A house in Kansas, anyone? Make an offer!

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, the blog that is afraid that no sooner than we have fallen in love with it, summer is about to leave us. The aspen leaves are not quite as dark green as they were two weeks ago. Frost has tinged the meadows with brown. Last week, a few nights when I took Andy outside to do his business in the pre-dawn gray, my bare feet left tracks in the ice on the deck. The signs are subtle, but they add up- fall is not yet in the air, but it will be very soon. Never mind that the last two days broke 80 degrees, which is sweltering up here, so close to the sun, never mind that weekend campers and tents line the sides of every logging road this weekend...we still know. It will be what it will be. Ski passes go on sale soon, labor day to be exact, and Christy Sports is hosting their massive tent sale this weekend, selling last year's skis, coats, snowpants, snowshoes. Bike shops are having sales, and not ordering any more merchandise. There's not a size medium pair of bike shorts left in the county.

B has been searching Auto Trader lately, trying to find a deal on a vehicle for me to drive this winter. My poor little jeep just gets smaller every year, especially now that a nearly grown golden retriever has to find a place to sleep amongst all the supplies that I haul around. He systematically shreds anything that will tear- toilet paper, sponges, paper towels, paperwork. If I had more cargo space, i could put those things inside tubs and he could not get to them. Plus, I must also haul around skis, snowboard, and cross country skis. The four square feet of cargo space in the Jeep just couldn't keep up anymore. And the tires are shot on the Jeep, worn too slick to help me stop in the ice and snow. So I was not too surprised when he called me on Wednesday, having located a really (and I do mean really) cheap Subaru Outback. We made a flying trip down to Denver, where after an hour of negotiating an even cheaper price, due to a few obvious issues, we wrote a check out of a bank account that is feeling the effects of the slow season rather acutely, and drove home a 2000 light green and tan wagon. We got back to the county, I raced home, changed into my bike shorts, grabbed an apple, threw my bike on the jeep, and broke the speed limit to Breckenridge, wondering if I was making a big mistake. Let me explain.

All summer, I hve been making excuses about why I should not race. First, I didn't realize when it was until after it was over. Then, it was that the race was all on singletrack, and I was so slow I would hold up the whole show. Then I made up my mind to just go for it, pre-rode the course, and had that stupid crash. Nix that one, the next one and the next one. Then, the race was so much uphill I still wasnt sure I could do it. Which brought me to last Wednesday, the last race of the season. It was only a six mile race, up Peak 8, then down Peak 9 at Breck. I copied down the directions and after a few wrong turns and one enormous climb to the wrong place, I had ridden to the top. I got turned around coming down, so I had no idea what the downhill was like, and felt like I was riding so slowly I could just see all the other racers flying past me. I had no intention of actually doing the race until driving home from Denver, when I got so annoyed at my chicken self, at my self doubt, at the fact that I would never know unless I tried but I didnt have the guts to try. And that did it. Nobody, not even me, can accuse me of not having the guts to try. I stomped on the accelerator, and 5:15 found me in a line at the starting gate, looking uphill at the steep, loose gravel hill I was about to grind up, mouth dry, hands shaking, heart pounding.

900 vertical feet later, I caught the leader, and 39 minutes later, flew across the finish line with her riding one second behind me. Now I am sitting here feeling a sense of loss, all the races I could have done this summer. I would have done fine. Sure, I coughed and hacked half the next day, and I was only in the beginners class, but still. I could have had a lot of fun racing this summer. As soon as I had settled into my pace and relaxed, I realized I was having fun. I just feel a little idiotic about all the lame excuses I made about why I should not do it. And I was very pleasantly surprised- for having a last name that nobody knows how to pronounce, apparently there are other people with the surname in the county, and they apparently even pronounce it the same way I do, even though there are several possible variations. I was not the only one with my last name on the podium that night, and they totally pronounced it right. Having my name pronounced right makes me want to stick around.

B and i are trying to decide what we are going to do this week. It is slow, the several-week calm before the storm. September has filled up for us, between a labor day crowd in the county, Marci's vacation, then our vacation. We must stay in the county, tethered to the phones, for most of the month. We will also be busy getting ready for the winter season. Which leaves until Labor Day if we want to get out of the county and go do something. I caught B researching hikes in the Maroon Bells Wilderness today. We may make a quick trip to Kansas to do a little more house maintenance, since we are really hoping to sell it, and sell it soon.

I worked this morning, did two cleans and one inspection, and because I got started early and hustled, I was done by 1:30. I came home, left Andy in the neighbor's yard, ate a peanut butter sandwich, and sat down with my computer for a bit to unwind and procrastinate going on a bike ride. At 3:00, I finally got off my behind and onto my bike. 10 miles and a deep, wide stream crossing later, I was on top of West Ridge, at 11,o33 feet. Nine downhill miles after that, I coasted into our yard, Andy in tow, both of us tired, thirsty and hungry- him from 3 hours of romping with his best friend, me from biking for 3 hours in 82 degrees. I know my flatlander friends are thinking if only they could experience 82 degrees...but it felt really, really stifling. Either I have acclimated to cooler temps, or 82 degrees is just hotter when the sun is so intense and the wind is not blowing. I guzzled 16 ounces of gatorade, had a bunch of corn chips, fed and watered Andy, then Bobby wanted to go on a ride, so Andy and I humored him and took him on a 4 mile ride. And now, fish tacos made for B, but the mess still spread out in the kitchen, I sit here in a stinky jersey, still in my bike clothes, in need of a shower. My eyelids are a bit heavy, and I have miles to cover yet before we sleep. So, 'til next time.

Hello and welcome to An altitude Problem, where you blogger and her husband have just hit the couch. I had a fabulous day. Bobby, not so much, spending it cleaning the car that Andy trashed yesterday-more on that later.

I have been cleaning condos lately, since work is slow these days, making a little money, doing something while I'm doing nothing. And I have done a lot of mountain biking in the last week, fifteen to twenty miles a day, and at the moment I am feeling a bit wiped out. Thursday night was the regularly scheduled Diva's ride, and finally, after a summer of moderate biking, I did not have to kill myself to keep up. We rode "my" trails, the ones accessible from my house, so I knew exactly what to expect. It was a good evening. I did not ride on Friday because I was planning to do a long ride on Saturday, but instead, B saw online that it was free national park admissions day, so on Saturday, we loaded ourselves, and after a bit of deliberation, Andy, up and headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. It ended up being a rainy, windy day, plus we had Andy, so we drove, and did not do much hiking, then followed the crowds out of the park, through Estes Park, through Boulder and Golden, surprising ourselves by finding small, somewhat rural-ish areas that we didn't know existed. If we had to live in the Denver area... we got home late, the backseat covered with shreds of a stick we had allowed Andy to chew on, bits of rawhide, bits of paper from the to-go bag B's breakfast came in.

Today was another Diva's ride, on Keystone Mountain. Since it could not be an evening ride, it had to be squeezed in on everyone's day off. I got to ride the gondola up, then ride downhills all afternoon. We rode two loops of the 11-7 trail at the top of Keystone, then rode down on green trails, stopping and waiting for the slower ones, and then, after most of the group had gone home, another girl and I rode up again, and down again on Eye of the Tiger, a swoopy, up and down rollercoaster of a ride. And after an afternoon of riding downhill, I am exhausted. There were 8 of us girls, and although I got my butt handed to me on a few of the uphills, I did fairly well by comparison on the downhills- I attribute it to riding Keystone Mountain. There's no better way to build confidence on the downhills than to spend time in a downhill bike park. You get experience in a little of everything- ooptie-oops (mounds in the trail, usually serving a useful purpose as a water bar, that pop one's wheels off the ground), bridges, rocks, roots, tight switchbacks, turn berms, trees, ledges, as well as optional features such as long, narrow bridge features, corkscrews, and drop zones (which i do not do).

When I got home, Andy was in desperate need of a run. Since Bobby had spent the day washing, cleaning, waxing the car, Andy had a nice snack of wax and sponge, which got him locked in the house. I unloaded my bike from the jeep, put my helmet back on, and then B decided to come along, so the three of us made a four mile loop by our house, and by the time we got back, my shoulders were giant knots. As hard as I try to have good form, I just can't seem to be able to help hunching my shoulders when I ride.

And now, one of these days, I need to do domestic things. My precious hour and a half before Bobby got home night before last was taken up by two little Mormon teenagers, who I sat on the front porch with and let them attempt to proselytize me. Yes, I open the door for the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses. I know what it feels like to be seen as weird for your religiosity. And these poor kids who are so painfully uncomfortable, being corralled by feel-good reasoning into knocking on doors for the greater good, selling religious agenda door-to-door, they may as well go home feeling like they have "fought the good fight". I can lend an ear, but the problem is, they asked me for my phone number so they could check on me after I had read the Book of Mormon, and, in spite of my deer in the headlights look, I gave in. So this morning I got invited to church, and who knows how many more phone calls i shall have to avoid. And my day yesterday was shot by our 300 mile ramble. And now that B has hit the couch with his laptop, I have settled in as well. I do not usually get all domestic when he is home, because it's just so darn tempting to sit and force him to make small talk, watch a show with him, make him sit on my feet to warm them up, generally annoy him. I can do housework when he is at work, but i consider it essential to our marriage to chill together.

But now, he has gotten up and started to make his own dinner. Uh-oh. Time to run.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where your blogger is in serious need of inspiration. The writer's block is so bad I actually had to ask B what my status is, so i could post it on Facebook. The good news is, the house is clean, and I am about halfway through the mountain of laundry that I was surprised to find contained items of clothing I had forgotten I had, mostly because I was wearing things from the dark corners of the closet a week ago already.

I am feeling the need to create again. It's harder than it sounds, because of limited space, and once a mess begins to pile up, it's so tempting to let everything else pile up, too. I had a table set up in the room designated as the office, but it has turned into an extension of B's desk. I knew it was a mistake to set it up so close to his space. And I know how it would go, even if I did set up easel, acrylics, a jar of water, my brushes. I would sit in front of the blank white canvas, and I would stare at it, imagining all the scenes that it could hold, knowing what I wanted to see, and lacking the confidence to dip brush in paint and spread paint on canvas. Knowing the potential frustration of not seeing the picture emerge as I had it imagined. And finally, without true direction, I would take a few swipes, scowl at it, and go find something else to do, to give the vision of what it should be solidify in my mind. Once it gets started, once it starts flowing from brain to hand to brush to canvas, I will find myself deeply content, happy, confident, and exactly, totally me, in a golden haze of self-expression. It's just taking it from the couch to that point that seems a bit daunting. It's all about waiting for the picture to decide what it wants to say. That's the reason I will never be that artist churning out the artwork by the truckload. Even if my pitiful talent were determined by someone with authority to be actual art, not just tacky, sentimental landscapes, it would still be in short supply.

Many days later- okay, the blockage was bad. Ideas got stuck, I found myself staring at the wall in front of me, on which hangs the 4'x4' painting of a different inspired day, and wondering what was wrong with me. Not the day for writing anything. Since then, I have soaked in Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, nearly gotten beaned by a falling tree, dragged B up Keystone and back down again, had Uncle Leroy here for a night, and got through the last busy week of the summer. This is it. All the kids are going back to school, summer vacation time is over. How did this happen so fast? where has my summer gone? Where are my legs of other summers, the legs that run me for miles, pedal me, hike me, take me all over these mountains?

And later still- just back from taking the dog for a run, on my mountain bike. It is an almost daily occurrence. Now he is calm, a welcome development, still panting a bit, lying on the deck by my feet and enjoying a breeze laden with dinner smells and dog knows what else. He is on the lookout for neighbors to woof at, already having demonstrated his rather impressive bark a few times, most recently at the tiny, smoky ball of fluff my neighbor across the street calls a dog. He had to spend the afternoon at home today, retribution for having made B's life miserable this morning at the office. I did a few cleans today, since i was not going to have enough other work to generate a paycheck, so instead of leaving him in the jeep for four hours, he went with daddy. I did not hear many specifics, only a phone call as I was starting my last clean, B asking if I thought Andy would be okay in the house. And a description of his worst infraction- eating a bunch of garlic that he had grabbed off the counter before B left for work. Anyway, Bobby has a severe aversion to the smell of garlic, before or after it is eaten, (harks back to the days of his grandpa's home remedies) and the dog's breath after that was the last straw. He got unceremoniously dumped in the house, where he was when I got home, and he was about two hours beyond needing a calming run.

And later still- After which Bobby got home, and immediately wanted to go for a bike ride. After he had told me that he wasn't going to feel like it, so I should take Andy out by myself. So I wriggled myself back into my bike shorts, pulled my helmet over my noggin, and rode the same 5 miles I had just done with Andy. Not a long ride, but some nice elevation gains and losses, and now I am feeling nice and mellow, with a lovely crust of salt on my face from sweat, my stinky feet up on the coffee table, my jersey stuck to my back. I really do need a shower, but that can wait until bedtime. I am debating with myself whether I should cook tonight, or scrounge around for leftovers, or just not eat. B is in the kitchen as I write, making himself a hamburger. I fell off the vegetarian wagon last week and had both a hamburger and a steak, and now I remember that my cravings were for what I remember red meat tasting like, and the real thing, as juicy and flavorful as it was, just tasted a little...dead. Like blood and rot. It is a really strange phenomenon. The barbecue and A-1 sauces were so much better than the meat they covered. I didn't start out banishing meat from the diet because it was morally repugnant, or because it grossed me out to eat tissue from dead animals, or because I had a political, economical, or environmental agenda, but now I find myself feeling a teeny bit drawn in by all three reasons. The problem is, when B fires up the grill, the searing meat smells so good that about every six months I give into what I assume are my cravings, but somehow, the taste just never matches the aroma. So now that I am reminded of that fact again, I sit here enjoying the smoke from the grill wafting through the house, and totally excited about the fact that I just heard Bobby opening a can of baked beans.

Speaking of agendas, I came to another strange realization the other day. I was raised in the cliche that is middle America, Bible belt, English-speaking, comfort zone, consumer-driven, SUVs, drive-up diners, chicken fried steak, go-to-church-sundays patriotic, with a generous heaping of ultra-conservative Russian emmigrant, and a side of Marienthal, which is to say, devout German Catholics. No, that is not the realization. Those are the facts. Here is the realization. In my sterile cocoon, bare feet and wheat fields and innocent, freckled faces, I was simply not exposed to the bias society feels toward certain ethnic groups, sexual orientation, or any people the majority of the rest of society expresses prejudice towards. I have my own standards and morals and beliefs, yes. But as far as ingrained automatic preferences connecting groups with differing standards, morals, or beliefs, or simply differing appearances or nationalities, to negative feelings, my warmest feelings lean, if anything, toward almost every group not considered familiar or majority. I was made aware of this by a book I am reading about the unconcious mind's ability to pick up patterns, impressions, socially programmed judgements and preferences far before the concious mind has a chance to come to such conclusions logically. The book invited me to explore my own subconcious racism, ageism, homophobia, whatever ism or phobia it was I thought I didn't possess. I went to the website it recommended, home of Project Implicit, and spent a good portion of a slow afternoon doing IAT tests, which measure the response time of categorizing said groups while associating them with "good" or "bad" labels. I went there afraid of the results I might get from such a test, considering my predominantly white, Christian, mom-and-dad-and-three-kids background, and came away pleasantly surprised, and ruminating about how such a sterile environment in one's formative years was possibly far more of a launch into a non-judgemental adulthood than I gave it credit for. Such preferences are created by more exposure, more good or merely neutral experiences, the book explained, and also by the amount of leading in one direction or the other the media, friends and other information imputs do. But although I have had plenty of leading, gotten plenty of email forwards containing racial slurs and heard on a regular basis of the wrongness and evilness and social leeching of certain groups, those things apparently did not replace personal experience, or lack thereof, on a subconcious level. And that was my realization. Ignorance of social isms and phobias during one's formative years sets the stage for far more than we give it credit for. I have sometimes wished i had been a bit more exposed, growing up in such a sterile place, and I was to certain things, but the things I wasn't exposed to I can look at as an adult and draw my impressions, preferences and biases on an individual level instead of being forced by my subconcious to make those decisions based on the reputation of the group in general. Does that mean I will raise my own kids "behind the stove"? Probably not. But I do believe in parents being involved in the imput allowed their kids, in censorship until their brains are developed enough to be aware that all is not always as it is portrayed.

And now...switching gears. My plans for tomorrow involve doing a clean, then hopefully hitting the trails again. And hopefully leaving Andy in the neighbor's backyard to romp with his pal Raisin. I want to go a bit further than his springy puppy legs can take him. Ideally, I would like to ride up A-Basin again, taking the Lenawee trail down the back side, dropping through scree fields and high alpine meadows to timberline, then through the trees to just below the town of Montezuma. I honestly can't remember if I told the tale of my last time over that trail. 2,330 or so feet vertical climb in just under three miles, which makes a few of the inclines hit about 19%. Once the inclines get steeper than about 14%, I start having trouble keeping my front wheel on the ground, and when I lean far enough over the handlebars to keep the front end down, the back end tends to spin out. Never mind that such inclines, sustained for more than a few minutes at over 12,000 feet elevation can very easily get one's heart rate over 200 beats per minute, one's breath coming in ragged wheezes, one's head feeling light and dizzy, and the taste of blood in the back of one's mouth. One (which is me...) feels so woefully out of shape when one hits that state so easily.

Anyway, the last time I did the trip, I parked at the Basin and hit the uphill, fresh as a daisy, and passed the lodge at the top of the first chair still pedaling strong, a rolicking fantasy novel audiobook on my ipod, and hit the upper slopes. It only took me an hour to get to the top, although I was fairly wiped out when I got there, and as I crested the hill blocking my view of the descending trail, I stopped. And followed the trail with my eyes until I lost it in the boulders. Gulped. Wondered if I should respect life and limb and just turn around and go back the way I had come. Then slid my new body armor onto the still-raw skin on my elbows and forearms, since the thought of abrading them again in another crash gave me chills, took a picture of my smiling self with my phone camera, just in case it might turn out to be the iconic last picture, the picture that captured the essence of my short life at my funeral, ate a granola bar while surrounded by wildflowers, wind, and hundred mile views of distant mountain ranges, communed a bit with nature, then clipped in and pointed my bike downhill. I soon realized I was going to be okay. The trail that looked so rough and precarious from above turned out to be an extremely pristine, well maintained dirt track, boulder drops built up so the descent was gentle, not a wheel-grabbing drop, windblown and sunbaked, through scenery so amazing I found myself in danger of riding off the trail, so i had to stop every few minutes to take another picture with my phone. I popped out onto the jeep trail at the bottom far too soon, and rode down it to the highway, then coasted down the highway to Keystone. Once there, I hid my bike in some trees along the road, pulling branches over it, and walked over to the last intersection before US Hwy 6 headed up Loveland Pass, and stuck out my thumb. And waited. And waited. Minivan after Ford Excursion after GMC Envoy after minivan after minivan rocketed past, slightly pudgy, short-haired tourists craning their heads toward me as they passed, but not slowing. I even took off my sunglasses and held eye contact over my extended thumb, hoping to elicit some sympathy, but to no avail. At last I gave up, because if nobody was going to help me, I needed to stop wasting time and get my sore behind back in the saddle and start helping myself. Of course, as soon as I unearthed my bike and started up Loveland Pass, several locals passed me, swerving into the other lane to give me plenty of berth, flashing thumbs-ups, bumper stickers, bikes and kayaks on their beat-up Subarus and Ford Rangers indentifying them as locals, and therefore highly likely to have offered me a ride had they seen my thumb back there at the bottom of the pass. Instead, I ground my way up to the Basin, and arrived an hour later, exhausted, with a bruise that afterward revealed itself to be a rather problematic, slow to heal broken blood vessel in the parts of me that had been in contact with my saddle for the last five hours. I think I shall make other arrangements next time I go. Like a riding partner and two vehicles. The ride is worth it, but not the Loveland Pass portion of it, not after one had already ridden singletrack, jeep road, ski resort access road, and downhill highway for several hours.

Anyway, that's a few happenings, ramblings, and ruminations of one sporadic blogger. More later...