Goodbye Durango (You will be Missed)

Durango and Fort Lewis College from Hogsback. Oct, 2009

Kinsee and I are moving. We’re headed back to San Diego. We’ve known for a while now that we’d be leaving Durango, we just didn’t know exactly where we would be going or when we would be leaving. Last week Kinsee got a job offer in San Diego and we decided we’d be heading back.

San Diego’s not the perfect city, but it might come close. I feel like I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it in the past, but I’m excited to be going back. I’m sure there will be things I hate (traffic, well driving anywhere in general) but so many of my friends are there, the weather is damn near perfect, and there’s a whole lot going on in the craft beer realm.

There are things I’ll miss about Durango (and a lot of things I won’t miss, but I don’t want to dwell on the negative). I can’t imagine a better place for cycling (well 9 months out of the year). Road or trail, it’s pretty much perfect here. It’s beautiful, the picture above doesn’t do Durango justice. And I’ve had no complaints about the craft beer in Durango.

But we need to get back to a bigger city. Durango can be a little stifling if you’re not prepared, that’s not to say we haven’t had a lot of fun. We’ve met some really great people  too.

My last hurrah in Durango will be the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. I’ll be racing the train 50 miles and 5700 vertical feet up to Silverton in just a few weeks, then we’ll be on our way to San Diego.

We’ll be back to visit plenty  (hopefully in the summertime) but we’re both looking forward to getting back to San Diego.

stifling

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Iron Horse Bicycle Classic 2010

I had hoped to ride the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic last year but didn’t do it. I didn’t train enough and it filled up before I felt I was ready. I’ve been talking for a few weeks now about wanting to ride in the Iron Horse, and decided I’d better get serious and sign up for it. I’m definitely not ready right now, but have a few months to get in shape. I even talked Chris into riding.

Last week I started training for it. The weather had been really nice for a while so I got to ride about 60 miles on the road and then when a storm came in last weekend I rode about 20 miles at the gym. There’s a good 15 mile, mostly flat loop I can do on my lunch break, and an 11 mile out and back ride with some climbing I can fit into my lunch break as well. My plan is to ride about 100 miles a week for a while and then some longer rides on the weekends as we get closer.

The Iron Horse is a 50 mile ride/race from Durango to Silverton with abotu 5700ft of climbing over 2 10,000ft passes. It happens on May 29th, so I have about 95 days to get in shape.

My Own Personal Videographer

This Small Town Life

Kinsee and are doing a radio show on the local college/community public radio station, KDUR. It’s on Sunday’s from 12:30-3pm and can be streamed from the KDUR website.

We’re also trying to podcast as much as possible. You can stream it after the show from our website or subscribe to it in iTunes.

This past week, our first show, we were only able to podcast the pre-recorded produced piece, but in the future we hope to have all the talk sections on the podcast. Unfortunately we won’t be able to podcast the music, but we will post the playlist online.

Hammett – Morlan Wedding Reception

For a blog called “Just a Life Story”, it seemed strange that I hadn’t posted about getting married yet. Kinsee and I got married September 19th, 2009 at the Silverpick Lodge just north of Durango. Kinsee made a slide show of some of the pictures from the official wedding photographers. Below is a slide show I made of pictures Chris took at the reception. For our first dance we started dancing to a slow Whitney Houston song, then had a record scratch come on and Kinsee told everyone to get up and dance with us, and the much more danceable song in this video came on. (Hopefully they won’t remove the video or the song because I don’t have permission to use it).

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Hammett – Morlan Wedding Reception“, posted with vodpod

Miss Mona’s First Snow

We got our first snow of the season early this morning. We woke up to a couple inches outside. Miss Mona is only six months old so she’s never seen snow fall. The only time she’s seen snow was on a hike up in the mountains over the summer and there wasn’t much of it.

She didn’t know what to think of it at first, she wouldn’t go outside while it was still snowing until I went out and pulled her out the door. Once she was out there she had a great time.

It stopped snowing for a while so we went for a walk. I swear this is almost exactly how I reacted to snow last Christmas when it snowed for two day straight.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Miss Mona’s First Snow“, posted with vodpod

 

La Boca Center for Sustainability CSA: Week 4

I blogged about our tour of La the La Boca Center for Sustainability a few months back, and now we’ve finally started getting our weekly deliveries.

It’s mostly greens right now, but we’ve been told it will get better and better as the season continues. Pictures of this weeks food is below.

Blogging and San Diego

I haven’t been blogging much here, but I’ve been doing a ton of blogging over at BeerNBikes.com Durango, CO (and the surrounding Four Corners area) is an awesome place for both craft beer fans and cyclists.

I still read up on things happening in San Diego every once in a while, especially all the wonderful beer being made.

I saw this post on Draft Mag’s blog about the SDCityBeat Festival Of Beer coming up in May, and their summary of San Diego pretty much sums things up for me:

Occasionally, we consider moving to San Diego. It’s warm. All the time. It’s beautiful. All the time. The people are attractive. All the time. Honestly, what’s not to like? Then you visit, however, and realize it’s essentially a city devoid of culture, unless you consider being a stop on the way to Tijuana an important cultural experience. We don’t.

They do have good things to say about the CityBeat Festival of Beers though.

Celebrating Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey died 20 years ago tomorrow. I’d never even heard his name until at least 10 years after he died. But since the first page I read in The Monkey Wrench Gang I’ve been captivated by his writing. I’ve read nearly all of his books since. I agree with him on a lot of things, and disagree on a lot of other things, but I always find his writing thought provoking and entertaining.

Monday at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango there’ll be some people gathering and reading to celebrate old Cactus Ed. I’m excited to go and meet some like minded people, hear Ken Wright and Kate Niles (among others) read and just have a good time.

There’s more info at The San Juan Almanac and Maria’s Bookshop.

Feeling More Durango

I did two very Durango things this past weekend.

Saturday I bought a mountain bike. Mountain biking seems to be huge here, and I can understand why, there’s a lot of open space and beautiful country around here. I’ve been road biking for a few years now and I felt I should start mountain biking out here. I picked up a used Yeti F.R.O. hardtail. I’ve been itching to get out and ride it, but it was snowing Saturday. Expect some pics and more about this bike on BeerNbikes.com.

Yesterday the weather was nice, probably perfect for mountain biking on some of the trails that dry earlier in the year than others, but instead Kinsee and I went up to Durango Mountain Resort for some winter sports action. It was my first time on a snowboard (I want to ski, I’ve never been skiing either, but Kinz insisted I try snowboarding first). She said I did good for my first day, I’m not sure if she’s being nice or what, but it seemed like I spent almost as much time on my butt as I did on my feet. I stayed on the bunny slope, but stood up quite a bit. The snow was hard packed so when I fell it hurt. After one good run of standing up the entire way I fell hard on my ass and decided it was time to hit the bar. Kinsee went up to the real slopes and got in some good runs while I read the paper and spent some time in the sun.

I’m sore today but look forward to giving skiing a try next year.