Author: Steve

Kayaks on the Colorado.

Disconnecting in Carbondale in a light rain following the thunderstorm. We
have a routine. I drive us there. Judy goes inside and gets us registered,
while I disconnect the tow car. I got the disconnection done, and went
inside out of the rain to check on Judy’s progress. She was still inside
chatting at the front desk. I hadn’t been inside more than a minute, when
the woman behind the counter directed us to our site. She was very
specific. She looked right at me and explained “That’s space “N”, like in
knucklehead.” What was that? I was only in here a minute. I had hardly
even made any smart aleck remarks at all. She must be a man-hater. So we’re settled in at the Crystal River Resort outside Carbondale for a
week. It’s right on the Crystal River. It’s a little rough here.
Carbondale is a little rough. A messy mountain town. But when you look
around at where we are, Wow! What a place to be. We’re parked with the water right outside our window. Good background noise
for sleeping. We’re right next to/under a blue spruce tree. The mountain
chickadees are outside, only three feet away. There is a white-breasted
nuthatch creeping up and down the tree trunk. The water looks a little high and rough for fishing here at the campground.
The water in the Crystal River is silver gray, just like always. Tomorrow,
we’ll scout around for a friendlier spot to fish. A little less drop.
Smoother slower water. I’ve never liked the Crystal for fishing. That’s
because I have never done well here. We have some information about where
to fish upstream, though, which could change my opinion. This might not be
a stupid river after all. Today, we drove back to Aspen to pick up the bicycles. We drop them off at
the Physics center when we first get there and leave them all week. It’s
handy to have them right there for lunchtime transportation. We got so
excited yesterday about finishing up and getting out of town before the
down-valley rush hour started, we forgot to load them back onto the car. Let me explain rush hour in Aspen. A beautiful town like this, isolated in
the high country, you wouldn’t expect something so cosmopolitan as a rush
hour. But Aspen is different. It is so beautiful here, more people want to
live here than can fit. As a result, property values got bid up. They used
to complain that all the local residents got pushed out by the millionaires.
Now they’re complaining that the millionaires are getting pushed out by the
billionaires. It comes down to this: If you have to work to be in Aspen,
you can’t afford to live in Aspen. Aspen is for people who have already
made their money. It takes a lot of people to provide the services and support for the Aspen
residents. People who can’t afford to live there. They commute. They
can’t commute out the east end of town, because the only thing off that
direction is Independence Pass. They go west. West to Basalt, El Jebel,
Carbondale. There is no relief in Glenwood Springs, so they turn left and
go off toward Rifle and Parachute. It’s forty miles from Glenwood to Aspen.
Thirty miles from Carbondale. It’s not cheap to live in the towns
down-valley, but it’s possible. We checked the classifieds for Aspen. You
can get a one bedroom apartment in Aspen for $2,000 a month. They commute. We haven’t actually seen the commute. It is legendary, so we avoid it at
all costs. Even without rush hour, it’s a difficult road to drive. It
alternates between two lanes and four lanes. The speed limit is sixty-five
miles per hour, but the drive is punctuated by stop lights. Stopping for
red lights at highway speed. Maybe ten lights between here and Aspen. I
don’t know the road well enough yet to anticipate all of them.

Wednesday. The conference concludes. We talked about strategic planning and about
working smarter. In the back of the space next to us, under a tree, in the gravel, is a
killdeer nest. Mom is sitting on the eggs, on the ground. If Judy or I get
close, she makes noise and gets defensive. If Annie gets close, she runs
off. We’re being careful not to get too close. The owner’s manual says we should wash and wax the motorhome every six
months to preserve the finish. That has been bothering me because we have
owned the motorhome for more than six months now, and I haven’t managed to
get to that yet. Judy found a crew washing motorhomes in the park yesterday
and had them wash and wax the Bounder at our site. They had it completely
done in a couple hours. It looks great. I feel better. I didn’t need that
weight in my wallet either. Off to Susie and John’s house on the river.

Tuesday. The conference continues. We talked about what is happening in the
profession, OMB Circular A-133 audits, marketing, and communications. After the conference, Judy and I went back to Red Rock Canyon for a dinner
picnic. Got an entire family of chukar. Sas phainopepla, ladder-back
woodpecker, raven, coopers hawk, cactus wren, rock wren, and a wild burro
encounter. A very loud wild burro encounter. The sleeping weather is good. It’s over a hundred every day, but it cools
off into the eighties after dark. We set the air conditioning on sixty-four
and open the windows above our heads. By morning, the outside air has
cooled off to sixty and the air conditioning has stopped running. For that
part of every day we get cool clean unconditioned air. Got back to the motorhome and was looking through the bird list and
discovered that chukars aren’t on it! 299! A whole family of big chukars
and little baby chukars. 299!

Sunday. Cousin Ed, the Las Vegas taxi driver, stopped by for a visit last night. He
assured me that traffic on Sunday would be completely different from traffic
on Saturday. He even explained the logic. This is Las Vegas. The crowds
arrive Friday night. Saturday they fill the city with their cars. Sunday
they go home. Saturday is the worst day of the week for traffic. It makes
sense. Sort of. I decided to try it again today. Carefully. We drove the route Ed suggested. He was right. It worked. I attended the
Sole Practitioner’s Brunch. The drive worked so well, I’ll even try it
tomorrow for an 8am start. We’ll see if his explanation holds up to weekday
rush hour traffic. It’s a hundred six degrees outside on the sunny side. That’s not in the
sun, that’s under the awning. In the shade. Over on the other side, on the
shady side, it’s only 99. It makes a difference. Inside, it’s 76 degrees.
This is much better air conditioning than we had in Shamu. It’s still
roof-air, but it’s vented into the ceiling. It doesn’t just blow cold air
out from directly under each air conditioning unit. Both the air
conditioners feed into ducts that vent out at regular intervals all along
the ceiling. It’s a good design. The Jeep parks in the direct sun here. I leave the tailgate of the Jeep
open any time we’re not in it to cut down on the solar gain. Driving along, on the way here, I realized we’ve come full circle. All
those years ago, traveling in the VW Bus, sitting over the front wheels,
rear engine pushing us along. It’s the same design. Nothing has changed.
We’re back to doing what we started with. It’s just a big VW Bus. When we’re plugged into 50 amp power, we can run both air conditioners, the
coffee maker, the microwave, the hair dryer. It doesn’t matter. The lights
don’t even dim. I wonder how much power the house in Louisville is plugged
into. The lights in Louisville dim when the air conditioner kicks on.
Circuit breakers pop if we turn on the hair dryer while the coffeemaker and
toaster are already going. Fueling has evolved into a generally benign experience. It’s better than it
used to be. With pay at the pump, we never get stuck standing in line in a
smoky building, waiting for the cashier to ring us up. But fueling in
Colorado, I forget what the experience can be like in other places. In
California and Nevada, at least parts of California and Nevada, they have
discovered a wonderful offset to their costs. Advertising. The pay at the
pump screen? After it has collected your credit card information, they can
make it yell advertising at you. And better than that… they can disable
the pump handle so it won’t stay on unless you stand there and hold it, or
they can abbreviate that spring shaped wire that helps the nozzle stay in
the filler hole, so again, you have to stand right there, and you can’t walk
away while they’re advertising at you. And. And. You don’t have any
volume control. You can’t turn it down. I don’t know how much the station
gains by doing this. If it is a penny or two a gallon, I would gladly pay
that much more for my fuel to avoid this. I would pay a lot more than a
penny or two to avoid this experience. Wait! Wait! There is something else. I’m not done yet. I’m standing
there filling a motorhome at the diesel pump, and they cut me off at $50.
$50! If I’m willing to stand there and put $100 in my tank, why would they
want to cut me off at $50? It’s not like they have to. The tank before
this, I got to put $150 in my tank off one credit card ring. Why do they
only want me to spend $50 with them? That’s it. Gas stations suck. Let’s all boycott gas stations. The ones
that suck, anyway.
Today we talked about succession planning and paperless offices. Tomorrow, the conference starts in earnest.