My silence has been too long. Although I have been running monologues in my head, they rarely make it pass that. The flow to and out from the fingers has been interrupted by demands of life, such as trying to prepare the current house for the market and preparing to develop another home in the desert. Meanwhile, 13-14 hours away from home five to six days a week (mostly work at the lab, but also errands and gathering resources for the new place) don't allow much time for me to sit still and write anything down. Nor do I have much energy.

Motorcycle rides and trips other than daily commuting haven't offered much enjoyment of riding the bikes. During good weather the Wee-strom is my faithful workhorse, but the little play bike, the DR350, sits and pouts. I anticipate a weekend trip somewhere when weather and workload allow. More so, I look forward to stuffing the panniers, strapping a bag on the back seat, and swirling off for a long trip somewhere. That may be awhile to materialize. 

Regardless, I have stolen a few moments over the past year (has it been that long?) to start a new website and blog -A Sense of the Desert- devoted to deserts, especially the Chihuahuan Desert where I will move this year. With increasing pressure on desert environments around the globe, with climate change and human impact, an urgency has grown to educate people about desert environments. Drylands, including all deserts, are highly sensitive to alterations and climate change. Yet deserts are also considered useless wastelands by most people. Thus I have begun to join others in helping to raise awareness and appreciation of deserts and the biodiversity they contain. 

This blog site will retain its focus mostly on motorcycle trips and other adventures (such as my recent wildlife refuge visits, etc) and other meanderings. Content specifically about our home in the desert and other desert-related writings will appear on the other blogsite. I hope you will continue to enjoy both and invite you all to offer a comment here and there to let me know what you think, or to start a discussion.

A word of caution: the other site is hosted on wordpress.com. They usurp bloggers sites to pay for their free service by inserting video advertisements at the bottom of our posts. I suppose that is the price we pay for the free hosting unless we pay an annual $35-40 fee. I have decided to forgo that fee with the intention of joining a third-party hosting company in the near future (aka when I have more time to devote to site development and maintenance). Until then, ignore the obnoxious videos at the bottom of my posts; they are not mine. (Thanks to Brent for bringing the WP videos to my attention)