Month of July 2024

by Nick

Posted on August 2, 2024

I got a little behind on writing this month so instead of writing weekly I am just going to write a post for this month. This may be more practical going forward since I have other things that I am wanting to write anyway so this would give me more time to do it instead of trying to write a weekly update post.

Week of 7/1-7/7

Steve was in Houston for the fourth so we were watching Wilson. Tiff was feeling like she wanted to go on a trip for the long weekend, but watching Wilson made it a little more complicated. I had traveled to VA for work the week before and was pretty worn out from traveling. We also needed to get caught up around the house and were planning on listing her car for sale which didn't end up happening. Tiff is starting to feel like the summer is half over and we haven't gotten to do as much as we wanted to as far as camping and trips.
We ended up deciding not to go anywhere and went over to Ryan and Hannahs and watched Fourth of July fireworks at overlook park in white rock. On the morning of the fourth we drove out to Red River to see Alee and Alex who were in town from Texas on vacation. We went to the parade in Red River and went back to their rental for a few hours. Mitch and Harris played in the river and we sat in the back yard for a few hours and cooked some hot dogs. We left around three or four and headed back to watch fireworks in white rock. On Friday Ryan and I took the kids fishing to Canjillon lakes. There were quite a few people there fishing and it was a little tough. I think we ended up catching probably 5-6 rainbows that were around 10” or so. On Sunday Ryan and I took the kids fishing at the Valles Caldera. We were there from around 8-4 or so. It was a pretty successful day fishing between the Jaramillo and the San Antonio and a beautiful place to spend a day.

Week of 7/8-7/14

Tiffs mom came up on Wednesday and brought Molly with her. She had been watching her for the past month or so since after she started getting sick from eating people food, mostly from what she was able to steal from Mitch’s plate and food that he was dropping on the floor that we didnt realize. We had to take her to the vet multiple times and spent close to $3k on vet bills. Tiffs mom volunteered to watch her for a while, which I think they wer both happy about since Molly was spending most days at home by herself and Sheila got some company out of it as well.
Tiffany and I left for Pagosa Springs on Friday. Tiff’s mom offered to watch Mitch for us so that we could have a weekend alone together. On our way out we stopped in town at the ski and bow rack so that I could buy a fly rod to use over the weekend since mine had broken the week before while we were fishing the Caldera. We took the camper and stayed at West Fork Campground, about 20 miles to the East of Pagosa Springs. We didn't have a reservation but were able to pick up a first come first serve spot, which is surprising considering how full the Bruce Spruce campground was on the road out. I assume it was due to the West Fork campground not having utilities. Anyway it was a beautiful spot on the West fork of the San Juan River. After dropping the trailer we decided that we were going to cook up a couple of trout for dinner if I could catch some. I went to put together the rod that I had just bought and realized it wasn't in the rod tube… so we decided to go back to Pagosa before the store thought that I was lying about not getting the rod. It ended up working out pretty well honestly and we went to city hall, our favorite Pagosa restaurant. I had a steak with burgundy sauce and Tiff had the Chicken Piccata. That restaurant surprises me every time. It honestly isn't anything fancy but the food is always top notch an the service and drinks are always everything that you hope it will be. I did a little fishing when we got back in the half hour before it was too dark to fish. I had a few hits on a chubby chernoby and ended up catching one small trout and had a couple of others on. Tiff sat close by and collected rocks and soaked in the nice views of a beautiful river. It was a great way to start the trip.
On Saturday, we went to the hot springs in Pagosa. We spent a few hours there before walking around town and stopping at the Pagosa Bar where they had news on TV. That is where we learned about the shooting at Donald Trump's rally in PA. It was very shocking but not necessarily surprising. In the days after I have been watching basically all of the news coverage of the event and aftermath and all I can say that it is hard to believe that such an event could happen under the oversight of the Secret Service whose sole responsibility it is to protect from such an event. My honest first reaction is what happened is the result of negligence at best, and was an intentional oversight at worst. How basic security protocol was not considered is infuriating as an American citizen. How a building within 200 yards of a US presidential candidate’s stage with line of sight was not 100% locked down is mind blowing. Not only that, the secret service was made aware of his presence on the roof 18 minutes before the shooting began. I can concede that maybe it was a difficult call to make to kill the shooter before he opened fire but I cannot understand how Trump was not moved to safety when there was any suspicion of danger.
Sunday, we slept in and packed up the camper. We made it to Pagosa around 10 am im guessing. I had been carrying around my fishing equipment to this point in a ziplock bag so needed to get some sort of pack that I could carry my things around in. I ended up buying an Umpqua Northfork Waist Pack from Let It Fly and a cheap aluminum frame net. I felt a little guilty buying so much fishing gear but with these things I feel like I finally have a proper setup where I can keep track of my necessary gear and can pack it around all day comfortably. As we walked out of the fly shop a line of cars was driving through town flying Trump flags and honking. This was the day after the shooting had clearly made an impact and got people motivated to go out and show their support. Tiff and I walked by a woman that was walking out of a shop/restaurant as the line of cars was driving by. She made a comment about not making a rude gesture because she was a business owner. Its funny that people make these types of comments and it seems to happen to me only when Tiff is around. I think it is because of her short haircut that they make certain assumptions about her political affiliation.
I fished the town section of the river between the metal pedestrian bridge up river to the east and ended up catching around 10 or so rainbows using my nymphing setup Tiff wanted to go find some gifts so went and walked around town while I fished. This was my first time really trying a euro-nymphing rig and I was surprised at how successful I was. Even though I only had my regular rod, my success spoke for itself. We ended up leaving around 3 in the afternoon and got home around 7. The following day was a work day. I had to get up early to drive to Abq for meetings on Monday morning so it was a short night's sleep.

Week of 7/15-7/21

I spent Monday night in Albuquerque for work. Tiff had let me know that Ryan’s wife Hannah who was past the due date pregnant was in the hospital and that she hadn't heard an update. I reached out to Ryan who sent me a picture of the baby that was born shortly before.
I ended up watching the republican national convention while I was in Albuquerque. It was surprising to see the teamsters president Sean O’Brien speak. I think the fact that he was there speaks to the state of the political divide in the country. Im not even sure that it feels as much of a divide as it is an alignment based on what your most important political attribute is such as the economy, abortion, gun rights, etc. I think pretty much everyone is going to hold their nose when they vote this year but it seems like that is where the political climate is currently. You make your best judgment, based on who you think will move what you believe are the most important issues forward and hope that you weren't wrong. At least that is how I am feeling about it. The issues that seem to be most important to me right now are the economy and who is going to do the best job of keeping us out of world war three. I think much of the bureaucratic state has grown too large and that excessive public sector influence has led us to be excessively slow and fiscally inefficient. I’ll let you guess on who my current pick is.
On Wednesday I helped Mitch fix his RC car. It is a Traxxas TRX4M Defender in Blue that we had bought for him for his birthday after a few cheaper rc cars that had broken just because he plays with them so much. This time we had to fix the front and rear differentials after the factory plastic gears started grinding. We have had to replace the steering servo as well which seems like a lot but judging by the number of hours that he has on it so far I think it was still a good buy. He plays with the thing for multiple hours a day on average. It was a pretty hectic week overall I had taken the prior Thursday off so that I could work all week (instead of my typical four day week) and tiffs mom was a big help watching mitch and juggling everything. Thursday night there was a work event at Boese for food and drinks. On Saturday, we went over to Ryan and Hannahs to help him out with the shed. He wasn't happy with the roof so we took off the old plywood and put on some that was heavier. He had made a brisket also and wanted to celebrate the birth of his son. Hannah’s mom and dad were in town so we got to meet them. We brought some stuff to make cocktails and ended up having some whiskey sours and margaritas.
I found some landowner cow elk tags that were being offered for sale on facebook that were a little pricey but we decided to contact the guy and try to buy them. We had put in for hunting tags as a group which was a bad decision and Ryan, Steve, and I all ended up not drawing anything. We also tried to draw in Utah with no luck. We ended up picking them up the following Friday.
On Sunday Tiff wanted to take her mom to go do something with just the two of them. They ended up going to Nambe falls and Tesuque Village Market. I took Mitch to go fly fishing in Capulin Creek which I had heard had cutthroats. It was a little over an hour drive by the time we got there and it ended up getting fairly rough to the point where I wondered if it was a mistake taking the truck since it was honestly more of a jeep trail. The creek ended up being dry, so fly fishing was a bust we kept driving down FR 249 as far as we could and ended up finding a really cool view just short of the St. Peters Dome lookout. We hung out there and took a few pictures and drove back to Las Conchas to try and catch a fish. It was raining as we were driving out from the lookout so we were the only people at the Las Conchas trailhead. I really just wanted to catch a fish with mitch which happened almost immediately. We were walking up to the water and saw a fish in the water while we were still on the trail. I made a cast over to him and we watched him slowly swim over and grab the ant pattern that I tied on. We fished for probably a half hour or so and the rain started again. Mitch played in the river throwing rocks until he got too cold and wanted to go back to the truck.

Week of 7/22-7/28

Monday was the mens C-league softball tournament we ended up winning the first game and losing the next two so that was the end of our season. We were down by two and I hit the game winning hit.
I have been working to lose some weight. I am basically just counting calories and staying at or below 2000 calories a day. I am going to do this for at least a month to see what kind of results I have. I already feel like I am making progress. At the end of the week I was at 203 which felt lighter than when I starten but I didnt weigh myself initially.

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