JoAnne and I were on a trip to Cripple Creek Colorado on Saturday, 23 June, 2012 with her work folks.  Because she belongs to a group that pays money over the year for a Christmas Party, a Cripple Creek trip and a picnic in the summer, we went.

Around 1230 local time in Colorado we started hearing rumors of a "fire" near Colorado Springs. At about 1315 my daughter sent a telephone text message saying something about a fire in "Waldo Canyon" and the possibility of  highway 24 being closed.  As a ham radio operator connected with the Amateur Radio service (ARES) I contacted the local police and fire to find out what was up.

To make a very LONG story short a fire was found to be burning and by the time we heard about it, the fire was close to 100 acres.  The road wasn't yet closed.  By the time we passed the location where the fire was supposed to be located, it was raging on the mountain top, we saw flames that were pretty damned high and a helicopter doing an airdrop.

On Sunday the fire got bigger.  On Tuesday evening the fire had been 5% contained.  At 1600 local we had a press conference and about the end of the conference the fire exploded with 65 mile an hour winds running up the canyons.  It hit Mountain Shadows along the front range and wiped out a lot of houses.  Estimates at this time are from 100 to 300 homes.  Somewhere around 64,000 people over Saturday through Wednesday (today) have been displaced.

Amateur Radio has been called up and they can't get enough people to operate radios.  This fire has become the highest priority for Colorado and we have now well over 1000 fire fighters, thirteen aircraft hitting the fire, and we have no idea the number of trucks and other fire suppression units. 

At this point, NO LIVES have been lost.  Lots of homes are gone though.

And lo and behold, Obama will visit on Friday.  As far as I am concerned he can keep his ass home at the White House and deal with all the other crap he ought to be dealing with and just sign off on sending us money to this state.  (I think the state ought to stop sending money to the Feds, myself, but that's another story).

Colorado has been declared a disaster area.  There are somewhere between 10-13 fires burning right now. There were over 20 set in Teller County over a week (last week) and they were ARSON.  A few weeks back the Al Qaeda published a magazine telling their followers to "Set the US West on Fire".  Looks to me like they succeeded, and if not them, it was the bloody Earth Liberation Front.  Either way, they are terrorists and they better hope they never meet me and admit it.

Hundreds of people have lost their homes on the mountain side.  This has affected 1.5 million people in Colorado Springs and El Paso county, the Air Force Academy, and it is promising to be problematic for the people up the front range.  The fire is moving NORTHWARD and people in Monument have been requested to standby on evacuation.  Woodland Park on the West side of the county has had a mandatory evacuation.

The last few days have been hell for a lot of people in Colorado Springs.  Many of us believe this was a terrorist attack and the government is keeping that information quiet, because frankly they don't want the public to know the truth any more.  Think me a Conspiracy Theorist? You'd be way off.  There are news articles and evidence to support this.  Then again, I think it was either AQ or ELF.  Neither of them are beyond the pale.

Welcome to the page.

Our website is located at http://www.windsoftime.us

We're setting this blog up on Google + so we can connect with friends and they can find us later when we retire.  I'm a lot torqued off at Facebook which we'd originally hoped to use (and still might continue using on a  limited basis) because of one major change after another.  The most recent change was an addition of a "username@facebook.com" email address which is to me, nothing short of a Man-in-the-Middle attack using email addresses.  Facebook and Zuckerdufus, get your act together or you're going to lose that "market share" you've been trying to get and your FB stock is going to go from bad to worse!

A little about us.

Four years ago this August we decided to make plans to retire early.  The short story is (more at the other site) we decided to become cruisers, in a sailboat and go away to distant lands and islands.

Over the past four years the plan has advanced, we've eliminated our debt (save the home), we bought a small training sailboat (25' Macgregor Venture, which is up for sale if anyone is interested!) and took courses on sailing and other related things.  I've been going to "Cruiser College" - a self study course I created for myself to learn as much as I could about everything I'll need to know.... this includes sailing, navigation, rigging a sailboat, diesel engine repair, sailmaking and repair, anchoring, weather, heavy weather, fishing, and many other subjects.

I can say we're closer to going, but I'm far from an expert on any of the above mentioned items.  I can do them all to some degree and it's going to take experience to get more proficient.

On the other site we have a countdown timer for 5 August 2012 as our retirement date.  However, the house isn't on the market and we don't expect to hit that date for sure.  We still have a year left on the Five Year Plan though.  Three weeks ago we had a major hail storm and we're getting a new roof, gutters, and paint job.  Then we're moving out of the house to finish the inside and then get the house on the market.

Colorado Springs is having fires just west of the city right now and things are somewhat on hold for the moment... however, with luck in a few days we can start again and get things back on track.

I'll update this more later.