Aaaahhh! In the oft-quoted words of... I'm not sure who, actually.... "doesn't it do nothin' but RAIN in this here country?"

Every morning, we awake to a bluebird sky, and every afternoon, it clouds over, thunder rumbles, lightning flickers, and then it alternately drizzles, downpours in near biblical proportions, sprinkles, rains, rains, rains...

But the mornings are nice. After a freak crash a week ago, it hasn't made much difference to me what the weather was doing, I wasn't going out. No need to go into detail, let's just say that a short drop, a sudden stop, and a metal bar did a bit of damage that needed plenty of time to repair itself, and would not tolerate riding, running, or anything that might be qualified as strenuous. But this morning, the sexy little Stumpjumper found itself on the bike rack, riding to Keystone with me, as I drove to work. An hour and thirty-six minutes from the Mountain house base area up to Summit House, at the top of Dercum Mountain (the little-known name of Keystone resort's front mountain) thirty six minutes back down. A personal record. Not that it is a good thing, mind. Setting a personal record makes it necessary to break it. Of course, when one has pedaled up 2,360 vertical feet before reporting for work, one has need of a bit of freshening up. I cleverly become a guest at one of 10 condominium complexes that we manage units in, use my keys for access, and use the showers as though I belong there. This morning, after showering, I was supposed to meet B, to help him on a project we are doing for one of our owners, but he wasn't going to be in Keystone for an hour, so I even managed a swim and a near nap on a pool lounge chair. It can make one a bit reluctant to just get up and go to work after a vigorous workout, a swim, a shower, and a relaxing stretch in the sun.



Hidden along backcountry trails, local locos take time out from riding to create little challenges for future mountain bikers. A pile of lodgepole pines, stacked just high enough to ride over without dragging a sprocket, a turn berm aroung a tight hairpin turn, planks nailed to fallen trees, so one can ride up and over them. One of the craziest of these little works of art is found along a trail few people ride, because it runs parallel to a road. An old pine tree fell, and did not make it all the way to the ground. it's sturdy trunk angles up into the trees, and someone mounted a plank into it's branches, then nailed several boards sideways to the portions of trunk deemed too narrow to ride down. It's gonna take a realy long time until I get crazy enough to try it. I eye it, say, "Absolutely not... now or ever!" and pedal around it. But it distresses me that there are those so far beyond my skill level that they create just such an obstacle simply so they could ride over it. I will never be Good like that...

We are still in the lull before we have to panic about getting ready for winter. At the moment, we have two giant plasma TVs sitting in our entryway hall, waiting for the property they are to go into to check out, so they can be delivered. The front hallway of our house seemed safer than our garage or the office to store $4,200 dollars worth of TV. Of course, it was necessary to un-box one of them, just to see... since they will be installed on a back-to-back day, we needed to make sure we had all the right cords and such... and then, of course it needed to be tested, and the remote programmed... and a dvd inserted... and watched...just to see if the sound was good, of course... the whole affair evolved into an impromptu movie night, the "borrowed" toy all but filling up the living room. Nobody can accuse us of not doing our research.

In the middle of it all, the revolving door has continued revolving. Kansas people travel this time of year. Not that we blame them... Kansas in July is a good place not to be, we think. Blast furnace wind, dust a-billowing... although we hear this year has been surprisingly mild. We don't mind. We get to see them this way. Even though we are slow compared to winter, we still don't get to leave the county for more than a day or two, and only then if we cover for each other.



We took B's brother and sister in law jeeping the other day. We ended up at 14,000 some feet, at the top of Mt. Bross, above the town of Alma. The road passes a half-dozen long-abandoned mines, so high in such rugged terrain, one wonders how the miners did it. Sure, they were a crusty bunch, but still...