Note- all the pictures except this one are of our jeeping trip on Friday. The rest of the events recounted in this post all contained the potential for some priceless pictures, but your blogger could never seem to be able to remember her camera, except for on Friday.



Hello to my friends, family, and readers. As I was typing that line, I wished there was a name that would include all three of those, so it would read more smoothly... Hello to my freaders? framers? framlers? ok, enough.

It is another idyllic mountain morning two thousand feet below treeline, the sun bouncing around the thin atmosphere like it owns the place, shadows chilly, birds happy. Beads of water gathered on my patio table from last night's showers. Bobby and I went for a nine mile bike ride last night, back into the ranch, and were forced to take cover under a bunch of beetle-killed trees that had toppled into each other, forming a sort of teepee that kept us less than soaked, if not dry, as a "toad strangler" moved through. It was gone as soon as it started, leaving the ground slippery and little ice-pellets littered about, but we continued our ride anyway. I got lots of little bits of gravel flung into my face, and since I was panting on the uphills, into my teeth. Nothing is more disgusting than munching on gravel. We were dripping sweat, remembering why we do not ever want to live where it is humid, and the mosquitoes had a field day. But it was still fun. B and I almost never get to ride together anymore. I took several people on bike rides this last week, but they rode Bobby's bike while he was at work. We got back home covered in mud, undressed in front of the washing machine, and put our clothes in it to save the rest of the house. Our bikes will need a good hosing-down and greasing this morning.

We have been having a bit of company this week. It has been entertaining, but unfortunately the work does not stop when it is unhandy for us to do it, so we have been cramming our schedules full of both work and family. It would have been lovely to just be able to take all the time we wanted to spend with the family, and leave our clients to fend for themselves. But that is why we wanted to host this year's Kenneth and Luella Koehn family reunion- B's dad's family. The last one, held in Swan River, Manitoba, B and I had to skip altogether.

So the reunion was scheduled to start last Saturday, but everyone had already arrived by Friday night. We procured lodging for everyone for one night, until the house we had rented was available the next day. Just as all of B's family was arriving, Uncle Leroy called to say he was in Georgetown, just on the other side of the divide. It was almost too much excitement. We went out to dinner at Dos Locos, the bar and Mexican restaurant in Keystone, and met Leroy at our house after we had returned, just in time to grab our suits and head for the hot tubs in Keystone. Those of us so inclined spent several house simmering, then took our wet selves back home for showers. Wendell and Leroy stayed here for the night, and we betook ourselves to bed in the wee hours of the next morning, after both the Blue Moon Ale and the conversation had been abused to the point of exhaustion.

I got to take Leroy on a bike ride on one of my trails before he left the next day. It always makes my day when I can get someone talked into riding with me.

Saturday, the reunion commenced without me (who would have thought?) as I was at work. In the evening, B and I showed up for burgers and baked beans, hot tub, and the poker game that would not end. Oh, it ended for me, and early, after I went all-in on a bluff that was promptly met, but Bobby, a much more conservative player, just kept gaining and losing chips in small increments until long after the bedroom doors had been closed and the voices lowered.

It was mostly the same story the next three days. The group of twenty-somethings made their rounds from the pool table in the basement, to eating, to playing card or board (bored) games, to eating, to an occasional walk, to chasing kids, mopping tears and snot, changing diapers and taking them potty and realizing the futility of naptime, to the hot tub, to the pool table, to eating...

We did trade with Marci two days, one day she got off, the next day we did. On the morning we had off, we loaded up ten bikes in our covered utility trailer, and twelve people in two vehicles, and took the whole lot to the top of Vail Pass. After unloading, sorting out bikes and gear, and adjusting seat posts, the whole lot of us took off down the bike path, twelve miles downhill to Frisco, where our drivers were waiting for us. It was a good activity for lowlanders, since no physical exertion was necessary, even though the bikes we provided generated a bit of whining about sore posteriors. Ya see, a bikepath cruiser, which was what most were riding, has a wide, cushy seat, one capable of bearing one's entire weight for miles without causing saddle-sores. A mountain bike, on the other hand, has a narrow, hard seat, only designed to bear one's weight on an uphill climb. Narrow enough to allow one to slide behind it, push it into one's stomach on a downhill, hang one's bum a few inches over the back wheel. It allows one to keep one's weight far enough back that one won't dive over the handlebars should one ride off of a ledge, get caught in the tree roots, or hit a stream bed. And so that one can bail off the back of the bike without a moment's delay in the event of, say, a bear on the trail. But nobody on that particular ride was too concerned with any of the before mentioned hazards and obstacles, so the hard, narrow seats on the three mountain bikes we provided were cause for much complaining, and some spraddle-legged gaits upon dismounting in Frisco.

We vacated the rental house on Tuesday morning, and cleaned it for the next arriving guests. Since we had to reserve a whole week, and were only planning on using it for three days, we had sold off the remaining four days to my cousin Brian, for his wife Sam's family reunion.

Jay and Wendy moved to our house for the rest of the week, since they had committed to staying until Friday, to meet one of her friends in Breck Friday morning. Malindy and her husband Jeff are hiking through Colorado this summer, two months on the Colorado Trail, and had arranged for Jay and Wendy to meet them with a resupply package on Friday. As it turned out, they made it here two days earlier than planned, as a result of twenty miles a day instead of fourteen as planned, so they had two days to hang out, sleep indoors, and shower before hitting the trail again. We invited them to our house in the meantime.

On Friday, we planned a day with Brian and Sam. As soon as we had said goodbye to Jay and Wendy, Jeff and Malindy, the four of us (Brian, Sam, B and I) piled into the topless jeep drove up to the little town of Montezuma, 10,500 feet, and hit the uphill Saints John road. We ground our way through the ghost town of Saints John, past abandoned mines and mining cabins, to the top of Glacier Mountain, where several herds of mountain goats were waiting, posed on top of rocks, beside cabins, curious and tame. From the top, we took the Middle Fork of the Swan down to Breckenridge, and long, bouncing descent, much of it merging with a stream. We stopped to give several mountain bikers directions to the Colorado Trail, and stopped again at the old dredge boat floating in the pond in Horseshoe Gulch. By the time we made Downstairs at Erics, the best pizza in Breck, we were some hungry, sunbaked, dehydrated little people. (Even though we always take plenty of water, just the act of drinking it on such rough roads can get one soaked enough to want to choose dehydration over being hydrated inside and out)

After we dropped Brian and Sam off with their family, B and I did something strange for us- we did something while we were doing nothing. We killed off an evening like time was something we had, and work was not something we were worried about. We shopped for a pair of sunglasses for me (didn't buy anything though. After I had tried on a pair for $170, I got discouraged because nothing cheaper felt as wonderful on my face, and did not have the wonderful lenses that sharpened every detail, barely dimming my world, while cutting out the squint-causing glare, and I just can't bring myself to pay that much for something so easily destructible, and if I can't have those, I don't want new ones at all, so there).

Then we got ice cream. I figured, I had already blown my no dairy rule with pizza at lunch, may as well binge while I was at it. Bobby said if we were binging, he would rather have a soda than ice cream, so we detoured by the convenience store. And no sooner than I had sunk my spoon into my cappuccino-heath blizzard than he swung the jeep into the trailhead to the Old Dillon Reservoir.

We have just discovered, after living here for five years, that there is a 10-acre reservoir on top of the hill between the Dam Road and I70, filled by reverse-siphon from the mountain on the other side of the interstate. It supplied the old town of Dillon with water until the old town of Dillon was moved to a higher location to make way for the present, massive reservoir that now waters the town of Denver.

Not that our delightful discovery does us any good. It was just announced, just a few months after negotiations had begun to expand it, that it will be drained immediately. Apparently earthen dams are on the radar lately, leading to the closing of the road across the earthen dam that separates Lake Dillon from the town of Silverthorne below it, to the outrage of the 8,500 people who drive across it every day. The closure of the Dam Road also means the closure of one of the only three east-west routes in the county, leaving only the interstate, frequently closed, scary dangerous, clogged and bottlenecked enough with tourists and through commercial traffic without local commuters being forced to add to the problem, and Swan Mountain Road, with it's 30 mph speed limit, constant bicycle traffic, hairpin turns and no shoulders. The Dam Road has now reopened with restrictions, but nobody expects it to last.

But the tiny mound of dirt on on top of the hill, holding back the 10-acre reservoir stocked with trout and accessible only by footpath, has also been deemed unsafe, in part because the beetle-killed trees growing on it have weakened it and, when falling over, take some of it with them. So with ice cream in hand, we took our hello-goodbye hike up there. It is a darling little lake, with a wonderful view. We stood and looked over the new Dillon Reservoir and wished for a boat. I am afraid my B will just never be happy unless he has a means to be on the water. We decided just a canoe would do it for us, just something to paddle around it, rock on the waves, hear them slapping against. But it wasn't long until the canoe idea had morphed (in his mind) into a small boat with an engine, and old one. But then the whole idea got dropped when his wife reminded him that anything that needed to be towed would need to be parked, to the tune of $50 a month, so if it was worth $50 a month, it should be worth more than what we would pay to park it for a year or two. Practical women are the downfall for many a good idea.

Binging on dairy products before hiking was as bad a choice as hiking in flip-flops, but it was still a good little jaunt. From there, we drove to Wal-mart, because my stopwatch had stopped working that afternoon, and my left wrist felt naked and I kept looking at it and trying to read time on a nonexistant watch. B bought me another cheap stopwatch, made in China, with a green nylon and velcro band.

We drove home under a bright pink sunset, more relaxed than in a long time, and this one was thankful to be there, paying dearly for her day of dairy (don't ask)

On Sunday, we went to church and reconnected with all of our local friends (since that IS the main reason for going to church, right? Oh, right. God is a local friend, too.), caught up on all the comings and goings of these crazy outdoorsy people who are loving summer, as busy as us, but still find the time to mountain bike Pikes Peak, take river trips and camping trips and backpacking trips. And as soon as I got out of there, I checked my phone for missed calls and saw one from Grandpa Weldo. When I called them back, they were just coming past the Frisco exit, on their way back from visiting Uncle Dalin's family in Eagle for the weekend. I flipped a U-ie on Highway 6 and sped back to my house, to meet them there and show them the house, say hi and bye and how-are-ya. They only stayed about twenty minutes, since they were in a hurry to get on the road, but it was good to see them.

And now tis monday. The crazy week is behind us. No plans for company. What ever shall we do with ourselves?