Ice and Sun

A Belated Happy Easter to Y'all!

Just got back from work, but it's nice and sunny so thought I'd pop down and sit by the pool and type this. Luckily, thanks to BHPB, I have a snazzy new Bluetoothy-BlackBerry-with-Camera so I can show you a picture of where I am -->

I have lots of things to tell you about, and even an audience question which I expect you to answer using the comments facility below.

So first things first.

I went to get my car back from the Ford place - needed a new bumper after some crazy driver drove into me whilst they were overtaking 2 lanes of stopped cars on the wrong side of the road. They never stopped to let me get their insurance details, so the $800 is coming out of my pocket which stung somewhat. Anyway - whilst at the dealership I went to have a peek at the new cars. I have gone off the idea of a Mustang now - not terribly practical in Texas - I mean I only ever want to travel to the airport or the shops, and any long trips are usually to Big Bend where a convertible doesn't have the clearance for the backcountry trails. So another SUV is required.

Ford have brought out a Hybrid version of the Escape for 2008 (I have the regular petrol-driven 2001 model right now), so I took that for a spin around the block. It's really nice - very quiet, but still as roomy as the regular Escape but has the benefit of getting 500 miles on a tank of fuel rather than 330 miles which I get at the moment with my 3.0 litre V6.

It also has the coolness factor of being a bit new and high tech.

Driving it is funny - until you get to about 25 mph, the petrol engine remains off, and the car runs on batteries alone. If you put your foot down a little harder however, the petrol engine instantly turns on and gives you extra power as needed. The batteries are recharged automatically when you use the brakes. Very clever, and especially around town saves a lot of fuel and of course carbon emissions.

Downsides are that it costs about $5000 more than the equivalent petrol engined version, and has a little less power which may be an issue for overtaking, on hills and on backcountry trails, but I have no hard data on that.

Also, I work for an oil company, so may possibly get fired if I buy a Hybrid :-)

Plus sides are: vast amounts of moral high ground in that I get to drive around with an eco-warrior under the hood / bonnet, I get 200 extra miles on a tank of gas, and there is a $3000 tax rebate at the end of the year for Hybrids. That means the financial difference (disregarding fuel savings) is closer to $2k, which is becoming more sensible...

So, what do YOU think? Eco-warrior, or Gas Guzzler? Comments please.

(Note that those of you who suggest the Hybrid will need to contribute about $300 apiece.)

So, in my newly repaired Escape, I headed across to Big Bend for Easter. The weather dropped very cold indeed, and hit freezing at about 4000 feet elevation. This is pretty surprising for Texas in April. The result though was some spectacular views of the National Park covered in ice. The accumulation was only about 5mm or so, but it coated spines of cacti, needles on the pinion pine and juniper trees and spring flowers in a transparent icy shell. Very cool.

As it's spring, and there has been a fair bit of rain this year, the desert was flowering with all manner of nice cacti to look at and take pictures of. The Yucca had great big white bundles of flowers, and the Agave, Sotol and Nolina were all at it too. I like the ocotillo cactus - big daggers of green with bright red flame like flowers on the end - very cool. Pictures to come, but try googling: http://images.google.com/images?&q=cacti+big+bend.

Slightly less cool was the trip back to Houston. I drove down the mountains, out of the park, and headed north. The road climbs gently all the way to Fort Stockton, 100 miles away, at which point I was back at 4000' and in ice. The white stuff gradually encroached on the Interstate, with the bridges getting covered in ice first, then the hard shoulder, the overtaking lane, until I was trapped in two ruts with crunchy ice everywhere. The precipitation instantly froze when it hit the car, and the front grille, the lights and the bonnet were covered in quarter of an inch of ice too. The aerial and wing mirrors were funny - the former became over an inch thick as it accumulated ice, and the latter developed long icicles streaming backwards. The windscreen wipers that usually conform to the curve of the windscreen became rigid and frozen, so failed to clear the screen.

Of course in such conditions the 80 mph speed limit was not practical, and at times we were down to 35 mph, which is a hell of a slow journey when you're making a 500 mile trip. Although it was pretty impressive, I was glad when after 250 miles the road began the slow decent towards San Antonio and the ice stopped accumulating, first on the road, and then began melting off the car. It still took a further 200 miles before the ice was entirely gone from the aerial though.

Oh, and thanks Arminadinnerjacket for letting us have our marines back. Much obliged. Anyone for tea?

Labels: Apartment, big bend, Houston, ice

posted by Sam @ 19:08 5 comments

Brief Catch Up...

Jesus. It's March.

Since I last put fingers to keyboard to finely craft a post here, I have bought Christmas presents, got on a plane back to the UK, made it as far as Gatwick before transferring to a British Airways Fog Busting Bus to Manchester, seen the family for Christmas, even seen the Germans (Shout out to top cousins Ashley and Lewis!), before travelling back to London, spending a week there for work, travelling back to Houston, settling back into the routine for a brief 2 weeks before starting a new job, doing a little local flying before travelling to Geneva and onwards to Morzine for a Ski Holiday with the parents and Tom 'n Megan. Back to Houston a week later, and the following on board another plane to Santiago, Chile for a quick work gig, back to Houston for 2 and a half weeks to pick up the new job for a bit before back to Santiago again.

I have been back in Houston for nearly a week now, and have just about unpacked and got my apartment back to looking reasonably presentable again, although the odd sock still loiters under cushions awaiting a trip to the washing machine.

So, yes, it's been busy, and I've had little time to get bored, although have just recently been thinking about spending vast amounts of money that I don't have on some property. We have an ancronym at work - OPM. It stands for "Other People's Money" and I think it sounds a great idea. I should head down to have a word with the nice folks at Wells Fargo Bank about getting myself a mortgage. I just think that I should get some tangible assets behind me.

With this new-found ambition, I headed out on Friday (day off) to have a little look at some of the new apartments that are being built near work. There's one that I really liked, but looks like I slightly misjudged the market - it's $720,000, which needless to say is just a little more than I can afford right now! Ah well... Back to the drawing board... There are lots of lower priced properties around here too, a little further out of town, but Houston is a bit weird for holding real estate value over time - as there are no planning restrictions or zoning laws, new developments appear all the time, so areas can drop in value quite substantially after as little as 5 years. Not what I want in an investment.

So maybe I should just keep renting - it's a great for no hassle...

Anyway - back to the opening paragraph...

Skiing this year was in Morzine, not far from Cluses and Geneva. We had a great self-catering Chalet on the slopes on the edge of Morzine Village and right next to the lifts. As the snow in the Alps was pretty bad this year, we were lucky to be able to ski from the door, but we could and did all week. We had a huge dump of snow one night which made for one of the best powder days I've ever had the following morning. The holiday was marred somewhat by Mum managing to wreck her cruciate ligaments whilst getting off a chairlift on the first day. A really annoying injury, and potentially quite serious, necessitating an emergency evacuation from the slopes and an ambulance to a clinic where X-Rays were duly taken, and hundreds of Euros extracted for crutches, a leg brace and various drugs. Recovery is proceeding well, but these things are slow.

The Alps really are amazing, and it's great that we've got the opportunity to go most years.

Once back in Houston, I only had 3 days back at work before heading off to Santiago for another session speaking about Petroleum to the Graduate Programme. Again, it went down really well, and I had a great time, this time spending a lot of time pounding the streets of Santiago. The city is really busy, bustling, with plentiful parks and fountains, but at night the parties start late and go on until daylight. I went to see the statue of the Virgen (yes, that's how they spell it!) Mary standing atop San Cristóbal hill. She looks out over the city of Santiago which sprawls along the foothills of the Andes. The statue is partly the work of French sculptor Bartholdi, of the US Statue of Liberty fame.

I repeated the trip just last week, this time spending Saturday there as well, which was yet another opportunity to see more of the place that I had before.

Labels: Apartment, Chile, France, Houston, Travel, Work

posted by Sam @ 00:07 2 comments