Trail Thoughts

This is the place where I write about some of the things which occur to me while I'm "on the trail".  It's more for me than for others, but you're welcome to read them if you wish.  Of course, if I wanted to keep them private, I shouldn't put 'em on the web, huh?  Duh...   :-)

In Colorado, altitude is king...

Intellectually, I knew this all along.  Twenty years of vacations in Colorado couldn't help but reinforce the fact that the higher you go, the colder it gets, and the more difficult it is for "lowlanders" like me to breathe.

I took about three months to really get used to the altitude.  A brief week-long trip back to Ohio resulted in our losing a bit of acclimatization, but it was regained within a week.  Staying down low for too long would undoubtedly require another lengthy acclimatization.  A good excuse for not staying too long down in the lowlands!

When it comes to weather, a thousand feet of altitude make a big difference, especially in the fall.  I expected that I'd be able to watch the progression of fall aspen color move down the mountains from the 12,000 foot peaks across the valley down into the valley floor, just below 9,000 feet.  I was wrong.  I would have needed much more than three thousand feet to really see the progression, but it is there nevertheless.   While it may look like early winter up here, pictures on television of Denver show the leaf color is at its peak.  Once the snow starts flying the influence of altitude is very obvious to me just by looking out the window.  "Down here" at 9100 feet, the first snow was gone within a couple of days.  But it remained up top for several weeks.  The peaks directly facing the sun lost their coat first, and it gradually melted in the shadows as well. 

Undaunted, Mother Nature keeps trying, and eventually succeeds in coating the tundra with the white coat that will last into next June.

Meanwhile in October, unwilling to wait for the really big storms that come later on, man begins to cover selected ski trails with his own snow.  Again, it's the highest resorts with the temperature advantage.  Loveland Basin, straddling   the Continental Divide at over 12,000 feet, opened first this year.  Keystone, lower but with greater snowmaking capability, opened near the end of the month.  Breckenridge, Copper and Vail usually open in mid-November.

In the summer, one can find Colorado columbine blooming first at lower elevations, and later into July at higher elevations where snow lingers longer.  Wildflowers can be found throughout the season, again first at lower altitudes, and later at higher.

Even from a considerable distance one can see the tundra turning green as snow melts from its slopes.  Later in the growing season, it's obvious from the color of the underlying rock where the snow sits longest, even when it's all gone,   Green: early melting and a reasonable growing season, grey: late melting, and a summer too short to support much plant growth.   And when the tundra begins turning red, we know that fall is not far away in the valleys.

On low humidities:

For us, one of the great advantages of moving to Colorado from the east is the lack of humidity.  When we vacationed here, we noticed that glasses full of cold beverage didn't "sweat" the way they did in the east.  Old habits die hard, and we still use coasters on table tops where beverages will sit, even though they're not strictly necessary.

Correctly assuming that we wouldn't need our two dehumidifiers, we sold them before moving west.  The new place had a humidifier, instead.  It averages about five gallons of water per day, evaporated into the house.  Even with that, petting either of our cats results in static discharges which occurred only on the coldest winter days in Ohio. We have developed a different way of petting the cats as a result, since they're correctly not at all happy about the static in their coats.

We still find ourselves carefully sealing potato chip and cookie bags to keep them from getting mushy.  They won't, of course.  But bread has to be sealed to keep from becoming "crumby".  And brown sugar has to be very carefully guarded to keep it from becoming an impenetrable brick.

We still have problems waking up in the middle of the night with very dry nasal passages. 

But good riddance to the high humidity of the east!!

On resort town economies

During good years, jobs are plentiful here.  Service jobs.  Most pay between $8 and $10 per hour.  Not bad if you are living in a tent.

Meanwhile, property values in Summit County are skyrocketing.  Had we followed our original plan and waited  in Ohio two more years to save up additonal money, it is quite likely that we would not have been able to afford our move.  As things worked out, we found pretty much what we wanted, but had to stretch financially to make the move.  

The problem, it seems to me, is the old supply-and-demand situation.  Many people would like to move here.  The supply of housing is limited and nobody has added any land to Summit County (about three-quarters of which is in National Forest and Wilderness areas).   Ergo, prices go up.  With a very strong demand and limited supply, prices go up quickly.  Just imagine what it will do when most of the Baby Boomers retire!

The quintessential example of supply-and-demand running completely uncontrolled is Aspen, Colorado.  The cheapest place of any kind in Aspen hovers around a million dollars.  This for a "house" which would sell for under $100,000 in central Ohio.  As land prices skyrocked, valuations increased, and taxes went through the roof.  Unable to afford the high taxes, the middle class sold and moved to Carbondale or Glenwood Springs.   Now the problem is Aspen is the "dark community" syndrome. Multi-million dollar houses sit empty most of the time. What a waste.

The same thing could happen here.  Much has been said about "affordable housing" and "employee housing", but the problem remains: land prices are high because demand is high.  Much money can be made by developing the land and selling the "upscale" home at the inflated market rate.  Why would anyone build cheaper housing?  How does one hold down a $10-per-hour job (or, indeed, two jobs!) and make house payments on houses which range from an average of $600,000 in Breckenridge to $240,000 in Silverthorne (in 2001)?

The end result: jobs are plentiful here!  But the workers can't afford to live nearby.  Aspen deja vu!

On retirement

I have mixed feelings about this.  The problem is that I miss the best parts of my teaching job--roughly 20% of the job.  I don't miss the daily routines, paperwork, hostile parents and hassles.  I don't miss getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go to work.  But I miss helping people.  I miss being able to sit down and write a program which elegantly solves a problem.  And once in awhile there was that head rush where the lights would come on in a student's brain, and I had a hand in flipping the switch.

I get up in the morning now, check my newsgroup and e-mail.  Maybe go for a walk or drive in the morning and get a few pictures with the digital camera, for use as e-mail attachments or perhaps in the web site.  Cora comes home for lunch nearly every day. Afternoon activities might include a movie or a trip to the recreation center.  As ski season approaches, I'm looking forward to using my season pass at Copper for an hour or two a couple of times a week. 

Do I regret retireing and moving to Colorado?  No way!  Moving here was the culmination of a life-long dream.  Whenever I am out driving, I look around and cannot believe I'm living in what is certainly one of the most beautiful places in the world! 

On working from home...

It occurred to me the other day that everything I did in the last half of my teaching career (i.e. that part which dealt with computers) has served me well now that I'm retired and can work when I want, not when I have to.

I taught myself how to do basic PC maintenance.   I figured out how to connect with a PPP connection when all I was using before was a connection to a BBS.   I ran a BBS for a couple of years at the high school, and became more familiar than I wanted to be with the headaches of system administration.  For the last two years I was network administrator of the high/middle school.  Lately I heard on TV that some of the technology jobs that are going begging even at Sun Microsystems are system administration jobs.  *I* know why.  And I know why I'll never go back *there*!

I taught myself how to use Netscape to do simple web pages.  It was fun then, and now it actually pays!  My marketing strategy still reflects the teacher within.   I would rather show the client how to do it him/herself than be paid for everytime he/she needs help.  It's an empowerment thing, I guess.  I used to think that this strategy was excellent for working myself out of a job, but the last three years of teaching showed me that this was not true, as long as I kept ahead of the majority of users.  With all this time on my hands, that shouldn't be too hard!!  As long as it's fun...

On tourists...

The nearby town of Frisco has a Wal-Mart.  The unique thing about this store is the incredible view as you come out the door into the parking lot.  You look past the parking lot right out to two of the highest peaks around--Torrey's and Gray's Peaks, 'way out there across Lake Dillon.  Very nice view.  One February evening when my wife and I were at Wal-Mart, I noticed that the cloud cover had broken and the sunset's colors were being reflected by the snow on the two big peaks.  I went outside and just watched as the peaks turned first a brilliant pink, then slowly changed to orange and then to purple-blue as the sun went down.  I was amazed by the show of color.  I was more astounded at the number of people leaving the store who seemed completely oblivious to the spectacle right before their eyes.  The whole thing lasted maybe fifteen minutes, but only three or four of the hundreds of people leaving the store even stopped to watch or remark on the show.  These people were both tourists (it was Presidents' Day Weekend) and locals.  If tourists, I'm astonished that they can come to one of the prettiest places in the country and not notice the light show.  If locals, I think they should be ashamed of themselves for taking such chromotechnics for granted.  I hope I never get to that point!