Daily Archives: January 16, 2012

Family, Travel

Jumping Horses

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Winter                            First Moon of the New Year

Sometimes you do something for one reason and have an unexpected outcome.  Tonight was like that for me.

The Great Western Stock Show, Colorado’s winter State Fair-like celebration of things Western, has become my time to visit with the grandkids.  I take the kids to a couple of shows, walk through the exhibition hall with them and get down into the stock barns, too.

This afternoon at 5 we boarded a shuttle here at the Best Western, making it out to the show around 5:15.  Gabe had his picture taken on a Clydesdale.  3 year old Gabe and this giant horse made quite the shot.  Very big horse, very small Gabe.

After a dinner of polish, briskets and chicken nuggets we wandered the merchandise and exhibition halls, seeing John Deere implements, cattle chutes, Western clothing, candy, baby chicks, several cages filled with chickens, a bee exhibit (I chatted with some Colorado bee keepers) and bought Ruth a lavender cowgirl hat.

Before going to the main event, we wandered through the horse barns, stopping to communicate with a few.  On the wall opposite the last of the horse stalls were some larger stalls.  In two of them  were Texas Longhorn cattle.  One came out of the stall while we watched, he had to angle his head to maneuver those huge horns through a three foot + opening.

Then we went to the event center for the Grand Prix, a $40,000 steeple chase, which pitted 27 horses and several riders against an 80 second clock and a series of jumps designed by the top steeple chase course designer in the US.

I’d never seen horse jumping live.  It amazed me.  These huge animals and their relatively small riders approached jumps of various heights, widths and construction.  One had water and another had a brick wall, both difficult for horses to cross.

The horse would gather itself in stride, then leap, stretching out those four legs, legs meant to have contact with the earth and follow their momentum across the obstacles.  This is an act of courage, skill, athleticism and beauty.  On the part of both rider and horse.

I would do this again.   Never occurred to me I might like it.

 

 

Family, Travel

The Triangle Hotel

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Winter                        First Moon of the New Year

Worked this morning on the novel.  Finally finished editing all the stuff I’d written before and got back to actual writing.  A bit of stop and go, flushing out the pipes, reorienting the fiction side of my brain, but a page or two got put into bytes before lunch time.

Kate was over at Jon and Jen’s helping Ruthie clean her room.  Lunch at the Renaissance Hotel, a ziggurat inside with open balconies narrowing as they get toward the top.  Plants dangle from a few planters, the paint is an egg shell gold.

Gabe and Ruth refer to the Renaissance as the triangle hotel, a landmark visible when returning from Ruth’s gymnastic practice.

In the gift shop you can buy Stetsons, belt buckles, items carved from deer antlers and many accessories decorated with large flared crosses, studded with rhinestones.  This is Great Western Stock Show memorabilia and disappears when the horse and cattle trailers pull out headed for Wyoming, Montana or Texas.

Faith and Spirituality, Travel

Jon and the Big Picture

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Winter                              First Moon of the New Year

Jon and I went to the Yak and Yeti, a Nepalese place in Denver.  We had the buffet, talked of politics and generations, family and China.  Jon’s a bright, well-informed, guy whose political views have nuances.

He’s worried, for example, about a currency collapse if the dollar is no longer the world reserve bank note.  I haven’t followed the argument closely, but from what I know of it, it imagines a scene in which China pulls back from the dollar, suddenly giving the privileges of the reserve to some other lucky money.

Here’s my two cents.  As the world’s largest economy, it is in no one’s self interest to torpedo the US markets, especially for China.  The interlocking nature of trade reduces the likelihood of hostilities, whether fiscal or military.

Britain, bestride the world at the end of the not so long ago 19th century, made a shift of the nature Jon anticipates, falling to second rate power status.  Yet Britain and the British have survived.

We will not suffer the same fate.  At worst, and I imagine, at best, too, we will be demoted from hegemon to co-hegemon.  China and the US, perhaps eventually India, will share responsibility for word leadership.  That’s bad for America 1ster’s but good for a world that can benefit from dilution of power in any one country’s hands.

Then we got in the rental Nissan, navigated through the blinking lights of Denver, the front range at our back and went back to  Pontiac Street.