to start using.  Here's that letter from April 2008:

Hello Dear Family & Friends!!!

Yes, we are still here.  We apologize holiday greetings never made it to you the last couple of years.  We seem to catch bad winter colds November to December.

went dirt bike riding in Salida in September before the snow came.  There's a trail just south of town.  Only a mile until dirt and not much more until a high clearance, rought road.  But I couldn't make it to the top of the local mountain because of a road closure.  So, I went on a single track called Rainbow trail, which is well known and is over 100 miles of trails , much of it available for dirt bikes.  It was a mistake to ride alone, but after much adventure, I came out OK.  Here's a view looking north west from one part of the trail.