Summer's almost over...

It is a wonderful thing, living at 9,000 feet when the rest of the lower 48 is suffering a heat wave. I keep subconsciously waiting for summer to arrive. And here it is, the first few days of August. We bought sweet corn from a roadside stand the other day, grown at much lower elevations on the western slope, and it was overripe. How can summer be so nearly gone as to have already produced sweet corn, let alone overripe sweet corn? But here, it rains in the evenings, and the balmy Kansas nights are perhaps one of the things we miss the most. It is almost laughable to watch fellow suburbianites scurry around, planting here, weeding there, tending and caring and watering, when in six weeks, the snow will begin creeping down from the peaks, and cover it all up. The tangled mess of columbines, daisies, and poppies will be gone, and we will walk over their beds, and park on expensive sprinkler systems because we will not reallize where our borders are because everything will be white.

The bears have already switched into frantic forage mode. One attempted a mad dash across a road the other day, through a tangle of bicyclists, coasting downhill at breakneck speed. After a tangled tumble, the bear disengaged itself and scrambled into the bushes. The only bicyclist to actually make contact showed off her roadburn for the papers the next day. There are stories of them raiding parked cars, even refridgerators, inside unlocked houses. (the bears, that is, not the bicyclists).

I must say, the town I live in is so much more obviously exciting than the one I grew up in. I say obviously, because there is excitement in little prairie towns as well, but it is not so readily available to the casual observer. Take the other day, when the Safeway truck lost it's brakes after it had passed the last runaway ramp. it could have continued on over the overpass and slowed on the long uphill stretch all the way up Vail pass if need be, but the rattled driver chose to exit at Silverthorne. The truck, in the process of turning over, lost it's trailer, which also overturned in the busy intersection. No life was lost, although it easily could have been, but the street flowed with soft drink. Two weeks later, the street is still a bit sticky.

Yesterday was a big day for anyone approaching a midlife crisis...ok, that was a cliche, but honestly, how many young guys did YOU see yesterday at the Show 'n' Shine event yesterday, when over 500 Corvettes nosed their way onto Main Street in Frisco? Ok, so it's also a little unfair, since most of the proud, balding owners of said Corvettes have spent a lifetime aquiring the money needed to finance such a hobby. We walked, and looked, and marveled at the sheer amount of money amassed along both curbs and the center of the street. How many small countries could each of these cars feed for a year? How many individuals could one sparkling, mirror-chrome wheel clothe? How about if each bandana'd participant had thrown their hundreds and thousands of dollars which shone out of their chrome incrusted engine components and gleamed from their flawless original paint and peeked from between the oiled treads of their original tires, at something else, say, I dunno, research on how to become independant from the oil which is the life force of this sort of lifestyle?

Ok, now I've waxed cynical, and for this, I am rediculed as the resident tree hugger. I do not claim to be nearly passionate enough for such a title. Only tonight, I took out the trash, soda cans and beer bottle clanking against eachother, and I threw the whole mess right into the dumpster. Shame on me.

But it is the people here that provide the most interest. No real drama is needed if one can be content to people-watch. It becomes a game to peg them as they come and go- to imagine one knows what makes them tick, and what ticks them off. Trophy wife, ski bum, golfing retiree, and then of course, the foreigners. Give it your best shot. Polish? Russian? Spanish, Mexican, Equadorian, Peruvian? What about the varieties of English? England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand? The youngish restaurant owner in the Subaru, most likely to exhibit road rage to someone with Kansas plates. The muscle bound jock in the A-basin tee shirt, most likely to have his license revoked. The kid with the wires snaking from his ears, with his pants belted on under his cheeks, most likely to fail his pre-employment drug test. The tie dye clad hippies, their guitars and dreadies and those VW van/campers that just wont die. And of course, those of us who come and go, youngish and determined to get their lives and finances in order before they take the next step, such as families. It's a colorful, glorious world. You can't tell me that God made everything but humans as diverse as He did, and now expects the humans to conform to each other's models and ideals of perfection.

And now I've waxed philosophical. It happens.

Half of the rest of our household should be arriving tonight, the other half on Sunday or Monday. We were planning on them being back today, in time to help us get through another hairy weekend. Why must families invariably plan their reunions when we are the busiest? we optimistically thought, if B. and I stayed home, the others could still go, but in the ten days since they left, we have been rethinking that offer. A hundred condos and nine businesses without running water for an hour and a half because one of our condos develoved a torrential water leak, and the entire building only had a single water shut-off (honestly, who designs these buildings?) leading to a very irate day spa owner, threatening legal action on our quaking little selves... I had visions of dye left too long in hair, lost bookings, thousands of dollars we would have to make up in damages. As it was, it cost B. an hour of listening to the guy scream before he revealed it had cost him two manicures and a few bottles of water. That was one day. to say that was representative of our entire week would be a little bit of an overstatement, but it has been possibly the most stressful two weeks of work we have ever done. If we can only make it through one last peak-season weekend, shorthanded, we will take a few days off, leave Summit County, sit somewhere and stare around us with glazed eyes and try to stop quivering. At least it has started another cycle of rainy afternoons. If it were sunny and beautiful yet, and we were unable to enjoy our last few weeks of such sunny beautifulness, I think I might cry. As it is, we've just been a little snappy.

And now I am off, to go create something tasty for just the two of us before we must begin planning meals for four again. I took an ill-afforded morning at home to try to remove the effects of our eat-sleep-and-run schedule the last ten days, and by now, have almost found the floor and countertops again. Maybe I can fool everyone into thinking I am a tidy, virtuous, little wifey type a while longer.