October Break 2009 in Tejas

It took me 15 hours to get to Plano, TX from my house going the KS, OK route as opposed to my usual hypotenusal route via the TX panhandle. Right triangularly speaking, I decided to go the three-four route instead of the five. It was long. Don't know if I want to go that route for the return trip. A friend said though, that the OKC bombing memorial (RIP victims; Timothy James McVeigh there's a special place in hell just for you), was a pretty touching tribute to the loss that day. Worth checking out in a Schadenfreude kinda of way. Maybe, but that just makes it a 15 hour trip.

Ruby's doing great! She remembered us when we walked through the door. Her tail waggin' mightily and when she's super happy she does this mouth vibrational thing on your hand because she can't control herself. It was great seeing everybody although Mason and I were tired from sitting all day trying not to let boredom kill us and trying to be aware of other drivers. Driving's kinda like lifeguarding. Aware with boredom letting you know he's around by constantly tapping on your shoulder. I swear, Oklahoma has the biggest congregation of the world's $hittiest drivers. Second only to drivers in Phoenix, AZ.

Monday was spent getting a USB compatible LP player so's my daddy can convert his LPs to MP3s. Once we got it I got crazy playing some old LPs I left behind back in the day. It was a sonic blast from the past: Devo, Yes, Van Halen, Carol King (my Dad's), Kansas, Johann Strauss (Dad's again), EW&F, Pink Floyd, Styx, Led Zeppelin, Beatles...all on LP! Brought back some awesome memories. Mullets, high-top tennis shoes, parachute pants, power boosters, walking barefoot in the summers, pimples, concert T-shirts, skin tight bell bottoms, Members Only jackets, bandannas, aviator sunglasses, checkered Vans (shoes), upturned collars on Lacoste shirts, and "feathered" haircuts. What also helped was jamming after a meal I made for my folks: vegetable stir-fry with coconut milk, tofu, broccoli, onions, and yellow bell peppers, topped with fresh basil leaves on a bed of rice. Yummy. Washed it down with Spaten's Optimator. Oooo-weee! Man, listening to LPs with a full tummy hanging out with my parents and son on a super rainy day with a hint of the Optimator's buzz was kinda like Christmas. All the software works. Did a trial run, works nicely. The only things was the sound was clipping so we turned down the gain manually from the turntable. Oh, we purchased the ION TT-USB that's iTunes friendly.

Tuesday. It's going to suck going back to Colorado with the weather so beautiful as it was today. Mostly Sunny, high of 74°F. Took my old pal Ruby and my son for a 2 mile walk to burn off some energy sitting all day yesterday due to the thundershowers. After dinner, I helped my Dad figure out the bugaboos on ripping and burning on his new ION TT-USB onto the iTunes. It's all about hanging with my parents and father-son bonding on this go 'round. Didn't tell hardly any of my Texas chums I was coming down because the hours go so quickly and I don't ever want to regret NOT spending time with my folks (if you would've asked me in my twenties, it'd be a completely different story). Early afternoon, my Dad and I are going to check out a record store in Dallas. We're pretty much bitten by the LPs again. I'm eyeballing John Coltrane's A Love Supreme used on vinyl boi! After dinner Mason and I worked on some "worksheets" so that his brain won't go completely gelatinous whilst on vacation.

Wednesday was my Mom's birthday. We celebrated that joyous day by me making dinner and dessert. Dinner was fettuccine noodles in pesto with salmon flakes and dessert was from scratch carrot cake and the cream cheese icing. Not to toot my own horn but the dinner was pretty damned tasty y'all.
Driving around Dallas is pretty interesting. It's almost as nutty as SoCal driving. 4 lanes of people exceeding the speed limit by a good 10 mph. Aggressive but you get to where you're going pretty quickly. Started to pack the big stuff that evening. Was feeling a bit melancholy because as usual, we had a great time enjoying each others' company. I hate that penultimate day of leaving's feeling you get in your heart and head. We hit the hay early for the sake of quality REM time for a day's worth of mindless driving. It's that glucose deprivation thing you get because your mind has to be pretty darn alert...

While in Texas, it's been snowing like a banshee back in Colorado. In fact they got close to two feet of snow; and where we live the drifts pile up close to 5' high. The snow up there translates to rain here in Texas. I check the NWS site for the route and I'm expecting crap. When I woke up this morning it was gray and not the 100% chance of thunderstorms. I quickly packed up the rest of the junk into the truck to take advantage of the calm before the storm (it pays off because I get a text from my Dad saying they're getting hammered). After we said our goodbyes we hit the road. Hit all manner of weather out in the Texas panhandle. Finally settle in Dalhart; get some Chinese take out and we veg in our jammies (incidentally, it was by far, my most greasy take-out to date-yummy!)! My fortune cookie says,"

We'll get cracking by dawn...
My Dad lets me liberate one of the Spaten's for when we bed down. I do believe it's time for a Spaten. Grandad said the storm front's moving eastward, so by Friday (tomorrow, as I currently type), it should be clear but colder than the Western Front (a not so obscure WWII reference). Quick check at NWS' website and it's going to be sunny. Ah yeauh; bust out the sonnenbrille. As I flip channels I go to an MTV, reality love show and I swear, Ray J--not to be insulting--looks like one of my friends (Chip!). Raton Pass was a sheet of ice and the blowing snow on I-25 made for interesting driving but the snow sure was pretty. It's good to be in Colorado. I'm glad I took this old route back because I-70 (the route I took going to Texas) on the Kansas/Colorado border was shut down due to snow and blowing snow (still!).

We make it back to attend our daughters' parties at their elementary school; but I see the work that's ahead of me shoveling the snow out so that we can at least get to our house. Nutty but it's on par with October blizzards we usually get in Colorado. It's trick or treating at Grandma's Saturday. I'm going to enjoy the weekend before work starts up again Monday...

Hillbilly Weekend

Seeing that I totally blew off splitting wood until the September, freak-ish snow storm, that event reminded me to get my arse in gear and consequently I rented a hydraulic wood splitter this past weekend. Wasn't having a whole lot of luck renting because all the other hayseeds around me were doing the same thing until i called the last rental joint. It was also conveniently located 10 minutes from my house. What a fortunate break. The sucky thing was this past weekend was GLORIOUS weather-speaking. How would I spend it? Splitting wood in my worn-out steel toed Doc Martin industrial rated shoes, ear protection, straw Stetson hat and my overalls my li'brah gave me back in the day. Remember Captain Kangaroo's Mr. Green Jeans (yes, I'm dating myself)? I pretty much emulated that except inside the overalls think instead of a 5' 7" devastatingly handsome filipino wannabee competitive cyclist. All I need is a corn-cobb pipe, an ox named "Babe", and some banjo lessons to complete the hillybilly transformation...
I figured seven straight hours would do me completely in so I busted ass splitting as much of the "trunk" sized pieces of wood as opposed to the smaller stuff I could tear up using the mauler and chainsaw. When it was all said and done, I probably split 4 Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck sized beds (filled to the top!) worth of hardwoods (evergreens suck but they'll burn). We loaded two bed-fulls on Sunday next to our house and I'm guesstimating we have another two we can load up to stack next time. We better do it soon because the snowy season is pretty much upon us in the high-country (my Suunto altimeter says 8,500'); that was Saturday...
Sunday, my father in-law Bob whom unlike other peoples' in-laws, I actually think he's a badass, came over to help replace our small firebox-stove with the bigger, cast iron firebox (fireplace stove) in our barn (left behind from the previous owners). The latest one we have in our living room has an ill-equipped firebox volume rating deficit compared to the square feet it has to heat. Enter the stove from the barn. It's at least 2.5X more volume than the lame one in our living room.
We'da considered a pellet stove but that requires electricity. Where we live the snow malingers until April where freak, spring snowfalls are so heavy they snap trees in half which snap power lines, that leave us without electricity for days on end! So, while a pellet stove might seem practical, it won't do a thing without electricity. Our well pump runs on electricity too so once Mother Nature unloads her snow on us we keep a bathtub full of water just in case...
We take the barn from the stove to our house on an industrial grade dolly. Afterwards Melissa and I pick up the 200 lb "wimpy" stove from our living room outside. Okay, so while I consider myself to be fairly manly (at least manly enough to move a 200 lb stove with my wife), sadly I was not. When Melissa and I were moving the stove, I had to take these baby, shuffle steps and sadly I was the one to call "break" every 10 feet. Yes, I'm a wimp and one of the first signs is to publicly admit it...
Well kids! Seems like we're getting our ducks in a row to make this winter a smidge more manageable and hella more comfortable. Hella is a Système International d'Unités (i.e. a S.I. recognized unit). With the old firebox our living room would be barely in the sixties during winter. Now (albeit it's not the December deep-freeze), I can walk around in just my boxers and flip-flops and be actually warm. It's great. At night, we pack the firebox with wood and when I wake the house is still warm. Simply amazing. I wonder why we didn't get it done sooner (well, I actually know why: it's because I'm a talented and gifted procrastinator-that's why!).
I'm in Texas now visiting my parents and I forgot my cord to my digital camera so next time I'll show you the picture of our new stove. You gotta earn the privilege to be comfortable up here in the high country. I'll take this type of living any day though over city living back in Denver. Denver's nice; but not so much my thing anymore. It's quite a paradigm shift when you start bike riding conversations with, "Damn y'all, my chainsaw's the $hit!"

Crested Butte with Kevin and Dah-veed

This sign symbolizes my frame of mind for this weekend-no school.

The week leading up to this past Friday seemed to be the longest week ever. Seemed like the Space-Time continuum had a repetitive hiccup and instead of 24 h days, it seemed like 30+ h days. One of the main reasons were finals week at our HS. Being the nice teacher that I am I gave the kids who wanted to turn late stuff in the benefit of the doubt and I accepted it all without penalty. Not all the kids took me up on this offer but the ones that did certainly kept me busy to the very end. Another reason was proctoring and grading the district tests in addition to my comprehensive final exam on the last day. Damn, that was a busy week! My mind had only a singular event (preoccupation): Crested Butte! Friday comes and Kevin meets me up at my place and we BAIL (traffic was a biscuit do road upgrades)! My darling daughter makes me some cupcakes with a written note before we leave and I eat them with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside...

When we arrive at Dave's some 3.5h later, after eating a late dinner in Gunnison (and a trip to the liquor store to get a 12-pack of Left-Hand Brewery's finest Milk stout and a 22 ounce Black Butte porter) we doze off. David's house sits in front of the Taylor river, in a town right next door to Crested Butte. An amazing piece of property, home to a pretty amazing individual. Dave's like a poster child for Cabela's with a General Custer (minus his last stand!) veneer whose interior resides a Renaissance man o'sorts. Class act through and through...
Here's my truck with our Yetis in David's driveway the next morning.

Saturday has David committed to a wee bit of work so Kevin and I eat and warm up at the outdoor patio, next to the creek in downtown CB like our reptilian ancestors did some 315 million years ago at Izzy's (not eating at Izzy's mind you but the whole warm-up thang) and head up to Mount Crested Butte like pilgrims for our hajj to Schofield's Pass aka Trail 401. We could've parked closer to the trailhead but we started off with a slight to killer 11-mile uphill warm up on skinny 4X4 fireroads up Gothic.

We dressed for cold and thank goodness we brought it all up to Snodgrass mountain to stage. Cold ears are a deal-breaker so Kevin and I both wore our yamulca-inspired, under-the-helmet head-ears covering. We had thermal base layers, winter-weight jersies (Kev even brought a jacket), and leg warmers (coincidentally though we forgot our shorts and rode Free Willy-style--NOT!).

The road to Schofield's involves riding through open range, private territory where all manner of insouciant cows were grazing not knowing of their soon-to-be-leather-couch, consumable fates. I say that rather non-caringly about their fates but let me remind y'all I am exactly a vegetarian for that same cavalier remark I made about our bovinaceous, fire road companions. I take pictures of the East River on our bird's eye perspective northwesterly trek towards Trail 401.

It's October so we miss the highlights of the changing of the Aspens because most photosynthetic creatures have stopped the anabolic processes of synthesizing starch from recycled, biogeochemical nutrients made some 4 billion years ago with products made from cellular respiration thus resulting in their decided deciduousness weeks ago. What makes it visually stunning is the composition of almost cloudless blue skies, barren rock, and this purpley colored bush thingy sporadically placed all over the ground. It's surreally stupefying being surrounded by it all. In fact, I'm sure Kevin and I had copraphagic expressions on our faces while we adsorb this audio-visual-proprioceptive anomaly. On the way up we pass Emerald Lake.
After climbing for ages and portaging our steeds over fallen trees from fierce, recent windstorms we make it to the plateau atop Schofield's. It was also amazingly muddy in the tree covered areas with snow interspersed as well. Did I mention it was a wee bit chilly too? These fallen trees made going warp speed impossible because we'd have to stop once we got into the smoovy-smoove flow of our fall line. It reminded me of cross racing where once you got a head of steam going, there would be barricades for you to dismount to clear the obstacle. Nobody in my class can bunny-hop these things...yet! The downhill had sections of scree where you had to really pick your line or else you might lose traction and biff yosef. Other cool manmade shizzle on the trail were skinny bridges to cross over the creeks. Not a very technical downhill but the trade-off (for endorphin release) was picture perfect postcard scenery and the novelty of being in this high-alpine environment. It took us about three hours...

Later, back at Dah-veed's we made a dinner consisting of Salmon, corn-on-the-cob, salad and copious amounts of Milk Stout (a la Left Hand Brewery) and Black Butte Porter from the Deschutes Brewery from Oregon (Kev's home state).

The dinner punctuated what was to be-in all accounts-a pretty glorious day. Apres-dinner consisted of viewing Dah-veed's pictures he took when he was in Italy. A full tummy with a silly, monkey grin on my face added to my mass being firmly ensconced into my sleeping bag as I drifted off to La-la land...

Sunday brought high elevation snow showers and the signal for us to head on back to Monday's reality. Conspicuously absent this go 'round was Hez-Chilly and Javier DeSoto Kol-yur. That was a fun weekend kids...