Being of a certain age that qualifies you for such things, Ms. Seeking and I became eligible for our COVID vaccine this week. After a year of weirdness and months of waiting I can honestly say I have never been more excited to receive a vaccination. Come to think of it, I’ve never had a vaccination elicit any kind of excitement at all until this one.
If you haven’t heard of Playing for Change and their Songs Around the World you owe it to yourself to check it out. They basically ask musicians from all over the world to play a song on their respective instruments, then edit it together into something that is truly greater than the sum of its parts. You can find dozens of their songs on the YouTube or the Playing for Change website. This is one of my favorites, The Weight by The Band, featuring Robbie Robertson himself. In the key of F-demented, if you’d like to play along.
After my Fooses Creek ride a couple of weeks ago I began thinking of other places in the area where I could get the fat bike back into the mountains in snow. Preferably someplace with a well-packed trail that goes a little deeper into the woods.
Besides enjoying our share of the outdoor activities Colorado has to offer, one of the other things that’s been an entertaining part of our relocation has been discovering a whole new assortment of local adult beverages.
With the in-town trails mostly melted out and muddy I decided to take the fat bike on an adventure a little farther afield in search of rideable snow. I wanted to try segment 15 of the Colorado Trail which runs south from Highway 50 just above Maysville to the top of Continental Divide.
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks alternating between skiing and fat biking, depending on the weather in sunny Salida versus up in the mountains. No complaints here, not a one. I found this nice little video about riding the Kettle Valley Railroad trail in British Columbia. And while I have no intention of camping overnight in the snow or riding to Argentina like this guy (check out his other videos if you want to be amazed), I think this video captures the feel of fat biking in the snow as good as any I’ve seen.
Winter is finally getting with the program around here! We got two straight days of snow followed by an evening of single digit temperatures which makes for light, dry powder the consistency talc covering everything like a soft down comforter.
Over the past month and a half, snowstorms in the Sawatch have been few and far between. Conditions up at Monarch have been an unpleasant combination of wind-blown hardpack and exposed rocks. Not wanting to break bodies or equipment we’ve been doing far less skiing that we had hoped. In fact, over the past two weeks I’ve spent way more time riding my fat bike than my skis. Then on Monday the high country got 5 inches of fresh powder and with the solid base already laid down we headed up to Monarch to check it out.
I set out to make this blog a place to share stories of things going on in our lives in Colorado. But damn, the events of the past two weeks, cumulating in the attack on our nation’s capital on Jan 6 make anything I have to say about what’s going on here seem trivial and out of touch. In my life I never thought I’d see armed insurrgents storming our nation’s capital, let alone the president encouraging them to do so. But here we are.
What’s most amazing to me is not that Donny Small Hands is a con man. Everyone knows that. What’s amazing is that so many people fell for the con and so many others either encouraged it or stood by and let it happen. If nothing else, these events are the perfect argument for why we need to be teaching critical thinking in school.
Whoa, two posts in one day! Our snowshoe adventure in the previous post actually happened yesterday but I just got around to organizing photos and posting it. This happened today. I will be returning to my regular haphazard “schedule” starting in 2021 so don’t go getting used to this twice a day thing.