Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the focus of the week is racing. Race season is official. It's here. It's big, and bad, and here. I am a nervous wreck. I just want to train, train, train, and never stop.

The weather is beyond nice. Maybe still a bit windy, but nothing like those horrible windy days of early and mid-May. About four trails are dry enough to ride, but one of those is the three and a half mile loop outside my door.

Yesterday was the BolderBOULDER. I ran with my friend, we stayed the night before the race with a couple we know who live in Boulder, close to the action downtown. I slept light because I had a bad feeling that I was going to go to sleep, forget where I was, forget that my friend a few feet away was not B, and I would wake up spooning her. Or worse, I would not wake up, she would, and would not know how to go about telling me to stop snuggling her while keeping both of our dignities intact. Add that to the excitement of the event and a comfortable, but strange bed, and having hydrated way too enthusiastically the day before, and you have me, lying there for hours in the dark. I actually tried counting sheep, visualizing one sheep running across the pasture, then two sheep running across the pasture, then three sheep, and so forth...I got all the way to twenty before I wanted to start killing the sheep. Finally, at three a.m., my friend sneaked out of the room to use the bathroom, and I followed her, meeting her in the hall and giggling together at the absurdity of the fact that we should be sleeping, not peeing. Back in bed, I finally drifted off and dreamed that I missed the race, except it was on Keystone Mountain and I had lost my timing tag and took too long brushing my teeth and for that, I was livid. And then the dream was cut short by her alarm ringing at 6:00 and she bailed out of bed to shut it off and collapsed on the floor against her two-year-old's crib, her leg asleep, numb and lifeless. The kid started whimpering, she started laughing, I was asking if she was okay, and there was no more sleeping for us. We went to the kitchen, ate breakfast, pinned our race bibs on, and headed out the door, our host giving us a ride around many detours to the race start.

We found a pace that was comfortable and finished in 1 hr, 10 minutes. Not exactly a race pace, but we had too much fun to really want to pick it up. We might have finished a bit faster had we not kept having to change our pace to match the bands every few blocks, skipping and clapping, shaking our hips, whatever we could manage that matched the music while maintaining our forward momentum, high-fiving bystanders, zig-zagging those slower than us, running across the entire street full of people just to get hosed down by a water gun or a sprinkler, grabbing at marshmallows and bubbles and other odd bits of food and miscellany as it flew over our heads. We bypassed the slip-n-slide and kiddie pool that others were flopping down in on their way past, and whooped and yelled at the great costumes. It was a great day for people watching, and the chatter was loud and entertaining. At the end, we picked up our pace and charged into Folsom Field, flying around the runners who didn't quite have a finish sprint left in them, and crossed the finish line, high-fiving and just generally high. It was a fun day, a fun run with over fifty thousand runners, and over almost as soon as it had started. Our starting wave was 8:33, and by 9:43 we were done and wondering what was next. We caught an RTD bus to an intersection as close as possible to the friend's house we had stayed at, and walked up the hill from downtown to their house, showered, threw our clothes in the car, buckled in her two year old, and hit the road for home. We stopped in Golden for lunch, a falafel in a sunny courtyard, being watched by a great dane tied to the table next to us, then took the canyon back to the interstate.

I got home and was greeted by Andy, thrilled that his mommy was back home after a night away, and beyond ready for a bike ride. We both begged until B decided to come along and rode the loop by our house, then a loop down the the pond a mile away from our house, where Andy swam and retrieved a homeless flip-flop that he found in the grass and raced in excited circles and shook himself all over us. We got back home and I fell asleep, exhausted from the minimal sleep the night before and the excitement of the morning.

This morning, I awoke determined to not do anything. Nothing at all but hang around the house, maybe work a little, eat healthy food, drink lots of water, and be ready for the bike race tomorrow night. That was before I remembered that I really knew nothing about the race course, and that it was probably marked by now. I arranged to meet a friend over in Frisco to go ride it together, just a leisurely ride... Then another friend called. Would I like to go for a quick ride in the Ranch? She never calls, and she really sounded like it might be important to her because she rarely gets out of the house, and it did sound like fun. We met at 9:30 and rode a loop together, then I came home, loaded my bike and Bobby's bike (which he had reluctantly agreed to let me ride) on my car, grabbed my grocery bags, loaded Andy, and went to Dillon where I dropped off my bike for a pre-race tune-up, bought groceries, ate a quick lunch of bing cherries, strawberries and raw cashews, then hit the road for frisco, where I drove right to where my friend lived...and it wasn't her house.

I actually wondered if she had neglected to tell me that her landlord had painted the place and put a different entryway in. I was positive I was in the right spot. I have driven there a half-dozen times. I have walked there in the snow after last call, then raced through the snow the next morning to catch the bus home in time to see Bobby, who had so nicely let me go out for girls night. I know where this chick lives, but her house flat wasn't there. I drove around the block. Nothing. I drove around the next block. Nothing. I finally called her. "Why can't I find your freaking house??" I demanded. She laughed and gave me her address. In my defense, I was only two blocks over, and all those streets off of Main look alike. I still don't know what wires crossed, but that must be what is feels like to lose one's mind. That totally helpless feeling that nothing is as it should be and the things that should be familiar are strange to you and your friend's gray townhome with steps up to the front door and crescent windows and a sloping driveway is now a cream and green townhome with a ground level entry and square windows and a flat driveway.

I got there, unloaded B's bike, and we hit the bikepath for the Frisco Peninsula, Andy making me proud by trotting obediently beside me, barely even noticing that his mommy had forgotten his leash, sitting at stoplights, staying a nice two feet away from me as cool as a cucumber just as if he had been leashed. We rode a few pointless circles, wasting a mile or two trying to find the starting line and finally, with the help of my friend's iphone map, found it and rode the race course. I am a little worried about it. I am going to have to do two 6.8 mile laps, and the elevation gain felt rather significant to my legs, a bit sore from overuse lately. And I am racing with tougher broads this year than last year. I decided to ride in the Sport category.

Andy was limping a little when we got back. I inspected his pads, and saw a little bit of pink on the bottoms of his front feet, where the skin was rubbed thin. He flinches when I press on them. He may have run a little farther that he should have on the rocks and pavement. He is such a happy boy, and so fiercely loyal and eager to please, it is often hard to miss the warning signs that he is overdoing it and literally killing himself to please us. Now he is passed out on the windowsill. Poor boy. He has gone on a 14 mile ride with me already this year and did not act like it hurt him, but today was a warmer day and the ground conditions were rougher and the 11 or so miles we did today wiped him out. I feel rather terrible about that, and have kissed his head and scratched his ears and promised to be more careful with my sweet boy many times already this evening. It is hard to believe we are so attached to and have so much love for a sixty pound bundle of muscle and fur and silky ears and gentle brown eyes and toothy grin, with a permanent worry wrinkle on his forehead as he tries so valiently to understand us and protect us and discern our every need and perform his duties for us that his little doggy brain almost overheats.

And now, I should go to bed. B has not yet emerged from his home office, where he has been other than for the ten minutes it took him to eat dinner, since he got home from work. There will be no riding for me tomorrow, until the race at 6pm. I need to work tomorrow so I am not even tempted, and as luck would have it, there are arrivals that need my attention. Wish me luck, faithful few. Tomorrow evening, 6pm. The moment of truth...

Tomorrow also markes the passage of another year, bringing the total to eight years since that hot, windy June day when B drove me to the church, all distracted by his Cinderella dressed in yellow, yours truly still under the impression that life was like a fairy tale, we wed, drove into the sunset, didnt stop driving until we hit the ocean, and finally began getting to know each other. We plan to celebrate all the good times we've had since that day this weekend. (Cheering from the sidelines and two free beers and hanging out with stinky bikers is not our idea of romantic. Too many skinny people in spandex tend to ruin the ambiance.) Our half-formed plan involves a cabin in the woods, hot springs, a hiking trail or two, and no men with shaved legs and no women in smelly polypro.

Right, bedtime...

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where your blogger sits in the stew of an existential crisis. And yes, I am a big enough dork that I actually googled "existential crisis" just to make sure it meant what I thought it did. It did. The big red "you are here" arrow on my life map did not have to move at all from the junction of "Why?" and "Who?" and "How?", which is about the perfect place for a real, true...you guessed it.

It all started innocently enough, with a mouse click and a phone call. The mouse click was on a site I have visited many times, the site of Colorado Mountain College. I have been turning over in my mind the possibility of going to school for quite some time. I have narrowed my areas of interest to...well, not very narrow. I would like to work with special needs kids, and council special needs adults. I would like to work in a field that somehow magically combines ecology, earth-stewardship, sustainable agriculture, forestry, and wilderness studies. And I would like to be a chef.

Which leads to a lot of rumination about how well qualified I already am in each of those fields. I already know I am psychotic and over-analytical, but also easily empathize and enjoy listening to people's problems, although mostly because the more I hear about their problems, the better I feel about my own. That might not be the best hybrid for a successful therapist. Mote in your eye, beam in mine, and so forth. I would enjoy (for the most part) being a special-needs teacher, but I do not want to have to find myself in a classroom full of perfectly normal kids because that is the degree I have to fall back on. And the other thing, the earth and water specialist thing is, lets face it, not something that would fit well in my life. Not something I could do from right here, right now. It would require nights away from home and lots of traveling and moving around. But the one thing that seems like a real possibility if I decided I wanted to do it and worked really hard to prove myself and actually, miraculously, was accepted into the program, is a culinary arts degree. Keystone has an incredible culinary arts program. One graduates in three years with an already stacked resume, because of six-month rotating apprenticeships in Keystone's six four-star restaurants. So it is on the career front that I am dangling right now, knowing that my 27th birthday is looming, knowing that I sure as heck won't be getting any degree if I wait until after I have kids (okay, IF.) Feeling the stress of neither B or me being educated, should we need to job hunt again. And becoming aware that our time at this job should not, for the sake of our sanity, be indefinite.

Making the sacrifice of three years to become a chef would open up a lot of opportunities as far as where we could move and our quality of life once we got there. So now we just have to decide- is it worth it to us? Can we support me being a full time student for three years? Can our company live without me? Can B live with me being owned by Keystone, whipping up delicacies in tiny, esthetically arranged, overpriced portions, my life being exclusively about reduction sauces and garnishes and stainless steel commercial kitchens?

We do not know. I do not know. If only I had known several years ago, and I was all graduated now and had resume in hand. Who are we? what are we here for? where do we belong? how do we get there?

The other half of my personal crisis concernes the face I show the world. I had a rather uncomfortable heart-to-heart the other day with a friend who, upon my probing, admitted that I am possibly seen as a pedestal-dweller by many who do not know me well. I ran to B, expecting him to argue this and tell me what a warm and loving person I am in the first impressions I create, and he laughed a bit, and agreed that that is exactly how he saw me the first time he met me- as aloof and cold and having a bit of an elevated opinion of myself. Well. I am at a loss. I had no idea. And now I must go about finding the root cause of this impression I seem to give people.

Those who know me well know that I am not confident, I am far too easily hurt, and yes, I do throw up the shields and circle the wagons at the slightest sign of threat. If I get too overwhelmed, I cannot think of anything witty to say, so I shut up. I try hard- way, way too hard to make everyone love me. But if I percieve that they do not like me, there is no way I am going to keep putting my tender parts out there to get stepped on. I have nothing more to say to them, thank you. I will just stop breathing the air that belongs to them, lest I give them even one more reason to dislike me. So yes, I am aware that my defense mechanisms are well polished and idling, ready to go at a moment's notice. I have these knee-jerk responses to any hint that someone might not adore me, and they tend to alienate. So it stands to reason that I sit up on my pedestal because the pedestal is very safe. Nobody can get hurt up there. I desperately want to be sought out, because if I do the seeking, I could very easily get my tender parts crushed. And when someone does seek me out, I can think of a hundred reasons why, and few of them are without agenda, and if I suspect agenda, I go ahead and pull in the tender parts, just in case.

There are people in my life that have become so constant, and so consistant, and have proven to have enough in common with me that I have become fiercely loyal to them and do not think twice about breathing their air. These people know me as the yes-woman, the crazy one, the best friend. I am lucky to have found people who wait around past the first impression, or put me enough at ease that I am able to be myself from the start.

You, faithful few, are the validation I seek. I go places, and I hear "I read in your blog...", and I realize that my faithful few click on a link not because I will ever know they did it, not because they are just trying to make me feel good, not because they may have to fake interest in my affairs some day, or are looking for conversation starters should we cross paths some day and fall into awkward silence, but because they may actually like me and be interested in what I have to say. That actually blows my mind a little bit.

And yes, I already know what it takes to stop being seen as the one who thinks she is too cool for everyone else. I have to start liking myself. It is a tall order. It's not an easy task. It is why I set unrealistic goals for myself. Why I am so competitive. Why I spend so much time and effort trying to set, then break, personal records. After all, when one is one's own worst enemy, one has no time to be one's best friend.

Sorry. Not trying to bring you down. I know that this is not what you signed up for when you started keeping track of our altitude problems. But if I go ahead and put my psychoses out there, where there is no calling them back, it forces me to at least pretend to be a better person. And with enough pretending, eventually one can't help but become the character they play. And I want to be a genuinely warm, loving character. I know the first step. I have to start liking me before I can accept that anyone might like me.

And finally, where do we go from here? Once we have ourselves all transformed and bettered, what do we do with ourselves? We can only hope that we make the right moves on this not-exactly-mapped-out journey.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, getting used to this new concept of consecutive days off. The winter was a long, dark, cold tunnel, and we have emerged. I honestly don't know how we are going to do another winter, because the thought of that mad rush not being a one-time event makes us want to run, screaming, over Loveland Pass, or Vail Pass, or Fremont Pass, or Rabbit Ears Pass- the four passes that keep us here, boxed in, socked in, snowed in, and parked in. So we try not to think about it.

B is still busy, doing things I am not qualified to do. All the things that had to be postponed at the end of last fall are now needing to be finished, all the holes in ceilings from water leaks this spring have to be repaired, owners are popping up to the county to assess the damage the winter did to their properties, so he is rushing to stay a step ahead of them. Today he took a trailer to Denver to bring home a load of wire mesh and I do not know what else, a list of items the Department of Wildlife recommended to foil the beaver's over-enthusiastic damming of a pond behind one of our houses. We have tried pipes, tunnels, bi-weekly digging of a channel, but the beavers just clog our attempts to keep the water flowing down the valley away from the house and instead, the water flows over the back of the pond, into the basement of the house, and down the street, through the neighbor's yards and driveways. Andy got Giardhia last year from drinking from the stream that comes down the street. Two winters ago, the stream built into a two foot deep ice flow and all but made the houses we manage at the end of the street unaccessible. The owner of the house was all for killing the beavers. We did not like that idea, and the Department of Wildlife liked it even less. I thought we had left it that in the spring, we would call a specialist to come trap the beavers and move them to an area not shared with million dollar houses, so I am quite relieved that the beavers get to stay in their home, with the compromise of a drain in the bottom of their kid's playground.

I do not have a busy schedule these days. I have made no money at all since we got home from vacation. There is not much need for an inspector when nobody is checking in. I am banned from any sort of work that involves things indelible and splatterable, such as painting, and B has a maintenance man for hauling trash, picking up a couple thousand cigarette butts from around hot tubs, and washing windows this summer, so I am not it. I will be it after mud season is over and the guests start arriving again, I am sure, but right now, I am not doing much of anything. And I still have not filled the deficit of days off created by taking only about five since the season started in November.

What I mean is, with a normal job, people take two days off a week. Thats fifty two weeks, times two days a week, equals 104 days off a year. Plus a week of vacation. Three and a half months of weekends. Wow, when you look at it that way...maybe these nine-to-fivers are onto something. Even with our slower summers, we do not take that much time off. At any rate, I will be easing back into work again about the middle of June. Memorial Day officially starts summer everywhere else, but for us, it really kicks off July 4th. From July 4th until the middle of October, whenever the last of the fall foliage fades, we are fairly busy.

I decided not to pursue a summer job. It was a serious consideration for a while, back when I was in work-all-the-time mode and could not imagine what I would do with a day off if I had one. I planned to apply to Breck and/or Keystone stables, to groom and saddle and lead trail rides. I would still love to, but it is a full time job. Now, I remember what summer is like. Why would I want to spoil a good thing, no matter how great the job is? So here I sit.

It has been a horribly windy May. It snowed yesterday, not enough to accumulate, but enough to put us all in a foul mood. My rec center pass expired and $40 a month is a lot of money so we did not renew. I have been training for the BolderBOULDER outside, bowing into gusts that reach over 50 MPH, gravel flying into my face, pushing into the wall of wind that is always pushing back. I try to plan my runs in sheltered areas, in the trees, but not too in the trees, lest one should blow over.

Almost daily, we have a power failure because of trees falling over and taking powerlines with them. In one ten minute walk yesterday with Andy and my sister in law yesterday, we had to climb over about five fallen trees. And not beetle-killed pines, either. Healthy spruces and aspens, these were. Makes one think twice about walking in the woods on a windy day in the spring, when the ground is soft and lets go of tree roots easily.

BolderBOULDER is on Memorial Day. My friend and I plan to drive down on Sunday and pick up our race packets, then relax that evening and be ready to run 6.2 miles along with fifty thousand (give or take) other people on Monday morning. It will be my first experience running with a mega-crowd. Someday, I want to run a city marathon, but right now, 10k is about all this child can handle.

Every year, I have to overdo it once. If I do not run to, then past the absolute limits of my endurance and pain threshold, I never know where it is, and I never know when I am about to hit it. But after that first long run of the spring, when I run too far, and, by so doing, discover which signs of exhaustion originate above my shoulders and which originate from below, which are my body telling my mind to stop and which are my mind telling my body to stop, I begin to enjoy running long distances without the mental blocks that, in the winter, keep my runs within the 3 mile range.

I am a pretty solid half-marathoner, I guess. This season's first run was slightly better than last season's, last season I fell apart after mile 12. The season before that was mile 13. This season was mile 14. Perhaps it is still a mental thing, I do not know. I do not take anything with me that would give me an indication of how far I have gone so I do not get distracted by knowledge of distance traveled, I only know after I get home and map it.

My lungs were fine, my heart rate was fine, but my ankles, knees, hips, and back finally just said enough after almost two hours and 14 miles. I had to climb 800 feet or so over Swan Mountain to get home, and it was torture. I still ran a mile or two on the way home, between walking, and my nods and smiles to fellow runners felt more like grimmaces and bows of defeat. The total distance traveled was 18 miles. I was disappointed. I had hoped that with my casual training for the BolderBOULDER for the last few weeks, I would have more go-juice than that. I had hoped this would be the spring I could run the whole 18, and build from there to 26.2- the length of a marathon. I have to just face it- I am not an athlete. I may have athletic tendancies, but until I can spend time alomost every day training (and why would I want to do that?) I will never be in the big-time. I will always have a little of that healthy chub we talked about, always decide that spending time with friends, or with B, or walking Andy, or coasting on my bike down loamy, twisty trails, or chilling and blogging is more important than the big-time. And I'm fine with that.

I got home, peeled out of my stinky, sweaty clothes, wiping at the salty film of dried sweat on my face, hobbled into the bathroom, reached for the shower knob, and the electricity went off. I dug some dirty but dry clothes out of the hamper, put them on, hit the couch, and did not move for two hours. By then, my hips and knees had loosened up enough that I could walk without limping, so I got out my bike and took Andy for a run around the neighborhood and a swim in the pond before finally taking that shower.

The next day, I took the bus to my friend's house, chatting with the bus driver as we made the loop from Summit Cove to Keystone, back to Summit Cove (I did not realize that the bus only runs once an hour over noon, so I was 30 minutes early, and instead of waiting it out at the bus stop, I just rode the whole loop)down to Dillon Valley. We ran the 6.2 miles from her house to my house in the baking sun and howling wind, unable to hear each other unless we screamed at the top of our lungs, which left us gasping for breath. We did not stay with the chatty norm we usually try to maintain. Correction- I try to maintain. She has had a little less time to train than I have, between a job and a toddler, so she tells me to talk, and my talking keeps my breath regulated and I unconciously slow about one MPH and forget that I must be racing and we hit a comfortable pace that we can both maintain for the whole 6.2 miles.

That was two days ago, and I spent the rest of that day and yesterday favoring my left hip and knee, inflamed by too much running. I plan to only do one more run, on Friday, the midway point between now and the race, to give all the inflamed tendons and joints time to recover.

Yesterday, the electricity blinked off just as I finished putting the last of my protein shake ingredients in the blender and reached for the power button. I tried to shake it to blend it, but the protein powder just stuck to itself in gloppy curds and the orange juice and coconut milk separated and curdled and the thought of drinking it almost triggered a vomit reflex, so I dumped it down the drain. I went to work, but did not get a whole lot accomplished. In the afternoon, after the snow had moved in, I went to Marci's house and lay flat on my back in front of her TV for six hours and got lost in a marathon of a TV season she owns. I spent the day craving junk food, since that is what happens on the days I do not drink my protein shake, ate lots of chocolate chips, and, becasue I begged him to, B brought a pizza to Marci's house for dinner. Marci and I walked Andy after dinner, and I threw a stick to keep him running and give him more exercise than just a walk. We were walking along a stream and I threw it too close to the bank and it rolled in. Andy followed it. He had the spend the rest of the evening in the car, drying off.

June 2 is the first mountain bike race of the season. The question this year is not whether I will do it, but which category. Judging from my only other race, I am slightly better than the beginner's category, which means I may only be challenged by the sandbaggers who intentionally ride more slowly than their best times, and juggle a fine line between winning most of the time and intentionally losing just enough races that they do not get forced to switch to a more challenging category. Last year, I was sure I would lose even in beginner's class, so I entered it and won, and got (semi-jokingly, since it was my first race and how was I to know?) called a sandbagger, even though I won by only a second. The girl who finished a second behind me took first overall for the season, so she will have to move up. And I do not want to sandbag, even though winning a lot would be sweet. It probably would not make a lot of friends, though... although maybe I would not be sandbagging. I have ridden with a girl who wins a lot of the beginner's races, and she was stronger on the uphill. I was only faster than her on the downhill. Oh, dear...

But if I switch to sport category, I will probably get my butt handed to me. The courses are twice as long as the beginner's courses, and the Sport women also sandbag when they really should do the honest thing and move up to Expert class. I think I could keep up, but I do not think I could ever win. Although come to think of it, I rarely ride in a social setting with Sport racers, it is usually with the girls in the Expert or Pro/Elite categories, and they really kick my butt, I can't even begin to keep up with them, so how am I going to know unless I try? But on the other hand, it would be embarrassing to have to drop down a level because of my overestimating my abilities...but on the other hand, it would also be embarrasing to get forced to a higher level if I won too many races in beginners...but on the other hand...oh, heck. Sport it is. I think I just decided. May as well be miserable and never measure up, rather than know I may not deserve the wins. Although the thought of those long races and people passing me like I'm standing still while I am pedaling as hard and as fast as I can with the blood roaring in my ears and my breath so hard and fast I think I may pass out and my nerves making my stomach queasy and my mouth dry because that's what happens when I race and am running on adrenaline and gatorade...makes me a little nauseous.

B's and my anniversary is on the 2nd. He is a little squiffy about that, and supposses I'm going to make him come along and stand on the sidelines for two hours and cheer for me on our anniversary. He somehow misses seeing how that might be fun.

And, becasue I always have to carry a good thing just a little bit too far, I have entered one more foot race for this summer. Yes, all of my money will apparently be going to race fees this year. But this one, I am psyched about. It is called the Warrior's Dash. It will be half serious running, half ninja skills (okay, not exactly ninja skills, but you get the picture...) and half street party. It takes place at Copper Mountain in August, and the first portion of it goes straight up the ski slope before it hits service roads and singletrack. In the last half mile of it's 3.27 miles sits eleven obstacles. Wall jumps, scrambling over old cars, running through tires, crawling under barbed wire through mud, climbing up vertical cargo nets, crawling over horizontal cargo nets, crawling through culverts, jumping over fire, climbing over large round hay bales, running down a stream, balancing on narrow planks over gullies... finishers recieve one free beer, a tee shirt, and a big, wooly helmet with horns. I don't really care about the beer and horns, but the race is going to be one of the most grueling, most painful, and most fun runs of my life. I don't expect to do well at all, but I do plan on finishing, if a bit bruised and bloody.

Oh, yeah. This is shaping up the be the best summer yet. If it would ever stop snowing and the wind would die down...and I can keep myself from debilitating injury. Here's hoping!

And here's hoping I can see some of my faithful few this summer. We plan on making the Koehn Kampout, still on the fence about the Unruh Reunion, (maybe if B can't make it, I still can) and if you have no reason to attend either of those- although you do not need a reason to crash the kampout, the Koehns feel loved and validated by reunion crashers- you are welcome to come and get an altitude problem up here with us.

A full-length report

Hello and welcome to an Altitude Problem, back at altitude and ready to go. We wish. The mind is ready, the legs are ready, the stomach and the weather are not.

I could attach pictures to this post, but I have not yet transferred the pictures from the camera to this computer for Mexico, and the video in the upper right hand corner of this blog gives an idea of the scenery on our Porcupine rim ride. So pardon the lack of pictures...honestly this post is big enough without them.

We went to Moab two weeks ago with my parents, a long-planned three day vacation, and did a lot of relaxing. We hiked out to Delicate Arch with them, biked Bar-M loop (a super friendly gravel bike loop) and hung out in town, taking the dogs to the lake for swims in the afternoons, taking them on bike rides in town, browsing shops, sampling food. On our second day there, I drank a killer mango smoothie, and I do mean it nearly killed me. About an hour after I finished it, I began wondering if I had made a big mistake, an hour after that, i knew I had, I tried to settle my stomach by eating a tamale for dinner, and felt better for about four and a half minutes before I felt a whole lot worse, stumbled to the bedroom to lie down, and was about to make a bolt for the bathroom when the bathroom door closed and the shower turned on. I lay there, afraid to move a single muscle lest I see the tamale and smoothie again, and finally called out to whomever it may concern, to see if the bathroom would soon be empty. My dad brought me the kitchen trash can. I promptly filled it with smoothie and tamale. As soon as everyone had gone to bed, me and my trash can moved out to the couch, since B seems to have this odd hang-up about being in the same room as someone who is vomiting. I can't imagine why. That was a long, long night for me and my ex-smoothie.

We spent the next day showing my parents all the impressive, yet easily accessible spots we know of in Moab, which mostly means the national parks. We took Potash Road to Shafer Canyon, a fairly smooth road by Moab standards that winds up from Moab Valley to Island in the Sky. It has a lot of vertical, and some pretty impressive drop-offs and gets pretty narrow (not by Moab standards) in a few spots. I finally got brave enough late in the day to brave a few pretzels, and they did not cause any ill effects, although I was completely wiped out by the night before. I cautiously sipped my watered-down gatorade, and worked on rehydrating without overdoing it, and by that evening, was feeling almost human again.

My parents left to ride down to Main street, and Andy was acting like he needed some exercize, so B decided to take him on a bike ride. After some thought, I decided I felt like a little exercise might do me good, too, so I tied Andy to my handlebar and off we went, bickering about the fact that B had forgotten to bring Andy's poo-bags when we left the condo. We tried to ride fast, so we cold get to the poo-bag dispenser on the bike path before Andy had to go, but I could tell he was already starting to hunch up. I pedalled harder. Without warning, Andy stopped dead, jerking my hadlebars sideways, and left a big pile right in the middle of the bike lane, ejecting me sideways. I ran a few giant steps, pulling my bike along behind me, and then sent B on ahead several blocks to get a poo-bag. He finally returned, picked up the evidence, and off we went. A few minutes later, we met my parents coming back, and tehy decided to ride along with us, so we led them along to Mill Creek parkway (the city bike path) to a wood-chip path that crosses a stream and comes out on the other end of town.

Now, B and I had ridden this trail before, and he had carefully caried his bike, careful not to get his shoes wet, and as he was doing so, I, like a total show-off, had studied it, turned around, gotten a run at it, splashed across, rode up the bank on the other side, and stood there mocking him and he finished picking his way across. So this time, he knew it could be done. He was in the lead, then my parents, and I was "riding sweeps" with Andy, so I had time to see him hit the water and ride across. My parents hit their brakes, not expecting a water crossing. I dodged them, losing momentum, and making Andy dodge me, throwing me just a little off balance, but not much...I was still confident I could do it, especially since it would not do to not do it, since B had just done it, and I would show him I could even do it with a dog tied to my handlebar...I dropped my bike off the bank, and all heck broke loose. Andy may have bolted, I don't know, because I was too busy watching my front wheel not rolling over a big round babyhead right in front of it. Then I was face-planting in the water and my bike was crashing down on my back. I lay down in the stream for a moment, spread-eagle, my legs wrapped around my handlebars, and assessed the rediculosity of the situation for a moment, afraid of what I might find in the way of bodily harm should I get up. Then I was up, and grabbing my left ring finger, pain blossoming through it. I finally stopped squeezing it and walked my bike out of the stream, water squishing in my shoes, in the padding in my bike shorts, the wind blowing my soaked bike jersey against me. I attempted to straighten my brake and shifter that had been turned to the bottom side of my handlebar, and cautiously stepped into my pedals, to Bobby's mix of anger, glee, and concern. Andy, in the meantime, had flopped down in the running water, apparently thinking that since I had done it, he could, too.

It was a long ride back to the condo with my wet clothes. I put them out on the patio, hoping the bikeshorts and shoes would dry, and went to bed, my finger hurting, my legs and ego bruised, my stomach muscles sore from the ex-smoothie weight-loss plan.

The next morning, I got up to take Andy out to potty, and found Jeremy sleeping on the living room floor. Yes, this had been pre-arranged. He had left Flagstaff the night before, leaving after his last final at 7:00 pm, and had driven most of the night to get there. Andy nearly fell apart. Unfortunately, he had a full bladder when he nearly fell apart, and after he had gotten over the shock of seeing Jeremy, whom he dearly loves, in his living room, there was a wild welcome, the evidence of which stayed on poor Jeremy's sleeping pad. I was, of course, mortified, but he was good about it, and I took a bit of hand sanitizer, diluted with warm water to it. I hope I got it all and J won't have to be reminded of Andy whenever he goes camping from now on.

Apart from the uncomfortable feeling of spending the day in a still-wet bike chamois and wet shoes that created blisters on my heels, the next day was epic. We used my dad to shuttle us up to the top of Porcupine Rim, and we rode down almost 3,000 feet to Negro Bill's Canyon. It took me about on hour of riding to get brave about riding off ledges after my experience the night before, and my ring finger swelled up and throbbed the whole day, but after a while I got more brave and didn't crash, no matter what I decided to ride off of...until 20 minutes from the bottom. It was a pretty tame crash, but it was simple physics, a softer substance gave way to a harder substance, as in, epidermis to slickrock, and I finished the ride with blood running from my knee into my shoe.

We got back to town and hit Zax for lunch, traded the pictures and video from the day's ride to each other's computers, told Jeremy good-bye, and hit the road. My parent's had already left town, taking Andy with them, and we all met at Grandma Rose and Grandpa Bill's place in Eagle for a few hours before continuing home.

My parents took Andy home with them, and spent the next two days getting ready for stage two of our spring vacation.

(Okay, this next part was originally written as a separate post. I am sorry it is long, but hey. Trip reports are. You can't cover a week in a sentence and expect your mother or your aunt to not ask for more details while they are pretending to be interested. Just a warning though, there are many, many more words and sentences and paragraphs to follow. You might want to bail now, before we get on a plane to Mexico.)

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where we are counting- eleven days until the BolderBoulder, the 10K I am planning on running in Boulder with my friend on Memorial Day weekend. I can run 10k fairly easily, but my speed has suffered lately. And now, when I need to be hitting the training these last few days before I take a pre-race break, I am stuck with the leftover ill-effects of two weeks of vacation, a week of that in Mexico. It seems it does not matter how careful one is, it just happens. Not severely, but enough to keep me off the trails.

I risked a run yesterday, and made it back to the house without making a mad dash into the woods (I know, classy, huh?) and the weather was somewhat cooperative, giving me about an hour's gap between rain showers. There was a bit of stinging sleet in the last mile, but Andy and I enjoyed being back up where one can breathe light, invigorating air and run for miles without being weighted down by thick air and heavy humidity. My running in Mexico was an interesting experience, and I must have trained harder there than I thought I did, because I am feeling like I got in better shape there. But while there, I felt like I was always a few steps away from crawling, lifting heavy, weighted legs, forcing each step, feeling more like I was only putting one foot in front of the other to keep from falling. The resort where we stayed threw in a surprise charge for use of the work-out facilities, so my plan to spend my days lifting, running on a treadmill, stretching, and basically living between the gym and the beach like I did on our last trip to Mexico was thwarted by me not wanting to pay $12 USD a day to do so. For this reason, we will definitely not be staying at any of the Royal resorts again- they all do this, I was told when I professed disbelief at having to pay more for use of their three treadmills and small weight bench than I have to pay in SkiTown, U.S.A. for use of a 12,000 square foot facility. I will be making sure that use of the resort's gym is free, since working out is always a major part of a vacation for me. I went a little nuts without spending an hour twice a day doing that. I don't do well with lying on a beach. An hour after I settle in, I am experiencing phantom hunger pains borne of severe boredom.

I chose to run along Kukulcan Blvd my first few days. The first day was one of the worst runs of my life. I had not realized the gym was not free that morning, and did not get around to going down and checking it out until about 10:00 that morning, and then realized I could not afford it so, simmering and muttering to myself, I took to the road. The sun was high, buses rocketed past a few feet from the sidewalk, I had to dodge people at bus stops, dodge taxis, dodge tourists in flip flops. It was hot, and sweat dripped down my face, beaded on my upper lip, the hiumidity turned my hairdo into a fuzzy mass of frizz, my face, I am sure, was beet red, my shirt was soaked, my shorts rode up, and, of all things, I got stopped in this state by a timeshare hustler and had to spend five minutes fast-talking, explaining why I would not like to spend the day in some fabulous resort. And apparently, runners get honked at there. By the end of the run, I was not whipping around every time a horn beeped beside me, thinking I was in someone's way, even though I was on the sidewalk. I did not feel like I was getting very far very fast, and I had overspent my energy at the beginning of the run because I was still muttering about the gym, and I tend to run too hard when I am upset. By the time I got back, I was completely overheated, dehydrated, had a headache and a sunburn, my knees and ankles hurt, my clothes were stuck to me and sweat was rollong down my back and chest, and, since my shorts would not stay down, had a nasty bit of chub-rub going on the upper legs. I got back to the condo completely grouchy, did not feel like going to the pool, and slept for several hours.

I got smarter after that, running at 6:00a.m., and even then, running along Kukulcan was stressful and hot, so I started leaving my shoes behind and running on the beach. After three days of that, my calves were constantly on fire from lifting me out of the sand with every step, and the tendons in the bottoms of my feet were burning, but it was cooler because I could run in the surf. Now that I am home, I have mapped the distances and realized I ran between two and a half and five and a half miles every day, although I have no idea how, because it felt like I was running barely two miles. Maybe it is easier to run at sea level, but the only way to tell it is by comparing how far you went, because it certainly does not feel easier.

Since we went down to get B's wisdom teeth out, we only had two and a half days to do touristy things. We had planned on doing some exploring on the day we got there, but we had planned on spending about an hour getting through customs and ended up spending almost three hours. We had skipped lunch, because our flight left Denver just before lunchtime and was only a three and a half hour flight, and we were not hungry in Denver, but by the time we got through the nearly three hour wait in the customs line, we were famished, and had no idea where to go to eat. We spent another hour and a half renting our car and getting talked into a timeshare presentation the next day, with a reward of free admission to the eco-park we wanted to visit, but were stressed out about paying the entrance fee. When we realized we had driven right past our hotel and would have to turn around, our blood sugar had hit rock bottom. We pulled off the road while searching for the hotel, dug in our luggage, and shared a Boost shake that B had brought for sustenance after his surgery, when he would be unable to eat solid food. It spiked our blood sugar levels just enough to convince us we might live, even though we were both still shaky, and we found the hotel, waited in line some more, got lost finding our room on the seventh floor, and finally, found it and began perusing the restaurant guide on the coffee table. It was long after dark by the time we walked down to a restaurant on the edge of the resort grounds, and, unsure about whether it was on the resort's water purification system, ordered our food and the drink special of the night- a margarita that, we noted through our hypoglycemic haze as our waitress rattled off the ingrediants, contained only a nominal amount of lime juice, it was mostly Grand Marnier, Tequila, and several other boozy ingredients. I was expecting it to be small and cheap and mostly ice, like the margaritas served in the Mexican restaurants at home. It was none of those things. We shared it without water, and mostly before our meal arrived because we were thirsty, and it only took a minute before it hit the bloodstream. I managed to steer about one-fourth of my flautas to my mouth between giggling hysterically at B trying to coordinate closing his mouth around the enchiladas on his fork before they dropped back onto his plate. We spent a long time trying to do impossibly complicated math involving figuring out a twenty percent tip in pesos, and thought we nailed it brilliantly, only the next day realizing we had actually left about a twelve percent tip. We weaved our way out of the restaurant, wondering why they would fill the parking lot with little round holes and plant grass in them, topes (speed bumps) for drunk people, found our room and sprawled on the couch to wait until the spinning stopped. We finally woke up, showered and stumbled to bed around midnight.

The next morning, we grabbed the map to the timeshare presentation, left the hotel bright and early, and got spotted by a concierge woman out front, who stopped us asking if we needed a taxi, and apparently, has eyes like a hawk when it comes to timeshare invitations from rival resorts. She descended on us with guns blazing. "Where are you going?" I immediately began to formulate a lie, but B just blurted the truth, and what followed for the next ten minutes was a valuable lesson for him in the art of evasion. She tried all the tricks. "Why would you want to go somewhere else? You are staying here. Don't you like it here? Why would you want to waste your day? What did they offer you? Who did you talk to? You do not want to go there. It is not nice like here." Yes, yes, okay, we must be going now... "Did they say 90 minutes? It will be at least five hours. Did they offer you breakfast? They will not give you breakfast. Did they offer you a shopping gift certificate? They did not tell you that is only valid if you buy a timeshare. Did they offer you free admission to the park? You will only get a small discount. Okay, you want free admission? We can give you tickets. If that is what you want, you do not need to drive to Playa Del Carmen. You can stay right here. Don't you want to stay here?" By this time, I was tugging B's arm, in full sight of her. He kept looking at me as if to ask what was wrong with me, and I was being rude. I kept saying, Oh, we want to be able to see the whole area, not just the Zona Hotelera, we enjoy being able to tour resort grounds, it is okay, we have been to timeshare presentations before, we know what we are getting into. We know what to expect, blah, blah. I finally interrupted her with quite the bubbly, "thank you very much, don't worry, we will be back," smiled as sweetly as if I were not being rude, and succeeded in pulling B enough off balance that he took an unintentional step toward the parking lot. She raised her eyebrows at him. "Ahh, she is a tough one, huh?" and we scuttled off, casting nervous glances over our shoulders, half expecting to see her running after us swinging her clipboard at our heads.

I learned later that time is running out for these salespeople who get tourists off the streets herded into timeshare presentations, because the Mexican government takes very seriously any complaints coming from tourists, and one of the main complaints is that they feel harrassed by these people. It will soon become illegal for them to do this, and the only way of selling for the resorts will be to sell to people already staying there, or people specifically requesting a presentation. Our host at the presentation told us that he ends up making a sale to about 1/3 of the people who come in off the street, so this represents a huge loss of sales for them, which may be why it seemed to be hitting such a fever pitch right now. And that, because one sale generates such income for the resort and the salesperson, they pay these people out working the streets well. Very well. Porsche and beachfront property well. Obviously, with that in mind, this particular woman pulled out all the stops, even resorting to outright lies, in an effort to keep us away from her rival resort.

We got to Playa Del Carmen and registered for the presentation, and were quite impressed with the cool, leafy grandeur of the Mayan Palace. Our particular salesman saw immediately that we were not ownership material, and we leisurely toured the grounds, winding through a labyrinth of blue pools and dripping greenery and hidden, shady corners and foliage more worthy of an Audobon center than a resort. We finally found ourselves in a shaded, open-air restaurant overlooking a small lake, sharing the place with several hundred other presentees, and a brilliant green iguana looking for scraps. Our host ended up being a very personable fellow, and I am pretty sure that normally, breakfast time is filled with sales pitch, but by the time we got done with our chit-chat, exchanging life stories, a near tear or two over a tragedy in his recent past, a long discussion about the way tourists from the US tend to act on vacation, and how to best present oneself in a foreign country, how to gain a local's acceptance by open-mindedness toward their culture, hobbies and interests, and a discussion about roads less traveled in the Playa Del Carmen area, racism in the U.S., and how it is difficult for many people in other countries to see beyond the white-trash deep-south mentality when meeting people from the states, how it annoys them when we call ourselves Americans when, actually, we make up only about one-fourth of the Americas...by the time we had covered so much ground, we all realized this was not an ordinary timeshare presentation, and we had long passed our 90 minute promised time and had not even begun the sales pitch. Other salespeople had long left with their marks, our table had been long cleared, the restaurant had been quiet and empty for a long time, save for our chatter. Not that we minded, because there could have been far worse ways to spend a beautiful, hot morning on vacation than in an pleasant restaurant on a lake, iguanas sneaking past our feet, songbirds chirping, palm leaves rustling, a cool breeze ticking our faces, chatting with an english-speaking local.

Ended up, he missed his scheduled tee-time that afternoon, and we spent all morning and most of the afternoon there, and he still flew through the sales-pitch part of it before we left, and we (of course) all knew we would not buy, having covered during our breakfast talkathon our whole new grab-life and live-in-the-present philosophy that extends to our finances, and how we do not really believe it is a healthy way to live to commit one's future to debt when one can be just as happy in the present with less car, less house, less luxury, and more friendship, more love, more living.

The next morning, we drove out to Xcaret (pronounced ESH-cah-ret), the park we had researched while still at home. Turned out, it was not quite as natural as we had hoped, and we realized that the park next door, Xplor, might have been more what we thought we were getting. We had thought we would find fairly natural underground rivers and caves like the ones the area is famous for, but the underground river ended up being very child-friendly, and only a little bit underground, and I suspect from the smooth walls of the oval tunnels, mostly man-made. The park next door boasted the stalactite-filled caves we had been expecting. But we still enjoyed our day, wondering between exhibits of native animals, fish, birds and reptiles, finding hidden walkways and getting lost in the labyrinth of footbridges and paths through rainforest foliage and damp earth, popping out on the beach to hammocks and palm trees, ducking back into the shade. We felt our way in near-total dark back to a cave filled with bats, peered over moats to watch spider monkeys, deer, panthers and jaguires, watched quail chicks hatch, watched sea turtles, dolphins, manatees, crocodiles in the water. In the early afternoon, we left the park and drove the Royal Haciendas, a resort we had access to because it was part of Royal Resorts, the same group our resort was part of. We had lunch at one of the resort restaurants, La Palapa, chugged about three tall glasses of water, dehydrated from our day, gorged ourselves on Sopa Limon and fish, sat and enjoyed the salty ocean breeze on our faces as we sat on the shady patio, then wondered out to the pool area. My swimsuit was wet, and I had changed into a sundress to go eat, and did not feel like changing. As we were eating, I kept seeing people rowing past in kayaks, and I asked about it at the activities desk, and was told all they charged was a smile. B ran to the resort store to buy sunscreen, and I signed in, grabbed the paddles and life jackets, and headed to the beach to meet the guy as he dragged them down to the water's edge. I waited and waited for B to get back, and finally, shoved my kayak into the water without him, filled the seat up with water getting in while being buffetted by waves, and took off. I was soaked from the waist down in salt water in no time. B finally returned, I paddled back to shore and we both headed out, shooting over the rope they had told us to stay inside, and enjoyed the higher-than-normal waves until B started feeling a bit seasick. We went back, retured the paddles, and he hit the pool. I was in a wet dress. The salty water was making my legs stick together, and the above-the-knee skirt did not allow for lounging in a pool chair. I finally slathered up with suscreen and left to go walk down the beach, not helping the chub-rub in the least.

Okay, so a side note here. You know how when women walk, they put one foot directly in front of the other? Men walk with their feet pointed out, a side-to-side swagger that never allows their thighs to touch. But all except the most anorexic women have a brief moment of contact between upper legs. And it never causes a problem except for when you introduce salt water and sand to the mix. Well, welcome to the beach. It will have the most elegantly-striding supermodel walking like a man in no time. They call this unfortunate, painful malady chub-rub, even if there is very little chub involved, and there is no shame in it, since all healthy women have a bit of chub to rub on their upper legs. I personally like to say I am in great health, which is to say, there is most definitely chub.

A thirty minute walk along the water down to Playa Del Carmen's public beach and back did not help the problem, but it did dry my dress from sopping wet to merely damp. I could feel a bad mood coming on, especially if I had to be in the sun any longer, so B acted quickly to avert it and we drove back to Xcaret.

We went to the show that evening in the theater inside the park, the scent of citronella heavy and the candles held by the audience winking and flickering all around us, and watched the interpretive dance that told the Mayan's story. We left at intermission, because we were both feeling exhausted from our day in the sun.

The next morning was the reason for the trip, and the thing we dreaded most about it. The dentist. We drove into downtown Cancun and found the dentist, who after one glance at B's x-rays, doubled the price quoted for a standard wisdom tooth extraction. They showed me his x-rays, two severely impacted lower teeth, two upper teeth that were halfway in, but at extreme angles, and one small, pointy tooth that seemed to be floating behind them. I asked about it. The dentist giggled a little and said, "Oh, yeah. And there's a baby tooth. Don't worry, we'll get that out, too."

They got him started, and took me upstairs to a small loft above his cubicle to check me out and fill some cavities. At one point, I sat up and peeked over the railing in time to see them bringing out a big, bloody chunk of tooth from his mouth. It took them almost four hours to get them all out, and it ended up that they could use disolveable stitches only on the inside, but had to use stronger stitches on the outside, the holes left by his teeth needing two layers of stitches. He drove to the condo one-handed, holding ice to his face, and I ran into a pharmacy and attempted to tell them what I needed for his pain meds. Back at the condo, his face began to swell...and swell...and swell.

We had hoped that on our last day there, we would be able to drive the three hours to Chichen Itza, beat the tour buses, and check it out. Chichen Itza was going to cost us about $80 USD apiece, so we had had second thoughts about it, but then we realized that if you drive yourself out there, it only costs like $3 USD plus gas. Unfortunately, B did not recover as fast as we had hoped, and by our last day there, he was feeling better, but walking still jiggled his cheeks and jaw, so we just hung out at the resort the entire remaining four days. He slept in, I ran in the mornings, came back, mixed up smoothies and protein shakes for B, we took naps through the hottest part of the afternoons, watched whatever movies were on cable in English and went down to the beach as soon as the sun began to dip behind the row of high-rises on the strip of hotel hell that is the Zona Hotelera. Then, as soon as we got cold because the sun was down and the breeze was damp, we went back up to the room and sat out on the deck, where the weak wifi signal was the strongest, and tried to pick up internet.

We had nowhere else to be between check-out time at 11:00 am, and our flight at 4:00 pm, since B's face still hurt too much to be out in the hot sun, and we had no desire to go shopping, so we dropped of fthe rental car and spent four hours at the airport. Another three and a half hours on the plane, about two minutes to get through customs in Denver (Oh, how I love DIA), and we hit the road for Kansas. My friend Ginta met us just outside denver, and I jumped in with her and her almost-three year old son, and we drove through the dark flatlands, flashing past half a dozen deer along the road. Thankfully, none of then jumped out at us, and we talked, and talked, and talked (neither of us has much of a problem with keeping a conversation going)until we turned into Marienthal, and scared the daylights out of Andy, who had apparently taken on guard-dog responsibilities while my parent were dogsitting him. B walked into the house, and woke Andy from a dead sleep with his intruder alarm at full volume, and it took awhile to realize that the shadowy, menacing intruder trying to be heard over the barking and growling was just his beloved B, come back for him. Of course, after he realized who it was, he turned into a whining, groveling pile of Golden Retriever relief and love. By the time Ginta and I got into the house, all that was left of his panicked protective frenzy was a puddle on the floor.

Andy is a very job-oriented dog, and lately, has finally settled on his area of expertise- watch dog. He has gotten very loud and agressive-sounding when he perceives a threat to his people. Not that he would ever carry out the foul threats he makes, because if the intruder does turn threatening, he hides behind me, so he makes a terrible guard dog, but he can watch and alert. But he can make the faint of heart quiver in the knees and rethink the whole Golden-Retrievers-are-harmless-creatures thing.

We had a great time at Donny and Laci's wedding, catching up with people we have not seen in years, and I got to show Ginta where I grew up, five hours and several light years from where I live now.

And now, I'm done. If you are still reading, I salute you.

On the brink

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where yours truly thinks she might be able to be creative enough to come up with titles for her posts if she just gets a bit more committed. I have been organizing all week, trying to make things easier to find. Why should the blog be any different?

I sit in a clean house. Possibly even clean by other people's standards. The carpet cleaner still sits in the back room awaiting use, because the day I had set aside to use it was the day we discovered it was missing a part. I brought home the part the next day, but by then I had moved on to other projects.

The spare bedroom is clean, and the closet is filled with only camping gear and sports equipment, instead of being an avalanche hazard of art projects, sewing projects, a Christmas tree, various bedding, bike gear, home decor trinkets, etc. Most of the latter list has been taken away to Goodwill and consignment.

The office was clean, although the cleaning project in there is like the Olympic torch- it's always going.

Our bedroom is clean, and all the laundry done. The kitchen is clean. The cluttered corners of the dining room are clean, and the everything-basket has been emptied and the basket given away.

Christmas cards from the last three years, gone. All my shirts that no longer meet my pants (I can't seem to be able to buy clothes that don't shrink more with each wash), gone. All my paintings, gone. Cast-off bedding and wall art from redecorated condos, gone. The remote control, gone. (Oops.)

And, since I cannot seem to be able to clean without also rearranging (which drives B absolutely nuts, but makes everything feel wonderful, clean and new to me) the living room, office, and bedroom are no longer familiar, but the furniture has been moved to new locations to suit my whims. I try to tell B that we do not wear the same clothes every day, so why do we arrange our spaces once, and never again? Once it gets to be the same old same-o, I lose all inclination to keep it uncluttered.

I have two new mantras, which I have repeated to myself many times this last week. "If you don't use it, you need to lose it", and "A place for everything, and everything in it's place." There are two items that are actually bothering me a lot, because I absolutely cannot find a good place to put them. One is a wake board, bought in Missouri on our last vacation with our boat in anticipation of many more days on the lake, used three days, and then, when we decided that winter to sell the boat, stored. We have stored it ever since, reluctant to take it to consignment, because we will take such a loss on it. The other is a box of wrapping paper. I stuffed a mattress in one of my closets, to be taken out when the office room needs to be turned into a bedroom, and without that closet, there is simply no place for those two items. Every single other item in this house has a home. I am feeling quite good about that. You try to run a lodging company, storing all the tools needed to do so in your home. A double-wide trailer house could burst at it's seams with tool boxes, paint cans, cordless power tools.

And in a year, we may need to give up our home office space to a roommate. Yes, we have a new plan. Wanna hear it? But of course you do.

Right now, the Lord willing (and the creek don't rise) we plan on leaving for Maui about next April 1st. For 4 months, we will enjoy a slacker's life on a Pacific island, yours truly using the idyllic weather and lack of a job to train hard for mountain biking when we come back August 1st, B getting PADI dive certified and following his dream of exploring the last frontier- underwater. Then we will come back home and face the music, run the company, and enjoy the last two months of summer in the mountains while B's sister spends the next 4 months in the house we will have rented there. Then, for the remaining 4 months of the year, we will sublet our house in Maui (we have a few leads on people who might be willing to take one for the team, make the sacrifice and spend the winter in Hawaii in a cheap house with a free vehicle) while we all live together in Summit County and manage the company through the 4 busy months- December, January, February, and March. Since rent there is slightly cheaper than it is in Summit County, between B's sister and us, we will still be paying the same amount as we are right now for housing. The sacrifice will be coexisting in the same house through the busy season, but it seems an easy one, since the pay-off is four months off. It's the best way we can think of to have our cake and eat it, too. We do not need to lose our job security, can maybe delay the inevitable burn-out that everyone experiences with a lodging management job, keep from going insane from being too cold from too long, get to add a great adventure to our life's story, and, by operating half-staffed eight months of the year, we will all work longer days, and the extra hours each day add up to enough to allow us to take those four months off.

I give us two years. I really think after two years max, we will be so sick of moving Andy to a rabies-free island, and jumping through all the hoops to prove that he is rabies-free. We will have the island thing out of our system,and be ready to move onto the next best thing (which, truthfully, some days seems like an even better idea than Maui). And what is that, you ask? The next best thing involves losing all ties for four months, an open road, me and you and a dog named Boo, travelin' and livin' off the land. Actually, Lobo's dog was named Boo. Our's is named Andy. Gonna have to write a new song, one that rhymes with our dog's name. Our plan involves a 20-ft home on wheels hitched to our pickup truck, 14 days in one spot(the maximum amount of time one is allowed to stay in one spot on National Forest land before one is considered a squatter), chasing dry trails through the U.S. of A. This plan is more conducive to the having of kids than the Hawaii plan. If something should happen to get conceived in the meantime, accidentally or on purpose, the Hawaii thing would probably get cut short.

Of course, it could happen that we would decide we really like it in Maui, and the perfect jobs would fall into our laps, and we would just decide to stay. Or we might decide we hate it, and would rather hit the road for 4 months out of the year. Or any number of other options. All we really know is we don't know if we have tomorrow, let alone next year, and in this one area, B and I are reading from the same page. The world was made big and beautiful for us to enjoy. A life lived happily is far better than dying wealthy. We talk with big words and big gestures about grabbing and enjoying every day like it is your last, because it may be. Going ahead and crossing off all the items you can from your bucket list while you are young. If you make it to old age, having stories to tell that your grand kids are actually interested in, and having enough of them that you don't have to keep telling the same ones over and over. Wondering if something is wrong with us because the older we get, the less we want to settle down, spend the rest of our lives in one place with side-by-side rocking chairs on the front porch looking at the same view we have seen every day for the last sixty years. The word "tied-down" induces nightmares, and we get dreamy-eyed at the thought of seeing, being, doing. And suspecting that the fact that we are polar opposites in every other area is probably a good thing, because if we get this crazy in the one area we agree on, it is probably best for our equilibrium that all other areas are balanced by our own version of yin and yang.

As far as our present goes, it is looking up. The winter, the horrible, hellish winter, is over. Already the memory of the mad rush, the stress, the hysterical tears (okay, it's quite possible I was the only one who actually resorted to such measures of stress-management, and then only after total exhaustion had set in), the short tempers and the phone that rang with perfect timing to make relaxing impossible, all is fading, being blocked by our minds, our subconsious kicking in and repressing, compartmentalizing, minimalizing like the good little coping mechanism it is. It is slow time. We are ready for summer, in spite of the fact that we have gotten over a foot of snow in the last week. Yes, now that winter is over and the skiing conditions were dismal, now it can snow. No longer are trails dry. Mud season is official. And we are getting outa here. Moab with my parents for a few days, Mexico for a week. Definitely looking up.