By the way... if you looked at this post several days ago, and did not see pictures, for reasons described in the post, these are from several days later. I ran the same route just this morning, the first time the sun is shining again since this post was posted. And this time, took the camera...
It's a rainy day in the Summit. Of course it is- yesterday was idyllic. Seventy degrees, windstill... I hopped out of bed as soon as I saw the blue sky through our bedroom's patio doors, determined to get a run in before the clouds built. The plan was just to run across the dam, and turn around when the rec path cuts into the trees. It's a little more than a mile, and I told myself I was feeling lazy, a two mile run would suit me fine. I got a new camelback, a much more comfortable one that cinches down tightly enough that the only movement is from the two liters of water it holds, and I filled it all the way up before I left, for the weight as much as anticipated hydration needs. Only when I got to my planned turn-around point, I found myself reluctant to turn around. "Maybe I can at least make it to Frisco" I told myself, tightened the backback straps and kept running. Naturally, I had left the camera at home, or I would have taken some killer pictures. The last time I was out, I took the camera, then the clouds moved in, and the pictures were not impressive in the least. So why would I take it out again, I asked myself, and left it at home.
But yesterday morning, the surface of the lake was glass, the water clear enough at the edges to peer down and watch the fish swimming amongst the rocks off the shore. Peak One hung perfectly suspended upside down in front of me across the surface of the lake, Mounts Guyot and Baldy, upside down in all their glory, to my left, details almost clearer in the water than on the actual mountains in their upright state. Aspen leaves hung motionless, waiting for only the slightest breeze to throw them into a quivering frenzy, squirrels crouched and watched me, not sure what to do with the silence. The air was cool, and scented with sun-warmed pine sap. It was far too lovely to turn around, and before long, I found myself in Frisco. One of my favorite portions of the path was ahead of me, a series of sharp turns and wooden walkways through and over a large wetlands. This time, I could actually enjoy it because I was not on inline skates... skating over a boardwalk will pretty nigh rattle ones teeth out and have ones feet and ankles buzzing for a few minutes after, much like mowing the lawn does to your hands. Just to the Marina, I told myself, and kept running, my steps echoing on the boards. The marina came and went, and I found myself on the far end of Frisco, and wondering if I should turn around. The ADD kicked in with perfect timing, reminding me that I had just seen that route, wouldn't I rather explore some new area? And there's all this nice recpath between here and Breckenridge... so I stopped, peeled off the backpack, applied sunscreen, stripped down to sports bra and running shorts to dry the sweat, changed playlists on my ipod, checked my phone for missed calls, reassembled myself and kept going. Just to the end of the lake, I told myself. Just to Farmer's Korner, home of Summit High, the water treatment plant, a gas station, and a sudden population boom. By now a plan was forming, to keep going as far as I wanted to in this direction, then when I get tired, find a bus to take me back to Dillon. I actually stopped at the bus stop in Farmer's Korner, but after reading the schedule and realizing I had just missed the bus, and it would be thirty minute
s till the next one, I recinched the backpack and kept running. By this time, I had a half-marathon in mind, and thought that I would have surely done it if I made it to Breck. It was the toes that decided it for me. My heels never blister, I dont have corns or any weird protrusions that my shoes rub raw, in fact I almost never blister from my shoes. My toes take care of that all on their own. The pads on the bottoms overlap, and step on each other, mile after mile, until they start to rub off on each other, and actually blister each other. It seems like something that might only happen to an improperly designed mutant. (Aww, shut up, you there.) Anyway, by the time they had carried me to Tiger run, still five miles from Breck, they were sending urgent distress signals with every step, and finally convinced me to stop, two miles short of the hoped-for half-marathon. As the clouds gathered and the wind sprung up, I took the Summit stage home, still feeling like I had run left in me, glaring at my mutant toes that refused to cooperate. It is so frusterating when one cannot use up all of one's energy and stamina because one is losing one's skin in the process.
Oh, well, it still gives me something to work toward. I never have made it all the way to half-marathon, if I did, I would have to start working on marathon, which quite honestly scares me, because I am not at all sure I can do it. Actually, I am mostly sure I cannot. Maybe it's best to keep it at almost there, because we all know that if Susan fails at something, her world might just grind to a halt. A wise man once said, It is far better to never try, than to try and suffer the humiliation of failing. (Hey, it's my blog. My wise men can say whatever I tell them to say.)
By the time the Summit Stage dropped me off at the LaBonte Street stop in Dillon, B had finished his work for the day. It was only noon, and threatening rain so after a lunch of my sister in law's most innovative version of Ramen Noodles (cook the noodles and a handful of frozen peas together, dump off the water, add half the seasoning packet and a slice of cheese, and let the cheese melt into the sticky goo that holds it all together) I let B start the mower and mow the front yard before I felt guilty enough about sitting around that I offered to finish the back yard for him. The neighbor/landlord is out of town, so I mowed his lawn as well. This whole green-grass suburbia thing is kind of a drag sometimes. But then, nobody ever taught me that greenliness is next to Godliness. I spent most of my childhood crunching over dried-up buffalo grass, which turned emerald only after a gullywasher, until it dried out again.
I'll tell you something else that is a drag- Summit county housing market. Oh, not for someone that is in it, that owns a home, for them it is a regular cash camel. (More fun to say than cash cow, by the way. Comes from a movie.) People buy and sell homes up here at an alarming rate of speed, and to hear them talk, turn a tidy profit each time. Forty percent increase in twenty-two months. Must be nice, we say, as we earn our dollars one at a time and pay them to our landlord as quickly as we make them. We are looking at buying a place, to save ourselves rent. Oh, it certainly won't make us rich, but if we can just break even when we sell it, maybe we won't have to kick ourselves for buying a house for the man down the street. We can at least make payments on something that is ours, not his. And in the name of simplifying and downsizing, and turning a few of our more burdensome belongings into cash, both the car and the boat are for sale.
I guess that means no Lake Powell this September, if we have no boat. It somehow does not sound like as much fun to just have a houseboat, with no way to wakeboard, or ski, or tube, to maim, or otherwise kill, yourself. What could possibly be the fun in puttering around at slow speeds? But if we have no boat, that means we won't have to pay to park it when we find ourselves in some tiny economy condo with a minimum of two parking spaces per family and the laundry facility a ten minute walk away. Yeah, we'll miss suburbia, at least the two story single family home with two car garage, washer/dryer and a bathroom per bedroom, but look at it this way- no grass to mow. Only a geranium on the deck, if one feels a need to excersize one's green thumb. And solitude. No roomies. The american dream, baby. To live alone (alone can also mean "just the two of you") in far more space than one could ever need or want, while in other countries, several families exist comfortably in fewer square feet than your fat american selves would be willing to share with, say, a goldfish.
Oh, yeah, which brings me to the most appealing part of owning a home- pets. No more scanning the rental adds, and finding only np/ns. That would be "no pets/no smoking", by the way. I object. Not being a smoker, but a pet-lover, how could a faint whiff of litterbox ever be as offensive as the in-everything smell of cigarette smoke? And besides, this is Summit County. Nobody follows those rules except for us. Everybody knows that only a dog qualifies as a pet, and only tobacco qualifies as smoking. You can pet many things besides a dog, like a rat, or a cat, or a chihuahua or a toy poodle- those last two do not qualify as dogs, in case you were wondering, and everyone knows you can smoke things that are not tobacco. If ya get caught, you're gonna have bigger things to worry about than a security deposit, anyway...
Oh, well, it's alright. We'll figure it out, one of these times. In the meantime, till next time!
But yesterday morning, the surface of the lake was glass, the water clear enough at the edges to peer down and watch the fish swimming amongst the rocks off the shore. Peak One hung perfectly suspended upside down in front of me across the surface of the lake, Mounts Guyot and Baldy, upside down in all their glory, to my left, details almost clearer in the water than on the actual mountains in their upright state. Aspen leaves hung motionless, waiting for only the slightest breeze to throw them into a quivering frenzy, squirrels crouched and watched me, not sure what to do with the silence. The air was cool, and scented with sun-warmed pine sap. It was far too lovely to turn around, and before long, I found myself in Frisco. One of my favorite portions of the path was ahead of me, a series of sharp turns and wooden walkways through and over a large wetlands. This time, I could actually enjoy it because I was not on inline skates... skating over a boardwalk will pretty nigh rattle ones teeth out and have ones feet and ankles buzzing for a few minutes after, much like mowing the lawn does to your hands. Just to the Marina, I told myself, and kept running, my steps echoing on the boards. The marina came and went, and I found myself on the far end of Frisco, and wondering if I should turn around. The ADD kicked in with perfect timing, reminding me that I had just seen that route, wouldn't I rather explore some new area? And there's all this nice recpath between here and Breckenridge... so I stopped, peeled off the backpack, applied sunscreen, stripped down to sports bra and running shorts to dry the sweat, changed playlists on my ipod, checked my phone for missed calls, reassembled myself and kept going. Just to the end of the lake, I told myself. Just to Farmer's Korner, home of Summit High, the water treatment plant, a gas station, and a sudden population boom. By now a plan was forming, to keep going as far as I wanted to in this direction, then when I get tired, find a bus to take me back to Dillon. I actually stopped at the bus stop in Farmer's Korner, but after reading the schedule and realizing I had just missed the bus, and it would be thirty minute
s till the next one, I recinched the backpack and kept running. By this time, I had a half-marathon in mind, and thought that I would have surely done it if I made it to Breck. It was the toes that decided it for me. My heels never blister, I dont have corns or any weird protrusions that my shoes rub raw, in fact I almost never blister from my shoes. My toes take care of that all on their own. The pads on the bottoms overlap, and step on each other, mile after mile, until they start to rub off on each other, and actually blister each other. It seems like something that might only happen to an improperly designed mutant. (Aww, shut up, you there.) Anyway, by the time they had carried me to Tiger run, still five miles from Breck, they were sending urgent distress signals with every step, and finally convinced me to stop, two miles short of the hoped-for half-marathon. As the clouds gathered and the wind sprung up, I took the Summit stage home, still feeling like I had run left in me, glaring at my mutant toes that refused to cooperate. It is so frusterating when one cannot use up all of one's energy and stamina because one is losing one's skin in the process.Oh, well, it still gives me something to work toward. I never have made it all the way to half-marathon, if I did, I would have to start working on marathon, which quite honestly scares me, because I am not at all sure I can do it. Actually, I am mostly sure I cannot. Maybe it's best to keep it at almost there, because we all know that if Susan fails at something, her world might just grind to a halt. A wise man once said, It is far better to never try, than to try and suffer the humiliation of failing. (Hey, it's my blog. My wise men can say whatever I tell them to say.)
By the time the Summit Stage dropped me off at the LaBonte Street stop in Dillon, B had finished his work for the day. It was only noon, and threatening rain so after a lunch of my sister in law's most innovative version of Ramen Noodles (cook the noodles and a handful of frozen peas together, dump off the water, add half the seasoning packet and a slice of cheese, and let the cheese melt into the sticky goo that holds it all together) I let B start the mower and mow the front yard before I felt guilty enough about sitting around that I offered to finish the back yard for him. The neighbor/landlord is out of town, so I mowed his lawn as well. This whole green-grass suburbia thing is kind of a drag sometimes. But then, nobody ever taught me that greenliness is next to Godliness. I spent most of my childhood crunching over dried-up buffalo grass, which turned emerald only after a gullywasher, until it dried out again.
I'll tell you something else that is a drag- Summit county housing market. Oh, not for someone that is in it, that owns a home, for them it is a regular cash camel. (More fun to say than cash cow, by the way. Comes from a movie.) People buy and sell homes up here at an alarming rate of speed, and to hear them talk, turn a tidy profit each time. Forty percent increase in twenty-two months. Must be nice, we say, as we earn our dollars one at a time and pay them to our landlord as quickly as we make them. We are looking at buying a place, to save ourselves rent. Oh, it certainly won't make us rich, but if we can just break even when we sell it, maybe we won't have to kick ourselves for buying a house for the man down the street. We can at least make payments on something that is ours, not his. And in the name of simplifying and downsizing, and turning a few of our more burdensome belongings into cash, both the car and the boat are for sale.
I guess that means no Lake Powell this September, if we have no boat. It somehow does not sound like as much fun to just have a houseboat, with no way to wakeboard, or ski, or tube, to maim, or otherwise kill, yourself. What could possibly be the fun in puttering around at slow speeds? But if we have no boat, that means we won't have to pay to park it when we find ourselves in some tiny economy condo with a minimum of two parking spaces per family and the laundry facility a ten minute walk away. Yeah, we'll miss suburbia, at least the two story single family home with two car garage, washer/dryer and a bathroom per bedroom, but look at it this way- no grass to mow. Only a geranium on the deck, if one feels a need to excersize one's green thumb. And solitude. No roomies. The american dream, baby. To live alone (alone can also mean "just the two of you") in far more space than one could ever need or want, while in other countries, several families exist comfortably in fewer square feet than your fat american selves would be willing to share with, say, a goldfish.
Oh, yeah, which brings me to the most appealing part of owning a home- pets. No more scanning the rental adds, and finding only np/ns. That would be "no pets/no smoking", by the way. I object. Not being a smoker, but a pet-lover, how could a faint whiff of litterbox ever be as offensive as the in-everything smell of cigarette smoke? And besides, this is Summit County. Nobody follows those rules except for us. Everybody knows that only a dog qualifies as a pet, and only tobacco qualifies as smoking. You can pet many things besides a dog, like a rat, or a cat, or a chihuahua or a toy poodle- those last two do not qualify as dogs, in case you were wondering, and everyone knows you can smoke things that are not tobacco. If ya get caught, you're gonna have bigger things to worry about than a security deposit, anyway...
Oh, well, it's alright. We'll figure it out, one of these times. In the meantime, till next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment