Hello and welcome to...sigh...an altitude problem. Havent got the time to post much these days (okay, not saying never, maybe tonight after Andy and I get back from headlamping through dark forests on skis), but for anyone wondering if the altitude can actually be a problem, and why it is that I can lock my keys in my car twice in the space of four days in the most hectic time of the year, and why it is that at least twice a year I try to board the ski lift without my ski pass, and at least once a year, without my snowboard or skis... this article might help explain it. A bit scary, actually. Maybe the slow speech and absent-minded air that seems so common to the ski bums up here can be attributed less to mind-altering substances and more to too-fast ascents.

Are the Mountains Killing Your Brain?

Although the article points out the only documentation has been in amateur mountaineers going at least above 15,000 feet, it is not much of a stretch to think it could apply to our peaks in the lower 48.

Up in the nine-seven-oh, we are happy that the shortest day of the year is past and we are on our way to summer. This month has been a cold one, evil cold, and the fact that the days are so short isn't helping. Three more days left in this year. We can't wait until we are able to do such things as drive without slamming on our brakes because a pedestrian just stepped off the curb without so much as a glance at us, make a left hand turn without having someone lay on their horn because, even though we waited rediculously long for that hole in traffic, someone still thought we cut it a bit tight, and actually take the time to do all the things we claim to do before each check in, such as check the cleanliness of a condo and change burnt out light bulbs. And if it would warm up a bit, we could stop getting the calls from the guests from Georgia who left their garage door open all night, froze and burst all their water pipes, and now can't take their morning showers, and are downright ticked off about it. And lie to our faces, and act perfectly puzzled about how it could freeze up so solid when the garage was only open for a half hour, lest we get the idea that they will be paying the thousand dollar service charges to get them running water again.

We are a bit exhausted. I went to bed at 9:30 last night, and pretty much died until 7:30, and all I can think about right now, at 5:52 this evening, is when I can crawl back between those sheets. I have done nothing but run down hallways and drive like a maniac and mumble under my breath at housekeepers and smile brightly at guests and inquire how their vacation is going and how I might make it better, then resume mumbling as soon as they are out of earshot. I have climbed hundreds of staircases a step at a time, and hopped back down them with my right leg, and now my right calf has, I swear, a bigger muscle than my left. And it is killing me. It is so sore from doing the work of two legs for miles of panicked hop-running, carrying a heavy messenger bag filled with batteries, extra remotes, everything I might need to ready a condo for guests arriving any minute, that it is by now vying with my right knee for the title of "Most painful body part". Actually, my right knee can hit 90 degrees by now if not under weight, still not enough to be able to do it's job going down stairs, but enough to get me up them and allow me to do a stiff-legged run-hop down hallways and icy driveways and walkways and all the other ways I traverse in a peak season day. And the beauty of cross-country skiing is that it never requires me to bend my knee more than a few degrees, except in a fall, so I can shuffle along nicely and carefully and make sure to keep my feet under me while Andy races in circles and rolls in the snow and runs off all the energy he has been saving up while sleeping in the Subie's backseat for the last eight hours.

So, faithful few, until later. We are out, trying to let the moonlight and an insanely happy dog calm our nerves while we shrink our world to just what can be seen in a circle of light from our new Black Diamond headlamp, and forgetting all the rest of it.

Hello and Welcome to An Altitude Problem, where, while all around us there is merriment and goodwill, we work. Actually, we have been made aware again lately how fortunate we are to have a job as several friends have resorted to selling possessions on ebay in order to keep house and vehicle. Construction-related businesses entrepreneurs thriving two years ago are now sitting in darkened houses, waiting for the phone to ring. We are fortunate. We really have not suffered at all while those around us know all too well how fast a bad economy can affect them. So we are thankful, and we do have goodwill, if we are not making merry, and hope that they can hold on until spring, and that maybe by then, someone will be building or remodeling or, at least, hiring.

Your blogger sits here on the couch, taking some ill-advised time before heading out on icy roads to prepare welcoming abodes for other travelers tired of icy roads and screaming kids. The last several days, I have run the gamut from feeling angry and isolated, no family this Christmas, no friends, no dinners and pine boughs and good china and pumpkin pie, to feeling extremely blessed, in comparison to those who would gladly drop all Christmas plans if it meant a day of work. We are not doing gifts this year, not by any actual decision, but now that the day has arrived, it is too late. We have all been too busy to be able to make the time to get to the store. My plan was to swing by a sports store yesterday and at least have one tiny giftwrapped item for B under the tree, he (we) needs both clear goggles and a headlamp, but by late last night, it still hadn't happened. Mostly because I couldn't make it out of Keystone and down to Dillon. Keystone had it's hooks in me all day. And because every step had to be a thought out, analyzed process.

Part of the reason yesterday was such a long day was because of this little thing called suprapatellar bursitis of the right knee. A fancy name for the fact that extreme impact, night before last, apparently pushed my kneecap up into the bursa, or fluid-filled area providing the padding between my femur and the tendon connecting my kneecap to my thigh, and scrambled things around a bit. With the result that I could not bend my knee under weight, or more than a few degrees under any circumstance, or do anything that would require use of my left quadriceps, such as lifting my leg into or out of the car, or switching my foot between gas pedal and brake pedal, or climbing stairs, or walking briskly, or pretty much anything that is required of a housekeeping inspector during one of the busyest times of the year, without involuntary gasps and yelps and sudden paleness and faintness. Instead, I hobbled around with my right leg straight, knee locked, swinging it around, lifting it from the hip with every step, carefully sitting down for every job that would have required kneeling (and my job has a lot of those), taking stairs a step at a time, pulling myself up with left leg and using the right one for the only thing it could handle- balance. I worked eight hours yesterday. I got five inspections done. Obviously not something I could bill eight hours for. Marci did the rest, which is to say, most of my work for the day.

Which is why I am slid far down in the couch at the moment. I have a bag of snow wrapped around the offending knee, hoping that, if the swelling goes down, the time I take now to ice will actually save me time later. I found a handy ace bandage with a pouch for ice in a condo the other day, washed away the suspicious stains that may or may not have been blood from a guest's skiing accident, and claimed it for the inevitable. Who knew it would need to be used so soon.

I realize that, while suprapatellar bursitis is fairly uncommon and usually injury related, other bursitis is a common ailment and simply life-related. People who deal with arthritis deal with this sort of pain all the time. I realize now that a few people I have known have walked in just this manner for years. Which has served to make me even more thankful that while my time will come, if I live long enough, it is not yet. Someday, I may experience pain like this that does not go away, as this will in a week or two. It has made me realize again the extent of the thing I so often preach- the time for living is now. The time for doing and being and rejoicing in one's good health and the beauty and happiness of the moment is now. This moment, this set of circumstances, this glow of well-being will not last because nothing lasts. The people we share these moments with will not last. So now, while these moments are ours, we should all claim them. Squeeze every drop of life out of them and absorb it- the joy and the pain and the knowing that without pain, life can't happen.

And, of course, I also realize the value of not skiing blind in the dark, and of remembering footbridges through ditches and not angling through said ditches in the perfect spot to collide with said footbridges, landing with one's entire body weight behind one's right kneecap when it meets the sharp edge of said footbridge, buried as it is under the snow. And remembering that it is nobody's fault, certainly not the county worker who labored for two days building said footbridge in a perfectly needless place a few weeks before it snowed. Or the friend who accidentally took my headlamp home, or the dog who thought he needed the second run of the day, or the husband who did not offer to take him.

I am blogging on a new computer these days. Although it is wonderful, and lightening fast, and I get to learn how to use Windows 7, and it is shiny and new and pretty, I am still wondering if it was entirely necessary. Remember a month or so ago, when I was whining about all my electronics leaving me sit? Well, I waffled for a long time about whether I thought I could afford to replace my 1G ipod, which did not even hold a quarter of my music, podcasts, audiobooks, etc that I force through my eardrums on a given day, and lately, had been refusing to load my music, due to an unknown error. I finally decided that yes, I could, if it was an older refurbished one without all the fun stuff that Apple put in the new one. So I ordered it, and impatiently tracked it from China to Colorado, and finally got it and opened it, lovingly turned its small sleekness over, admiring it's pretty orange color and big screen, and plugged it into my computer, and...what's this? Unknown error? Could not load my media? I unplugged it and spent the day listening to the a's and b's- all it got loaded before it errored- and a day of Abba and Blink 182 had me in a foul mood by evening. I spent the evening trying, and mostly failing, to back up music and pictures online, and just before I went to bed, tried to shut it off. When I got up the next morning, it was still trying to log off. I tried for three hours to get it to respond, with zero results. There was no way it would be turning on again. I admit to being a teeny bit mean to B, in my frusteration, and he responded with what I thought was a perfectly harmless, idle threat- one borne of his own frusteration with me. "Fine. You'll have a new computer by tonight. Go to work." And claims he did not slam the door as he left, but it was certainly securely latched.

So I accepted that the items not yet backed up, such as the story I had spent two days writing, recent music purchases, recent prized landscape photos that I had had to climb three thousand vertical feet to take, were lost forever, dissolved into useless piles of computer code, and I ran my recovery discs (instead of going to work) and by the time I left, I still only had Abba and Blink 182 to listen to, so I left the shiny new ipod at home. But my computer worked. Maybe not stellar, because it occasionally still locked up, but not indefinitely. I was ready to try to get as much data back as possible and get on with grieving for the rest. And then B called. He had just purchased, for what I thought was an exorbitant amount of money considering the amount of agonizing had just gone into my new ipod, a new laptop for me. He thought I would be extatic.

I was livid. I am laughing now, as I type that, but then, there were immediate tears of rage and frusteration. He was taken aback, utterly shocked that I would react in such a manner to his selfless guesture. He did his thing and got quiet, and I did my thing and stormed and sputtered and demanded that he say something, and he did his thing and pointed out that when one is in a hole, one should stop digging, and I did my thing and nearly popped a vein in my forehead. By the time we met for lunch an hour later, I had calmed down, and was feeling a bit silly for making such a scene, and was ready to think logically again, which, of course, proves that he was right to stop digging, as much as it pains me to admit it. When I am primed for a fight, all I want is someone to fight with, although five minutes later, when the evil wind has stopped blowing, I am left in a mellow, humiliated pile of remorse for it.

And so it was that by that evening I was actually quite excited about Windows 7 and lots of internal storage and super fast page loads. And now I sit here quietly clicking shiny new keys, and loving it.

And now, it is time to take myself to work. I just tried straightening my leg from the seated position I so carefully eased it into an hour ago, with painful results. Not sure if the ice did much at all except get the rest of me to shivering. The wind is howling around the house like a beast and I don't think the tempurature has broken single digits yet. Time to go make everyone else's holiday the stuff of dreams and fantasy, cozy, snowy mountain Christmases. And remember that just the fact that I am able to do so should make me less Grinchy.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where we are all experiencing the five stages of ...whatever it is that has 75% of summit county on edge these days.

Denial. "I can. Not. Believe. This. They were calling for twelve to fourteen inches, so we will get it. It just isnt here yet. It is a slow moving storm. It will get to Nebraska, realize there is nothing there, and turn around. It simply cannot have passed us by again".

Anger. "Bad, bad, BAD weather man. BAD. You made me bring in my ski boots and put them by the bed, so I could land in them when I bounced out of bed in the morning. BAD front range, that trapped the storm. I will go outside right now, draw in a breath of -16 degree air, and scream at the sky until it drops a snowflake on me.

Bargaining. "If I pretend not to notice the low pressure system moving across Arizona, maybe it will sneak into Summit County unexpectedly. If I leave the snow tires off the car...if I hope it never snows...If I mountain bike on the trails and pretend to like their dry state...THEN will it snow?"

Depression. "It will never snow. Summit County has upset God. That is all. Go home."

And finally, acceptance. Just kidding. Nobody, except those few who are here for reasons other than living life surrounded by deep snow and high peaks, sweeping turns in the powder, spring runoff, and White Christmases are about to accept the fact that there is still, two weeks before Christmas, still, on the shortest, coldest days of the year, still, even as the season officially arrives along with out of state SUV's, STILL, no snow.

It is a strange feeling walking about town, mingling with locals these dark days. They snarl. They twitch. They seem to shrink when they make eye contact. This cannot be. Wolf Creek, four and a half feet of snow. Rabbit Ears Pass, two feet. Even Vail, 7 inches. But here, naught. They said two inches. I am sceptical. If there was, it was flung by the wind into low areas. I still see dirt in my front yard. Our eyes sink into our sockets, our brows furrow, we powder-starved citizens of Ski Country. There is no helping us. Nothing but a big dump of white marshmallow fluff will make us feel better.

Although there is no snow, there is still no doubt that it is winter. It has been as low as fifteen degrees below zero. Poorly installed water lines have burst, causing ceilings to buckle and drywall to fall onto floors, insulation following it, icicles cascading down exterior walls and water soaking carpets and carpet pads that, less than a year old, have had to be lifted and dried out, then all must be repaired in the ten days we have before the next booking. And do you think a single contractor would answer his phone and be available to do a speed job for a homeowner who lives in sunny Florida and thinks a broken pipe, one that has had to be repaired before because it was installed in an exterior wall, should be a warrenty issue, covered by the last repairman?

I spent a good part of my day running from building to building, condo to condo turning the heat up to 70 degrees to prevent other frozen pipes. I passed several condo doors propped open, plumbers working feverishly to contain and repair water geysers soaking floors on fourth and fifth floor condos. And today was a heat wave. 9 degrees. Although the wind whipped and howled around buildings and through plazas, pushing icy needles of pain through my fingertips as I fumbled for the right key to get me into building lobbies or into my car. And although the heat in all our condos is usually set at 65 degrees, I spent the day chilled to the bone. After seven arrival inspections, at the thought of an eighth, the thought of programming one more remote with numb, wooden fingers, filling out any more paperwork with handwriting so cramped and spiky I didnt recognize it as mine, I almost succumbed to the urge to cry. So I went back to the office instead, to a cardboard tub of steaming soup from City Market, and cookies, also from City Market, oddly glad that the friend I had agreed to meet to snowboard with for a couple of hours late in the day never called. The frost settling in my bones was stronger than my fondness for sharing turns, however icy, with another living, breathing human being. Even one as laugh-inducing as this particular friend.

I came home and built a fire, my impatience with being cold making me use an insane amount of newspaper kindling, sat and wrote the first half of this post, then B came home and we went to the gym, where my cookies and my glasses of water they were washed down with were at the perfect stage in their digestive process to provide me with a burst of energy just long enough to get me around the indoor track thirty three times, three miles, in twenty eight minutes, which is about as good of time as I will ever make indoors when I have to make a left hand turn forty four times in a single mile. It's as pointless as a Nascar race.

And now, we are home, I am warm for the first time today, and will not be moving very far from the woodstove until bedtime. The only food that could be prepared for dinner that did not involve preparation was the emergency Red Baron pizza that has been in the freezer for months. I will even be eating it. I will try not to think about the amount of time the cheese and sausage will sit in my innards, how it will completely undo my workout, how it is just white bread devoid of nutrition, covered in cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, non-sustainability, environmental and economic destruction, and cruelty.

Did that just sound snooty? I suppose so. Please do not take it personally, faithful few. I don't want to be THAT person, even though I suppose it is inevitable, once one does such far-out things as leave one's midwest, flatlands roots and embrace the mentality of someone living in a personal-and-global-betterment mountain town environment.

Speaking of which, have I mentioned that we sold our house in Kansas? We are officially citizens of only one place, and that place is not Kansas.

And now, it is time to go and chase the pizza with a cookie, crawl onto the couch with B, and begin regretting my choice of dinner, which has been eaten during the last two paragraphs, with many breaks for chewing and swatting the dog away. I do not plan to move again until bedtime.

Hello and welcome to An altitude Problem, written in an second-hand leather armchair that eats everything that comes within three feet of it, including, but not limited to- loose change, bicycle shorts, scarves, cameras, ipod cords, computer power cords, apples, silverware, head lamps, small chunks of firewood, dog toys, entire throw blankets and pillows, coats and hoodies and hats. All have been lost, then found deep inside this chair. It's slick leather surface and the way the cushion folds around the person sitting in it acts as a funnel, and once the person sittin in it gets up, it clamps shut around whatever it has managed to grab while occupied. And the things it eats do not merely stay between the cushion and the backrest. This chair has a deep channel between the backrest and the seat that goes nearly to the floor. I would not be surprised to someday find Andy, or a small child in there.

I do have a power cord now, and now, my manic need to write has passed. I spent an entire day in this chair, bent in unnatural positions, coaxing copper strands to connect so I could write just a few more lines. What was I writing that was so important? Nothing important. I got all jazzed about an idea for a story, and yes, I am finally admitting to the world that I occasionally write stories. I just do not finish them. I have never, not even once, finished a story. I write obsessively for two days, rarely more, and at the end of those two days, I suddenly look around me, surprised to see sunlight and life, feeling queasy and ashamed that I have wasted so much time and I re read what I have so far and it is total rubbish, and implausible, and the storyline suddenly seems stagnant, and it is sent to the cobwebby place on my hard drive where many other hours and days of manically tapped writing is stored and waits to die, which it does when my computer inevitably crashes. But it did serve a purpose, when the need to create was almost causing physical pain, it was a tidy way to scratch the itch, a way that did not involve spreading paints and canvas and jars of water and brushes all over the house, only to end up with more worthless crap to store, if I finished at all. I am beginning to suspect that most people are not like me. They are fulfilled by reaching goals, attaining personal bests, crossing the finish line. Why I cannot be more like that, I have no idea. I am perfectly fine with not finishing something, after my need to be doing it, and doing it well, has been met. It is frusterating even for me, let alone those who interact with me. I burn bright and hot, and then I fade out, and have no interest in what I lived and breathed while I was doing it. Fix me, faithful few. I don't like being this way. I need direction, and an end in sight exciting enough to keep me going in said direction.

Eddies of snow swirl outside my window, the window behind my stuff-eating armchair, the window that is at the moment sending a cold draft over my arms and bare feet. We need new windows. But we live in a trailer house that we are unlikely to be able to recoup any of our money back out of when we sell. All our improvements have to be something that we do for us, not to improve resale. And old windows, while drafty, are compensated for by our wonderful glass-doored woodstove with a blower that sends warmth to at least the main living ares of the house, if not the bedrooms.

We were supposed to get a lot of snow. We got no measureable amount. Twelve to fourteen inches, the weathermen said. We knew better than to hope. Although waking up to nothing but the wind blowing what tiny skiff we got against the house, swirling it under the eaves, was almost enough to reduce us to blubbering crybabies. We are still walking on bare ground. If not bare ground, than asphalt-hard packed snow. Yesterday, while mountain biking, I even found lingering green grass under a big old fir.

Behind my stuff-eating armchair, enjoying the cold draft while lying on the bay windowsill and occasionally sticking a cold nose in my ear is a stuff-eating dog. He has been a terror today. You try being used to four miles a day of
scent trails, pine needles, snow drifts to roll in, squirrels to chase and ice to skid over, and then try going a day without. So far, he has completely shredded a squeaky toy in the form of a fuzzy gray wolf in the space of about five minutes- it was in the mending pile in need of a limb reattachment, and several minutes later, it was total carnage- stuffing everywhere, three more limbs torn off, plastic squeakers found in the disembowelment and killed. I swept up all the stuffing, then tied it's shredded torso together so it is a gray wolf's head now, with a knot where it's neck should be. While picking up frozen poop in the minefield known as our front yard where he does his business twice a day, I couldnt help but notice the amount of cotton stuffing lying out there. It's a miracle there hasn't been a major internal blockage yet. He has also eaten a hole in the pocket of my fleece inner jacket, part of my new, originally $420 dollar new coat (that I paid $60 for, but still.) because he was trying to get to the pony tail holder in the pocket, he has eaten the brim off my totally cute green hat with the buttons on the band, he has tried to eat a glove, he has carried off two Christmas tree ornaments, even while trying to shake the unpleasant taste of the bitter spray I used on them out of his mouth, has been banished to the front porch twice, then came back in to race in manic circles around the house, has tipped over the laundry basket to drag out a stocking hat that laid on my car floor for a week and got good and musty in the mud and melted snow, dragged food off the counter, dragged toothpaste off the counter, ate the handle of my hairbrush, and has snuggled up to me and laid his head in my lap, utilizing full-on puppy eyes when I yelled at him for all of the above mentioned transgressions.

I am trying to decide if I should leave the house. Yesterday I worked, and sat at the computer in the office and pretended to work, then actually worked, and got about four billeable hours in the eight I spent there. That was depressing. And I left nothing for myself to do today. There are no arrivals. B talks out of both sides of his mouth these days, telling me to enjoy to slow time because the 15th is fast approaching and I will not see the inside of my house by daylight until after New Year's, then, in the next breath, telling me that my paycheck is suffering because of all of my time spent not working. What's a girl to do? I spent this morning cleaning my house, readying it for "church" wednesday night (at least, the only church we get these days- a small group of friends, a Bible study or a debate, a meal). I have fallen back in love with my house and it's me-ness, even in it's still unfinished state. I wonder how I lived in other people's houses for so long, while all our possessions were back in Kansas and we rented furnished apartments. I did not domesticate, I know that. I lived in the space, but I never claimed it.

If I left my house, it would be to go to our company's storage unit in Silverthorne to find a bedframe, then to the store to find some lights to put under my cabinets in the kitchen, to illuminate my countertops. I also want to find some leather-ish looking suede vinyl material to cover a board with, to make a headboard to hang on the wall. I want to make the office, with it's mattress on the floor, look like a real room. We had big plans to build a Murphy bed into the wall, surround it with bookshelves, and in a pinch, have a real-ish bedroom as well as a lovely, roomy office the fifty weeks out of the year when the bed was not in use. Now we do a bit of research and find that to have a bed, even one folded into the wall, would cost us our home office tax deduction, which, being self-imployed, we desperately need, and we legitimately use the room as a home office, as well as sleeping space occasionally when we have guests. So the bed cannot be permanent. It must be small and light and moveable, in the rare event of an audit. We cannot fit a sofa bed through the hallway leading to the room, maybe a futon bed that we assemble in the room. I must admit, it is kinda nice to play Susie Homemaker once in a while. Yes, faithful few, my life is not all biking and skiing and snowboarding and hiking and being all happy in the great outdoors. Occasionally, in order to feel as though nothing is missing, one must spend time in one's own nest. That is important. It is a basic human need, to feel sheltered and at home. That is the kind of day I am having. A Basic Human Needs day. There has been food and shelter and the touch of a furry yellow beast and chocolate and warmth and I have brought order to my space.

I do not read these days. Years. Havent actually read, except for during vacations, ever since we lived in Kansas. Four weeks ago, I brought home three books from the library. A vegetarian cookbook, A Fool's Progress by Edward Abbey, and some insipid guilty pleasure read with a pink cover with martini glasses on it that promised enough vapid moments to escape from any sort of real-life drama. I thought two weeks would be more than enough to read all three. Two weeks later, I had read exactly three pages of A Fool's Progress. I renewed them for another two weeks. I read nothing at all. I finally took them back, overdue, two days ago. But I occasionally get a literary fix by downloading an audiobook and listening to it on my iPod while doing other things. I have put away probably a ton of laundry while listening to the adventures of someone or other, run miles to short stories, cleaned house to abstract bits of writing from some podcast or another.

Today, I began listening to In Search of #6 by Damon Timm. It is the recounting of a bicycle trip from Seattle to San Fransisco with his best friend-nay, "heterosexual life partner"- in search of his sixth kiss. Since he achieved his goal four hours into the trip, it is rather about leaving #6, with whom he promptly fell in love, to experience five weeks of early summer on the open road on the pacific coast, the recounting of experiences and friendship more close than many share with their actual significant others, although, as is stressed, their friendship is, and always was, and always will be a heterosexual one which they also share with their respective women. I am wondering who are these men who articulate feelings of cameraderie and a deep connection with each other, who observe the pungent effects of eating a dozen hard boiled eggs one moment and the glorious connection of sharing the beautiful sight of Mt Ranier with a lifelong friend the next. Not such touchy-feeley words I would expect to hear from any of my nearest or dearest, male or female, for that matter. I might say such a thing, or write it, and many of my faithful few might titter politely and turn away a bit embarrassed. It is okay, we were raised in the midwest. And I have never known when to not articulate such things. I suppose there is a time and a place. I have not yet finished the book, there are about ten hours of listening in it, so I cannot recommend it yet. But so far, as I have been scrubbing and organizing, I have also been watching the projector inside my head throw images of snow capped peaks, old growth forests and sheer cliffs, rolling hills and wildflowers, and have been laughing out loud at the ready wit and blindside humor of someone who has spent a lot of time in places less traveled, and has the imprint of his love for the outdoors stamped all over his storytelling.

And now, back to it. Miles to go before I sleep.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where your blogger has been doing everything but blogging. I have until my computer dies (which isn't that long) to type, because my power cord is broken. If i straighten out all the little copper strands, and mush them together where it it broken, right by the plug, and tape it just so, and do not wiggle it, it will recharge, but that means I can only sit in my eversized, sunny armchair for so long with my computer on my lap. A good thing, probably, but a wee bit frusterating.

All my electronics are on the fritz right now. My computer, my ipod (the ipod I found at the Basin, after the snow had melted this spring) treated me well over the summer with it's 80G of memory, but it finally succumbed to internal corrosion a few weeks ago. My four year old ipod, with it's 1G of memory, is just so small I have to spend a long time arranging music and playlists so it will have what I need to hear when I need to hear it (and my playlists are as diverse as the things I do- I have music for running, music for biking, music for snowboarding, music for XC skiing, music for chilling, music for cleaning). And yesterday, after stripping bedding out of units and exposing it to static electricity that traveled up the wires and crackled and snapped in my ears, it froze up. It is working again now, after I restored it to it's factory settings, wiped it clean and reloaded all my music back on it, but I do not trust it.

Since the thanksgiving rush, I have not worked hard, only enough to get done with whatever needs to be done. I started going to the gym again as of yesterday. All or nothing, as usual. I went at 7:00 in the morning for a yoga class, only to find the time moved up to 7:30, so I ran Andy through the park, trying unsuccessfully to get his morning "business" worked out of him. Then I went back inside, hacking from the zero degree air, and ran a mile around the indoor track, finishing just in time to slip out of my shoes and into the room where about twenty strangers were already meditating cross legged on the floor, and tried to find a spot for my mat, squeezing it in the likeliest spot, still uncomfortably close to my neighbors. After which followed an hour and fifteen minutes of Hatha Yoga, during which I tried hard to remember to breathe in addition to trying to keep up with a class that is already bendy as noodles and knows all the poses without needing to face the instructor the entire time, and trying to relax through the discomfort of my unbendy self holding poses arranged in ways I normally would not voluntarily arrange it.

Then, I went to work, Andy trying his best to undo everything I did, dragging out trash, gleefully killing rags dragged from the rag box. I stripped the laundry out of two units, then went to lunch with Bobby. No sooner had we ordered our chinese food than his phone rang, one of our reservations people up in the air because an eight week old puppy was trapped, yipping and howling, on the deck of one of our units on a twenty degree day without water or shelter, the sheriff was trying to track down it's owner, the tenants were not home, and they had not gotten permission to have a puppy in the unit. B gulped his lomein, left me with a pile of five dollar bills and an entire meal to eat by myself, and went to let the poor thing into the house, well aware of the damage it would most likely do, but unable to do anything else with it. I raced home from lunch to change out of my yoga pants and into better clothes in which to represent a reputable lodging company to some prospective clients looking for a place to hold a reunion in the spring, showed them our biggest property, then returned home, Andy threatening spontaneous combustion if I did not give him some exersize. So I pulled on my snowpants, laced up my cross country ski boots, and we headed up Montezuma Road to a trailhead near treeline, where the snow is deep. We skied for two hours, taking an obscure branch trail that may or may not have been private property, and got back down around dark, the full moon casting our shadows in front of us. I drove home, put band-aids over the blisters my ski boots left on my heels, met bobby, and we ate the half of our chinese food we hadn't had for lunch, then drove down to the rec center. I want to be able to run a consistant 10k by memorial day weekend to be ready for the BolderBoulder, a road race I want to run in this spring, but right now, all I am doing is 5k's. Did my 5k, then rowed for a while, while Bobby ran and lifted weights, and finally, came home, took a shower, hit the couch and fell asleep.

This morning, I got out of bed, cleaned and did laundry, loaded up my ski gear, and went to work. I inspected the only arrival for today, then met my friend at the gondola, both of us on our skis, and made several runs, taking pictures and videos of the bluebird morning and our novice selves on our skis (both of us are excellent riders, but are both somewhat new to skis). I sat down in a massive cloud of snow at one point, sliding my right butt cheek over hard corderoy snow, and removed the back pocket from my snowpants. I am disappointed in them. Brand new this year. We got back to our cars, parked in poached parking in a building we both manage condos in, peeled out of our ski boots, and I drove to work, where I should still be, except that I had to come home to get a key, and while I was here, had leftover thanksgiving dinner for lunch, and here I am.

Thanksgiving, since moving to the mountains, has never been traditional for us. We have run the gamut from Mc Donalds chicken sandwich, to dinners with friends, all of whom have no family in the county, to actual thanksgivings that were just us, no guests. This thanksgiving was no different, in that it was different from every other one we've had. Harlan Koehn and Jeremy Becker, two Pennsylvania boys now living out west in Center, CO and Flagstaff AZ, respectively, made the trip up here for two days. We cooked, and made a spread, and spent a lazy day in the house, hardly noticing, apart from my one four mile mountain bike ride with Andy (the bare minimum to keep him from destroying the place with his excess energy), that it really was a beautiful day outside. On Friday, Jeremy, Harlan, and I took the Subaru up Peru Creek road, already covered in snow, but hard-packed enough to allow vehicles, as far as we dared (and a bit farther, looking for a spot to turn around where we wouldnt get stuck...I sorta nosed it into a hillside when I did find a spot, leaving a bit of a scratched bumper and some pretty tracks) and hiked a ways up Argentine Pass in the snow, taking pictures of the ramshackle Pennsylvania Mine, historically one of Summit County's most profitable mines, operating from 1879 until the 1940's, yielding gold, silver, lead, copper, and zinc. Now it's biggest contribution is a scar in a high alpine landscape, and being the source of acid mine drainage that contaminates Peru creek, as well as the Snake River that runs through Keystone. Two years ago, something holding a large reservoir of water poluted with heavy metals broke loose from a mineshaft, and enough toxic water was dumped into the river to turn the water orange and kill fish by the hundreds downstream. One treatment system has failed to fix the problem, overwhelmed by the amount of acid in the water, and others have been proposed, but never implemented, the state afraid of taking on the burden of liability if another measure should fail.

Andy, of course, cared naught for such atrocities as acidic orange water that keeps the creek free of any aquatic life, and before I could stop him, had bounded into the stream trickling down the mountainside, carving a deep ravine through the snow. I yelled at him as I saw him begin to drink, and he obediently tried to climb out, succeeding on the third try, slush the color of orange Gatorade freezing to his tail and belly.

We went to Breck that evening without Bobby, who stayed home to answer phones, should our in-house guests need something. He actually spent the entire weekend fielding questions, making maintenance runs, tracking down contractors on their day off to ward off potential crises. Poor man needs a day off. He's starting to get grouchy. Unfortunately the things he does, I cannot be trusted with, so there isnt really anyone to take his place yet.

It still has not snowed. I am actually still mountain biking on a fairly regular basis. Most years, mountain bike season and ski season have overlapped only a little, but this year, the ranch trails are mostly clear yet, or covered in hard-packed snow that is, at most, slightly sugary and resembles riding in sand. Another storm is moving in as I write, but looking at the radar, it is likely to be another upslope storm, hitting Colorado Springs and Denver, and unable to climb over the Divide to us. The last storm yeilded the Front Range up to three feet of snow, while we saw, at most, a few inches. And so we wait. We desparately need it to boost skier numbers in a downish economy.

And that is all for now. There actually is a reason this poor blog has been abandoned lately. If you think this blog is bad, you should see my house. My laundry room. My car. All needing attention. None getting it. I find myself going to sleep on the couch earlier and earlier lately, as the days get shorter and shorter. After the sun sets, and I get back from exersizing Andy and myself, not much gets done. But thank you for stopping by. As always, I shall try to not wait so long next time.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the problem is, there is just never enough time in a day. Well, time there is, but daytime, there is not. The days are shorter than I ever remember them being. It is already dark when I drive home from work. I don't like it.

I am sitting here, stealing a bit of time from my day, knowing I need to get to work, but feeling heavy and draggy and tired. Andy was so completely enthused about his new compressed rawhide bone last night that he kept getting up to go hide it better, each time scratching and bumping and waking me up. And taking it away did not help, because then he whined and mourned for it. And at 6:00 this morning, he was up again, needing to go out, breaking the rule of no paws on the bed and jumping up to shove his bone in our faces, talking happily about it, his tail thumping the wall. He couldn't even eat his breakfast in one sitting, something that is usually of utmost importance, because the bone had him so distracted. He took mouthfuls of dogfood, and dribbled them across the floor as he ran back and forth between his bone buried under the nightstand and his dogbowl in the bathroom. By 7:30, he was asleep again, and so was I, long past the usual time I get up.

If I go to work at 9:00, that will give me about 12 more minutes on the computer, and still leave me time to get the fires put out by check-in. It is suddenly that time of the year. We have a new owner of one of our condos that is making our lives miserable right now. Huge freak-outs over a bit of soot on a mantle, a bedspread that did not quite cover the blanket beneath, and (gasp) haphazard pillows. Never mind that they just popped up unnanounced, immediately after a hurried clean by our housekeepers, and before I had time to go in, inspect it, and touch up the clean and fix the (gasp again) haphazard pillows. We got a lengthy letter detailing, in great repetition, their overwhelming disappointment in our management skills. Accusing us, or our guests, of stealing a lamp that upon investigation, we realized had been merely moved to a different room. And a strongly worded paragraph, since the low south sun had been shining directly on the walls and windows and had warmed the condo to a balmy 75 degrees, but they could not fathom a natural cause for the warmth of an empty condo. It certainly must have been because we had the heat cranked up, costing them unnecessary fortunes on energy bills. We spent two days after that casting about for ideas for after we quit this job. We really do wonder why we do it. It is our golden handcuffs. It pays well, which barely compensates for the headache, the daily drama of dealing with second homeowners and guests overextending their vacation budget. In the summer, we stress out because we have to do all the tedious jobs that could not be done over the winter, trying to wring money out of owners already on the brink of foreclosure, or merely tight-fisted, for repairs and renovations necessary to optimize rental income over the winter, or at the very least, keep us from losing money to guests furious over finding their condo in ill repair. We do have more time off, but it is not paid time off, so we fill our time trying to find obscure jobs to do that are guaranteed to get us paid. And then, the winter hits again, and we wish for summer. It hits Bobby the hardest. I try to remember how much stress he is under, and not make demands on him, but I occasionally forget, and in his overworked state, it does not take much to send him spinning. Oh, it will get better, but right now, we are in our pre-holiday rush of trying to head off all potential crises during the heavy bookings of thanksgiving and christmas, in a frenzy of delivering new hair dryers, shower curtains, cleaning carpets and bedding, removing all sign that the condos have been empty, or worse yet, rented long-term for six months by seasonal workers, and kind of hating life.

But all that aside, I have gottten a few days of riding in. Keystone opened with the best conditions I can ever remember on opening day, top to bottom, soft snow, a wide run, and even some snow in the trees, not that one would want to risk riding on it, but it did soften the edges of the two runs open so they were actual runs, not just ribbons of death. The terrain park opened with over twenty features, including a tabletop jump. Not that i've been jibbing, bonking, or jumping, but it has brought a good early season crowd to Keystone. And down in the Cove, the trails are dry yet. Or dryish. They do have icy patches in the shade. But I have been getting some good mountain biking in, Andy and I flying over the ice on the downhills, hesitant to brake for fear of sliding sideways. Yesterday I did not get a morning ride in, so I took my headlamp and went after dark. In a stand of willows and lodgepole pines, in the dark to the left and behind me, something went crash. Crackle, snap. Thump against a fallen log. I did not lose the prickles on the back of my neck for a good mile, at which point, something made a strange snorty-growly noise in the woods beside me. Andy tucked tail and headed for home, occasionally turning around to check on me, his eyeshine flashing in my headlamp light, my only clue to his whereabouts. We were both glad to get back to civilization. Usually when I headlamp, it is with other humans, and I find courage in numbers. And usually the dark does not scare me. But last night, it did. It was just too dark, without a moon, and too noisy.

And now it is time to hit the road. Lots of last-minute changes to the schedule, last minute bookings. It is the weekend. These knots in my shoulders will go away come about monday or tuesday, but first, we have to survive the weekend with all it's unforseen drama. Next time, I will try to do less complaining and have more happy anecdotes.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where there is no problem. Except for the fact that many of my faithful few may have stopped stopping by, because there was never anything new.

I am at home. Yes, at 3:52 in the afternoon. It would have been earlier, but I stopped by the rec center after work, for the second time today, determined this time to actually get my run in, and one nine-minute mile later, felt my face pale, and sweat pop out on my temples, and the fish tacos I had eaten two hours before began to swim again. I slowed down to a walk, aware of how far I was from an exit, and focused on breathing nice, deep breaths, and finally eased myself down to the locker room, into my street clothes and coat, and took myself out to the car. By that point, the Alaskan Pollock and black beans and corn salsa had agreed to stay down, so I went to the library, hoping to find something good to read, but the library in Silverthorne really is a tiny little affair, merely an annex to the actual Summit county Library in Frisco, and they did not have any of the books i wanted to read. So now, here i am, in my own cozy house, fire crackling and blowing toasty air past me as I sit on the end of the couch closest to the small circle of warmth. I am still feeling iffy, my head a bit light, my stomach a bit sloshy. I am pretty sure it was not the running that brought it on, because until .85 miles, I was feeling dandy, running tall and strong at 7 mph, hands and shoulders relaxed, stomach in, breathing steady, feeling like I could do this for miles yet. Maybe it was the fish tacos, or maybe a bit of a bug. Who knows.

What I do know is I love it here, in my house on a winter day, feeling not at all alone because the fire is leaping about so happily, the scent of pine and peppermint lingering from the essential oils I burned last night, hitting a bit of aromatherapy, needing a kick of clear-headed, happy energy as I resisted the urge to hit the couch and cleaned and begged Bobby to help me hang blinds over the dining room windows and shuttled two dogs in and out for potty breaks. (Yes, two dogs. We are keeping Raisin while her parents spend three weeks in Peru. They send us facebook messages in between multi-day treks. Must be wonderful.) Pine needle extract and peppermint extract are my two favorite scents, and always get my mood into an upswing, because of, if nothing else, the happy emotions I associate with both scents.

Andy and Raisin are in Raisin's back yard at the moment, leaving my house in a peaceful state of not being torn apart. Although blue shreds of what used to be an amoeba-shaped felt squeaky toy litter the floor, along with splinters of chewed-up firewood, a few bits of the bone we bought Andy several weeks ago, half of a paint roller, and, of course, the Moose, Andy's favorite tug-of-war toy. Two big dogs really are a bit much for us. One smallish Golden Retriever with a big personality fills our house just right. Add a 65 lb black lab, still an overgrown puppy herself at 1 year old, and it bursts at it's chewed-up seams. Having them gone makes me want to curl up and nap, although I am sure I would not sleep. I'd rather write, something I've been too busy to do lately.

I have been on a get-healthy kick this last week, one that I plan to make last through next summer's race season. I may only have one shot at this, since Bobby D will be turning 29 next month. He has always said that by thirty, we should be ready to put childish things behind us and start thinking about a family. And he has been saying it with more regularity the closer he gets. And I agree. But we arent in a place where we can just do that quite yet, finance-wise, workstaff-wise, and maybe not even maturity-wise. We are painfully aware of what a responsibility it is to create another soul and be responsible to guide it into becoming a well-adjusted adult, and how easy it could be to create a tiny little sociopath with just a little indifference, misunderstanding, inconsistancy, and insecurity thrown into the recipe. Hence the reason our marriage has sailed past the seven-year mark, and is well on its way to number eight with nary a thought about adding to the household that is us. But, never before have we set a date that we promise each other to stick to, and to be ready by that date. To try to be in a good place spiritually, mentally, and physically, so that we can create a safe, happy place for someone to start his or her life. That date is next fall. And whatever happens after that date, whether it even is possible to happen for us, we will try to be ready for it. Anyway, back to my original tangent. Race season. Possible last chance. Get healthy.

So, we bought Rec center passes last week. Actually, my kick kick-started on Sunday, when I went snowboarding at the Basin with a girl friend, then she talked me into a Bikram Yoga class that evening. The studio we went to in Breck was lovely, but because of the door opening to the 15 degree winter night outside, it did not get to the full 105 degrees, 40% humidity that one is supposed to do the 26 poses in, so it was wonderful for me, new to yoga as I am, I did not have to push myself, or get overwhelmed by the heat, I merely basked in the soft lighting, scent of sandalwood incense, quiet strains of music, and stretched, and balanced, and twisted, the 90 degree air making my muscles all nice and stretchy, the sweat gathering on me but never soaking me. My legs quivered a time or two, protesting having to support my weight in ways they were not accustomed to, and my balance was rather shaky, but by the time the class ended, I was feeling light and tall and at peace with the world. We drove home on sheet-ice and slush roads, then went out for half-price sushi at Nozawa, the local sushi and teppanyaki place. I came home late that night to Bobby and the dogs, starting to get a bit stiff from the unaccustomed work I had just put my body through, but determined to do it again.

I have never taken advantage of the Rec Center's classes before. I thought I had to pay for them, but this year, I belatedly discovered they are free to pass holders. Plus, it has been a long journey for this little farmgirl to realize that it is okay to take a class. No need to be self-conscious or worry about not being able to do something. No need to worry about my image. Nobody is going to redicule me. It's okay to be singled out. I had to get brave enough to join a mountain bike club first, and ride with it for two years, and find that people less athletic than me do these things and I am not holding everyone back. Then, I took the huge step of entering a race. And again, discovered I didnt suck. And now, with my rec center pass, I have entered a whole new world of fitness community, where I can sweat and grunt and push myself beside others who are doing the exact same thing, feeling the exact same pain, and in that hour or two, we have everything in common. Pilates class once a week. Cycling class up to four times a week, as long as I can be there by 6:00 am (which I haven't managed yet). Yoga every other morning. I am hooked. Especially on the yoga. It is an excuse to actually ease into my day, in a darkened room with a wall of windows framing the Gore Range and it's snowy peaks, washed in early light. An excuse to push all of my manic overthinking out and focus on happy feelings, and the way those feelings affect my body and mind. To visualize, with each deep breath, the values I wish to internalize- peace, joy, love. To close my eyes and breathe deeply and relax, gently manipulating and working my joints, muscles, and tendons, easing them into alignment and strength. And apparently, it works. I show up at my job in a strangely good mood, feeling all warm and glowy, loose-jointed and mellow. And get mocked for being all happy and peaceable, when I am normally full-steam on some rant, tear, path, or tangent from the moment I crash through the door.

Hmm. Now I look at the clock and notice it is 5:30. Where have two hours gone? Since I started this post, Bobby has been here, gathered his own workout clothes, I planned our dinner menu with him, he left for his workout, I got distracted a time or two by other matters, forgot I was blogging and got to googling. And now, I have two very hungry dogs waiting for me on the other side of the Cove. I should go them and feed them. And my mom just called me to chat, I am typing while talking. gotta run...

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, fresh back from a mountain bike ride, hacking and coughing from the big, wonderful gulps of 19 degree air. It felt so good. I can breathe again. I can take as deep of breaths as I need to, stretching my lungs without having them feel as though they are going to burst. A lovely sunrise, and meadows bejeweled by frost, just enough snow on the ground for Andy to roll in, stream crossings covered by thin sheets of ice. It's good to be home. Just a few pictures from this morning, since I just finished posting from our trip.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, posting from the airport after ten days of heat and sun and humidity and carnivorous crawly things and long-necked waterfowl and sunsets in hues of coral and tangerine and bruised purples and blues, angry reds and soothing grays, the sun a glowing orb sinking into gulf waters reflecting the same colors in shards broken by waves and foam and splashing gulls and pelicans.

B used to live here. I've never been. After several years of venturing further and further from home in our last hoorays before the season descends on us and the snow buries us, this seemed the year to vacation somewhere that did not require a seven hour flight over water, or changing currency. One of our first big purchases after we were married, when we could ill-aford it and spent several years paying it off our credit cards, was a transferable timeshare, the guarantee of a free stay for a week in a condo every other year for the rest of our lives. Free if we stay in "our" condo, and about $120 a week to stay anywhere else in the world. Since "our" condo is in Orlando, and once every twenty years in Orlando is about enough, we have yet to stay in it, but have already recouped our money in savings on lodging on other vacations. It also means that instead of staying in seedy motels, we now stay in luxury resorts and vacation clubs with expansive accomodations and kitchens, whirlpool tubs and private balconies, large and varied workout facilities, pools that cover acres, with cabanas and tiki bars and rediculous landscaping, on-site stores where one can buy bottles of aquafina for $3.00, and, in this case, a private island. It matters less what there is to do off-resort when one can so easily occupy one's time for a week without leaving the premises. For a week at the Hyatt Coconut Plantation, we spent hours flat on our backs on tubes, spinning in the current as the lazy river carried us around and around, and around. I read all five novels I had brought along, including the Dean Koontz I discovered I had already read a few years ago and still remembered the ending, tucked into a hammock under a tiki hut, surrounded by happy crickets and all sorts of flowering bushes and at least a dozen different variety of palms, new-agey, bongo-ey music bouncing out of hidden speakers, water gushing loudly over the many waterfalls worked into the landscaping, cascading into the many swimming pools and hot tubs and hidden grottoes. And in such manner, I didn't notice the oppressive heat and air heavy with humidity until we actually put on clothes that were not swimwear and left the resort. And then, my hair stood straight up, frizz covering my head in an inch deep layer, and I began to sweat, and to stick to myself, and settled into a heat-induced stupor, broken only by my irritable replies to B's happy yammering, until the sun dropped behind the bank of thunderheads on the horizen in it's nightly celebration of a job well done, throwing every shade of happy-inducing color at me, and I shook myself, wondering what was wrong with me, and felt myself becoming myself again. We spent every sunset on a beach somewhere, B wading and swimming and, by all appearances, thoroughly enjoying the way the salt and the sand stuck to him.

I planned on running a charity 5k in Naples on the 3rd of 0ctober, and completely underestimated the effect the heavy air would have on my running. And I had underestimated how hot it would already be at 7:00 a.m., which was when the run was. I had envisioned a cool early morning run, maybe 7o or 75 degrees, not 88 degrees. Although I can do 10K fairly easily, if not fast, at home at 8,700 feet, running 5k on the treadmill at 5 feet nearly finished me off. By the end of two miles, I was gulping breaths that nearly exploded my aching lungs, my head was spinning, my breakfast had risen nearly to my tonsils. After a few failed attempts, I discovered that keeping my mouth shut and breathing only through my nose kept me upright by limiting the amount of air I could draw in. If I took half breaths, and expelled the last breath fully before tenatively drawing the next one, eventually the pounding headache eased and I could settle into an easy gait that required no effort or concentration, and I could watch the miles roll by with almost my usual ease. All the same, I did not feel like sweating the gallons I knew I would, even though Alzheimer's research could have used me, so I ended up leaving the outdoor running to those more inclined to sweat and stickiness and humidity.

After we left the resort, we drove into the everglades. Actually, seeing the Everglades up-close and personal was the reason I had been excited about going to Florida. Yes, I knew it would be hot, although I may have not realized just how hot, but I am big on the whole getting a feel for the Land, in it's natural state, it's natural beauty and as it's natives knew it before civilization crashed in and drained it, or razed it, or devoloped it, or mined it. And I was determined to see an alligator. No, not in a zoo, as B tried to convice me to do, thinking it was just that I wanted to see an alligator. I told him that was not an option, because in a zoo, one might see an alligator, but one could not actually SEE an alligator. It's just not the same. It had to be one in the wild.

I did finally concede and agree to not make him rent a canoe or kayak and row through Everglades National Park, because of time constraints. We ended up not going the eighty miles out of our way to go into the park at all, although I am pretty sure we will regret not doing so. Every national park it it's own unique experience, and should not be skipped over if it is possible to go see them. But we did follow a narrow highway for miles through dense jungles of trees and swamps, water as still as the sky it reflected, oceans of grass, dripping spanish moss, and birds standing on long sticks of legs, white against murky backdrops of shadow and trees, necks kinked in s-curves, unfolding to shoot out and snap up unsuspacting insects, then settling back for another long wait. And yes, at a rest stop so fetid I decided I didn't need to go THAT bad, a wooden bridge lead over a still patch of water, the opposite shore looking like just the spot an alligator might like to hang out. I shaded my eyes and studied it, and even when a fellow observer pointed out the floating log with eyes, I still didn't see it. I was staring so intently at the shadows, hoping one of them would move, I didn't see a shadow to my right creep out into the water, and begin to silently drift toward me. I did see it as it was about halfway across the water, and watched, breath held, as it swam all the way over to us, drifted to a stop and sunk into the water below us, a twelve foot alligator. I whispered to B that he should get the camera, and he did, and I got pictures of my first alligator. I know, not so much of a novelty to those who see them all the time, but to me, it was pretty cool to see the carnivore in it's natural habitat. Even though I am pretty sure the reason it came so close was it was hoping someone had a chicken wing to throw it.

We kept driving, and got to Key West late that afternoon. I was feeling a bit queesy from reading my book, and one corner of my lip had swollen to grotesque, purple proportions, thanks to me trying to eat it along with my sandwich at noon. And it. was. hot. And humid. We checked into our frosty hotel room, which had my sweaty self shivering before I had changed into swimwear, and headed to the beach, as south as we could go in the U.S., and waded into the tepid water, mud, not sand, squishing between our toes. We didn't spend a lot of time there. I got hot. And sticky. And asked if we could go back to the motel. Which we did, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the gym, where it was cool, and the only sweat was induced by work, not overwhelming heat.

And now we are boarding, I will go ahead and publish this for now, but there will be more- I promise.

..And now, more. We are home. It feels amazing.

That night, we hit Key West, went to the pier to see the sunset and take in the Sunset Celebration, street performers and vendors jostling for attention in the crowds pouring off the cruise ship docked there, the sun worshipers and tourists, all gathered to soak up the last few rays and take pictures. I missed my bike, because it seemed everyone except me had two-wheeled transportation, either on a scooter or a bike. I had my new Teva wedges, but still. I wanted to pedal.

We walked down Duval street and found a place to eat outside in a courtyard, where we sat and watched the varied flow of humanity pedal, ride, drive, walk, stagger, stumble, swagger and sway past us. After which we joined them. At one point, I looked ahead of us and noticed an especially perky backside in an especially short skirt, sporting especially big hair, and halfway through my raised eyebrow, she turned around, spotted Bobby, waved a manicured hand, and said "Hi, Gorgeous...you here for the show?" in a decidedly male voice, which caused us to do a double take and realize that half of the bodacious, jostling girls around us were definitely not one hundred percent female. How were we to know that? We're just farm kids. Oh, we recovered quickly, and added it to our trove of stories from that night, but we felt a little betrayed by our small-town roots.

We got back late that night, loathe to leave the lights and music and hot summer night, but booked on a snorkel cruise early the next morning. We needn't have worried. We passed out as soon as our heads hit the pillows, but a few hours later, both of us were awake. The air conditioner was loud. Shake the walls loud. And it ran in short bursts. And B did not turn his phone off, since he was using the alarm clock feature, so every time someone posted something to his facebook or sent him an email, it vibrated on the bedside stand, which he didn't hear, but it woke me up every time. Never have we been so glad to see six o'clock. We had a carb-tinental breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and were at the pier, a hungry parking meter fed, at 8:30. We spent until noon seven miles offshore, over a reef, spotting dozens of kinds of fish, yellow, blue, silver, red, striped and spotted, dodging jellyfish. We went out on a smallish catamaran, only us and two other couples, with two stops. On the second one, schools of yellowtail snappers flitted around us in the hundreds, staring into our fat pink faces. Another school of great barracuda drifted below us, and angelfish, butterfly fish, and parrotfish poked along the reef. After two hours of being tossed around on the surface of the water, except of our brief dives that only lasted until we ran out of air, we were feeling extremely mellow. The waves were high, high enough that I had to wait till the crest to look around and find Bobby. We got back to shore, and I did the beach shimmy, simultaneously changing peeling out of my wet swimwear and slipping into a dry tank top, skirt and underwear in layers in the simmering parking lot. I brushed the salt from my skin as it dried, then B found a beach shower, so I rinsed out my tangled mop of hair and washed the salt from my legs and arms. He showered all of him, then, after a Taco Bell burito, we hit the road for the four hour trip back to Ft. Lauderdale.

That night, B asked me where I wanted to eat, and out popped the last place I would usually suggest- Olive Garden. Don't ask. I just wanted carbs- a lot of them. Oodles of noodles. And white, pasty bread. I am usually loudly opposed to the wanna-be Italian chain with it's red and yellow interiors that everyone wants to emulate in their own homes and wanna-be snooty atmosphere that says, lets pretend that this fettucini is better than the Ragu you dumped over your pasta the last time you wanted empty carbs without a hint of healthy veggies or whole grains. Okay, it is a pet peeve. Maybe I'm just tired of the hype and everybody always wanting to go there when they go to Denver, to the exclusion of privately owned, more sustainable restaurants. And maybe it's just me, but I've eaten at one maybe three times in six years, and all three time the waiter seriously creeped me out, asking for our order in a conspiratory library voice. And twice out of the three times, the two of us have been seated at a table set for eight, which just added to the whole creeped-out feeling I got. So if you are ever out with us, and B or I snorts, then quickly tries to cover our inapropriate response to the suggestion that we eat at Olive Garden, think naught of it. We will still go there with you, and it won't kill us. At least the food won't. We're not so sure about the waiters...

And today, eight hours of airports, and airplane, and wrong busses, and right busses, and driving, and here we are, back at home with Andy and the kitties. It is wonderful. And I thought I would get the chance to post pictures tonight yet, but now B has proclaimed it bedtime. Maybe tomorrow.

Well, this post sat in my "drafts" folder for the last several days, because it felt like a recitation. A report. A convoluted one with too many commas and run-ons. I was going to dress it up, disasemble the timeline, fix the sentences that my fingers tapped out while I was half asleep, but finally realized it was never going to get done. But hey. Not every post can sizzle...I was just a little reluctant to post so many of them that lack said sizzle. So now, without further edits, I give you...

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, the blog hoping to wake up to snow. Not that I want it to be snowy from now on, but if I could get out my skis in the morning, that would be a little bit exciting. It has been snowing, but not seriously, for the last two days. I have also been riding my bike to work since I have been spending my days in the office, feeling the cold air in my lungs, arriving feeling invigorated. Aspen leaves litter the ground like lost gold medallions, fat snowflakes drift down, whispering in the windstill silences, scurrying along the ground in swirling ribbons when the wind blows. Dry grasses rustle, and Andy, loping along bedside me, bounds through them in search of birds, his golden head dusted with white, grin revealing a lolling tongue. This morning, to my horror, he followed several birds when they flew over the lake, landing with a splash, scarcely noticing the water and he raced through the waves splashing on the shore, then plunged into deep water, steaming into air colder than the cold water, and swam in circles. I left the rec path and rode down to the water's edge, coaxing him out, telling him he would catch a cold, that no bird was worth pneumonia, but he heard me not, instinct having taken over. After he had finally splashed ashore and shook cold water all over me, I caught his collar and attached his leash to it, and rode along the lakeshore toward the Marina, Andy straining against his collar, trying to pull me into the water with him. I was hard-pressed to keep my bike on the shore in the soft, damp dirt, and by the time I hit pavement again, my tires were carrying a thick layer of clayish dirt. I dropped Andy off at the office and rode down to my LBS (local bike shop), where I had seen a bike wash, but the hose was frozen. I parked my bike, heavy with all the mud, in the office for the day. The ride home knocked off some of the mud, and I kept Andy's leash on and rode slowly, to keep from running him too hard. Making him commute on foot keeps him very well behaved. He spent the day on a futon in the office, occasionally barking at strangers visible through the door before flopping back down and sleeping again. And now, he is asleep on the living room floor.

It has been a wonderfully active week for me. Well, except for those three days last week... I did spend Tuesday night on the bathroom floor, thanks to either a bug or a bout of food poisoning, too weak from all the vomiting to move any farther than a few feet from the toilet. BBD brought me a sleeping bag, and I spent sixteen hours lying on it, using the backpack that held my dirty laundry from Kansas as a pillow, sitting up every half-hour or so, my body, against my will, attempting to get rid of whatever it was that had made me so sick. The next two days, forcing food or drink past my lips was risking another violent reaction, so I spent all day Wednesday on the couch, answering the phone once to make plans to go hiking on Friday, and hoping I would still be alive by then. On Thursday, I wobbled my way to work, held down half an apple and a dry slice of toast, and by late afternoon, attempted, and succeeded in holding onto a bowl of soup that my friend made for me. And as soon as it became clear that food was my friend again, albeit a friend I still wasn't crazy about, I started guzzling Gatorade, preparing for Friday.

On Friday, I woke up four minutes before my alarm rang at 5:00. I can do that, for some weird reason. All I have to do is go to sleep focusing on the time I want to get up, and almost without fail, I will wake up then. I still do not rely it, though, because the moment I do, it will let me down. But it is handy so that B does not have to awake from a dead sleep when I get up early. He says things that he does not remember the next day, and would never say while awake when awoken from deep sleep. And then wonders why I am offended the next morning.

At six, I picked up my friend from Frisco, and we both had a brief moment of panic when she walked outside into the early dawn gray, and realized her car was not in the driveway. She stood there staring at the spot where it should be parked, then went inside to check the garage, just in case it had gotten moved, then came back outside, laughing at herself. Since she lives so close to Main Street in Frisco, she often walks to shops there, and after spending the afternoon in a bookstore, she left and walked home, forgetting that this time, she had driven there. We retrieved her car from Main Street, dropped it off at her house, and finally, Andy still asleep in the backseat, hit the interstate, looking east, where Gray's Peak and Torrey's peak were silhouetted against a pink sunrise.

At seven o'clock, we started hiking, Andy springing around us, excited to be outside and hiking when he is normally just waking up. We were planning on climbing Gray's first, then Torrey's, but we took a wrong turn and ended up doing Torrey's first, which we later decided was probably the best route, steeper, but shorter. Since one of us (me) was still a bit gaunt from a thirty-six hour crash diet, and one of us (not me) had just had the stitches from a bike crash taken out of her knee, we didnt set any speed records. On top of Grays, at 14,270 feet, we sat in the sun on an absolutely windstill, warm morning, and marveled that it was past mid-September. Andy fell asleep and began snoring, we ate some granola and felt a little drunk on the view.

Back at the Jeep, after nine miles and 3,600 feet of hiking, I peeled off my backpack, unzipped the pocket that held my jeep keys, and my fingers, instead of closing around the key, slipped through the mesh lining. I stared stupidly at the pocket Andy shredded last winter looking for treats, the last time I wore the jacket, once holding my keys and ID, now holding only my ID. Fought a surge of panic, and quickly checked all my other pockets, just in case. Finally reluctantly opened my phone to call B to come rescue me. No service. By this time, we had attracted a bit of attention, other people at the trailhead noting that while they could break into a vehicle, all lacked the criminal know-how to hotwire it. And then, the person parked next to us, until then absorbed in whatever it was he was doing, suddenly turned around and asked if we might be looking for our keys? Because he had found some about halfway up Torreys, and had put them on top of a rock at the trailhead. We checked the rock, and sure enough, they were mine. Relieved, we hit the road for home, bouncing over the rough 4wd road back to the interstate.

On Saturday, B spent the day at home. It was strange and wonderful. I cooked mahi mahi in a cajun glaze and served it with bourbon sauce and mashed potatoes and salad, lunch at home such a huge novelty that we even ate at the table. Early evening, we were done cleaning, stacking firewood, all our jobs for the day, so we drove up to the top of Loveland Pass and hiked to the false summit of Mt Sniktau. It was too late to hike another mile to the actual summit, but we were still rewarded with a beautiful view, sun dipping low behind rainclouds gathered over the ten mile range.

Sunday, we attempted to go to church, that's another story. We never got it done. We did spend the day waiting for the rain to go away, watching football, and finally went to work and stripped blankets, bedspreads, and dry cleaning from several units to be cleaned and returned later. Monday and Tuesday we both worked long hours, and I commuted by bike, oddly enjoying the snow, which brings us to tonight, and my having spent far too long at the computer intstead of readying the house for us being gone next week on our fall vacation to Florida, since Marci will be staying here for several of those days with our animals.

Welcome to An Altitude Problem, home of a blogger who is tired and achy after a flying trip to Kansas, minimal sleep, and a long, long day of work. I ran last night, since my bike tires are still flat, thanks to several "goatheads", Kansas's most common thorn, and used muscles I have not used for several months. I should do that more, since my legs are a bit stiff from it.

On Wednesday, the lumberyard in Scott City called Bobby to tell him his new garage door was in. This forced us to have to make the choice whether we were going to go install it now, before our real estate agent begins showing the place with it's garage door all caved in from a windstorm a few years ago, or wait until we had a little more free time in October. But who are we kidding, free time in October? We hope, but we can't be certain. Since Marci was planning on leaving for her vacation at noon on Saturday, we had to be back by then, so we finished a few loose ends and odd jobs, then, late Wednesday evening, hit the road in a very packed-full Subaru, dog in the backseat, his head out the window, his jowls flapping in the wind, drool streaming back from the corners of his wide grin. We pulled up to our house in the wee hours, in fog that only revealed about three highway dashes ahead of us, threw some sleeping bags down on the floor for padding, and crawled under a light blanket, the only bedding needed on a foggy, warm Kansas night.

The next morning, we were woken early by a deafening cacophony of birdsong outside our open window, a novelty since we moved to Colorado, and by a dog who was anxious to eat some dogfood and go outside. We went to my parents for breakfast, and i got my bike out of the car and put the wheels on it, and took it for a quick ride around Marienthal. I pulled up to my parent's house and was greeted by two yellow striped kittens, purring loudly and winding themselves around my ankles- my mom's latest rescue, after they were unceremoniously, anonymously dumped on the Heartland Mill yard a week ago. Over breakfast, mom and I schemed our day, wondering when we would get the time to get down to the state park and ride some trails, and I asked Bobby if he thought the kittens weren't completely adorable, hint, hint, while they made themselves at home on his lap. I went outside, and noticed a goathead sticking into my bike tire. I plucked it out, and for my trouble, was rewarded by a loud hiss. I had forgotten about the goatheads. Thick, heavy slime tubes are a must in Kansas. Three years without a flat in Colorado, but one mile in kansas, and and the rubber was left puddled under my wheel. As it turned out, all my plans for mountain biking in the park were not to be, since the only tubes to be found in the small-town local Alco store had Shrader stems, and my rims will only accomodate a Presta stem. Dad, bless his heart, took my tubes to Co-op to get them fixed, filled them with slime, and in the process of airing it back up, what do you know, I broke the stem. I finally had to give up, leaving my bike in a useless $2000 dollar pile of aluminum and stainless steel. I borrowed my dad's bike, late in the day, and we did go to the park, but after we had sat on a picnic table and changed both of his flat tires to big, thick tubes, we only had time for a half-hour ride, but my mom tackled the singletrack with her bike-path cruiser like a pro, big, narrow tires rolling over difficult portions without skipping a beat. We finished our ride, threw the bikes on the car, and raced the clock back to Scott City, where I needed to be by 7:00 to have dinner with Bobby and some of our friends.

The next morning Andy let us sleep until 9:00, exhausted as he was by the life of a farm dog. A quick breakfast, then I moved a cord or more of firewood from our shed to my dad's yard, displacing mouse nests, spiders, frog skeletons, and damp, moldy, heavy chunks of wood that have been sitting under the trees, soaking up the runoff from our eaves, for four years. I finished at noon, and after lunch, cleaned the house, washed windows, removed and washed storm windows, and helped Bobby clean the shed and place struts on the new garage door to sturdy it up against future 100mph windstorms. We dragged into the house and dropped into chairs around my mom's dinner table, saying hello to Grandpa and Grandma Unruh who were there for dinner, and we were tired, dirty, sweaty, and mosquito eaten, wondering how we used to work in the heat all day. It wasn't even so hot, only in the 80's, but humid and windstill, not something Kansas is used to, and neither are we.

At 6 o'clock the next morning, Andy was up, and so were we, frantically cleaning the fridge, removing all sign that the house had been stayed in lately, the last odds and ends, pipe fittings and paint cans, pushed, stuffed, and shoved everything into the car, leaving half of the backseat for Andy, and stopped by my parent's house on the way out of town. And Bobby finally gave in to my begging. When we left the yard half an hour later, Andy was not the only animal in the car. Two yellow kittens were winding their way around the back of Bobby's head, purring loudly enough to be heard over the car's engine.

On the way home, trying to beat noon back to Summit County, Andy slept uncomfortably cramped in the backseat, two yellow tiger-striped kittens slept in our laps, and we tried out names for the cats. They are identical, as far as we can tell, so one of them sports a permanant marker spot on it's head, put there by a big red Marks-A-Lot. That one took a shine to Bobby, so naming privilages fell to him, and I took on naming the other one. I already know the name I wanted. Max sounds, to me, like a wonderful name for a big, beautiful, yellow tomcat, as they will someday be. Bobby thought Marks-A-Lot looked like a Paco. And that is how it comes to be that I sit here with a small yellow Max draped over my arm, eyes contented slits, paws reaching up from time to time to adoringly brush my chin, purr rattling loundly while I type, Andy stretched out at my feet, farting and snoring, his paws in the air, and Paco trying his hardest to climb the clothes rack sitting in the dining room. Never mind that we are also babysitting Frau, Marci's fat brown tabby cat who is so overwhelmed by a new house and three new, high energy animals, that all she can do is hide and hiss. This place suddenly feels like a zoo. Bobby wonders if he has gone insane, allowing me to fill the place with yellow canines and felines.

Today, after locking Frau in our bathroom with all her cat-stuff, litter box, food, water, scratching post, box, bed, etc, locking Max and Paco in the guest bathroom with their own collection of litterbox, etc, I loaded up Andy in the Subaru and went to work. At noon, I was at a stopping point, so we took up our friends on a lunch invitation, and grilled, and ate on their deck, while the dogs kept themselves very distracted by the ten-pound cow femur bones given to us by the butcher in Kansas and hauled back to Colorado with us. I left Andy there, where he got to go an a walk with his doggy friend, and we went to work for another seven and a half hours, delivering clean dry cleaning back to units. And now, it is late. I am so tired I am amazed I am still making sense...at least I hope I am. It is time to let my head fall back and do what Andy, Max, and Bobby are already doing- let the eyes close. No, I should not. I should go get ready for bed, then actually go to bed. So much work, going to bed...At any rate, until next time...