...Making the Most of Limited Time

When you only have two weekends left in Boulder, there is nothing better to do than to fill them to the brim with exciting things to do. When I realized this last Friday, I knew that I could not allow myself to be needlessly idle for any part of what was shaping up to be a gorgeous, cool, sunshine-y weekend. And therefore I did not.

Saturday morning I started things off with a bright and early ride out to Rabbit Mountain on Lacey. Can you say "best-trail-ride-of-my-life-omgoodness-amazing?" Because that's about how I felt. The first several miles of the ride were flat and filled with grashoppers. I'm serious. If you've never gallopped through a field and had millions upon millions of grashoppers flying in every direction around you, you really haven't lived. We didn't actually make it up the mountain... due to time restraints and a sore hiney. As much as I absolutely adore riding bareback... it really leaves a... lasting impression, if you know what I mean. Most of the ride back to the farm was spent sidesaddle to give my bum a break.

But out of this ride came one of the most beautiful views there is...behold, freedom.

Just ignore the barbed wire fence in the foreground. Really, in the next 30 seconds after this photo was taken Lacey reared, took down the fence with her deathly hoofs, and we galloped off into the distance. Or... we just kept walking along the fence.

Anyway. After we got back to the farm, I had about a half-hour to kill while I wated to pick up Lisa from her morning bike ride. So what did I do? I set Lacey loose in a field and I layed down to take a nap. Only to be woken up a few minutes later by a curious pony snuffling in my fanny pack and drooling on my face. That's love for you. Then one of the barn dogs came over to cuddle with me as Lacey kindly ate all of the grass that was tickling my legs. Heaven, I tell you, it was heaven.

After a shower and a quick cleaning of my room (finally) I met up with a friend under very strange circumstances. He lives in Western Mass, very near Mount Holyoke. We've been talking all summer, getting excited for when we can finally hang out in August. Randomly he had to do some work training in New Mexico (oh, the Military), so we were, for once, in the same time zone. Huzzah! But wait! There's more! There's a mountaineering shop in Boulder that he's been dying to visit, so he was going to be in town for a few hours. Obviously it was time to go putz around Pearl Street for a while.

We watched a banjo band for a while... well, to be specific, a banjo/washboard/uke/fiddle/guitar/tambourine band. They were great. And shirtless. Win win for me, I think. There were your typical jugglers and magicians... flaming knives and unstable ladders... you know the drill. We stopped at my favorite little deli (inside Haagen Daas) and grabbed a T.B.A. (turkey/bacon/avacado) sammich. Yes, it is as delicious as it sounds. And then he was gone, almost as quickly as he appeared. It was a fun visit, and I can't wait to go hiking with him back on the east coast come fall time.

Speaking of hikes, that's what I did for the rest of the weekend. Well, hiking and camping that is. Brian, Aaron, Emily, Lisa, Prateek and I packed up and left civilization mid-afternoon, and spent about two hours offroading to get up to a camp site in the Indian Peaks. It was already getting dark by the time we got up there, so we quickly cut down a few trees (you don't think I'm serious?) hauled them to the site in the back of my pick-up (heck yes!) made a fire, and put up camp. That night was a night of were-pika stories and reeses s'mores. What more could you ask for?

Well, you could ask for a morning of the best hike I've ever been on. It was relatively flat, we only gained about 1200ft of elevation. Of course, this put us up around 11,700ft at our highest point. Yes kids, thats more than two miles above sea level. We hiked along an old abandoned mining road, complete with crumpling bridges.

We eventually made it out to Kings Lake, a glacier-fed looking glass lake in the midst of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen.

We spent maybe an hour just hanging out at this lake. Emily did yoga on a rock in the center of the water, Lisa and I slept on rocks by the glacier waterfall, Prateek, Brian, and Aaron had their man love time off in the wilderness together. It was surreal.

6 miles of hiking, 1200ft of elevation, half an hour where I could not feel my fingertips. Why was this, you ask? Because I'm really terrible at glissading, and had to use my hands to stop myself from plummetting to my death at the bottom of a glacier. You see, glissading can be thought of as skiing down a glacier. The difference, however, is that you aren't wearing any skis. You are just on your feet, pointed straight down a mountain of ice. This mountain of ice to be specific:

Believe me, it was fun, it was terrifying, and it hurt. But I would not hesitate to try again if I were given the opportunity.

Sadly, we all had work the next day, so we had to leave this wild paradise to head back to our urban one. Exhaustion won over, and after watching Velvet Goldmine for the first time (a movie which I now highly recommend), I collapsed into bed for sleep. Thus ended my magical weekend.

Stay tuned for further information on my research, some pretty bomb videos of printing onto thin films, and further discussions of such things as Bands on the Bricks.

Love love, finger numbing glacial love,
Amy Plunk!