Category: Beautiful Colorado

Snowmobile Training

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

There’s a guy in Search and Rescue that has caught my attention.  I know he has a snowmobile so I asked him if he wanted to go snowmobiling sometime.  He said yes.  And then asked if anyone else wanted to go.  Huh?   Oh, he didn’t get it.  I do know that my friend wants to go badly.  We are both new to Search and Rescue and in need of some snowmobiling practice/lessons.  So I mentioned her.  Next thing I know, it’s 4 of us going and it’s now a training.  I played that wrong.

I know very little about snowmobiles.  I think I was on one 17 +/- years ago and then again 25 years ago.  Plus, who gets to go snowmobiling for “training”?  So, even if it is training and not a date, it’s going to be fun.

The two guys decide that we should take 2 snowmobiles out instead of 4.  Good plan.  Richard comes up to me after the two snowmobiles are ready to go and asks who is riding with who.  Really?  He doesn’t get it.  We all ride out to a big field where the two guys get off and let us newbies practice riding.  Riding out to the field I kept imagining what it would feel like to drive a snowmobile, and even though I’ve done it before, I couldn’t even guess what it would feel like.  That in itself is such a very weird feeling to be setting out to do something you can’t even imagine feeling.  We around the field for a bit.  It took me a while to get comfortable with the speed and turning, but I got more comfortable.  I thought it might feel like floating, but it wasn’t quite like that.  It was quite a bit more effort than I expected to turn them.  Even though it didn’t feel like floating, it was fun.  We spent the rest of the afternoon trail riding.  There are so many snowmobile trails.  I think you could ride for days.

A few days later we decided to go again, but this time start at dusk.  It was three of us since the guy I like decided not to go.  He definitely doesn’t get it.  Still, it was so much fun. I got to drive the whole time.  It was super creepy which added to the fun.  The headlamps would only illuminate a small section of the trail ahead of you and the area to the sides and behind you was dark.  The headlamps would throw weird shadows which looked like animals or other things moving just off the trail.  We went up to a point where you could look out over the valley and see all the lights of Granby.  Granby isn’t that large so “all” the lights isn’t like looking at a city, but it still was fun to see and it was more lights than I would have expected.

Post blog note: It has been confirmed that at the time of snowmobiling, he did not get it.  It took until August, but now Richard is my boyfriend.  He gets it now.

The Sound of Happy

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

There is a very big YMCA camp near where I live.  They have cabins, lodges, horseback riding, a sledding hill, a Nordic ski center and so many other amenities.  I have gone cross country skiing there a few times.  The sledding hill is near the Nordic center.  Today it must have been part of spring break as the amount of kids on the hill was 4 times as many as I’ve seen before.  Usually, I enjoy the quiet of being out in nature or at least the sound of my skis on the snow or my jacket rustling as I move.  Today, you could hear laughter, squeals, giggling, screaming and general chatter.  It filled the air and traveled quite a distance.  If you closed your eyes you could just see the smiles on all the kids faces.  The sound of happy was everywhere.  It was such a nice change from the quiet and much better than listening to music through ear phones.

Bonfire

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Uncategorized3 Comments

My little town built a Christmas tree out of old pallets.  It was put up by the Chamber of Commerce and strung with lights.  By day it looked like a jancky pile of pallets with some lights wrapped around it.  At night it actually looked like a Christmas tree.  So what does a small town do with their wooden Christmas tree after the holidays are over?  Yep, you guessed it – Bonfire!

The bonfire was held at the dog park.  I walked over with one of my neighbors.  The bonfire had started before we got there so you could see the glow from it as we approached.  As we got closer you could hear the country music playing.  There were probably about 60 or 70 people standing around the bonfire.  There was a small pop up tent selling beer and soda. I heard stories of how it took a lot longer to light the fire than they had expected.  It was fun watching friends and neighbors catch up with each other and watching little kids running around.  I met some of my neighbors and heard some of their stories.  Once the fire started to dwindle we headed back home.  It was nice way to spend a few hours of the evening.

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Silence

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sometimes we forget what silence is like.  We surround ourselves with constant stimulation and that comes with constant noise.  We are watching tv, checking facebook, playing music, or talking most of the day.  There’s the noise from cars, airplanes overhead. and the electric hum of all our electronics and home appliances.  Then there are the more natural noises such as rain, wind or animals.  I think we stop noticing how much noise we are surrounded by each day until we happen upon actual silence.

On my hike today it was a very still day with no wind.  Hiking in the snow is not silent.  The snow creaks and crackles underfoot.  Snowshoes make a crunching sound.  My jacket and pants add to the noise as the fabric brushes up against itself.  Then, if the trail is steep, my breathing becomes louder.  Today I didn’t need snowshoes as I was walking on snow that snowmobiles had packed down.  I have spikes on my shoes held in place by chains so I had the added noise of a pretty metallic clink every 5th step or so.  Of course, I didn’t really notice all the noise until I stopped and the complete absence of noise came rushing in, almost feeling like a physical wave of energy.  It almost knocked me over.  There were no animals moving about, no wind, no cars, no motors, no music, no movement at all.  I stood there in silence for at least 15 minutes before continuing on my hike.  As I started to move again, the sound my movement made became almost deafening in contrast.

I hope you can find and enjoy some silence in the upcoming week.

 

Front Yard Ice Rink

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, UncategorizedLeave a comment

One of my neighbors had a potluck get together for New Year’s Eve.  I only know one neighbor and she invited me so I could meet some more.  When she invited me, she said, it’s at the house with the ice rink in the front yard.

What?

When it was time to go, I figured I’d just walk down the street until I saw a house with an ice rink in the front.  That shouldn’t be too hard to find.  It was already dark and the temperature was below 0 degrees.

A few houses down the street I saw three kids playing hockey in the front yard.  My neighbors had flooded their front yard creating an ice skating rink.  It had a nice lip all the way around it so the rink was well defined.  The kids were having a great time playing hockey.  I’m not quite sure how you play hockey with three people, but they were loving it.  They didn’t even look up or notice that I walked by their rink and up to the house.  They didn’t seem to notice that it was dark and cold out.  When I left the party a couple hours later they were still in a heated game, skating to their heart’s content.

Now I want a skating rink in my front yard.

 

Snowboarding

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, UncategorizedLeave a comment

 

Two things I really missed about Colorado – Snow and being physically fit.  So, I was quite excited to go snowboarding.  I’m not sure mother nature is as excited about me going snowboarding.

My first attempt involved me driving up into the mountains in a white out blizzard.  I got to the tunnel and it was closed.  This is not abnormal.  They often shut it to let hazardous materials trucks through when the road around it closed.  Sometimes they close it when the roads are bad to clear the road or clear accidents.  So, I waited patiently.  I always have a book with me for situations like this.  Two hours later, the tunnel was still closed.  I turned around and went back down through the blizzard to go home.  Later I found out the ski resort I was going to was closed at 1:00 because of avalanche danger on the roads.  Welcome back to Colorado!

Then the next time I went snowboarding, I got up late because I was going by myself.  I got to the resort and there was a line of cars for the parking lot.  A parking guy came up and told me the lot was full and only cars with 3 or more people could wait for the lot.  So, people without friends are no longer allowed to ski.  I found a spot along the road quite a distance from the resort and managed to catch a ride in the back of a truck up to the resort.  I was determined to get that board on the snow.  Wow!  There is no oxygen up there.  I have also gained weight and every time I bend over to buckle my bindings, my stomach gets in the way.  Then I’m bent over trying to get these things buckled which is actually more work than I remember.  My belly is pushing on my lungs so I can’t get a full breath.  Add that there is a severe oxygen deficiency and I was exhausted before even getting on the lift.  I managed to do three runs before my legs started complaining.  At that point I decided that I could say I went snowboarding, but I couldn’t say I was enjoying it.  It took me a half hour to walk back to my car.  As far as snowboarding went, it was a disappointing day.  As far as getting a good workout in, it was a fabulous day.

Now, I’ve decided that snowboarding needs to happen during the week because the weekends are too crowded for single people.  The next time I went I made the goal of doing at least 4 runs.  I got there and it was -3 degrees and dropping.  I met a friend which was nice.  I did manage to do 4 runs, but was so cold by the end of the 4th run that I couldn’t stand it anymore.  And of course, it’s still painful, work with no oxygen.

The next time, I got up there late, but managed to get 4.5 runs in so I count that an improvement.  I would have done more, but the resort closed.  This time I took advil before which helped a little with the screaming legs.  I hope there’s a steep recovery somewhere in the near future.

Interesting question on the extra weight I’m carrying.  Some of it has to do with being weak and out of shape.  Some of it has to do with Valentines Day candy that mysteriously jumped into my shopping cart.  But, all of last year I was out of shape and didn’t have the extra weight and I ate sugar as if it was one of the major food groups.  I’m back in the US for less than a month and I put on so much weight that my skin hurts.  I am wondering if all the conspiracy theory drama about the horrible toxins in our food is actually part of this.  Is my body freaking out from the change in food?

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Final Snow

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, UncategorizedLeave a comment

What a day.  This was my last day snowboarding.  It wasn’t as awesome as I had hoped.  I went by myself, traffic was horrible, whine, complain.  Then the last run, I decided to take a tree run off a green that no one had taken.  Somewhere in the back of my head I could hear the voice of past mistakes saying “No! Bad idea!”.  But, how bad could it be?  What?  They’d pull my pass on my last day?  It was steep.  It was untracked.  It was wonderful.  It funneled into a deep hole with almost vertical sides and no logical way out.  Crap.  I decided to try to get out by going back the way I had come just before going into the deep hole forever.  It took a half hour of post holing up a near vertical slope with snow up to my mid thigh.  Thank god for the snowboard instead of skis.  I could use it to put my weight on so I wouldn’t sink as far and carve away some snow so I wouldn’t sink as far.  It took a half hour to get back to the green trail I so badly wanted off of earlier.  It was more cardio than I’ve seen in the past couple months combined.  I was delighted to take that green run all the way to the bottom and back to my car.  Did I learn my lesson?  Probably not.  I’m sure the lure of fresh untracked powder will call to me again and I’ll follow, but not for a while as there is no snow awaiting me in Thailand.  This picture isn’t from that run, but from the run before it that wasn’t quite as awesome or as terrible.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Grilled Cheese Blizzard

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I moved in with Jay and Deana until I leave for Thailand.  The house is rented and I wanted to move out as soon as possible so I’m not putting the final packing and cleaning off until the last minute.  I was going to do the final cleaning on Sunday, but I slept for 18 hours instead.  I went up to the house yesterday and did about half of it, but I also needed to help out at work too so I didn’t get all the house stuff done.  So, I got up early this morning to finish it up.  I awoke to a blizzard.  It took me over an hour to go to the post office and back.  By the time I got back, I decided that driving up to my house sounded too exhausting.  I would just work here and deal with it tomorrow.  Around lunch time, Deana suggested we have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  Apparently I kept forgetting I had soup and then would buy more soup so I when I moved in here it was me and a lot of tomato soup.  The idea for grilled cheese and soup was so perfect that no other lunch was going to work.  But, there was no cheese.  As much as I didn’t want to go fight the bad roads to get cheese, I was coming to conclusion in my head that it was going to have to be done.  Just as I was coming to this conclusion, Jay demanded that I move the truck out of the driveway so he could take the motorcycle out.  Huh?  We got at least a foot of snow and it’s still snowing.  Did he say motorcycle?  Yes, yes he did.  He explained that it’s so fun in the snow and asked if I wanted to go too.  Then I remembered he has a motorcycle with a sidecar. Ah, yea, I want to go.

It was so much fun doing donuts in the middle of the road and riding through the snow to the store.  And then we had grilled cheese and soup and it was perfect.  The End.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Elk Traffic Jam

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful ColoradoLeave a comment

One of the most amazing things about living in Colorado, especially in the mountains, is the wildlife.  It is not uncommon to have traffic back up in Evergreen due to a herd of elk or deer trying to cross the road.  I have no issue being late because I had to wait to watch this happen.  It happened today and I just felt so grateful for getting to stop and watch them.  This is probably my last elk traffic jam before I leave.  I wonder if there will be monkey traffic jams in Thailand?

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Where did that Lake come from?

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful ColoradoLeave a comment

Snow! Did I mention I love snow?  Oh, yea, I think I might have mentioned that before.  I skipped work to go snowboarding today.  Financially not a wise decision, but spiritually, a fabulous decision.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  I had a very odd experience.  I’ve lived in Colorado for 18 years and have skied or snowboarded every winter as much as I can.  I’ve been to Keystone so many times I can’t count.  The first run I did today, I sat down to put on my board and then looked up.  I could see Lake Dillon off in the distance and I realized I had no idea you could see the lake from Keystone.  What on earth had I been looking at for 18 years that I missed a giant lake?  I am completely baffled and amazed.  The only thing that makes any sense and the story I’m going with is that they just put the lake there last week.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore