Category Archives: Colorado

Asia, Colorado, Cooking, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Bloody Marys at Breakfast

December 6, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Into Denver in the morning today. Unusual for us since our city excursions are usually in the evening.

We went to Lucile’s, Denver for breakfast. I mentioned Lucile’s, Littleton a short while back. The Denver site, at Alameda and Logan, is hip. Full at 8:30 am with whip thin Coloradans, men and women, young families and a few older guys sitting at the bar eating scrambled eggs and drinking Bloody Marys.

Kate had rice pudding porridge with currants. I had red beans, poached eggs and cheese grits. We shared a side of collard greens and finished the meal off with beignets. Tasty.

After breakfast, we made our way through Denver, navigating north and east toward the old Stapleton airport. Jon and Jen live near there. We were bearing those Hanukkah gifts.

On the way home we made a complete circle, taking I-70 to Evergreen, then Brook Forest Drive to Black Mountain Drive and home. This particular route gives us a view of snow covered peaks to the west and lets us drive through more mountains on the way to our house.

Tonight we go to Domo’s, the rural Japanese cuisine restaurant Jon and Jen introduced me to long ago. Scott and Yin Simpson are in town and we’ll meet them there. Lot of driving.

Colorado, Politics, US History

Enough, Enough, Enough

November 29, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

This week’s Colorado shooting. Yes, he’s a terrorist. Yes, a black man in a similar situation would most likely be dead. Yes, he lived in the middle of South Park, the huge high plain only 50 miles here. Yes, his home was a trailer without sewer, running water or electricity. Yes, he was from South Carolina.

No, mental illness is not the problem. All but a handful of persons with mental illness, myself included (Generalized anxiety disorder), do not pick up guns and shoot people. No, Planned Parenthood is not the problem. The escalation of the rhetorical war in the so-called pro-life movement is a contributor. No, religious belief is not the problem. The absurd use of religious belief to justify already existing biases and hatred is so clearly a problem: ISIS, al-qaeda, Jim Jones, mongers of all apocalypses.

This is the second mass shooting in Colorado Springs in the last few weeks. In the first incident the eventual shooter was seen walking the streets carrying a loaded rifle and other weapons. When police were called, they said they could do nothing. Open carry is the law in Colorado.

I’ll say again. Let’s put the NRA on the list of those providing support to terrorists. Let’s emphasize the well-regulated part of the second amendment.

I also like making gun ownership applications similar to getting a driver’s license and, like driver’s licenses, make owning a gun a privilege not a right. I also like making gun ownership application processes equivalent to the most rabid right wingers dreams for vetting women wanting abortions.

And, let me say too: Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh. Enough, enough, enough.

Colorado, Health, Third Phase

It Feels Slightly Illegal

November 4, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Moon of the First Snow

Kate called up to the loft, “Do you want to go shopping for pot and out for lunch?” “If you still want to.” “I do.”

Down the mountain and into Denver. Broadway, a fascinating street filled with specialty furniture stores, vinyl record collections, funky restaurants and a block of marijuana dispensaries both medical and recreational.

We have to go into Denver because Jefferson County, where we live, does not allow marijuana sales of any kind. This conservative streak did not show up in the election results yesterday however when Kate and I and our fellow citizens of the county turned out a trio of right-wing school board members. They wanted our schools to teach only capitalism, American exceptionalism and a softer view of slavery. Oh, and they also treated teachers and teacher’s unions like pariah’s.

Still, though, no Mary Jane in Aspen Park or Conifer. We drove past the green block all the way to the Imperial Chinese Restaurant, a Chinese seafood restaurant we’d eaten at a month or so ago. Over shrimp, egg rolls, hot and spicy and egg drop soup, we discussed our pending purchase.

“This feels faintly illegal to me. Sort of guilty.” Like, I thought, I should be watching over my shoulder. Buying weed, after all, was a signal illegal act of the ’60’s.

When we got to Walking Raven, a premiere marijuana dispensary (as it says on its very own signs), it had a furtive appearance, much like the Adult stores of yore. No windows, nothing cheery about it, a block building, low and dull, as if embarrassed itself at what it did.

Stepping through the blue door above takes you into a narrow waiting area with a locked door in front of you and the entrance behind. A glass cage is on the left and a bearded young man looked at us. (His name is Matt and this is his picture.) A sign said, “No one under 21 admitted.” He asked to see, then take our driver’s licenses. “Do you really see us as under 21?” “You’ll get your licenses back when you’re called up.” Oh.

A door buzzed and Matt appeared on the other side. “There are three ahead of you.” We sat in comfortable chairs in the tiny waiting area. The three ahead of us were not Denver’s leading citizens. One man had the crippled walk of a person in permanent pain. Another sported a bushy red beard, jeans and a crumpled shirt. The third wore a Nepalese or Tibetan wool hat pulled down over bushy hair. He had on khaki shorts and displayed green socks sporting a marijuana leaf decoration. His tennis shoes were colorful keds. A hipster.

And us, two graying remnants of the ’60’s.

A young woman called us up in a bit, handed us back our driver’s licenses as Matt had promised. She had a leather glove on one hand and seemed confident. “We haven’t bought any pot recently,” I said. “Since the ’60’s,” Kate added. “No problem. We’ll make it as painless as possible for you.”

We told her we were interested in edibles. “Oh, they’re over here in the cooler.” The cooler was a small upright, maybe four feet high, but on a stand. It looked like a medical cooler you might see in a pharmacy. Inside were various colorful options: Edipure, Highly Edible Gummies, Cheeba Chews, Bhang Ice Chocolate, and Dew Drops among others. “The recommended dose is 10 milligrams. So the chocolate bars have small squares that are 10 milligrams, the gummies are 10 milligrams, one drop of the Dew Drops is 10 milligram.”

Kate chose Cheeba Chews*, a non-psychoactive blend of thc and cannabinoid. She wants to try it as a non-narcotic alternative to Percocet for arthritis pain. It was not cheap, at $55 for 8 chewable tablets. She’s not tried it yet, but I’ll let you know how it goes.

While waiting for her change, Kate noticed a second clerk reading things on the wall above the cash register. “I’m trying,” she told marijuana socks, “to tell how high I am.”

*A tasteful blend of chocolate taffy and CBD extract.

Each batch of high grade cannabis oil used to make Cheeba Chews™ is tested at three critical stages…The Flower, The Oil, The Edible…to ensure each individual chew is consistently infused. Individual 10mg chew in each bag.

Find a stocked Colorado dispensary

Ingredients: 10mg – CBD, Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Vegetable Oil, Skim Milk, Cocoa, Whey, Butter, Soy Lecithin, Flavorings | Calories: 10 cheebachews.com

Colorado, Mountains, The West

Foxy

October 25, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Moon of the First Snow

After some ice cream, we left Georgetown and, since Ruth wanted to go back a different way, we drove the Guanella Pass south out of Georgetown. It comes out in the very small town of Grant on Highway 285 about 25 miles from Shadow Mountain. The pass reaches 11,669 feet at its highest point and includes several overlooks, national forest campgrounds and a large Xcel energy hydroelectric station.

As we climbed, the snow cover got heavier and heavier until we reached an area where the snow was thick on the ground somewhere close to the treeline. 24 miles long the Guanella Pass takes a while to drive because it’s both narrow and twisty.

Along the way we saw this guy sunning himself on the road. He never moved when I stopped the car, rolled down the window and took several pictures. A healthy looking red fox.

This is wild, forlorn country reachable, for now, by car. One socko storm though and the Guanella Pass will close for the season. The Mt. Evan’s road, which traverses a similar route further east, climbs one of Colorado’s fourteeners.

Colorado, Mountains, The West

Tesla and Georgetown

October 25, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Moon of the First Snow

Ruth wanted to go to the Argo Gold Mine. We saddled up the Rav4 and drove through Evergreen, caught I-70 and found Idaho Springs. The Argo, in spite of its website, was closed. So, we had to regroup. Ruth thought Georgetown, a historic mining town, further west on I-70 might be fun, so we headed over there.

An Energy Museum caught Ruth’s eye, so we parked and wandered over to the smallish wooden building on the edge of downtown. It looked closed. Ruth had seen an open sign, but I was dubious. She still has faith in the veracity of signage. She was right.

It was open and turned out to be a fascinating place. Jason, the onsite employee, was an enthusiastic guy near my age. He explained that this was a working museum. Working? Yes, the museum was built around a functioning hydroelectric plant installed over a hundred years ago and still producing electricity with the same equipment today.

And, Jason said proudly, “It doesn’t produce any of that Edison direct current crap! It’s AC from the git go.” The first commercial AC plant was in Colorado, too. The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant outside Ophir, Colorado. It was built in 1890 and the Georgetown site came online in 1906.

This confluence of AC power generation probably has something to do with Nikola Tesla, inventor of alternating current. From 1899 thru 1900 he lived in the Alta Vista Hotel in Colorado Springs, carrying out experiments focused largely on the wireless transmission of energy. He liked the dry air in Colorado.

“What does it feel like to be the smartest man in the world?” a reporter asked Albert Einstein. “I don’t know,” Einstein replied, “You’ll have to ask Nikola Tesla.” Tesla is a protean figure whose relative absence from the public mind puzzles any who know the remarkable things he did.

Not only did he invent alternating current and champion it as an alternative to Edison’s direct current (AC maintains its strength much better while being transmitted from power station to consumers), he invented radio, though Marconi would eventually get the credit for it. Other notable Tesla inventions: Neon signs. X-Rays. Remote Control. Electric motor. Robotics. Laser. Wireless communications and limitless free energy.

Tesla has fascinate me for a long time and I’d like to see him get some attention here.

Colorado, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The West

Verticality and Aridity.

October 18, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Moon of the First Snow

When I went into Evergreen yesterday, just after turning off Brook Forest Drive I went past a house that had a bull elk and his harem resting in their front yard, maybe 15 does. A stream runs between the highway and this house. The trees gave shade from the brutal morning sun. A domestic scene with wild animals. It came to my attention when a large bulk moving caught my peripheral vision. That’s the paleolithic helping in the here and now.

It amuses me, when I go to Evergreen, to see the number of people who gather at the lake. All these wonderful mountains and the locals come to look at the water. I imagine only a former native of a water rich state would notice the irony.

Vertical and flat. Humid and arid. Those are the big differences between our new home and our old one. Here I drive through canyons, over high passes, around stands of rock with the view often limited to a few hundred feet on either side, sometimes less than that. When we leave Conifer and go into Denver though, we immediately return to the far horizons common to the midwest. We frequently transit between the great plains and the mountain west, living as we do in the borderlands between the two.

Though we have had a wet summer and somewhat wet fall, when the rains cease, things dry out fast. We can go from low fire danger to high in a day. That’s why fire mitigation is constantly on my mind.

When verticality and aridity intersect, as they do at 8,800 feet and above, a genuinely unfamiliar biosphere is the result. Unfamiliar to those from the rainy flatlands of middle America, that is. On Shadow Mountain we have two trees: lodgepole and aspen. Along streams there are more species of tree and shrub and there are microclimates that might support greater diversity, but on the bulk of the land that can grow anything, lodgepole and aspen. There are grasses, flowers, a few shrubs as understory, but just as often the rocky ground is bare. The mountains have strict limitations for plants.

The plant limits determine the fauna, too. Grass eaters like mule deer and elk do well, as do predators who eat them. There are small mammals that are prey for foxes and coyotes, but there are surprisingly few insects. That limits the birds. We have raven, crow, Canada and blue jays, the occasional robin, birds of prey that feed off food similar to that preferred by foxes and coyotes and other game birds. There are, as well, black bears. We’ve seen all of these save the bear.

Still learning about the mountains. Will not stop.

Colorado, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

A Mountain Autumnal Equinox 2015

September 23, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Elk Rut Moon

We are deep into a short and subtle season, the mountain fall. Today’s equinox, the autumnal, is not so relevant here on Shadow Mountain as the second harvest holiday. It finds no fields of corn, wheat, beans ready for reaping.

This does not mean Mabon, the pagan season between Lughnasa and Samhain, the other two harvest holidays, is not distinctive. Hardly. The early signal, as it is everywhere in temperate latitudes, is the changing of the sun’s angle as it descends from its northern zenith toward its southern nadir reached on the winter solstice. At some point in August, usually mid-August, the change in the sun’s position becomes noticeable and kicks up in memory high school football, back to school, leaves changing color, temperatures cooling. This is a nuanced moment, easily missed if life is too busy.

By Labor Day the new season accelerates with the temperatures actually cooler, back to school ads in the Sunday paper and, here in the mountains, the first brief flashes of gold. But the colors never broaden their palette. The fall signal is gold amongst the green. Right here on Conifer, Black and Shadow Mountains, the mountains we see everyday, the aspen groves are small and convert only patches of mountainside, but the effect is startling. What have been all summer ziggurats of green, uniform up and down, now are decorated like Christmas trees, one of those flocked trees with only gold ornaments.

The meadows tucked into canyons and valleys are a beautiful straw color, topped sometimes with a reddish furze. The season of desiccation, ignored by the dominant lodgepole pines, happens, though its reach is not nearly total, as it mostly is in the deciduous forest lands of the midwest.

The animals. Here the equivalent of the blazing colors of maples and oaks is the elk rut. Architectural wonders, the horns of mature bull elks, wander the mountains perched atop their owners, looking for does. Combat is an ancient, ancient sport here. And, like the medieval tournaments, it is for the hand of the lady. If they had them, the does would probably hand out colorful handkerchiefs and scarves for the bulls to carry into battle.

The mule deer shed their velvet in October, so during the elk rut, most of it, they still carry the moist, blood-rich covering that feeds antler growth.

Black bears are in the midst of a caloric imperative, their large bodies demanding upwards of 20,000 calories a day to insure they survive hibernation. That means constant searching for food and any disruption in their usual fall supplies of berries and nuts and honey finds them trolling residential areas in the Front Range or down into the Denver metro area. So another sign of fall are the reports of bear home and vehicle invasions.

Breathless anticipation of snow also begins to dominate the news. A couple of inches in Rocky Mountain National Park last week got several photographs on Open Snow, a forecast website devoted solely to snow and, in particular, snow where it can be skied.

Winter does not loom as the incipient oppressor as it does in Minnesota. It’s foreseen with anticipation, like the holidays. Winter is a fourth outdoor season here. An often repeated quote, an advertising slogan probably, is this: There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear.

So fall in the mountains is not the climactic end to a long growing season. No filled silos or grain elevators. Instead it is the time between the heat and flourishing of summer and the cold, snowy time occupied by hibernation on the one hand and bombing down the mountains on the other.

Colorado, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase

A Harem

September 20, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Elk Rut Moon

Coming home from an appliance purchasing excursion we saw a herd of approximately 20 elk does with one large racked bull standing just off to their side. This was along Shadow Mountain Drive about a half a mile from our house. A couple of hundred feet away, looking at the herd from a slight rise, was another bull, also with a large rack. Probably the loser.

We stopped in Morrison, the town next to the Red Rocks Amphitheater, for dinner at the Cafe Prague. It was 70 degrees, sunny, but headed toward evening. A lone guitar player strummed and sang pop tunes. Orange roughie and Weiner schnitzel.

The move to Colorado has been a good one for us: smaller grounds, smaller house, living in the mountains close enough to the grandkids, out west. Every day has an element of vacation attached to it.

Yes, the medical issues seem to just keep on coming, but that would have happened in Minnesota, too. The health care here is excellent. We should know. We’ve met more healthcare professionals than anybody else since our move here.

Our third phase has become a Colorado event. Kate’s removed from her former work environment and I’m removed from the context of my Minnesota life. We’re developing our third phase life in a place that nurtures us both and where we can also be nurturers.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Great Work, Science, Travel

Martian Meteorites, Dinosaur Skeletons and Peyote

September 18, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Elk Rut Moon

The Denver Gem and Mineral Show. “Largest in the nation.” I believe it. Vendor upon vendor occupying all the audience circulation area around the seating in the Denver Coliseum (where the hot dogs and beer get sold. And big on its own.) The coliseum floor and the circulation area around it, plus tents in the rear parking lot. We ran low on energy before we could get outside.

Spoke with three vendors, each unique. One wore a t-shirt that said Save Our Sacrament. He’s part of a church in Arizona that considers peyote its sacramental substance. His church welcomes all races, so they’re not covered like the native americans though he claims using peyote as a sacrament is legal in five states (actually 6 according to the churches website): Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Nevada and, drumroll please, Minnesota.

Second guy was a Colorado rockhound who clearly loves rocks. He told us about geodes with water inside (think how old that water is), how to tell jade from other rocks that look similar (put your hands on it. if it’s heavier and cooler than its neighbors, probably jade) and showed us his personal pendant, a space owl, a piece of agate (I think.).

Meteorites were the domain of the third guy. eegooblago meteorites. I asked him what an ungrouped meteorite was since a row of small pieces were labeled that way. He started slow, but got excited as he moved into his explanation. It involves an organization that is the only official meteorite naming authority. They have lists of meteorites by type, a sort of “canonical taxonomy”, great phrase. If, after a lot of checking a chunk doesn’t fall with the canonical taxonomy, then it’s ungrouped.

He went on to show us the Martian meteorite, the only one certified and named by the authority. (see picture) Not cheap. But, to own a piece of Mars? Wow.

I learned from him that deserts are great places to find meteorites and the Maghreb is one of the best. “Morocco,” he said, “has a very sophisticated meteorite market. The Maghreb itself not so much.” He and his partner do occasionally hunt on their own, but mostly they go to rooms in which many collected rocks have been gathered.

In the Maghreb they rely on the folks who travel the desert regularly. They pick up various rocks and bring them back to a collecting spot. Then, using a handheld device that can “read” elements, he and his partner decide which ones to buy.

There were things I wanted to buy. The Dinosaur Brokers had a very nice fossilized skeleton of a small meat eating dinosaur for only $4,200. Another outfit had a huge Woolly Mammoth tusk, gorgeous. $14,000 plus but they were willing to wheel and deal. Their words. Fossilized fish, Woolly Mammoth teeth and vertebrae. Dinosaur tracks. Most well out of my price range. Didn’t buy anything though Kate got a number of things for grandchildren gifts, including some coprolite, fossilized poop. For Gabe, of course.

Colorado, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

September 18, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Elk Rut Moon

Gold is in the hills and mountains. Black mountain has a streak of gold running to its peak, like punk rocker with a taste for precious metal. The temperature has dropped. It was 46 when I got up this morning and will get to 39 tonight. Fall has arrived. Our realtor said fall in the mountains is brief and doesn’t have the variation in color of a Minnesota, but “…has its own beauty.” She’s right.

(Black Mountain Gold. Taken from loft balcony.)

This is a minimalist color change. One tree, the aspen, goes from green, making it blend it with its conifer neighbors, to gold, making it complement them. The effect is stylish. You might expect those blocky black leather couches and chairs set out to view the green and gold mountainscapes.