Ilanarama!

Been gone a while, first to the Colorado State Democratic Convention (you can read my write-up at the Denver Post's PoliticsWest blog here - and haha, four out of our five CD3 delegates were elected from the Western Slope, including one guy from our county) and then off to Utah and Arizona for what was going to be a week but stretched into two because, mmm, Utah and Arizona.

Shakedown cruise of our shiny new-to-us Sportsmobile went A-OK! Even though it's rather painful filling the tank (30-40 gallons * $4.50-$4.90 diesel = ow ow ow) we only had to do it twice during our two weeks out; what a contrast from our old RV which got less than half the mpg and had about half the tankage. Of course gas then (2005, when we sold it) cost about half what diesel does today....

Used 4WD four times, twice on long, nasty jeep roads to and from trailheads, and twice briefly to get out of sand or mud hazards. Mostly camped in pull-outs off BLM or NFS land, but spent 1 night in free campground and 4 nights in definitely not free but still damn primitive NPS campgrounds. Hiked between 4-10 miles every day except for one day when we did a bunch of mountain biking instead; a couple of days we both biked and hiked, either because we were using the bikes to shuttle between trailheads and make a loop, or because we used the bikes to access the trailhead (in Zion, which was YAY). Oh, except for one day in the middle when we totally vegged out. Took about a bazillion pictures which I shall be putting on Flickr and annotating here.

I want to be still on vacation, damn it. I am not sleeping half so well in my own bed as I did under the van's pop-top. I suddenly have all this $%#@! work to do, and my house is a mess of dust and cat hair, and my lawn needs a haircut, and so do I. And there are all these photos that need rotating and uploading and captioning. And I want to write about our awesome trip. So I'm going to (try to) stay away from my friendslist and see if I can manufacture some spare time that way. If you have posted something I should see, point me to it.

The problem with having nice friends who invite you on river trips and loan you nifty inflatable kayak thingies is that then you get all covetous and want to spend money and get your own.



That's me on the Dolores river, paddling the Fat Cat, which is kind of like a cross between a kayak and a cataraft. Steve and his girlfriend Sue are on the cataraft in the background, and Britt, who took the picture, is in an inflatable kayak (duckie). Britt and I traded crafts on and off, but I felt a lot more confident in the Fat Cat and used it in all the named (class II and III) rapids. Part of it was because the cat is more stable and the seat's higher, so I could see better, but part of it was because during my first stint in the duckie, the wind was blowing really hard (well, it was blowing most of the trip!) and one astonishingly strong gust overturned the duckie and knocked me into the water. Yep, I took a spill in flatwater - and had no problem with any of the rapids. Clearly, I have a very special talent. Sigh.

The Dolores is a nifty river. The section from Slickrock to Bedrock (yabba-dabba-dooo!) starts out in a fairly open valley which the river paradoxically travels through crosswise; the valley subsided after the river was entrenched. Then it enters a classic desert sandstone canyon which was occupied by pre-Puebloan cultures who left plenty of artwork behind:



( More pictures and more river rambling. )

I should add that we drove our NEW SPORTSMOBILE YAY out to do this trip (well, it's just a couple hours west of here) and we camped in it the night before we put in - everything seemed to work beautifully. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of more desert trips this spring, and mountain trips this summer.

Except now I want a Fat Cat. (Britt wants just a regular inflatable kayak, like the Aire he was using, which costs maybe a couple hundred $ less - not much difference, really.) Steve got his at the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake, which we went to last year and came back from with all sorts of schwag and pro-deal stuff. So the question is, do we shell out the money for the boats now, so we can play all spring and summer, or do we wait until OR in August and maybe save a thousand bucks between the two of us? Thing is, this is a wet year, and there are a lot of tiny rivers which are not normally runnable that we could do. Like the Escalante, which is very tempting - remember this picture from our hike last year? It's runnable maybe one year in five. And this is it. Steve offered to loan us his boats again - but then reconsidered, because he wants to come with us, and he'd need one of them! Then again, we could just rent inflatable kayaks, which I'd be fine with as long as we did flatwater rivers. Decisions, decisions.

But I think we will go to OR again. I guess I should work on our website so it looks a little more legitimate... :-)

This weekend we are headed up to Laramie to look at a used Sportsmobile. It's a lot like our old Westfalia Synchro, except, you know, with an actual engine instead of a hamster wheel. Absurdly expensive, too. Um, yay?

...you wake up to a snowstorm, and in the middle of the afternoon go for a run in t-shirt and shorts.

Well, it's over and it was a blast. For those of you who don't know, my husband and I are co-committee-chairs of La Plata County's Precinct 3 (Colorado) for the Democratic Party. We started at the 2004 caucus, at which there were 12 people. At the 2006 caucus, we had 6. Last night, we had 39.

( I belong to no organized political party: I'm a Democrat. )

Then, a bunch of us went out to one of the local brewpubs and drank beer and watched CNN reporting the results on the TV over the bar. Woo! Next time, I'm going to suggest we hold the caucus in the bar.

Via zadcat. I've linked a bunch of answers to photos, although many of them are from the remodel so some of the background things have changed (like the front door in the floor photo).( Our house is a very very very fine house )

Playing chess with Death
Even the most skilled masters
Have to lose sometime.

I, um, just remembered that we took a bunch of photos of this trip. Me, Britt, Kristen, Rolfe, and Gregory went to Cochise Stronghold, which is in southern Arizona about a million miles eleven hours south of here. We'd intended to do a bunch of climbing, but the weather got sucky; we climbed What's My Line (5.6 A0) in cold, windy conditions and then bailed on doing anything other than hiking around a bit the next day, because it snowed. Phooey.


Kristen climbing


Britt rappelling


Me in a horizontal chimney (possibly the exit of Inside Passage, possibly just some random squeeze)


Me, Gregory, Kristen, and Rolfe around our campfire

Seventeen pictures here on my flickr page.

motorcycles fall
with max acceleration
to jump River Styx

Dear La Niña,

It's not that I actually mind walking downtown in shorts and a t-shirt in mid-November. But the mountains look kind of stark, all brown with no snow on them. More importantly, we ponied up for weekday passes at Purgatory Durango Mountain Resort, and we would like to get our money's worth this year. And of course, this year's snowfall will turn into next summer's water supply, and the plants I put in the yard this summer are going to die if I can't give them at least a little.

Yes, I know that it's still early in the winter, and our big snowfalls typically happen later. But we're currently at 10% of normal snowpack for this time of year, which does not bode well. So if you don't mind, could you move the jet stream just a tad southward? The San Juan River Basin will thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Ilana