I should be working...

Hello... I am sorry, this will not be the extensive report that my faithful readers have come to expect. I am in a bit of a hurry. I am supposed to be packing for two nights in Kansas, but instead, here I sit writing, because anything is better than packing and cleaning.



Ok, first photo is of your favorite blogger and her hiking pardner. Not that you can tell, but the cataract which gives Lower Cataract Lake it's name is behind us. This was the evening after I posted those pictures on my last post. I had 15 miles of running, two hours of wondering around the annual Frisco BBQ cook-off, a massive ingested smoked turkey leg, a brief reboot at the house, then a two mile hike and a five hundred foot climb over massive boulders, logged in the last ten hours. I am aware that I appear a bit bedraggled. B of course was still fairly fresh, having done it all with me except the fifteen mile run from dillon to breckenridge. Hey, I did it, by the way.(except for the few minutes I spent taking those pictures...) That was four days ago. Havent put on my running shoes since. I guess now I have to either fish or cut bait as far as the marathon goes. Ask me later how that's coming...

Anyway, that night, we forgot it was the weekend, so we packed the tent Uncle Leroy and Aunt Mary gave me when I graduated from eighth grade, grabbed some firewood, and fully planned on camping. We remained unaware that it was the weekend until we tried to find a campsite, and every single available flat spot of ground was claimed. By the time we got done with our hike, everyone was settled in. We settled for our big, soft bed. Kind of wonderful, actually, after my day.

The second picture is of Lower Cataract Lake, in those last still moments just before dark. For Bobby, I think it was in these

moments he became excited about backpacking, along the trail which runs from this point, at the end of the Gore Range, past our backdoor twenty five miles away, where the gore range begins. (Or begins and ends, vice versa, depending on which end of it you are on...) He's not quite so excited about it anymore. Why? Cause a day later, we did it. No, not the whole thing, just thirteen hours worth, interrupted by one night on the trail. But, my friends, that is a story for another time. I do not have the time right now.

In the meantime, we are preparing to make another flying trip to Kansas, first thing in the morning. We found a buyer for the boat. If we'd'a known we would sell it to a Scott Citian, we would not have gone to all the effort to haul it up here, for one several-hour session on the lake! We would have just left it in Kansas. But, hey. We dont mind, we'll probably take it out to Cedar Bluff Reservior in KS for the day tomorrow, ski and wakeboard like there aint no tomorrow (cause there aint), spend tomorrow night on the same lakeshore where we have spent some of the best summer nights of our lives, those nights of just being kids, with family, friends, flaming marshmallows and wine coolers, then we'll give it a few polishing farewell swipes, a full tank of gas, and drop it off at it's new home the next day. Hopefully it's new family has as much fun with it as we have.

So for now, bon voyage (did I use that right? I think you're supposed to say it to me, actually...), check back in several days for more reportin'!

rainy day musings

By the way... if you looked at this post several days ago, and did not see pictures, for reasons described in the post, these are from several days later. I ran the same route just this morning, the first time the sun is shining again since this post was posted. And this time, took the camera...

It's a rainy day in the Summit. Of course it is- yesterday was idyllic. Seventy degrees, windstill... I hopped out of bed as soon as I saw the blue sky through our bedroom's patio doors, determined to get a run in before the clouds built. The plan was just to run across the dam, and turn around when the rec path cuts into the trees. It's a little more than a mile, and I told myself I was feeling lazy, a two mile run would suit me fine. I got a new camelback, a much more comfortable one that cinches down tightly enough that the only movement is from the two liters of water it holds, and I filled it all the way up before I left, for the weight as much as anticipated hydration needs. Only when I got to my planned turn-around point, I found myself reluctant to turn around. "Maybe I can at least make it to Frisco" I told myself, tightened the backback straps and kept running. Naturally, I had left the camera at home, or I would have taken some killer pictures. The last time I was out, I took the camera, then the clouds moved in, and the pictures were not impressive in the least. So why would I take it out again, I asked myself, and left it at home.



But yesterday morning, the surface of the lake was glass, the water clear enough at the edges to peer down and watch the fish swimming amongst the rocks off the shore. Peak One hung perfectly suspended upside down in front of me across the surface of the lake, Mounts Guyot and Baldy, upside down in all their glory, to my left, details almost clearer in the water than on the actual mountains in their upright state. Aspen leaves hung motionless, waiting for only the slightest breeze to throw them into a quivering frenzy, squirrels crouched and watched me, not sure what to do with the silence. The air was cool, and scented with sun-warmed pine sap. It was far too lovely to turn around, and before long, I found myself in Frisco. One of my favorite portions of the path was ahead of me, a series of sharp turns and wooden walkways through and over a large wetlands. This time, I could actually enjoy it because I was not on inline skates... skating over a boardwalk will pretty nigh rattle ones teeth out and have ones feet and ankles buzzing for a few minutes after, much like mowing the lawn does to your hands. Just to the Marina, I told myself, and kept running, my steps echoing on the boards. The marina came and went, and I found myself on the far end of Frisco, and wondering if I should turn around. The ADD kicked in with perfect timing, reminding me that I had just seen that route, wouldn't I rather explore some new area? And there's all this nice recpath between here and Breckenridge... so I stopped, peeled off the backpack, applied sunscreen, stripped down to sports bra and running shorts to dry the sweat, changed playlists on my ipod, checked my phone for missed calls, reassembled myself and kept going. Just to the end of the lake, I told myself. Just to Farmer's Korner, home of Summit High, the water treatment plant, a gas station, and a sudden population boom. By now a plan was forming, to keep going as far as I wanted to in this direction, then when I get tired, find a bus to take me back to Dillon. I actually stopped at the bus stop in Farmer's Korner, but after reading the schedule and realizing I had just missed the bus, and it would be thirty minutes till the next one, I recinched the backpack and kept running. By this time, I had a half-marathon in mind, and thought that I would have surely done it if I made it to Breck. It was the toes that decided it for me. My heels never blister, I dont have corns or any weird protrusions that my shoes rub raw, in fact I almost never blister from my shoes. My toes take care of that all on their own. The pads on the bottoms overlap, and step on each other, mile after mile, until they start to rub off on each other, and actually blister each other. It seems like something that might only happen to an improperly designed mutant. (Aww, shut up, you there.) Anyway, by the time they had carried me to Tiger run, still five miles from Breck, they were sending urgent distress signals with every step, and finally convinced me to stop, two miles short of the hoped-for half-marathon. As the clouds gathered and the wind sprung up, I took the Summit stage home, still feeling like I had run left in me, glaring at my mutant toes that refused to cooperate. It is so frusterating when one cannot use up all of one's energy and stamina because one is losing one's skin in the process.



Oh, well, it still gives me something to work toward. I never have made it all the way to half-marathon, if I did, I would have to start working on marathon, which quite honestly scares me, because I am not at all sure I can do it. Actually, I am mostly sure I cannot. Maybe it's best to keep it at almost there, because we all know that if Susan fails at something, her world might just grind to a halt. A wise man once said, It is far better to never try, than to try and suffer the humiliation of failing. (Hey, it's my blog. My wise men can say whatever I tell them to say.)



By the time the Summit Stage dropped me off at the LaBonte Street stop in Dillon, B had finished his work for the day. It was only noon, and threatening rain so after a lunch of my sister in law's most innovative version of Ramen Noodles (cook the noodles and a handful of frozen peas together, dump off the water, add half the seasoning packet and a slice of cheese, and let the cheese melt into the sticky goo that holds it all together) I let B start the mower and mow the front yard before I felt guilty enough about sitting around that I offered to finish the back yard for him. The neighbor/landlord is out of town, so I mowed his lawn as well. This whole green-grass suburbia thing is kind of a drag sometimes. But then, nobody ever taught me that greenliness is next to Godliness. I spent most of my childhood crunching over dried-up buffalo grass, which turned emerald only after a gullywasher, until it dried out again.



I'll tell you something else that is a drag- Summit county housing market. Oh, not for someone that is in it, that owns a home, for them it is a regular cash camel. (More fun to say than cash cow, by the way. Comes from a movie.) People buy and sell homes up here at an alarming rate of speed, and to hear them talk, turn a tidy profit each time. Forty percent increase in twenty-two months. Must be nice, we say, as we earn our dollars one at a time and pay them to our landlord as quickly as we make them. We are looking at buying a place, to save ourselves rent. Oh, it certainly won't make us rich, but if we can just break even when we sell it, maybe we won't have to kick ourselves for buying a house for the man down the street. We can at least make payments on something that is ours, not his. And in the name of simplifying and downsizing, and turning a few of our more burdensome belongings into cash, both the car and the boat are for sale.



I guess that means no Lake Powell this September, if we have no boat. It somehow does not sound like as much fun to just have a houseboat, with no way to wakeboard, or ski, or tube, to maim, or otherwise kill, yourself. What could possibly be the fun in puttering around at slow speeds? But if we have no boat, that means we won't have to pay to park it when we find ourselves in some tiny economy condo with a minimum of two parking spaces per family and the laundry facility a ten minute walk away. Yeah, we'll miss suburbia, at least the two story single family home with two car garage, washer/dryer and a bathroom per bedroom, but look at it this way- no grass to mow. Only a geranium on the deck, if one feels a need to excersize one's green thumb. And solitude. No roomies. The american dream, baby. To live alone (alone can also mean "just the two of you") in far more space than one could ever need or want, while in other countries, several families exist comfortably in fewer square feet than your fat american selves would be willing to share with, say, a goldfish.



Oh, yeah, which brings me to the most appealing part of owning a home- pets. No more scanning the rental adds, and finding only np/ns. That would be "no pets/no smoking", by the way. I object. Not being a smoker, but a pet-lover, how could a faint whiff of litterbox ever be as offensive as the in-everything smell of cigarette smoke? And besides, this is Summit County. Nobody follows those rules except for us. Everybody knows that only a dog qualifies as a pet, and only tobacco qualifies as smoking. You can pet many things besides a dog, like a rat, or a cat, or a chihuahua or a toy poodle- those last two do not qualify as dogs, in case you were wondering, and everyone knows you can smoke things that are not tobacco. If ya get caught, you're gonna have bigger things to worry about than a security deposit, anyway...

Oh, well, it's alright. We'll figure it out, one of these times. In the meantime, till next time!

We're baaaaack!

Hi to the faithful readers, who made it through the trip report without nodding off...

We are home again, holding down the fort while Marci vacations on Maui. She's been gone a week, and has another week to go. This is it, we are here now for the summer. Another tentative trip is being planned for september, when they let us out of the county again. We want to take the boat to Lake Powell for a week of sun and water with some friends. Who the friends are is still not entirely known, but we want quite a croud so a houseboat becomes affordable.

It is cloudy and cool here, but that hasn't stopped us from doing things. We just let it rain, and hope we find shelter before it pours. Try to be back under a roof by noon, when the clouds move in.

We packed up our hot dogs and marshmallows the other night and took them to Green Mountain Reservoir, where we sat and enjoyed the full "blue moon" until the wind came up. The lake is extremely low right now, in the middle of peak run-off, which has us puzzled. All we could come up with was they let out a lot of water to make room for peak run-off. The Blue River is running well over it's banks right now, and the Dillon Reservoir is full. It was actually full all winter, because for the first time in years, Denver did not need to draw water out of it. Denver got such phenomenal moisture this year, they could draw all they needed from their own reservoirs.

The lower trails are drying off. We have taken the bikes out three times this year, once before Hawaii, twice since we've been back. Summit County has a less than stellar reputation amongst the mountain-biking crowd, simply because the trails are not advertised. The few trails that make the maps and guidebooks are jeep trails, or only short spurs of singletrack. The most advertised singletrack is on Keystone mountain, accessed by paying a fee to haul your bike to the top on the chairlift. Even the locals who write the guidebooks admit to only printing the most well-known trails, keeping the out- of-town traffic off "their" trails. As one of them informed a mutual friend, "if I put 'em in the book, they'll get ridden!"

It is true, no area needs heavy bike traffic. Tire tracks encourage erosion, and two-way traffic encourages off-trail riding. But it is tourist revenue that Summit County loses to Utah in the summer, because Utah is willing to share it's trails with non-locals. (Well, maybe not willing, or thrilled, but they do seem to keep fewer secrets than Summit Countians)

Not that Summit County has the world's best trails or anything. But they do have better one's than you'll read about in the pitifully thin, recycled-paper booklet the Summit Daily prints out every summer. Many of these trails can be found in the area known as the back ranch. Lay a ruler on a map from Breckenridge to Keystone, and it will cover many of them. The Aquaduct, the Blair Witch, the West Ridge , Soda Ridge, and the Colorado Trail, to name a few of the named ones. Then there are the unnamed ones, like "The one that takes off from the yurt", "The one that comes out by the powerline", and "The really muddy one that starts by the trailer park". It usually takes us about three hours to find a loop, we often end up in Tiger Run, a part of Breckenridge, before we find something that connects. Many of our friends have tried to help us, but it is just too confusing. trails are not labeled, or mapped, so we are left with the convoluted mess of, "ya know where the planks are across the stream?"
"yeah, is that where i fell that day?"
"No, you over by the dredge. this is a different stream. Ya know where theres that really steep hill, right where several trails converge?"
Uh... I think so... it that by the Colorado Trail?"
No, this is a good mile from there. let's see... ya know where that big horseshoe gulch is? and there's several big rocks?"
"I know where there's big rocks, but I don't think they're the same ones you are talking about!"
"Never mind...Ok, so ya know where that old cabin foundation is?"
"Which one?"....and on, and on, and after a while, nobody is any more enlightened than anyone else about the locations of trailheads, and way-back loops, and old mines. Finally, our trail-guide throws up his or her hands, and says, "Let's just go out together some day, I'll show you around!"

So in the meantime, B and I have been taking random trails, missing loops, no idea where we are, just a vague idea, and we occasionally happen across places we've been before and find our way home from there. Our behinds are not toughening as quickly as we'd like. Each ride becomes slightly less painful, after we sit on our bike saddles long enough for the bruises from the last ride to get numb.

My calves will not be beautiful as long as I ride bike, just as my shins will never be smooth and unmarred again since I started braving rails. Remember those rainbow shins? Still ugly purple scars across them. The bruises never did heal, right over the point of impact. It causes much consternation, a sudden intake of air, usually released along with a not-so-nice expression of displeasure when they get bumped, as happens a lot with me. And now, the sprocket-gouges from Moab still purple dots over my achilles tendon, my calves are once again sporting a line of deep holes, surrounded by ugly bruises. I know, mud and blood just happen, but it is so hard to deal with on laundry day. All of our new white socks are stained. And I had to wear panty-hose with my dress and heals when B took me out to celebrate our anniversary, to cover up all the wear and tear.

By the way, in case ya didnt know, B and I celebrated #5 on the second of June. And Congrats to cousin Norman, who shares the same day with Char! He thinks he is gonna come up here and ski with us, he tells me. Now, of course I believe him, it's just that enough other statements of that nature made by others of you my readers, never came to pass. Ya know you're all welcome, if ya dont all converge on us at the same time! (just kidding, cuz. Norman...)

Amber, Scarlett, Brooke and I hiked up to the S. Willow Creek falls this morning. It's not a long hike, just long enough to make one feel pleasantly drained of ambition when one gets back. The Merrels are treating ninety percent of my feet very well. But they have chosen to crease right over the line where my little toe, misshapen, fat, several times broken, turns into my little toenail. I know that they have a track record of about eight miles before they rub actual blisters, but it still feels nice to slide them off and cool the burn at the end of a much shorter hike. Sure enough, it sprinkled on us on the way back, but it held off on the downpour and hail and high wind until we got back to the house.

In the meantime, poor B took his lawnmower to one of our properties, mostly weeds and rocks, with a little lawn thrown in to appease a rather hard-to-please neighbor who, we have joked facitously, will be pleased only when he looks out his window and sees nothing less than the green of rolling hills, interupted only by the distant winding of the River of Life. And the backside of the gate to the gated community he lives in, the gates distinctly pearlish in nature. Naturally, our dandelions and false chamomile daisies add to his already marred surroundings, and, despite the fact that we already have seventy-some units to look after, we must do our best to create beauty and traquility around him, or the boss gets called, and the emails get harsh and frequent... Ok, so in his defense, we deal as much with noxious weeds as does the rest of Summit County. B spends all summer spraying and mowing so we can still qualify as good neighbors. Our mantra is, "They deal with enough", meaning our guests subject them to enough abuse, that when the neighbors of our properties ask us to jump, we do not ask how high, we just jump as high as we can and pray it's enough. Ha. I'm betting most of my readers do not deal with seventy next door neighbors, and a dozen different homeowner's associations.

But today, poor B experienced the truth of another mantra the boss is fond of, "No good deed goes unpunished." Mower met rock, and rock turned the metal under the deck into a twisted, broken mess. Apparently, the mower is a total loss. It's not even officially summer yet, and we already have to replace it. Not a riding mower, mind, just a push mower, but still, it was an investment we made only last summer, to be used on our own yard as well as that guy's yard.

Oh, well. That's the way it goes. Maybe it's karma for getting so annoyed at the neighbor in the first place.

Ok, have a good day, all of you. I'm off, to go find some sustanance that is not in the form of granola. A bit of a feat, but doable if one gets creative...