On the road again!

Well, it's time to resurrect this blog as Jane and I are once again on the road! I should have done an introductory post yesterday or last week or something, but I forgot so... this is what's up:

I am headed to SoCal to Knott's Berry Farm for Fabulous Fords Forever 2015! I decided that I could use a vacation from the cold of Colorado (and the boredom of living rural) so I took a week off of work to head back west for another round of California fun. For those of you who are not familiar with the event, it's a giant All-Fords show that hosts a couple thousand classic Fords every April. It's only a one-day event, but most people come to stay for a few days and fill up the rest of their time with cruises, other shows, and beach time. I plan to get there on Friday, spend Saturday at the beach / entertaining myself in a myriad of ways, and then attend the show on Sunday. The Monday morning after the show I will head to Joshua Tree National Park; from there I'll make my way back through Arizona and New Mexico, stopping at several interesting places along the way. I'm optimistic for good weather and plenty of fun times ahead!

Today my main goal was to get to New Mexico, as there is a big snowstorm heading into Colorado tonight. I wanted to get past all of the major mountain passes before the snow swept in, which meant that I needed to get out of the Rockies and then down across Raton Pass on the NM-CO border. I got Jane all loaded up (with substantially less gear this time) and we hit the road mid-afternoon.

Well first of all, it was so windy that I'm surprised I didn't end up in Oz (or worse, Kansas)! Wind speeds were in excess of 30 MPH the whole drive south with very strong gusts that were blowing cars all over the road. Most people slowed their speed to compensate, but of course I am young and lacking in common sense so I took the weather circumstances as a challenge and maintained rather high rates of speed. I have to say that I'm really glad that Jane is lowered, as a stock-stanced Mustang would have really been skidding around. Mostly I just had to deal with incredible amounts of wind noise, a horrible whistling sound when the wind angled just right under a loose piece of trim, and the occasional swerving around trying to keep the car on the road while the wind did its best to get me off of it. But I'm pleased to report that I seem to have lost no parts (I was sure that the antenna was a goner with the way it was whipping around) and Jane seems to be running excellently!

Oh, and you know how I was all concerned about making it through the second mountain pass (Raton Pass) before the snow hits? Yeah, that is the WEENIEST pass I have ever seen in my life. I don't even know if it counts as a hill. I go up bigger inclines when I go to the grocery store every week! What a crock. Had nothing to worry about with that but at least I'm over it and out of the storm's way.

I've been working on tuning her up recently and this morning actually checked the timing for the first time ever. Imagine my surprise when initial timing was at 25* BTDC! I backed it off to 15* and of course now the car runs worse. So probably tomorrow I will give 20* a try and maybe I'll have it sorted by the time I hit California. Nothing like testing and tuning your way across the country!

Anyways, no pictures for today. Hopefully I'll have some good ones for tomorrow though as I will be covering a LOT of ground. The plan is to hit Kingman, AZ by dinnertime. That said, time for me to hit the hay! Kelly signing out.