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...
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