Place Your Bets

Here we go.

Now, for the next seventeen days we will be watching the best in athletics, not necessarily amateur athletics. There are quite a few players that are getting paid through sponsorships and other means to help them train on a full time basis. Most of the countries and even here in the U.S. there are still athletes crawling out of bed at 4am after working the night shift at the Buswani Food Mart, tying on the old sneakers and taking it to the street---or water buffalo path. But last night's opening was pretty fun. Nothing better then the Queen of England, having relinquished herself to being a 'Bond Girl', parachuting in to the games right before the crowd stood on their feet and sang 'God Save the Queen.'

Those crazy Brits.

I won't eat up more of your time. I know this Saturday morning you have lawns to cut and laundry to wash before you even think about turning on the TV to see that highlighted bike crash on the men's 10K, or maybe the girl from Italy missing the pummel horse all together and crashing into the first row of folding chairs. I think a lot of us watch the games for the great performances, but I have to admit, I am one of those that watches sports like I would ever, which I never do, want to watch NASCAR-for the crashes. Nothing crippling, of course, but come on. Who doesn't want to watch the diving competition from the high platform and see a belly flop? We all do if we were honest.

So, get the laundry and lawn squared away. Order that pizza or get the hot dogs grilled before tonight's show. Who knows, the Olympics might be as good as a Daytona 500 on a rainy day.

Sorrow

Most of the time, my blog is in the process of seeking some humor in life’s daily stuff. Not today.

There is no humor in what happened in Aurora, Colorado. Everyone who heard about the killing and hurting of almost one hundred people and the shattering of countless other lives, begs explanation. We always want a reason why someone would do such a thing, any reason is better than no reason. When we don’t have that reason, we start to try to pigeonhole the actions into something we can explain, at least to ourselves.Having that explanation wrapped in our brain pan, it allows us to go on. At least we 'know.'

It never works.

Unfortunately, it won’t be the last time we have to do this. From Columbine to Red Lake to the Arizona representative shot in the head and the world watched her recover, we are an animal that absolutely finds it miserable to live quietly for any length of time in peace.

We want to. We talk about it. We vote for it. But behind the smiles and ‘he was such a quiet neighbor, kept to himself a lot’ type conversations, eventually, something pops, and we find ourselves again sitting in front of the six-o’clock news with our hand over our mouth and shaking our collective heads at the images on the TV, listening for that explanation.  

So, what could we ever do to counter this depressing, overwhelming, nauseating thought of such a desolate future?

We can love.

Yep, we get up, push away from the TV, take a deep cleansing breath, and love. We love our neighbors, love our families, love the guy in the grocery store, love the poor, love the rich.Love the family of the shooter. Love the victims. Simply love and whatever that looks like.

That’s all we can do.

When you  think about it, that’s all we need to do.

Men and the Fifth Level of Pi

I have come to the conclusion, there is nothing more manly, more able to tap into a man's testosterone, more willing to spark a man and cause him to grunt and find the simple function of his brain stem, then pouring and setting concrete.

I poured a concrete slab early this Saturday morning. Had the boys over, three wheelbarrows, tools, AND RE-BAR! Anytime you can put a man with other men, concrete, a concrete truck, and RE-BAR you got yourself an event that transcends time.

I do not want to take away those testosteroney events from my brothers if they haven't ever done this- moments like parachuting into Kandahar in the dead of night or throwing a runner out at home from deep right field or even something as simple as changing the flange adapter to your m-wheel brace all contribute to the 'Big T' development, passing by a moment with my ancients and campfires, skinning the fatted calf, digging an arrow out of someones shoulder, those kinds of things. For men, all these things cause a significant release of that little hormone. But nothing can compare to schlepping mud like the Romans who invented it.

My daughter suggested that throwing a few hundred dollars at the project and allow some seasoned, experienced labors do the work would eliminate the sore backs, knees, shoulders, neck, feet, eyes, basically all parts of my fifty-four year old body that is sitting here popping ibuprofen like their jelly beans while I write this. But then, I wouldn't be in touch with the ancient Romans and the Big T. I laughed in her face and proceeded to order my three full yards of PSI 3000 Mix On Site bad boy concrete.

The project was set up quick, executed like landing Apollo on the moon, and after just twenty minutes, all the concrete was off the truck, being pushed into the corners and woven around the iron (really steel but the word iron is just more manly), cutting in expansion joints. We were running a cacophony of shovels, trowels, and enough sweat to take out three shirts, enough sweat to soak your shorts--both of them, running down your leg into your socks and pooling in the bunker fire boots we "accidentally" forgot to give back to our former employer thirteen years ago, just waiting for a day like today.The fact I didn't use the restroom for most of the day and when I did in the afternoon, the fluid coming from me was the color of lemon zest pie might have been an indication to the miscalculation of our hydration issues. 

Yep, that's what men do. I guess you could say the same thing for just about anything men participate in, but moving concrete, having a cement truck in your driveway, you have every man in the neighborhood perk up their ears, stop in their tracks in whatever it was they were doing, and turn in the direction of the disturbance in the force. Its like the migration of the Great American Bison during the rut. They're RADAR was on this primal event.

An incredible moment. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go tank up on some injectibles, a tall-boy of whiskey, and a bath, before I fall asleep sitting up.

Wait, I need to go pop a Bayer aspirin, you know, just in case.

Morning Peace and a cup of joe

As you can tell from the picture, morning rush hour here is a bitch. This being the last full day here, I get my cup and go for the complete walk, hitting every street, before sunrise, which actually doesn't hit the valley until almost 8:30. This time of day, when the street lights are still on, is something else. I've given up trying to explain it years ago.

Jake was driving his water truck again, washing down the streets after yesterday's heavy rain. It was enough rain to break the back of any fire danger here in the valley and surrounding areas. Jake's partner was driving the street sweeper. That little piece of machinery could be heard up on 6th Street and 3rd Avenue. The deer on the toboggan hill didn't seem to mind the noise, they just kept grazing. As you walk down Main, when you walk passed stuff in the gutter the sweeper missed, you find yourself picking it up and throwing it away.  The second crew comes in behind the street crew and waters the hanging flower baskets and empties the trash cans found on each corner, getting the old girl ready and presentable for her fans.

The morning walk this early in the morning was well before the Artisan, Back Street, and Silver Nugget restaurants were open, requiring me to come back to the apartment and refill my coffee before hitting the lower half of the town, down by the livery where the mule teams were just waking up. Crows/ravens/black birds, whatever they are, start the sounds of the day with their cawing. Someone told me once what the difference was between a raven and a crow, not that I am losing any sleep over it. They are big enough to carry away your toy poodle if you had one up here, which some visitors bring, causing the wolf hybrids some residents own to salivate just a little.

The trip this year was pretty simple. The town continues to change, one shop closes or sells and another opens. Someone sells their house, the next owner paints it. It can't grow, there is no place to grow too, unless you attach yourself to the side of a cliff and that's just fine with me and probably most folks here. They work to live here, not live to work.

Not a bad philosophy.

Ouray on the 4th

This is small town America. Ouray is the county seat with no stop light. This morning, the street, by 6:30am, was already filled with cars, parked along the side of Main Street. Many of them were trucks so families can sit in the back of them and watch the parade, a small American town, like thousands of others across the country today, having a parade to celebrate the country's birth.

Today is a day of tradition here, culminating in a fireworks display to challenge those in New York and Boston, only its been cancelled due to the fires ravaging the state. Still, the Ouray County Volunteer Fire and Mountain Rescue had their traditional pancake breakfast this morning in the community center on the second floor over the fire truck bays. The mountain rescue volunteer staff is up all night, right after the Volunteer Rescue Dance from the night before. These hearty souls stay up all night drinking beer and making pancakes as well as eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, gallons of coffee, juice and just about anything else that would go with a breakfast. Some, as you walk down the line, meet your eyes with their blood-shot ones and toast you with a half empty beer bottle. Just like pirates would do, if pirates were makers of pancakes. At 8, starts the Ourayrace 2012, a 10K run that heads north on Highway 550 and then back on Oak Street, circling around with a Hollywood finish coming down Main from the south of town. Lots of skinny, fit people run this as well as some show offs pushing their child, or someones child, in a stroller while pulling the family dog, or someones family dog.

The parade is at 10. There is a fly over sometime after the parade, about 11. One of the military branches sends some form of aircraft down the canyon, just as they reach the town, they light in the afterburners, setting off every car alarm in town. One year, it was a C-130 which has no afterburners but was fun to see a large plane fit into a reasonably tight canyon. Lots of 'oohs' and 'aahhs' on that one along with 'holy crap, its going to rain plane!' The highlight might be the fly over. Mine is the synchronized wiener dog team.

At 2 today is the Fire Hose Fights. Teams divide up and try to knock each other over with a fully functional, fully on, stream of water from a fire hose. Teams actually train for this, have custom made helmets and body armor. It has been described as getting hit with a Barry Bonds bat, only constant. Now, to me, that sounds like fun.

At 4 today, the concert in the park starts. I'm not sure if this takes the place of the fireworks usually seen about 9 or if this was part of the plan the whole time, but music in a small town park actually sounds like fun. We'll let you know.

Today, even with all of America's problems, issue, disagreements, we can still come together and celebrate the reason we are able to have all those issues. I  don't think Iran has a synchronized wiener dog team. They, apparently, aren't that sophisticated.

Ouray and after the lay of the land

DAY 2-3 REPORT
We took a jeep tour yesterday. We went up to Red Mountain and took the Corkscrew Gulch leg into the depths of Red Mountain #1. There are three Red Mountains in a string and I'm sure they each have names but our guide apparently named them 1, 2, and 3. When you're a jeep tour guide, you can say stuff that can be pure sci-fi and no one would know or care about. This picture doesn't do it any justice, but does justify the name. We went into the mountain and somewhere near the top of one of the endless peaks, snaking along a ridge line to a point of just under 13,000 feet where only lichen and the marmot live. There, off to one side, was the remnants of another mine. Hundreds of scratches in the sides of these mountains where you can't even stand straight without falling over. You have to ask that miner, if you could, "Okay Giles, what made you pick that site to start digging for gold, hmm?  Were you drunk?"

When we came back, we went down to the town's deli and ate lunch. This place was bought by a young couple with young kids a couple of years ago, wanting to escape the big city life of Montrose. I remember the glazed-over look in their eyes when they were first starting out wondering what foolish move they made. Apparently, they worked it out because the kids are now working the front counter and pouring each sandwich plate with a bountiful load of Lays potato chips. They make their Caesar Salad with chunks of chicken from a real chicken.

O'Brien's Pub has as part of their drink menu called-'flights'. Well, we had to try them, purely for the reporting need. Each flight contains four special whiskeys. We ordered Leprechaun balls, fried pickles, and scotch eggs to 'marry' the flavors according the literature that comes with each flight. Of course, after the second drink, no one really cared about the fight, who was married, or anything other than how the good whiskey in a Irish pub in the middle of a small Rocky Mountain town made you feel. We laughed at nothing. We, as a group, decided we should make this a formal meeting place to discuss the needs of the community, economic well-being, sports, the color of that mole one of us has, and  of course, the whiskey. It seems to be a need of the group to do this.

This morning, starting on the early walk, Jake the Ouray City maintenance guy, was filling his water truck via the fire hydrant at the corner of Main and Seventh Avenue before dawn this morning. You can recognize Jake from his soft demeanor, the walrus mustache and the steel blue eyes. He was part of a morning crew that was busy washing the street for the 4th of July parade tomorrow. Every morning, they move up and down the street, towing a water trailer and water the hanging baskets of flowers from each street light at each intersection. Another worker is running a CAT with a scrubber attached to its front, the kind that  you have in a car wash that scrubs your tires only this one looks like it s on steroids.

The Artisan Bakery wasn't open yet at 7 when I walked by, so I just came on back to the apartment for my refresher cup of joe. The big debate is about breakfast, then maybe a nap. When was the last time I have ever had a nap, besides the fact its in the morning. I know the Artisan will be closed tomorrow. The whole family is in the parade. They are driving a truck pulling a flatbed with a montage of people spanning the centuries dressed in period garb. The float will be labeled Baking Across Time. I heard they are dressing their baby up as a bag of yeast. Hmm.

Ouray and the lay of the land

It is Sunday morning and you are up checking your e-mail and Facebook stuff. There is another release from that Williams guy who is in that place, somewhere in Colorado. You roll your eyes and mumble under your breath about someone getting a life and not filling up your time with such dribble. So I have an idea for those people-go start a nice hot bath, your joints ache anyways and you can justify it, throw in some bath salts, they will help. Take your clock radio in with you and listen to NPR, catch up on the news while you relax, then, just for the heck of it, PULL THE RADIO IN THE BATH WITH YOU.

For the rest, let me give you a quick lay of the land-

Ouray is ten official blocks long and six blocks wide if you don't count Oak Street on the other side of the river that flows down the west side of town. To the north, beyond 10th Avenue, is the park, the hot springs, and several RV parks and support facilities like a gas station. To the south, through some of the prettiest and dangerous mountain passes in the U.S. is Silverton. The town is in a grid with streets running north and south and avenues running east and west. Main Street is really state highway 550, connecting Durango on the south to Montrose on the north. It goes beyond those towns but that's all I care about.

I try to head out every morning before the sun is up, trying to see what's what, who is who and will report on those findings. As you can see from the photo above, state route 550 is not too busy. There were eight cars parked on the street from about 3rd Avenue on the south to 10th Avenue on the north. The mountains around the town are so high, the sun doesn't hit the valley floor until well, now, about 8:30.

This morning was just a quick scouting mission. After making my first cup of coffee, I headed east up to 6th Street on the far east side, my favorite street because it backs up to the forest. You think of places in your mind and you quietly tell yourself, "If I just had this, my life would be complete." That is 6th Street to me. Peace sits on a front porch rocker here.

Except for Tommy Hoggins. He lives on 4th Avenu,e that intersects 6th. He could be heard calling his mother with that nasally voice of his. "Mom?" Mom!" You know the one, the frequency of someone's finger nails on a chalk board, which is okay if it hadn't been for Tommy Hoggins being forty-seven years old and still living at home.   

As 6th Street turns back west and down into the heart of the town, I walked past the toboggan hill, looking for the Bad Boys of Ouray. They are three not so young deer that hang out together and their whole mission in life is to find rose bushes, cherry trees, any flowering plant at all, and consume it. If they were your kids, you would be getting phone calls from people telling you your teenage boys were going through the alleys looking into peoples' trash cans for cool stuff. Mischief makers they are, with a 'tood. I wasn't expecting to see them, still disappointed from last year when they didn't show at all, but as I came out of the Artisan Bakery with my first cup of refreshed coffee, there they were, working their way from the west side of Main to the east on 4th Avenue, stopping traffic (okay, just one truck) while they moseyed across the highway. There were only two of them and sure, they might not be the same three deer, so? My feeling is the third one was either up early and already got the goods its brothers didn't, or was still incarcerated in the prison in Uruguay for the bar fight it started.   

So far, so good. I will give you reports on the businesses and who is still here. You need clarity on things like this. You need to know, for example, the difference between Ouray Brewery and Ouray House Brewery. Not that it really makes any difference to any of us, a cold beer is a cold beer.  One place might be a well run, clean establishment with a waitress that wipes down your table and greets you with a smile. The other might be where your high school teacher fled to after the warrants for his arrest came out regarding that little misunderstanding with the school credit card. Again, if the beer is cold....