Happy Birthday, Courtney

Twenty-five years ago, Courtney graduated from high school. The funny thing is the reunion committee couldn't find her address, but they managed to track us down in Colorado. It's hard to believe it's been that long since she graduated. Courtney spent her birthday weekend going to the beach and participating in Bike the Drive in Chicago - the day they close down Lake Shore Drive to cars and only allow bikes. She rode from her house all the way down to the Field Museum. Even though she frequently bikes to work, it must be really relaxing to be able to bike on a wide road and not worry about getting run over.

Courtney's birthday also happened to fall on Labor Day this year - the last day in September it can possibly be. We, of course, spent a big chunk of the weekend doing yard work and home maintenance projects (mostly cleaning). Even with the drought this summer, several of our perennials grew like crazy. So, Bruce split them and replaced the plants (mostly bushes) that didn't survive the heat. I've been noticing that more and more of my neighbors have been digging up their dead lawns and replacing them with a more drought-tolerant landscape. Even the governor has authorized replacing some of the bluegrass in front of the Governor's Mansion with native plants.

My St Louis friend, Joyce, passed through Denver on her way to Beaver Creek, so we met up at the Lil Coffea Shoppe for a quick catchup. Not quite as tasty as our usual Ted Drewes Cardinal Sin frozen custard, but the conversation was great.

With angst over gender-identity these days, I thought this sign outside the restroom at the coffee shop was kind of quirky, but clever. It's nice to see someone putting more emphasis on hygiene rather than who's using the toilet.

I decided to try some different activities this week. I attended another Artist in Residence workshop at Hudson Gardens. This topic was on collage. The artist provided tons of old magazines for us to cut up and glue back together. I thought I'd be clever and do a mix of old and new with the frontiersman and the space shuttle. That's an astronaut peaking behind the beaver.

I went to the garden early to do a little sketching before the workshop. Since it was a Saturday, there was a bluegrass band playing on the patio of the coffee shop. This is the same coffee shop that my bike club often stops at when we ride the Platte River trail. You can't see it in the photo, but there are about 50 bikers sitting off to the side taking a break from the trail. That's why I never go out bike riding on weekends - the trails are too crowded.

But I did go out riding during the week downtown to REI. I needed to exchange my zip-off hiking pants. While I was there, I also tried on a new pair of photochromic transition goggles. With the sun coming up later, it's too dark to wear traditional sunglasses early in the morning. But the new goggles work great. I don't know how they do it, but they adjust to changing light conditions.

I also had to take Charlie to the vet this week to get his booster shots. He's always excited these days when we go someplace in the car. But when we got inside the vet's office, I think he realized where we were, because he turned right around and headed for the door. He got lots of treats, though, from the girl who gave him his shots. Plus, after it was over I took him next door to Murdoch's for a new toy. This is supposed to be a cow. It looks really strange, because the body is made out of ropes - a toy Charlie normally loves.

I also finished reading my book for this month's challenge. I chose Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I had to read it in high school (which incidentally was 55 years ago based on the invitations I've been getting to my 55th reunion). It used to be one of my favorite books and I still think it is very intriguing, though after seeing how the world has changed the past 55 years, my reasons for like the book are quite different. I've been on the waiting list for the Project Hail Mary book for the past several months, but my turn finally came up. I was going to read it to satisfy the Book Never Read but Saw the Movie category. Well, I didn't like the movie, and the book wasn't any better. In fact, I didn't even finish, so I can't really check that off. It's disappointing, because I think it could be a great story, but Andy Weir is just a bit too wordy for me.

Jackson, WY

To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we had planned to go on a Llama Trek in Teton National Park. It was supposed to be a back-country camping trip where the llamas carried all your camping gear. Well with all the screw-ups in the government, especially with the national parks, our trip got cancelled. But we decided to go ahead with visiting Jackson, Wyoming and doing our own outdoor adventure.

Courtney and I had purchased plane tickets to fly into Jackson early and do some sketching. Bruce was going to drive with Charlie and meet us later in the day. Flying to Jackson on United Express was certainly a lot nicer than flying on Southwest. I can't remember the last time I had an entire row to myself (probably pre-COVID). The views out the window were stunning.

Jackson is a tiny airport, so they don't have traditional jetways. Instead, you just walk off the plane down a ramp onto the tarmac. Everybody kept stopping on the way into the terminal to take selfies with those gorgeous mountains in the background.

The first day we all went on a hike. I was a little nervous about bears, but I rented some bear spray while I was waiting for Courtney at the airport. Mostly I hiked behind Bruce and Courtney figuring I'd be long gone back to the car before they even got the bear spray out of their pack.

I'm not the biggest fan of scaling mountains, so I picked a trail that wasn't too steep and was supposed to have lots of wildflower meadows along the trail.

That trail turned out to be quite a jungle. The wildflowers were beautiful, but being late-summer, also full of pollen and seeds. Charlie got absolutely covered in them, because he can't resist sticking his nose into everything. Since we're having a drought in Colorado, I'm not used to all this foliage so close to the trail either. I'd have worn long pants if I'd known, but luckily there were no mosquitoes or poison ivy.

One of the things that impressed me about the trailhead was how well-kept the site was. Even the port-a-potty had a colorful mural painted on all the inside walls.

The next day Courtney and I rented eBikes while Bruce and Charlie went on another hike. We decided to ride up to the Teton Village Ski Resort (you can see all the cutouts for ski lifts in the background). 

The bike trail was really nice - paved and surprisingly flat. That turned out to be a good thing, because about 5 miles out of town, I discovered that the rental shop had given me a bike with a low battery. I managed to make it to Teton Village before the battery totally died, but I headed straight to the bike shop and switched it out for a fresh one.

That afternoon, Courtney and I went down to the river to sketch. We were staying in a cabin along the Snake River. It was really nice with 2 bedrooms, a mini kitchen, and an outdoor deck. 

I had brought some floating chairs thinking we'd go for a swim in the river, but the water was way too cold. However, several times we saw people floating down the river on paddleboards. If we'd been staying an extra day, I think I would have found out where the rental place was and tried it myself. I think I would have been OK as long as I didn't try to stand up and fall in.

On the last day, we took Courtney to the airport and then drove home (almost 10 hours - yikes!). Along the way I couldn't resist stopping at this little coffee shop. When I got my drink, I saw that they had mini-huckleberry donuts - yum. So this didn't turn out to be the llama trek I'd originally planned, but I think our little multi-sport adventure turned out to be even better. 

Seattle

For the past 15 years, I've managed to make a trip to Seattle in August. Mainly, it's to celebrate Brian's birthday (#48 this year... yikes!), but also because the weather is so nice - sunny and mild, but most importantly, no rain. The new light rail extension makes it really easy to commute from Redmond to downtown. When I go out to Redmond, though, Brian and I mostly play board games. This time out of 8 games, I managed to beat him once. That's quite an accomplishment, because usually I don't win any games at all.

I spent a lot of time downtown sketching. There are so many quirky things to see and there is a coffee shop on almost every street corner. 

This time I checked out an area called South Lake Union (SLU for short). When I first saw this sign, I thought I was back in St Louis at St Louis University (also known as SLU).

South Lake Union is home to the Amazon headquarters. The executive leadership has their offices in the buildings called The Spheres. I wasn't able to go inside, because they are only open for tours on the weekends, but you can see through the glass walls to the gardens inside. The designers think that "connecting with nature increases creativity and reduces mental fatigue." Hmmm... kind of intriguing. There was an old airstream trailer in the grounds in front of The Spheres that was being used as a Community Banana Stand. Twice I went there and picked up a free banana for my lunch. 

I thought this area looked really good to try out Courtney's acrylic paint technique. The middle picture took me the longest. It's the sunshade that covers the dog park on the right side of The Spheres. I don't know why I forgot to take a real photo of it, because Charlie would have loved it. There wasn't a lot of space to run around, but there were lots of dogs using it.

On this visit, I stayed an extra day so I could take the ferry over to Bainbridge Island. It's such a nice way to see spectacular views of the waterfront. It's hard to tell from this photo, but the Space Needle is behind the Ferris wheel. I was fascinated by the Bainbridge ferry dock. Since the Bainbridge ferry transports cars as well as people, the ferry comes in under a road ramp. Hydraulic motors lower the asphalt roadway down onto the ferry deck, so the cars can drive off. There's a much smaller ramp off to the side for walk-on passengers to exit the ferry. 

While I was on the boat, I picked up a brochure for a troll. It seems like every town's got one. So, I followed the map to the waterfront trail and went looking for Sakai Park (that's where the troll was hidden). The troll ended up being a mile and a half from the ferry terminal and looked a lot like the Breckenridge troll, but with a Suquamish twist (the indigenous tribe of the Pacific Northwest). I noticed that most of the other tourists didn't walk up to see the troll but drove.

When I scheduled my trip to Seattle, I purposefully wanted to miss the FIFA World Cup crowds. However, everywhere I looked I saw Chivas fans from the Guadalajara, Mexico soccer team. You'd think they'd won the tournament, but they didn't. I guess the fans just didn't want to go back home.

But after 5 days, I headed back to the airport for the trip home. I really dread the Seattle airport, because it is just too small to accommodate all the passengers moving through it. The restrooms, especially, are way too small. But rather than adding more toilets, they had signs up saying they were installing sensors to make your restroom experience more enjoyable. As far as I could see, all they'd installed so far were the signs, because there were no sensors in that bathroom that I could find. They even still had flush-levers on the toilets. I should have taken this as a premonition of more hassles to come, because later that day they shut down the Denver airport due to a really severe hail, wind, and rain storm. Our plane circled around Colorado for an hour trying to wait out the storm, but finally got too low on gas and had to land in Albuquerque, New Mexico to refuel. Good grief. I finally made it back home that evening. The customer service reps in Albuquerque begged us not to get off the plane, because there were no flights back to Denver. So, lunch and dinner that day ended up being 3 bags of munchies. Luckily, I was sitting in the "extra legroom" seats; the regular passengers only got 1 bag. 

Another Milestone

I passed another milestone on my eBike - 1,000 miles in only 7 months. I think that's quite an accomplishment. My odometer scrolled over while I was riding along the Platte River. We've had some rain recently, so the sky was really clear when I took this photo. Unfortunately, it's gray again from wildfire smoke. We can't seem to catch a break from fires.

They've been doing a lot of renovation work along the river turning sections into wave parks for paddleboards and kayaks. The river is so low right now that there isn't enough depth to launch any kind of boat. The ducks and geese are having a gay old time though.

Our bike club had their annual potluck social. We had a bit of rain right at the start, but then it cleared off into a beautiful evening. It's funny how different people look when they aren't wearing helmets. I didn't recognize half of them. I think the helmets make you look a lot younger (it hides the gray hair).

I'm still trying to master the art of sketching with acrylic markers. I took them with me to the coffee shop and didn't do too bad. The nice thing about these markers is that if you make a mistake, you can draw over it with a different color. I took some photos so that Courtney and I could draw together on our Saturday Zoom session. That's her rendition of the wishing well on the right. You can definitely see her architectural background in her drawing style.

For the July reading challenge, I checked out several air fryer cookbooks from the library. The topic was to read a book outside your typical genre. Since I don't normally read cookbooks, I figure that counts. I found one that I really like with recipes from America's Test Kitchen, but when I went on Amazon to order it, I discovered that it cost almost $30 to buy a real book these days. I normally spend 99 cents for my mysteries, and that's only if I don't get them for free. I decided I'll just keep renewing the book as long as the library will let me or until I get sick of cooking in the air fryer. I joined another challenge at the library only this one has nothing to do with books. It's a tour of coffee shops and breweries near the various library branches. That definitely sounds like something right up my alley.

Summer of Love

This weekend the neighborhood social committee sponsored an outdoor dinner and concert at the clubhouse. Their 60's theme was called, All You Need is Love. Since I rarely go to clubhouse events, I thought I'd go all out and dress up for the occasion. I bought this dress, sunglasses, and earring set off Amazon (very colorful) and helped out at the front desk checking people into the event. I had to laugh at all the other party-goer's who'd also ordered costumes from Amazon. Some even purchased go-go boots (though they swapped them out for their more comfortable tennis shoes after an hour).

This party reminded me of the Ozark Music Festival that Bruce and I went to in Sedalia back in 1974.  While I have wonderful memories of that weekend, the state of Missouri doesn't. Historically, most people remember Woodstock when asked about rock concerts from the 70's, but the Ozark music festival actually had much bigger attendance (over 200,000). And in a small farming town like Sedalia, that caused quite a stir. 

Earlier that day, I participated in one of my more "normal" activities by running the circuit station at STEM day. I don't look quite so much like an aging hippie in this photo.

Glenwood Springs

I've been wanting to bike the Rio Grande Trail in Glenwood Springs for a couple years, so this week I finally made it. Bruce, Charlie, and I went up a day early to spend some time in Frisco. I biked up to Copper Mountain while Bruce and Charlie hiked to Rainbow Lake. 

Then we met back down in Frisco for beer and a pretzel at Ein Prosit. Sometimes it's a little tricky traveling with Charlie, because he gets so excited. We took him over to the Historic Park to run off a bit of energy while I did some sketching, but mostly he just laid down in the grass and took a nap. Then we continued on to Eagle, Colorado. We stopped for dinner at a great barbecue place. They had a dog-friendly patio, which would have been perfect, except that the temperature was 98°. Patio umbrellas just aren't that helpful when it's that hot. Even Charlie wasn't that interested in the pulled pork.

The next day I met some friends and biked the Rio Grande Trail. The trail runs south from Glenwood Springs 40 miles to Aspen. We only rode a third of the way to Carbondale. We stopped at Bonfire Coffee for a break, but so did about 30 other bikers. The only available seat was another outdoor patio umbrella table. I forgot that July is peak vacation season.

The trail was really beautiful with breath-taking scenery. It runs along the Roaring Fork River (not the Rio Grande). The mountains were gorgeous, because there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

We passed several art installations along the trail. I would have stopped to do some sketching if the temperature hadn't been up near 100° again. 

While I was biking the Rio Grande trail, Bruce and Charlie were hiking the Glenwood Canyon trail to Grizzly Creek. This trail runs along the Colorado River. It also has gorgeous scenery, but was even more packed with people than the trail I was on. Poor Charlie enjoyed the first part of the hike, but when the temperature started climbing, he was really suffering. Most people don't hike in fur coats. 

Urban Sketchers Workshop

For this week's adventure, I went to Chicago for their annual Urban Sketchers Workshop. It's always fun to go visit Courtney in Chicago, but I totally forgot about the humidity and mosquitoes you get in the Midwest in the summer.

This year I decided to sign up for some of the formal classes. The first one was on drawing people - not really my thing and the instructor did nothing to change my opinion. We spent the first half of the class drawing a Halloween skull he bought last October at Menards; then we paired up and practiced drawing our partners (the girl in the middle was my partner). I really tried to do a good job on her, but we weren't given much time (2 minutes actually), so she tended to look like the Halloween skull.

Courtney presented a demo during the morning sketchwalk on using acrylic paint markers to draw iconic Chicago landmarks. I would have much rather attended her session than the people drawing. 

The Palette & Chisel gallery (our home base for the workshop) was hosting an art show and sale of pieces from any sketchers who wanted to contribute. Courtney painted a bunch of postcard size drawings on tan paper. That made those bright markers pop even more. Her work was extremely popular as you can tell by all the little red "sold" dots underneath her paintings.

She tried to teach me how to do it on Sunday, but we were using an incredibly ornate Gothic church as the subject matter. It was hard for me to simplify the initial drawing, plus I picked colors that were too dark. I'm intrigued by the technique, so I came home and ordered my own set of markers off Amazon. We'll see if I can make mine look as good as Courtney's.

After the first class Courtney and I went to lunch at Velvet Taco, my favorite place to eat in Chicago. Every time I go there, the menu is just a bit different, because their tacos are not traditional Mexican fare. This time I had the fish & chips and fried paneer (cheese). Yum! We actually went back again on Sunday, and I tried the Chile pulled pork tacos. 

My afternoon workshop was significantly more interesting to me than the morning. It was on travel sketching. Our instructor was very lively and really kept things moving. We all downloaded a travel app to our phones and then we followed the itinerary she uploaded. She gave us paints and sketchbooks she'd gotten donated by various businesses (the paint came from a company in Poland). We started sketching at the Blue Door Cafe to sketch the outside of the shop (obviously, because it had a bright blue door). Then we walked over to a park to sketch a city skyline view that included the Hancock Building. 

We ended up at a couple picnic tables where she'd laid out iconic Chicago travel souvenirs like Cubs hats, Garretts popcorn, and hot dogs. At the end of our workshop, we got to eat the food that was left on the table. I should have probably tried a hot dog, since it was dinnertime, but they were just a bit weird with huge dill pickles, sliced tomatoes, relish, and mustard. Supposedly people in Chicago do not put ketchup on their hot dogs. It's hard to tell in my sketch, but you can see a tiny bit of the hot dog peeking out from under the dill pickle.

At the end of the weekend, I had so many free art supplies that I couldn't fit them all into my suitcase. I had to leave a bunch with Courtney.

But traveling would not be complete without the dreaded plane ride home. Southwest is trying to improve the "comfort" of their passengers, but sometimes I wonder if the person making those changes actually flies on their own airplanes. They don't hand out peanuts anymore, but we got cookies instead. Supposedly they were gluten-free, organic, flourless and any other new buzzword people are throwing around in the food industry... but there were only 4 nickel-sized cookies in the pack. They've also installed new tray tables to their seat backs. There's a little pull-down tray you can use to prop up your phone. Interesting, though you couldn't stream movies, because the "free" wi-fi wasn't working.

But truthfully, it would be much more practical if they put their improvements toward enlarging the overhead bin space. People are bringing so much junk onto the plane these days. I watched this dad trying to pack up his baby stroller before getting onto the plane. Luckily all the pieces were collapsible, but it still ended up being about the size of (and looking like) a body bag for a St Bernard dog. What happened to those little umbrella strollers we used with our kids???