Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, the blog that's thinking of changing it's opening to each post. "Welcome to the land of..." gets to be problematic at times, as your blogger feels the need to create catchy, attention-grabbing post intros, and limited by only what the land in general does, the people as a whole, it often gets reduced to a weather report, and a commentary on only the events that affect the community. Not to mention the times your blogger sits stumped, fingertips a-tingle, ready to write, but hung up on just not knowing what this is the land of at the moment. So your blogger, feeling the unaccustomed effects of a limited imagination at times these days, will be playing around with her lead-ins. Although "Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, the blog that's...." is mildly evocative of a certain column in our local Daily, it does seem to work about the best, and I am certainly not trying to plagiarize them, it did sprout out of my own brain (I'm fairly certain.)

Your blogger has also decided that the time has come to begin a more disciplined approach to this whole online journal idea. Instead of every several weeks posting a daunting epistle, it would not hurt to write shorter posts, a bit more often. We shall see if the execution of this idea goes as well as it should in theory. By the time I do finally sit down with my computer, I have so many thoughts, so many tangents unexplored, I overwhelm myself, let alone my loyal few blog-followers. And perhaps it is time to soliloquize about things of general interest, instead of report on daily activities all the time, even though that is exactly what B is afraid I might start doing. Rambling, pontificating, jabbering, burying my faithful few under an avalanche of words. He does it, too, he knows he does, but only when he is carefully primed for it, and only with spoken word, which he hopes will be forgotten soon, if he ever overdoes it. I, on the other hand, make conversations that last, that have the ability to come back and haunt me and do not leave me the option of conveniently forgetting ever having told someone that little tidbit.

So... onto the first tangent- forced shame. Especially as it relates to this marvelous planet we live on, this rock covered with swirls of moisture, with growing and dying, sentient and non-sentient living things. These ponderings were prompted by my short bike ride on what I thought would be a perfectly dry trail several days ago. Of course, just past the point where I could easily bail, it turned muddy, and out of respect for the trail surface and erosion control, I shouldered my bike and carried it out, trying to tread lightly and not leave evidence of my passing. But as I was walking, bike frame digging into the boniest part of my right shoulder, wrist cramped from supporting 32 lbs of aluminum and stainless steel components, handlebar thumping my forehead with each step, I was skylined above the road, where the good citizens walked, occasionally casting disapproving glances my way. I tucked my tail between my legs and hoped they hadn't recognized me.

My guilt complex worsened later in the day when I forgot my reusable shopping bags and had to use plastic bags at the grocery store. Other shoppers, participating in the county-wide push to become plastic-free in the next few years, eyed my bags, and I rustled loudly as I walked to the car. Then my dog pooped along the side of the road, and I didnt have a poop bag, although I would rather leave it there to biodegrade than use a plastic baggie to wrap it it, then put in in a landfill inside said baggie. But I must make the choice- promote the contamination of a pure mountain stream with the poop that will eventually find it's way ito it, or promote the filling of a landfill with something that just. never. goes. away. Or finding a dispenser with degradeable poop bags, expensive ones at that.

Oh, I am all about living with as little impact as possible on this swirly blue planet. But no longer am I allowed that warm fuzzy when I do my little part. No longer is it optional. No longer am I the good guy when I live green, I am the bad guy when I don't.