San Felipe, Thanksgiving 2011

 

Kinsee and I went to San Felipe with her family and Derrik for Thanksgiving. More pictures on Flickr.

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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

My Own Personal Videographer

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

The Drive from Durango to Denver

I’ve only done it twice so far, but I love the drive from Durango to Denver. It takes about six hours, about the same amount of time San Diego to Santa Cruz is (a drive I did about ten times) but it’s way more exciting. One of the things I really like about it, is that depending upon which way you go, you’re only driving on the interstate for between 10 and 60 miles. The rest is mostly two lane highways, that go right through small towns. I like slowing down and driving right through a town rather than speeding past on the interstate. It reminds me of a lot of the cities I passed through while travelling by bus in Argentina (and the landscape is similar in places also).

There’s plenty of things to see along the way, one of which is South Park, Colorado. We stopped there last weekend to check it out while driving home. It’s not identical to the tv show town, but it’s apparently where they got some of the inspiration for it.

Just a few miles down the road is “Two Mile High Stadium” I’m hoping to stop there next time.

Local Food

I don’t consider myself a localvore at all, but lately I’ve been eating some great local food thanks to our CSA share with La Boca and the farmer’s market every week.

With the CSA we don’t get to pick our food, they just deliver what’s been grown. This is nice because we eat things we otherwise might not. We’ve been eating some great beets, chard, kale and all sorts of other things. We got some potatoes this past week which were awesome. Yellowish fingerlings, red and purple potatoes. All delicious.

At the farmer’s market I’ve been buying basil and eggs. The eggs are from local ranches and the basil is from a local farm. I bought a gallon zip lock bag of basil for $3. Pesto made with the local basil and local garlic was just amazing. The garlic we got is so much more flavorful than any garlic I’ve had before (even at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the supposed Garlic Capital of the World).

I was afraid I’d use all the basil for the pesto but there’s still so much left. Summertime is good out here…

Lake City, Colorado

Lake City, Colorado is the spot where Alfred Packer ate five of his fellow travelers while stranded in winter 135 years ago. I’ve heard that Packer is the only person convicted of cannibalism in the US, but I’m not sure if that’s true. You might know Alfred Packer from the fantastic Cannibal: The Musical, a musical retelling of his story.

We headed out early Saturday morning for Lake City, Colorado, about a three hour drive up into the mountains to do some backpacking. Some friends were supposed to meet us there, but they decided to take the “short cut” over Cinnamon Pass and couldn’t make it over, so it was just Kinsee, Walter, Mona and I. The trail was only 4 miles but over 2000 feet of elevation gain. It got steep in some parts but not too bad. We got to Waterdog Lake and were the only people up there.

I was a little disappointed that the surrounding mountains weren’t more rocky and that there was no good beach or jumping rocks at the lake, but it was nice regardless. We camped around 11,100 feet and the weather was perfect. As is usually the case (unless you’re in a canyon) the hike out was much quicker and easier than the hike in.The physical geography of Southwest Colorado reminds me so much of that of Andean Patagonia, from El Calafate to Bariloche.

Below are some more pics from Lake City and Waterdog Lake.

Bayfield, CO Fourth of July 2009

I spent my second Fourth of July in Bayfield. Other than the shock factor of not knowing what to expect, it was just as great as last year. We had a wedding shower the night before and a couple of Kinsee’s friends came to town to hang out.

Below are some of the pictures. You can see more on flickr.

The Economics of Non-Financial Things

The lastest NPR Planet Money podcast is a great example of why I listen to Planet Money and Marketplace.

I’m not big in to economics, at least not in the traditional sense of the financial world and money and all that stuff, but the economic principles can apply to all sorts of other parts of our lives. The latest podcast is about South Carolina Governer Mark Sanford and is on the Economics of Cheating and Love. I think it’s facinating to look at other non-financial aspects of our lives in economic terms.

La Boca Center for Sustainability

Sunday morning we took a trip down to the La Boca Center for Sustainability to check out their farm and, if we liked what we saw, sign up for their CSA. La Boca is an old railroad town on the Pine River just north of the Colorado/New Mexico border, about 35 miles for our house. More than just a farm, La Boca practices and teaches principles to farm/ranch sustainably.

Gabe the Assistant Director of the center was our tour guide for the morning, showing us the property where the grow the crops, raise the animals, and even his low impact housing. Towards the end of the tour I found out that Gabe went through the Ecological Horticulture program at UCSC and knew/worked with Amy at Freewheelin’ Farms. That was the farm we got our CSA from when I was living at Zami House. Small world. We signed up for their CSA, hopefully the food is as good! (And if anyone knows where I can get duck, emu, ostrich or any other “strange” eggs in the Four Corners area, please leave a comment!) Kinsee’s pictures are below.