Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where we may be going for a record number of posts this year. It is an indication of our state of mind when I post a lot- I am either whining, or have nothing better to do, or are procrastinating doing something I would better be doing. Lately, it is that I have had the time.

The 2nd was B's and my 8th anniversary. After a few rather blatant hints on my part, he did everything right for me. He came to the race and the after-party, he whisked me away to a warm, beautiful place the next day, got a motel room so we would not need to rush home.

He didnt especially enjoy the race, because it meant standing around for almost two hours under skies threatening rain, just to see me start, ride past once, and cross the finish line. And then hanging out at the noisy bar (noisy bars really aren't his scene) and driving me home late, when I was exhausted, dusty, stinky, and my lips were slightly numb after only one free beer.

The race went better than expected. I came in 5th out of 12 riders in my class. I feel good about it because I gave it everything I had, didnt hold anything back, rode on the edge of control downhill and ignored the burn in my quads and pulled the uphills as hard as I could, and still watched several women pull away from me. I did miss one corner twice, each time around the two-lap course, and wasted precious seconds that I could not make up, and came in 9 minutes, 57 seconds behind the race leader. I honestly do not think I physically could have ridden it almost ten minutes faster, the winner won it fair and square. Now I have two and a half weeks to be ready for the next one.

The next day, we left Andy in the house to be picked up by the dogsitter after she got off of work, and we hit the road for Steamboat Springs. All the cabins at Strawberry Park Hot Springs were booked, so we got a room in town, then headed up to the hot springs. It was an amazing, relaxing day. Strawberry Hot Springs is far and away the most beautiful, natural hot springs we have ever been to. The water smells very good, not at all sulfuric, just natural, 104-degree stone-walled pools cascading into each other, separated from the swollen, icy stream a few feet away. We hung out in the water most of the afternoon, moving to a cooler pool after we began to feel overheated, lying in the water, heads propped on convenient stones, arms and legs floating weightlessly, rising and sinking with each inhale and exhale. Today, my skin feels silky, my muscles are not at all sore. It was the perfect way to end race week. We ate dinner at a bistro in town, eating our meal at a patio table on a lawn a few feet away from the raging river, pushing at it's banks. We walked through town, under flowering trees, warm breeze whispering to us, got ice cream, and finally returned to our motel and fell asleep, feeling like we had been on vacation for weeks. The only unpleasant part of the whole trip was the looming ski area and condo town. Every time I looked up, I saw it, and I did not like how it made me feel. Ideally, our escape should have not been to anywhere with a ski resort, so as to not remind us. It revealed something to me about my current feelings about resort towns. I do not see fun and recreation anymore when I see ski runs, I only see stress and demanding guests and entitled tourists and the need to juggle an overwhelming work schedule so I can go through the motions of skiing and snowboarding and being cold and having snow down my pants so that I can keep my sanity, when what I really wish for is a dry, lonely trail to nowhere, everywhere, anywhere disappearing under a mountain bike or a sturdy pair of shoes.

Back in Summit County, we remembered who we are. We got back into town at 10:30 a.m., picked up Andy, and came home. B immediately left for work, and I spent the afternoon dreaming of the day when we can live somewhere that has flowering trees, when I can have a garden, maybe even a greenhouse, where we can live off of the fruits of our land. I took my greenhouse drawings to the trailer park manager so he could peruse them before he tells me I can't build one on our lot, and dug dandelions and pretended that I was gardening and that summer was here to stay.