Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where your blogger has been doing everything but blogging. I have until my computer dies (which isn't that long) to type, because my power cord is broken. If i straighten out all the little copper strands, and mush them together where it it broken, right by the plug, and tape it just so, and do not wiggle it, it will recharge, but that means I can only sit in my eversized, sunny armchair for so long with my computer on my lap. A good thing, probably, but a wee bit frusterating.

All my electronics are on the fritz right now. My computer, my ipod (the ipod I found at the Basin, after the snow had melted this spring) treated me well over the summer with it's 80G of memory, but it finally succumbed to internal corrosion a few weeks ago. My four year old ipod, with it's 1G of memory, is just so small I have to spend a long time arranging music and playlists so it will have what I need to hear when I need to hear it (and my playlists are as diverse as the things I do- I have music for running, music for biking, music for snowboarding, music for XC skiing, music for chilling, music for cleaning). And yesterday, after stripping bedding out of units and exposing it to static electricity that traveled up the wires and crackled and snapped in my ears, it froze up. It is working again now, after I restored it to it's factory settings, wiped it clean and reloaded all my music back on it, but I do not trust it.

Since the thanksgiving rush, I have not worked hard, only enough to get done with whatever needs to be done. I started going to the gym again as of yesterday. All or nothing, as usual. I went at 7:00 in the morning for a yoga class, only to find the time moved up to 7:30, so I ran Andy through the park, trying unsuccessfully to get his morning "business" worked out of him. Then I went back inside, hacking from the zero degree air, and ran a mile around the indoor track, finishing just in time to slip out of my shoes and into the room where about twenty strangers were already meditating cross legged on the floor, and tried to find a spot for my mat, squeezing it in the likeliest spot, still uncomfortably close to my neighbors. After which followed an hour and fifteen minutes of Hatha Yoga, during which I tried hard to remember to breathe in addition to trying to keep up with a class that is already bendy as noodles and knows all the poses without needing to face the instructor the entire time, and trying to relax through the discomfort of my unbendy self holding poses arranged in ways I normally would not voluntarily arrange it.

Then, I went to work, Andy trying his best to undo everything I did, dragging out trash, gleefully killing rags dragged from the rag box. I stripped the laundry out of two units, then went to lunch with Bobby. No sooner had we ordered our chinese food than his phone rang, one of our reservations people up in the air because an eight week old puppy was trapped, yipping and howling, on the deck of one of our units on a twenty degree day without water or shelter, the sheriff was trying to track down it's owner, the tenants were not home, and they had not gotten permission to have a puppy in the unit. B gulped his lomein, left me with a pile of five dollar bills and an entire meal to eat by myself, and went to let the poor thing into the house, well aware of the damage it would most likely do, but unable to do anything else with it. I raced home from lunch to change out of my yoga pants and into better clothes in which to represent a reputable lodging company to some prospective clients looking for a place to hold a reunion in the spring, showed them our biggest property, then returned home, Andy threatening spontaneous combustion if I did not give him some exersize. So I pulled on my snowpants, laced up my cross country ski boots, and we headed up Montezuma Road to a trailhead near treeline, where the snow is deep. We skied for two hours, taking an obscure branch trail that may or may not have been private property, and got back down around dark, the full moon casting our shadows in front of us. I drove home, put band-aids over the blisters my ski boots left on my heels, met bobby, and we ate the half of our chinese food we hadn't had for lunch, then drove down to the rec center. I want to be able to run a consistant 10k by memorial day weekend to be ready for the BolderBoulder, a road race I want to run in this spring, but right now, all I am doing is 5k's. Did my 5k, then rowed for a while, while Bobby ran and lifted weights, and finally, came home, took a shower, hit the couch and fell asleep.

This morning, I got out of bed, cleaned and did laundry, loaded up my ski gear, and went to work. I inspected the only arrival for today, then met my friend at the gondola, both of us on our skis, and made several runs, taking pictures and videos of the bluebird morning and our novice selves on our skis (both of us are excellent riders, but are both somewhat new to skis). I sat down in a massive cloud of snow at one point, sliding my right butt cheek over hard corderoy snow, and removed the back pocket from my snowpants. I am disappointed in them. Brand new this year. We got back to our cars, parked in poached parking in a building we both manage condos in, peeled out of our ski boots, and I drove to work, where I should still be, except that I had to come home to get a key, and while I was here, had leftover thanksgiving dinner for lunch, and here I am.

Thanksgiving, since moving to the mountains, has never been traditional for us. We have run the gamut from Mc Donalds chicken sandwich, to dinners with friends, all of whom have no family in the county, to actual thanksgivings that were just us, no guests. This thanksgiving was no different, in that it was different from every other one we've had. Harlan Koehn and Jeremy Becker, two Pennsylvania boys now living out west in Center, CO and Flagstaff AZ, respectively, made the trip up here for two days. We cooked, and made a spread, and spent a lazy day in the house, hardly noticing, apart from my one four mile mountain bike ride with Andy (the bare minimum to keep him from destroying the place with his excess energy), that it really was a beautiful day outside. On Friday, Jeremy, Harlan, and I took the Subaru up Peru Creek road, already covered in snow, but hard-packed enough to allow vehicles, as far as we dared (and a bit farther, looking for a spot to turn around where we wouldnt get stuck...I sorta nosed it into a hillside when I did find a spot, leaving a bit of a scratched bumper and some pretty tracks) and hiked a ways up Argentine Pass in the snow, taking pictures of the ramshackle Pennsylvania Mine, historically one of Summit County's most profitable mines, operating from 1879 until the 1940's, yielding gold, silver, lead, copper, and zinc. Now it's biggest contribution is a scar in a high alpine landscape, and being the source of acid mine drainage that contaminates Peru creek, as well as the Snake River that runs through Keystone. Two years ago, something holding a large reservoir of water poluted with heavy metals broke loose from a mineshaft, and enough toxic water was dumped into the river to turn the water orange and kill fish by the hundreds downstream. One treatment system has failed to fix the problem, overwhelmed by the amount of acid in the water, and others have been proposed, but never implemented, the state afraid of taking on the burden of liability if another measure should fail.

Andy, of course, cared naught for such atrocities as acidic orange water that keeps the creek free of any aquatic life, and before I could stop him, had bounded into the stream trickling down the mountainside, carving a deep ravine through the snow. I yelled at him as I saw him begin to drink, and he obediently tried to climb out, succeeding on the third try, slush the color of orange Gatorade freezing to his tail and belly.

We went to Breck that evening without Bobby, who stayed home to answer phones, should our in-house guests need something. He actually spent the entire weekend fielding questions, making maintenance runs, tracking down contractors on their day off to ward off potential crises. Poor man needs a day off. He's starting to get grouchy. Unfortunately the things he does, I cannot be trusted with, so there isnt really anyone to take his place yet.

It still has not snowed. I am actually still mountain biking on a fairly regular basis. Most years, mountain bike season and ski season have overlapped only a little, but this year, the ranch trails are mostly clear yet, or covered in hard-packed snow that is, at most, slightly sugary and resembles riding in sand. Another storm is moving in as I write, but looking at the radar, it is likely to be another upslope storm, hitting Colorado Springs and Denver, and unable to climb over the Divide to us. The last storm yeilded the Front Range up to three feet of snow, while we saw, at most, a few inches. And so we wait. We desparately need it to boost skier numbers in a downish economy.

And that is all for now. There actually is a reason this poor blog has been abandoned lately. If you think this blog is bad, you should see my house. My laundry room. My car. All needing attention. None getting it. I find myself going to sleep on the couch earlier and earlier lately, as the days get shorter and shorter. After the sun sets, and I get back from exersizing Andy and myself, not much gets done. But thank you for stopping by. As always, I shall try to not wait so long next time.