A Busy Quiet Day If That's Possible

Heidi has turned into a food begging monster. It doesn't matter that she had a meal just an hour before, if she sees me walking to or I am in the kitchen, she is there doing nothing but giving me the look that she needs a treat. With any hound you have to watch their weight. Too heavy means joint problems later, lower back problems with bassets and hips with bloodhounds. With that in mind I cannot pass out treats every time they want one. Yet, she tries to lay the guilt trip on me with her eyes.

I think you will notice a huge difference from last nights sky as it got close to sundown. Tonights skies were beautiful. These were from Sunday night. I will warn you though, tonight I don't have a lot to say nor do I have a lot of photos to post. I spent most of the day in town at one medical facility or another and that does leave a lot of time for taking photos. I did fit in a short 34 minute bicycle ride again today .... the winds made me work a little more than I wanted. I would downshift and ride slower is all.

I am finding out this medical arena is hard to figure out. Who does what, who pays for what, they say appealing costs is normal but I have a question that no one seems to answer. Anyone out there in blogland able to answer this question?

"If I do appeal a charge(s) and that take over 30 days to have an answer, will the balance due be reported to my credit agency as a late payment over 30 days, thus hurting my credit rating? I would be willing to pay for something I don't have to just so I don' have a balance due over 30 days old, and having it show up on my credit report as a "late payment"

I have to laugh when I hear "Medicare for All" ... Really?? I will not get into the financial side of that disaster but I will say that if you think the entire USA population is going through any kind of medical program run by the government ... take a quick look how that works out at the VA. You really want the government to tell who you can and cannot see as your doctor or surgeon? I am going to kick back in my couch and watch the circus when that happens.

These are from today, not quite 5pm. The Southwestern skies never give a poor show.

Overall the neighborhood is a lot quieter than I ever expected. Next door is an old 13 or 14 year old pug. We don't hear of him much but when he is out barking it always makes Stella curious what that sound is. If you didn't know any different the pug sounds like it has been a lifelong cigarette smoker.

Of course that is also the same neighbor that gave her some bbq chicken one Sunday night after asking me if it was okay. So she might be checking out for any sounds of him firing up his bbq grill. She isn't particular when it comes to grilling ... steaks, fat, chicken, wings, ... just toss it over the fence to her, she'll find it.

I've been waking up in the middle of the night lately unable to get back to sleep for hours so tonight I am going to try to stay up late for the first time since I moved here and see if that helps me sleep through the night. I catch myself more and more ALMOST getting into bed or the car the normal way instead of the way the PT showed me. I am also waking up at night about to roll on my right side to sleep, the surgical side. So is that the body speaking to me, telling me it's okay to do normal movement?

Another beautiful day here in the Wild West. Possible exploration day tomorrow.

Stella Sees A Coyote

Saturday morning we woke up to the best sunrise I have seen since I moved here June 13 and that is saying a lot because it seems almost every day there is one that ranks at the top of the list of sunsets. I am ecstatic that I live in this area. That is looking towards Bisbee and the Mule Mountains to the left ... the mountain on the right resides across the border in Mexico. It was a chilly 42° Saturday morning but Stella and I got our walk in while Heidi stayed home in a deep sleep after her breakfast.

The only plans for Saturday were "Football Saturday" and I was going to change the handlebar tape on two of my bicycles because I did not like the color that came with two of the 'used' bikes that I have recently bought. The hounds would sleep, I would sit on the couch watching games with me standing up to stretch during commercials and walking outside in the backyard during halftimes.

It might be fall and each morning is on the cool side but by mid-afternoon it's up in the high 70's making it perfect weather. Some that know me have been sending me photos of 4" of snow in their backyard or screen shots of their weather from the Midwest. I do NOT miss Southern Indiana weather !!!

When I bought the 'used' 1994 LeMond Zurich a few days before my bike wreck and surgery, I never liked the black tape but that seems to be "today's" color in the bike world. I am not sure how I pick which color I want but I know for this bike it wasn't going to be black.

Looking through my 'downsized' storage I find a brand new box, never opened, handlebar tape in the exact color I want ... White. This bike will now look just like the Romic.

Before I even knew this bike was for sale, I knew if I had owned this Specialized Diverge Comp I would have taken off the lowest water bottle cage and I would change the handlebar tape to black. To me, this bike was meant to show those orange highlights just as they are on the frame, not to add to them. I found out later from the owner that the lowered cage wasn't for a water bottle but a small tool kit and spare inner tube in addition to what was under the seat ... for his 100 mile rides.

Water bottle cage removed and black tape. If the seat didn't cost so much I would buy the same model of seat in black.

With Heidi in her bed in back for most of the night sleeping, that meant Stella would get all the rest of the Greek God's Honey Vanilla yogurt and would eventually clean out the container like nothing was ever there.

Again this week I found out the long hours of sitting down, even with the short breaks of standing up and walking around, probably make my hip area sorer than anything else I do. I get up three or four times while putting a blog post together but the hip is getting more flexible with those side kicks out to the side. NOT hard kicks, NOT kicks at all but just lifting my straight right leg out to the side and upward a little.

This morning skies were entirely different. Every morning is different with most of the afternoons the same. I like the variety. At least I don't glance outside and see snow flurries passing the window and temps in the single digits. :)

Little did we know that we would see a very very curious coyote on our morning walk this morning. We had made the turn around the vet building and as soon as we got on the sidewalk Stella pulled out that 25' of retractable leash like she never did before.  Just like that it zipped out 25' and I had to hang on unless I wanted to be part of the sprint. It stopped her and when I looked ahead there was a coyote standing in the nice mowed grass of the vet building staring right at Stella.

It would trot away then stop and look back at us while Stella and I did a very slow walk. By the end of the street the coyote took off running in the brush when Stella got there I wanted to see what she would do. She tracked the ground, went the right direction then when I stopped her, she raised her nose to the air and sniffed the scent of the coyote that was there just minutes before.

That is now three coyotes we have seen in two different occasions in the last 4 months. They were howling/crying in the vacant land behind my house an hour or two before sunrise this morning.

The skies were darker than the iPhone camera captured ... That is Hwy 92 where the lights are.

When the hounds think they are minutes away from being fed morning breakfast ... here is a pretty normal sequence, minus the howls and barking.

By 9am I was headed for Montezuma Pass again for the third time since moving here. I was just there last week with the truck and now I wanted to see what the new RAV4 TRD Off Road (new model) would do in comparison.

Every picture you see of a road like this, it turns left or right and climbs 7° or more right after the turn.

At the top ... the RAV did fantastic and it's only All-Four drive. I never had to go to low S1-S3 to climb. It may have handled this drive to the top better than the 4Runner and Tacoma TRD Pro.

That road doesn't go all the way to the ground level, it will veer back into the mountains for almost 16 miles of climbing and heavy rock surface.

The past few posts I have mixed and matched photos from the iPhone and the new Nikon D3500. I have really liked using the 18-55mm lens the Nikon came with although I bought it for the 70-300mm. The iPhone Pro 11 Max takes the best photos I have ever seen for crisp sharpness and little to no editing.

Besides changing the handlebar tape on two bicycles I changed the blog "About" page and updated my "Bicycles" page this morning early. I cut the size of the About page drastically and still covered 8 years of blogging.

Just like the doctor told me on October 22nd, "every day from here on out your hip is going to feel better. There will be some bad days but not from anything you do or have done, it's just a normal process of healing." The hip joint takes 2 to 3 months to heal and I will pass the 2 month mark on the 8th of November. Some of the exercises hurt just a little but I know they are helping a lot.

A great day here in the 'Wild West' today.

A Slow Day But A Good Day

Not much going on today so there will be few words. The hounds keep wanting food as soon as they wake up and they will sit in the living room until they are fed or will follow me to the computer room while I drink coffee just to see when I might feed them. I did ride my bicycle today very easy and very slow for 29 minutes. The route was flat and a big circle through my neighborhood. Interesting that Stella didn't want to stay in the backyard with the door closed but was willing to stand at the living room window watching me pass the house each lap I took.

For the second day in a row Heidi took the lead for our morning walk. She pranced out the front door ahead of Stella and trotted down the sidewalk ... attached to her retractable leash. Our walk this morning about about .73 of a mile in 42° weather but that is still shorts weather for me.

As the the temps warm up and the action increases the hounds find it best to sleep a lot during the day. Not a lot of blog worthy action going on.

Even though Heidi had been fed on schedule, she still thought she might get me to give her a dog treat while Stella was passed out on the patio.

Another beautiful day.

I was able to straighten out the billing department in town this morning. They had no idea why I was being charged anything for the surgery on September 8th. Headquarters is somewhere back in Maine!! Their balance doesn't match the real balance. You get the picture I'm sure.

By the end of the day ... Stella was at the point of confusion.  Looks like a good night for "Movie Night" here at the homestead.

Oh ... 5 hours after I rode easy, I've had no signs telling me that my new hip did not like it's exercise. That's good news.

It cannot be 'wild' all the time in the Wild West and today was one of those days.